Armed Conflict

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, has written compellingly in the WashingtonPost[i]that the damage done by the phrase, War on Terror, “is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves.” The persistent invocation of the phrase has created a culture of fear that “obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.”

It brings to mind a fleeting moment in the immediate wake of September 11, 2001 when it seemed that Canada would steer a radically different course.

In those deeply disturbing days, the dominant refrain was of course that the menace had arrived on our shores and we in North America would now all have to rise to the challenge and defend “our way of life.” But Prime Minister Jean Chr√©tien’s early message was different.[ii]” Our actions will be ruled by resolve but not by fear,” he told the House of Commons. “We will remain vigilant but will not give in to the temptation in a rush to increase security to undermine the values that we cherish and which have made Canada a beacon of hope, freedom and tolerance in the world.”

The focus was less on “defending” our way of life and more on “depending” on it: “Let our actions be guided by a spirit of wisdom and perseverance, by our values and our way of life. As we press the struggle, let us never, ever, forget who we are and what we stand for.”

But it was a distinction that went unnoticed where it counted most.[iii]Washington adopted the mantra that on 9/11 “everything changed” while CNN’s omnipresent banner headline trumpeted “America ‘s New War.” The claim that “everything changed” actively discouraged the idea that we could depend on the durable civil values and standards of our way of life in responding to the challenge of terrorism. The insistence that we were in extraordinary times fed the view that extraordinary measures were now required, that we should not be constrained or inhibited by the rules and values that guide us in normal times. The “everything changed” mood fostered the sense that we were in a new context in which the usual political rudders or navigational aids offered by established morality and the rule of law could not be relied upon and could thus be jettisoned in favour of new tools.

Within weeks of the attack CNN’s banner ceased to be a metaphor. The United States attacked Afghanistan claiming self defence, the UN Security Council implicitly agreed, NATO states invoked Article V of their alliance pact to declare the terrorist attack on the US an attack on them all, and Canada sent four ships to the war effort in symbolic but unmistakable acquiescence to the prevailing mood – not to mention in sanguine disregard for the Prime Minister’s earlier wisdom.

Five years on, we’ve seen a surfeit of innovative tools, used by the US as well as Canada: arrests without trial and security certificate detentions, violations of privacy through wiretap programs, illegal deportations, abuses of prisoners, and of course renewed warfare. In time, the “war on terror” spread to Iraq, this time in defiance of the Security Council and without even the pretext of legality, and, notably, without the political support of Canada. It is a war on terror that has successfully transformed Iraq from a murderously oppressive state that nevertheless eschewed Islamic extremism and refused cooperation with Islamic terrorism into a spectacularly failed state where lawlessness and unrestrained violence offer an open arena for the recruitment, training, and practice of terrorism.

In Afghanistan and Iraq , the all-out American attacks deposed the regimes of the day with impressive efficiency, but then things got a lot more complicated. Five years later, the security situation in Afghanistan continues its steady decline, as Canadians and Afghans have tragically learned, while the tragic chaos of Iraq renders the might of America impotent and searching above all for escape.

The end is not in sight, and it is a costly irony that these wars to build democracy and end terror follow more than a decade of lessons learned about what does and doesn’t work when trying to reverse state failure, build sustainable societies, and prevent violent conflict – peacebuilding, in other words.

The basic understanding that had emerged out of the peacebuilding decade that followed the end of the Cold War was that to prevent violent conflict, and especially to prevent backsliding in societies just emerging out of prolonged armed conflict, it was necessary to focus on building conditions in which the local population could see positive change and in particular would develop some confidence that the pursuit of positive change was being seriously engaged. Elections, as a means of demonstrating a commitment to political inclusiveness and power sharing, were an important component, but by no means the central strategy.

Inclusiveness had to be part of a much larger strategy: building local security institutions, like the police and judiciary, that were experienced by the people as fair and operating in the interests of all; building an infrastructure of basic services, notably humanitarian relief to the most stricken populations, as well as education and health care, transport and communication; the demobilization and disarming of combatants to give the civilian population the assurance of a serious effort to control crime and sectarian violence; and the start of economic development measures.

