Is it time to pull out?
The truth about Canada's mission in Afghanistan
By MICHAEL DEN TANDT, SUN MEDIA
KANDAHAR -- The Afghan war is not one conflict but three -- a guerrilla war, a development war, a communications war.
Canada is gaining ground in the first, slowly winning the second and losing the third.
The military and the media deserve some measure of blame for this. Mainly though, responsibility falls to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Even as he struggles to sell the Afghan mission to an increasingly uneasy public, his mania for control is stifling the truth about what's happening here.
On Friday, Harper announced he has tasked a blue-ribbon team to study Canada's future role in Afghanistan. Led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley, the five-member group will begin by meeting with troops and development workers in Kandahar. The panel is expected to report back in February 2008.
The truth of what is happening in Afghanistan is extraordinary: It's a story of courage and grit and idealism that, if more Canadians only knew it, would make them very proud.
PLEASE DON'T GO
But most don't know it, because the people best positioned to tell it have been gagged.
I came back to Afghanistan to find answers to two questions: Is Canada's deployment here still worthwhile, despite the rising toll in lives? And if it is, then why do so many people back home think it isn't?
In the past week I've spoken to dozens of Canadian soldiers, non-governmental aid workers, and Afghans, some who are very critical the U.S.-led international effort here, and of the Karzai regime.
Their message was clear: Please, Canada, don't go.
Our country has an influence and a reputation here that is vastly disproportionate to the number of troops we have on the ground.
That's partly because we are spending money -- a great deal of money, $1.2 billion committed over 10 years -- on rebuilding and redevelopment.
Your tax dollars are helping pay for a vast national de-mining project, led by Canada but in partnership with the United Nations. Every day on a mountain top in Kabul, Afghans mentored by Canadians carry on the painstaking and dangerous work of removing and destroying the thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance that litter this country. Canada is the single largest donor, contributing $20 million annually.
Your tax dollars are paying for a project that will help 3,000 war widows in Kabul start micro-businesses this year. Often, the aid begins with a single cow or goat.
Your tax dollars are paying for the training of a professional Afghan National Army, which is increasingly imposing order in the volatile south.
Thirty-four thousand troops are already trained. A thousand new troops a month are graduating from the Afghan National Training Centre in Kabul. Canadians are in the forefront of the training effort.
Your tax dollars are paying for 200 small aid projects in Kandahar City, all geared to stimulating local business and trades, and developing a functioning local economy.
These efforts are not being carried out on your behalf at arms' length. They're led, supported and protected by a Canadian military that has learned, through half a century of peacekeeping, how to properly and modestly engage with a foreign culture.
You may have heard that no one can tell Canadians and Americans apart any longer. In Afghanistan, everyone knows the difference.
Canadians are leaders here in the delicate trick of combining military power with aid. Other nations in the 37-member international coalition come to our Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Kandahar City, to study our methods.
The PRT, Camp Nathan Smith, is a model, an experiment in a new kind of military engagement: Soldiers, working hand in hand with RCMP officers, diplomats, lawyers, doctors, specialists in governance and foreign aid workers helping the Afghans manage their own affairs, raise their standard of living and establish a functional state.
You've heard about the 71 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat who've lost their lives in Afghanistan. You've heard about the CBC journalist and cameraman whose armoured vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb.
What you haven't heard, perhaps, is that the vast majority of the casualties and injuries in this civil war are Afghan. Mentored and supported by Canadian officers. The Afghans are in the forefront of every combat operation in the south and 85% of the casualties treated for war injuries at Kandahar Air Field, the main coalition base in the south, are Afghan army or Afghan police.
It follows from this that our deployment here is not an occupation: It's a support mission. But few people back home appreciate this, because nobody's covering the Afghan side of the war. Afghan casualties, even mass casualties, get short shrift.
The leading edge of Canada's humanitarian engagement here is the PRT, Camp Nathan Smith. But for reasons that defy explanation, only the soldiers stationed there are allowed to speak publicly about their work.
The five officials from foreign affairs, the 10 RCMP officers engaged in training Afghan police, the head of the CIDA mission in the province (with a budget of $39-million this year alone), are not allowed to speak to the media. According to multiple sources here, they have been gagged by the Prime Minister's Office.
Figure that one out. The very people who could best spread the word about the good works Canada is carrying out beneath the security umbrella provided by our troops, can't talk about it. This translates into a distorted portrait of the mission at home.
The military can't get off scot-free either. The Canadian army's communications resources in Kandahar province are located at the Kandahar Air Field -- the centre of combat operations. Reporters at the airfield are supported by satellite and media tents with sophisticated communications equipment.
At the PRT, there's a single media tent. It has no reliable, permanent Internet hookups. There's no satellite for television transmissions. As a result, most reporters choose to stay at the airfield -- where they don't hear a lot about development work, because it's all based at the PRT.
The media? We're at fault too. Reporters driven by competition and the demands of editors back home, are hell-bent on covering Canadians in combat. That's a good thing, as far as it goes: Canadians need a public witness to the exercise of lethal force by their representatives abroad. Combat stories are dramatic and gripping and the tales we hear about soldiers at war can inspire and move us the way few other stories can.
But the entire mission stands or falls on whether development can succeed. For media to ignore the tangible evidence of progress simply because these stories aren't as dramatic as combat, is beyond belief.
Here's why all this matters so much: The Taliban are not fighting a conventional guerrilla war. All their efforts are geared towards forcing Western governments to pull their soldiers out of Afghanistan.
DISTORTED VIEW
Every suicide bombing and IED attack is about hurting Western troops, but it's even more about causing fear and uncertainty back home. This is why there's such frustration, among soldiers here, about the posturing and chest-beating in Ottawa each time a Canadian dies in combat. Each cluster of front-page stories is, in effect, a tactical victory for the insurgents.
What happens if we pull out? Some say it would make no difference. The Americans could easily replace us.
But it's not nearly that simple. The Afghans don't trust the Americans. Their approach is different from ours -- much more blunt, less culturally sensitive. Canada has an institutional memory now in Kandahar, won by five years of hard work on the ground.
Canada has the aid projects, just now beginning to bear fruit. Canada has credibility with the Afghans, won by our soldiers' willingness to fight and die on their behalf.
If we pull out, much of that will be lost.
The mission will continue but the setback will be huge and Canada's standing in Afghanistan, and the world, will suffer immeasurably.
http://ottawasun.com/News/Afghan/200...76954-sun.html