Complementing the peacebuilding lessons, the Canadian-sponsored report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS ), “The Responsibility to Protect,” was released in late 2001 and gradually became the focus and stimulus for an international effort to formally recognize the international community’s responsibility to come to the protection of highly vulnerable communities when their own governments failed or refused to provide such protection.

On the military protection of the vulnerable, the report had brief but explicit advice about a new kind of military intervention, for humanitarian purposes, that “involves a form of military action significantly more narrowly focused and targeted than all out war-fighting.” Winning the acceptance of civilian populations, says the report, “means accepting limitations and demonstrating through the use of restraint that the [military] operation is not a war to defeat a state but an operation to protect populations in that state from being harassed, persecuted or killed.”[iv]

Yet in both Afghanistan and Iraq wars were launched to defeat a state without any plan for how to protect the affected populations or how to successfully support a successor regime. They were both invasions intended toadvance the interests of the invaders, but as Brzezinski confirms, these two hot wars joined the mythical “war on terror” to violate the rule of law, to advance intolerance at home, and to “gravely damage the United States internationally.”

Echoing the famous and much earlier confession of “shame” by the Dixie Chicks[v] at the actions of their president, Brzezinski concludes that “someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.”

[i] “Terrorized by ‚ÄòWar on Terror’,” March 25, 2007.

[ii] Hansard, Government Orders, attack on the United States ,” September 17, 2001.

[iii] The following is drawn from, and is elaborated on, in: Ernie Regehr, ” Canada is ignoring its own advice,” Inroads: The Canadian Journal of Opinion, Issue No. 20, Winter/Spring 2007

[iv] International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001, December). The Responsibility to Protect. Ottawa : IDRC. [Online]. Available: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/iciss-ciise/report-en.asp, pp. 37 and 63.

[v] In March 2003, during a now famous performance in London, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, a native of Lubbock, Texas, told the audience: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

Any persistent and buoyant insurgency, still an entirely apt description of the Taliban rebellion that Canadians are trying to help quell in southern Afghanistan, must necessarily feed off multiple roots, but the multinational counter-insurgency effort is now increasingly focused on what it regards as the dual taproots of the armed resistance.

The first is the rest and re-supply haven that is available to first-tier or hard-line Taliban combatants and leaders across the border in Pakistan. The second is the ongoing supply of young Afghan men available for hire as second-tier Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan .

In a series of recent encounters with international security analysts, UN officials, and Canadian military and foreign affairs officials, key elements of the political agenda they have in mind when they say that success in Afghanistan will not be achieved by military means alone became more clearly focused.

They all now have Pakistan fully in their sights. Intensified public and quiet diplomacy is now underway to persuade Pakistan to address the border problem and thus to take steps to stop the free movement of insurgents and their supplies between the two countries.[i]

Strategists are also focused increasingly on the second-tier Taliban fighters – young men who do much of the movement’s fighting but who are generally thought not to be driven by the movement’s ideology. Instead, they are part of a broad Pashtun community that is sufficiently disaffected with Kabul to be susceptible to the Taliban’s offers of attractive pay envelopes. The main effort to get these young men to decline further service to the Taliban is therefore a second offensive – this one accelerates reconstruction in accessible areas of the south in an effort to win over villagers who now, in the face of Taliban intimidation and the absence of reliable services from the central government in Kabul, are drawn either to neutrality or to supporting the forces that reject the incompetence, corruption, and political exclusiveness widely associated with Kabul.[ii]

B oth strategies – to cut off the Taliban from their haven in Pakistan and from their foot soldiers in Afghanistan – are necessary, but at least some analysts add that success will remain elusive unless these strategies are accompanied by fundamental changes in the make-up and behavior of the Government in Kabul .

To win the cooperation of Pakistan it will be necessary to demonstrate to Islamabad that the Government in Kabul is not a threat to Pakistan ‘s interests. It will be necessary to demonstrate that a stable Afghanistan government will not be dominated by the pro-India Northern Alliance,[iii] but will include the full participation of the south that is historically more in tune with Pakistan. In further recognition of Pakistan’s interests and in further pursuit of Pakistan’s cooperation, Kabul is also asked to accept the current border and adopt a policy of careful neutrality with regard to both India and Pakistan .[iv]

Canadian military officials as well as UN representatives emphasize that reconstruction with tangible and immediate returns to villages in the south – returns that display the benefits of the central government – can be the only source of real evidence of a serious intention to meet local needs and earn loyalty to the new Afghanistan. And it is only a sense of this durable mutual commitment that will finally discourage young southerners from becoming tier 2 Taliban.

At the same time, however, one does not get the sense from these conversations that there is full recognition that the south is indeed fundamentally suspicious of the central government and that the government itself must take overt steps to convince southerners that it is striving to be representative of and sympathetic to the needs and interests of the people of the south.

If current reconstruction efforts are to have the desired political impact – that is, growing support for the government – Kabul will have to demonstrate that it is not in the hands of the traditional adversaries of the people of the south (i.e. that it is not dominated by the Northern Alliance at the expense of the Pashtun). Only then, say other analysts, will southerners be persuaded that short-term benefits will be converted into a long-term commitment to the well-being of the south. If the south continues to view the regime as untrustworthy and not inclusive, loyalty will not be bought with a few projects delivered by Canadian soldiers.

A government in Kabul that earns the durable confidence of the people of the south is essential to produce a political culture that actively discourages defection to the armed resistance of the Taliban. Barnet Rubin of New York University and the Council on Foreign Relations, a pre-eminent American observer of Afghan affairs, even contemplates inviting the Taliban into the political process: “if, as some sources claim, the Taliban are preparing to drop their maximalist demands and give guarantees against the reestablishment of the al Qaeda bases, the Afghan government could discuss their entry into the political system”[v] – a point the advocates of talking to the Taliban have been making for some time.

There are thus two political transformations in Afghanistan that are essential to undercutting the Taliban military threat and to building Pashtun confidence in the government and national institutions anchored in Kabul: a reorganization and re-orientation of the central government to demonstrate that it is not hostile to the interests of Pakistan, and a political process that is inclusive and serious about forming a government that is ultimately regarded by southerners as their own.

[i]Foreign Minister Peter MacKay told the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence (November 22, 2006) that ” President Musharraf’s government can and must do more.” He said that “Canada, along with our allies, continues to encourage Pakistan to step up its efforts to prevent the cross-border movement of insurgents between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Specifically, we requested Pakistan’s efforts to seek out and arrest senior Taliban figures inside their country; improve border security; sign, ratify, and implement key United Nations conventions and resolutions against terrorism; legislate and enforce more robust anti-money laundering laws and counter-narcotics training; and work to prevent the exploitation by insurgents of refugee camps inside Pakistan .” In his January 2007 visit to Pakistan Mr. MacKay offered Canadian assistance to Pakistan , including aerial reconnaissance, training of border guards, and the provision of satellite telephones. [Sadaqat Jan, “Canada doesn’t back Pakistan ‘s land mine plan, MacKay says,” Associated Press, January 9, 2007 (www.theglobeandmail.com).

[ii] Thomas H. Johnson and M. Chris Mason, “Unterstanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan ,” Orbis, Winter 2007, Vol. 51, Issue 1 (The Foreign Policy Research Institute), pp. 71-89.

[iii] The Karzai’s government is linked to India, according to Pakistan, through strong personal and political ties and Pakistan is concerned that a strategic alliance with India will not only undermine Pakistan’s traditional influence in Afghanistan but will give India a foothold from which to further threaten Pakistan. [“Musharraf’s Taliban Problem,” Backgrounder, Council on Foreign Relations, September 11, 2006 (http://www.cfr.org/publication/11401/musharrafs_taliban_problem.html).

[iv] Barnet Rubin, “Saving Afghanistan ,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007 (http://www.foreignaffairs.org).

[v] Rubin.

Iraq and Uganda model the two primary narratives that dominate analysis of the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. The action to date has removed the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) from its short-lived control of the national capital, as well as from much of the rest of the country, and replaced it with the, till now, marginalized and ineffective Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

The Iraq model for what happens next predominates among observers and is persuasively argued by author and columnist Gwynne Dyer. In this story line, the Ethiopian invasion and defeat of the UIC are the start of a new round of war. As in the American invasion of Iraq (the Iraq analogy is specifically drawn by a UIC official that Dyer quotes), regime destruction has been swift and efficient, but the Islamists, far from being defeated, have only melted away temporarily to regroup and organize for the struggle to come. Thus Dyer concludes: “this is just the start of a long guerilla war that will sap the strength of the Ethiopian army, a Christian-led force backing unpopular warlords in a Muslim country.”[i]

The Uganda model was put forward in the Times of London by Rosemary Righter, citing Tanzania’s 1979 invasion of neighboring Uganda which finally ended the brutal regime of Idi Amin and set the stage for Uganda’s slow and far from easy emergence out of the special hell that was the Uganda of the 1970s. While the Tanzanians were denounced at the time, Righter insists “they deserved praise and so do the Ethiopians.”[ii]

The Iraq analogy definitely has the feel of realism to it, but the fear that Somalia has just been driven to the threshold of another long, drawn-out guerilla war may well be underestimating the potential for the Transitional Federal Government and overestimating the ambitions of the Union of Islamic Courts.

The TFG was formed in October 2004 after a long, difficult, but inclusive negotiating process.[iii] The new Parliament and the new Government it supports could not move to Somalia until mid 2005, and into the capital Mogadishu only now under the wing of the Ethiopian military, but both were and are broadly representative of the country’s clans and also include many of the country’s surfeit of war lords and militia leaders. While the inclusion of war lords is reminiscent of the unholy alliances that the Kharzei Government in Afghanistan has pursued with war lords there, the hard reality of Somalia is that clan-based war lords excluded from the political process have the means of fighting their way back to attention and contention – hence, having them inside the proverbial tent was considered the prudent option.

Similarly, any Government of Somalia that does not have the support or at least toleration of its key neighbors cannot expect a stable future. Indeed, a major challenge in the peace process that established the TFG was to gain the support of Ethiopia to prevent it from acting as external spoiler right from the start. Ultimately, of course, Eritrea will also have to be brought on board (which should be part of the now essential reconciliation process involving its friends in the UIC).

At the same time, it is not necessarily the case that the mainstream of the UIC has ambitions to fight for central power and to convert Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state. The local order brought by the Islamic Courts was welcomed by Somalis desperate for some stability, and the UIC’s emergence as a national power also enjoyed wide support. While the US reacted predictably to support the war lords in their failed effort to prevent the rise of the UIC as a national force, Somalia ‘s neighbors have reason to be wary of the UIC.

In particular, the International Crisis Group reports that elements of the UIC have tolerated the use of Somali territory as “a staging ground and a haven for the perpetrators of Al Qaeda bombings against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,” as well as other attacks in Kenya.[iv]In addition, some of the less restrained members of the UIC have also given voice to old Somali irredentist ambitions for a greater Somalia[v] – not a comforting notion to Ethiopia with its large community of Ogaden Somalis.

The hope that Uganda of 1979 will yet be the model for the start of a slow Somali recovery from chaos is based at least partly on the fact that the TGF and UIC both enjoy a kind of legitimacy in Somalia. The TGF emerged out of an extensive and participatory consultative process and has the support of the Africa Union and IGAD. But it certainly lacks the legitimacy and confidence that finally comes only from effectiveness – from delivering the public good of human security. The UIC, on the other hand, has the legitimacy born of effectiveness. It delivered stability and improved security where all others have failed. But as a national force it lacks the legitimacy that must ultimately come from public engagement and approval.

Both have their respective backers internationally, but how much support does each enjoy at home? That is what Amb. Bethwell Kiplagat, the Kenyan diplomat who guided the peace process and the formation of the TFG, calls a theoretical question that can only be answered through elections: “The problem of Somalia can only be solved by the people and not by leaders alone. Let the people decide through free and fair elections which leaders and what government they want.”[vi]

Amb. Kiplagat does not assume that an election will solve all problems. The challenges are enormous and daunting, but elections are a basic source of governmental legitimacy, which in turn is an essential ingredient in the making of a new Somalia.

The European Union’s International Somalia Contact Group has called for a new reconciliation process that involves both the TFG and the UIC,[vii] but the worst case scenario now is that the TGF and UIC will not seek accommodation with each other and that neither will prevail on its own. The presence of Ethiopian forces will not be tolerated indefinitely, and without an alternative international force to provide basic security services, the resulting power vacuum will again be occupied, as it has for the last 15 years, by a potpourri of clan-based war lords whose specialty is primarily the delivery of persistent chaos and insecurity.

[i] Gwynne Dyer, “U.S. prods Ethiopian invasion of Somalia ,” The Record, December 30, 2006.

[ii] Rosemay Righter, “At last, a glimmer of hope for Somalia ,” The Times, January 4, 2007.

[iii] I happened to attend the first session of the new Parliament, held in Nairobi , as a guest of the Kenyan mediator who managed the peace process on behalf of the regional Horn of Africa organization IGAD – Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.

[iv] John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen, “Getting it Wrong in Somalia Again,” the Boston Globe, November 29, 2006.

[v] ” Somalia Conflict Risk Alert,” International Crisis Group, November 27, 2006.

[vi] Bethwell Kiplagat, “Somalis must have the last word on who leads them,” Sunday Nation ( Nairobi, Kenya ), December 20, 2006.

[vii] ” Somalia : EU calls for reconciliation to achieve peace,” IRIN, January 4, 2007.

Somewhere on the road to Kandahar it has apparently been revealed to NATO that its future is inextricably linked to success or failure in Afghanistan – begging the question of whose definition of success applies.[i]

If NATO’s political and military leaders choose to characterize their alliance as so fragile and wanting in purpose that its fate is now in the hands of peasant fighters in Afghanistan – even though NATO accounts for two-thirds of all global military spending and even more of its military capacity[ii] – that’s up to them, but perhaps it’s time to get a grip.

Contrary to current rhetoric, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on which Canada serves in Afghanistan is not a “NATO mission.” Indeed, the American led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) force, still present and active in Afghanistan , is arguably much closer to being a NATO mission. The OEF force was mounted in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US , based on the UN Charter’s self-defence provision (Article 51), and NATO in turn invoked its Article V on grounds that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on them all.

ISAF is something entirely different, and it is definitely not meant to be the NATO alliance in self-defence mode. Established by the Security Council at the request of the 2001 Bonn Conference and the interim government it created, ISAF has the specific task of assisting the Afghan government in maintaining security – i.e. to provide for the safety and protection of the people of Afghanistan, as well as the UN and other agencies working there.[iii]

It was initially managed by the UK, and rotated to Italy and Germany until August 2003 when NATO took over.[iv] When ISAF was under UK command it was not regarded as a “UK operation” and now that it is under NATO command it is not a “NATO operation” – in both cases it was and is an international force, mandated by the UN, that involves troops from countries within and beyond NATO (of 37 troop contributing countries, 11 are from non-NATO countries).

The foreign troops of ISAF are not there under NATO Article V obligations of mutual defence, which means that the obligation on NATO countries to contribute to ISAF is no greater than the obligation on any other country.

The problem with the repeated insistence that ISAF is a NATO operation on which the future of NATO depends is that the focus inevitably becomes the interests and well-being of NATO rather than the interests and well-being of the people of Afghanistan – and to equate the two is the worst form of Western hubris and triumphalism.

In fact, it is NATO’s self-definition of success – that is, the military defeat of the opponents of the Government of Afghanistan and ISAF – that now drives the push to concentrate combat forces in the south and to bolster the firepower of those forces with more tanks and tracked armored vehicles[v] and more of the air strikes that inevitably produce civilian casualties.

NATO planners and strategists, unfortunately, are unlikely to follow the advice that the Washington Post says has found its way into the draft of a new US Army/Marine Corps Field Manual on counterinsurgency: “The best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot bullets. The more force you use, the less effective you are.”[vi]

While NATO steers ISAF increasingly towards shooting more bullets to militarily defeat the insurgency, that insurgency in fact grows. At the Latvian NATO summit, there was even pressure to pull ISAF contingents away from important security patrols in some of the relatively stable regions of the north, risking the subsequent spread of the insurgency to the communities that would be then left exposed.

UK journalist Kate Clark, in a new television documentary and a related account in the New Statesman, emphasizes the risk. Many of the grievances that fuel the insurgency in the south, she reports, are also present in the north. She quotes a northern Afghan aid worker as saying: “If we had a resistance movement to join, there’d be an insurgency here as well.”[vii]

The International Crisis Group elaborates on the grievances behind the insurgency in the south: notably, p olitical disenfranchisement which favors one group over others and excludes others; resource conflicts, particularly over land and water; corruption; lack of economic opportunities; and abuse by local and international security forces.[viii]

In other words, the insurgents which are routinely referred to as “the Taliban” are driven less by irrational fanaticism than by very basic and familiar complaints. And they are grievances that are all amenable to being addressed through negotiation, political inclusion, and changed governmental and ISAF practices.

But as long as the grievances are ignored in the hope that NATO will be able to claim success in militarily defeating the aggrieved, many Afghans will continue to transfer their allegiance away from a Government and international security assistance force that have not lived up to expectations and toward the very groups the international forces are fighting.

ISAF’s focus, at NATO’s urging, on expanding and trying to redeploy military forces, rather than on radically expanding attention to real grievances (through economic initiatives, improved social services like health care and education, and attention to corruption and to human rights violations by security forces), appears to have a lot more to do with NATO’s perceived need for a military success to cement its future than it does with the needs of Afghans.

What’s at stake is the future of Afghanistan. It’s not about NATO.

[i]“All NATO’s members need to bear the brunt,” The Globe and Mail, lead editorial, November 29, 2006. On the same day, the paper’s columnist, Jeffrey Simpson, argued that “NATO’s very survival hinges on the Afghan mission.”

[ii]Military Balance, 2006(The International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, UK) shows 2004 military spending for NATO to be $707 billion out of a world total of $1,119 billion (US dollars), p. 403.

[iii]Security Council Resolution 1386 (December 20, 2001).

[iv]See UN Secretary-General’s report A/60/224-S/2005/525, para. 68.

[v][v]David Pugliese, “Armoured vehicles headed to Afghanistan ,” CanWest News Service, November 25, 2006 (http://www.canada.com/components /print.aspx?id=1cef8bf3-18b2-4f06-b1f9-5031e1dba…).

[vi]T.X. Hammes, “The Way to Win a Guerilla War,” Washington Post, November 26, 2006 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR200611……).

[vii]Kate Clark, “The real Afghan war,” The New Statesman, November 27, 2006.

[viii]“Countering Afghanistan ‘s Insurgency: No Quick Fixes,” International Crisis Group, Asia Report No. 123, November 2, 2006 (http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4485&1=1).

The “third way” posting on Afghanistan (October 17) describes the polarized debate on the question of Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan:

“The Prime Minister leads the charge for staying the course. Canada is at war, he says, and we don’t cut and run – we will stay in this war until the job is done. NDP Leader Jack Layton leads the call for withdrawal. It is the wrong mission for Canada; it is a war with unclear objectives and it can’t be won.”

The posting goes on to look at some recent proposals and arguments that point to a third option or approach:

“So here are the main elements of an emerging third option: pull out of the south; redeploy to the north in support of training and provincial reconstruction teams; substantially increase non-military aid; review the strategy, objectives, and tactics used by the NATO-led ISAF; and re-open the political process in pursuit of a more inclusive and representative political order for the entire country.”

Since then, an October 27 letter sent out by Mr. Layton elaborates a position for the NDP that looks a lot like the “third way”:

• “Give notice that Canada will withdraw from the search-and-kill combat mission in Kandahar.”
• “Work with NATO partners, the Afghan government, and other affected parties to find a political solution through capacity building and a comprehensive peace process.
• “Focus Canada’s role in Afghanistan on humanitarian aid, reconstruction and development, with appropriate security measures.”

A focus on humanitarian aid, reconstruction, and development, assisted by appropriate security is elaborated in a recent press kit prepared by Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (available along with other excellent resources at www.w4wafghan.ca ), a Calgary-based NGO that has been working with Afghan women since 1996:

“Afghanistan needs an international security force, adhering to internationally recognized human rights standards, for a period of at least ten years. This force should have the following main objectives:

• To provide security and stability for all Afghans;
• To facilitate safe provision of basic services such as education, clean water, and healthcare;
• To create an environment where Afghans can take on reconstruction and development activities on their own terms; and,
• To ensure the security needs of women and girls are met, which include protection from sexual violence, trafficking, rape, and other security threats commonly face by Afghan women.”

Talking to the Taliban

For a state to negotiate with its bitter enemies is hardly a new concept, but when that was recently suggested for Afghanistan and the Taliban, commentators from Rex Murphy[i]to theWestern Standard[ii]managed only to ridicule the idea. The Globe and Mail editorialized that “if there were a realistic prospect that all sides shared this goal [of reconstruction and meeting the basic needs of Afghans], Canadian soldiers would not be fighting in Afghanistan”[iii] – and since we are fighting the Taliban, was the message, why would we negotiate with them? Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Canada cast it as a general principle: there cannot be “peace talks between an elected government and heavily-armed gangs of militant school-burners'[iv]

If that is indeed a principle, we should be grateful that it is regularly honored in the breach. Governments of varying degrees of democracy are even now in prolonged negotiations with non-state groups guilty of vicious attacks on civilians and state authorities.[v] In north east India the elected Government is negotiating with multiple rebel groups to try to end a quarter century of attacks. The same goes for Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. The current Government of Sudan includes southern rebels with whom it finally negotiated an end to decades of war, and it is now in similar negotiations with Darfur rebels, and one can only hope those talks will not drag out as long.

In the Mozambique of the early 1990s and Uganda today, Governments finally had to sit down and deal with insurgents guilty of the vilest of deeds. The elected Government of Uganda is now in talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group of heavily armed bandits with no apparent agenda other than the maniacal fantasies of its leader and the kidnapping of young children – but after two decades, the unspeakable horrors for which there have proven to be no military solutions must be ended. And so they’re talking.[vi]

Enemies talk to each other because that is how wars are ended. Calls by Canadians for talks by the Government of Afghanistan and its international backers with the Taliban recognize some hard realities. First, there is no military solution to the Afghan conflict – indeed, Canada’s Defence chief, Gen. Rick Hillier recently confirmed it “has never been the strategy” to defeat the Taliban militarily.[vii] Second, the credibility of the Karzai Government and the foreign military forces in Afghanistan are inextricably linked. And the declining credibility of both in large parts of the country sets up the third hard reality: many Afghans are transferring their allegiance to the very groups the international forces are fighting. That in turn means that restoring the legitimacy and effectiveness of the central government and its backers is not simply a matter of improved performance but also depends on a commitment to political inclusiveness that reaches out to those now in opposition to the government.

The UN-mandated and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan is explicitly charged with supporting the Government and assisting it in maintaining security in support of Afghan reconstruction.[viii] But the Government’s failure to meet reconstruction goals (in significant measure due to the failure of the international community to provide effective non-military support), charges of corruption, and deals with feared war lords have contributed to a decline in support and thus to a sense that ISAF is propping up an illegitimate regime. Similarly, counter-insurgency strategies that kill civilians[ix] and displace communities, and charges that ISAF is advancing American interests rather than serving the security needs of Afghans, have contributed to the sense that the Government is being supported by foreign forces that do not have the interests of Afghans at heart – and thus the suspicion that the Government itself does not have the interests of Afghans at heart is exacerbated.

The most recent report of the Senlis Council, a British think tank on security and development with an office in Kabul and researchers on the ground, describes the consequence – increasing support for the Taliban.[x] The people of the troubled south have genuine grievances and more and more of them are driven to conclude that the Taliban are a credible vehicle for expressing those grievances. That is why Afghans increasingly see ISAF, not as a force to support the government of the people of Afghanistan and to build security, but as “taking sides in a civil war situation between two groups competing for power in Afghanistan.”

It is appropriate to be cautious about accepting any one interpretation or perspective as the complete truth, but realism demands attention to the warnings of serious failure and requires a more credible response than a call for more soldiers, and now tanks.[xi]

A pre-requisite to peace is that Afghans become persuaded that their government has the interests of all Afghans at heart. In turn, that means dealing with those political-military entities outside of government that represent the genuine grievances of Afghans – a group that by all accounts now includes at least elements of the Taliban. It is certainly true that conditions need to be right for successful negotiations, and it is not for observers in distant Canada to name the people, places, and times for such talks. But it is entirely appropriate for outside observers to insist on the principle that the Afghan government and its backers talk to their declared adversaries in search of accommodations that respect the needs of Afghans and international standards of human rights.

If, as Defence Minister O’Connor now agrees, there is truly no military solution to the conflict,[xii] it is a conflict that must finally be disarmed – by eschewing counter-insurgency military strategies that further undermine the credibility of the Government, by setting the stage for negotiations to draw in the representatives of dissident communities and regions, and by putting a lot more effort into humanitarian and reconstruction assistance.

There is little we can be sure of regarding the future of Afghanistan, but one thing we can safely predict, the war in Afghanistan will not end without negotiations with fighters we now know only as “the Taliban” or “drug war lords.” In any armed conflict, if significant stakeholders believe that peace will entrench a political order that leaves them indefinitely marginalized, they will prefer war to peace – and as we are repeatedly reminded, Afghans wrote the book on the futility of trying to militarily defeat determined insurgencies.

Notes

[i] CBC News, The National, “Why are we in Afghanistan?” (www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex_060907.html).

[ii] “Dosanjh: negotiate with terrorists,” Western Standard.ca, Sept. 1/06 (http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2006/09/dosanjh_negotia.html).

[iii] “With the Taliban, Globe and Mail, Sept. 1/06 (www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060901.ESHORT01/TPStory).

[iv] Omar Samad, “The Afghan mission is not a failure,” Globe and Mail, Sept. 6/06.

[v] Project Ploughshares, 2006 Armed Conflicts Report (http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-TitlePageRev.htm).

[vi] “Uganda: Landmark peace talks stumble,” IRINnews.org, Sept. 8/06 (www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=55489).

[vii] Bill Schiller, “Force alone won’t beat Taliban, Canada’s defence minister says,” The Record, Sept. 8/06.

[viii] UN Security Council Resolutions 1368, 1386, and 1510.

[ix] Civilian deaths which turn the population against pro-Government military forces are a predictable consequence of counter-insurgency wars, and the current Operation Medusa is apparently no exception. Graeme Smith, “Civilian deaths reported in Operation Medusa,” Globe and Mail, Sept. 8/06.

[x] The Senlis Council, Five Years Later: The Return of the Taliban, September 2006 (http://www.senliscouncil.net/).

[xi] Campbell Clark, “Canada sending 15 tanks, 120 more troops,” Globe and Mail, Sept. 11/06.

[xii] Schiller, “Force alone won’t beat Taliban, Canada’s defence minister says,” The Record, Sept. 8/06.