Armed Conflict

Neither the Manley-Harper formula that focuses on intensified efforts to militarily “clear” more parts of the country of Taliban insurgents, nor the alternative that focuses more on holding and developing (economic, governance, reliable security institutions) those parts of the country that are already cleared of the insurgency, can obviously guarantee success in Afghanistan. Neither can assure gradual and irreversible progress toward the safer future that Afghans want and need. But if our responsibility in the Canadian political debate is to identify the course of action with the better chance of success, we would do well to heed experience, which tells us that the odds do not favour the Manley-Harper formula.

Scholars who study post-WW II armed conflicts and their ultimate resolution draw some telling conclusions.[i]

Insurgencies are for the most part deeply rooted in grievance, conflicting interests, and a sense of exclusion, not in a detached or apolitical fanaticism. In other words, while ideological extremists may exploit disaffected populations, insurgencies are based on deeply held goals from which they are not easily deflected. An insurgency gains genuine staying power when it is able to draw on a large or core ethnic group for support (in this case, the Pashtun communities) and when it can access an independent income source (poppies) and safe havens (Pakistan). The Manley Panel (p. 14) seems to agree, acknowledging that “few counterinsurgencies in history have been won by foreign armies, particularly where the indigenous insurgents enjoy convenient sanctuary in a bordering country.”

International military support tends to do little to improve the host government’s chances of prevailing over the insurgents. Instead, such support serves primarily to prolong the war because, with external support, governments take longer to face or own up to the disturbing reality that they are not going to prevail militarily. Put another way, external support tends to delay government recognition of a hurting stalemate, but does not ultimately avoid it.

Thus, wars against insurgents tend to be long wars, especially if foreign forces are involved. And the longer such wars last the more likely it is that they will be stalemated and require a diplomatic solution. Hence, the classic objective of insurgency is durability, not military victory. By dragging out the fight‚Äîoften committing heinous crimes in the process‚Äîinsurgents gradually force the government under attack to recognize that it must finally negotiate with the very people it once described as lawless perpetrators of atrocities and utterly unworthy of civil discourse. Insurgents win if they don’t lose; governments lose if they don’t win.

By this account, the Afghan Government and its ISAF partners are losing. When combat operations manage to clear the Taliban out of certain areas of Kandahar Province, for example, neither ISAF nor the Afghan security forces have the capacity to hold those areas in ways that ensure sufficient security to undertake significant development. The Manley Panel (p. 12) puts it more delicately, but there is no escaping the point: “security generally has deteriorated in the South and East of Afghanistan, including Kandahar province where Canadian Forces are based, through 2006 and 2007.” This conclusion is reinforced in much more categorical terms by a host of other studies, including a recent US study byCo-Chairs General James L. Jones (Ret.) and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering[ii]and the reports of the Secretary-General.[iii]

The Manley Panel (p. 28) recognizes that “no insurgency‚Äîand certainly not the Afghan insurgency‚Äîcan be defeated by military force alone. The Panel holds strongly that it is urgent to complete practical, significant development projects of immediate value to Afghans, while at the same time contributing to the capacity and legitimacy of Afghan government institutions.” It correctly emphasizes more immediate-impact reconstruction and better coordination of the counterinsurgency effort, but refuses to acknowledge the need for political attention to the conflicts and grievances that fuel the insurgency. In the end, it turns to an intensified military effort (p. 35): “a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan requires more ISAF forces.” And the odds do not favor such a strategy.

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[i] See, for example, the Journal of Peace Research, vol. 41, no. 3 (2004). The focus of the entire issue is the duration and termination of civil war.

[ii] “Afghan Study Group Report: Revitalizing our Efforts, Rethinking our Strategy,” Center for the Study of the Presidency, January 30, 2008 (http://www.thepresidency.org/pubs/Afghan_Study_Group_final.pdf)] and the UN Secretary-General’s 2007 report on Afghanistan.

[iii] UN Security Council. 2007. The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security. Report of the Secretary-General. September 21. A/62/345-S/2007/555.http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/sgrep07.htm.

Neither the Manley-Harper formula that focuses on intensified efforts to militarily “clear” more parts of the country of Taliban insurgents, nor the alternative that focuses more on holding and developing (economic, governance, reliable security institutions) those parts of the country that are already cleared of the insurgency, can obviously guarantee success in Afghanistan. Neither can assure gradual and irreversible progress toward the safer future that Afghans want and need. But if our responsibility in the Canadian political debate is to identify the course of action with the better chance of success, we would do well to heed experience, which tells us that the odds do not favour the Manley-Harper formula.

Scholars who study post-WW II armed conflicts and their ultimate resolution draw some telling conclusions.[i]

Insurgencies are for the most part deeply rooted in grievance, conflicting interests, and a sense of exclusion, not in a detached or apolitical fanaticism. In other words, while ideological extremists may exploit disaffected populations, insurgencies are based on deeply held goals from which they are not easily deflected. An insurgency gains genuine staying power when it is able to draw on a large or core ethnic group for support (in this case, the Pashtun communities) and when it can access an independent income source (poppies) and safe havens (Pakistan). The Manley Panel (p. 14) seems to agree, acknowledging that “few counterinsurgencies in history have been won by foreign armies, particularly where the indigenous insurgents enjoy convenient sanctuary in a bordering country.”

International military support tends to do little to improve the host government’s chances of prevailing over the insurgents. Instead, such support serves primarily to prolong the war because, with external support, governments take longer to face or own up to the disturbing reality that they are not going to prevail militarily. Put another way, external support tends to delay government recognition of a hurting stalemate, but does not ultimately avoid it.

Thus, wars against insurgents tend to be long wars, especially if foreign forces are involved. And the longer such wars last the more likely it is that they will be stalemated and require a diplomatic solution. Hence, the classic objective of insurgency is durability, not military victory. By dragging out the fight‚Äîoften committing heinous crimes in the process‚Äîinsurgents gradually force the government under attack to recognize that it must finally negotiate with the very people it once described as lawless perpetrators of atrocities and utterly unworthy of civil discourse. Insurgents win if they don’t lose; governments lose if they don’t win.

By this account, the Afghan Government and its ISAF partners are losing. When combat operations manage to clear the Taliban out of certain areas of Kandahar Province, for example, neither ISAF nor the Afghan security forces have the capacity to hold those areas in ways that ensure sufficient security to undertake significant development. The Manley Panel (p. 12) puts it more delicately, but there is no escaping the point: “security generally has deteriorated in the South and East of Afghanistan, including Kandahar province where Canadian Forces are based, through 2006 and 2007.” This conclusion is reinforced in much more categorical terms by a host of other studies, including a recent US study byCo-Chairs General James L. Jones (Ret.) and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering[ii]and the reports of the Secretary-General.[iii]

The Manley Panel (p. 28) recognizes that “no insurgency‚Äîand certainly not the Afghan insurgency‚Äîcan be defeated by military force alone. The Panel holds strongly that it is urgent to complete practical, significant development projects of immediate value to Afghans, while at the same time contributing to the capacity and legitimacy of Afghan government institutions.” It correctly emphasizes more immediate-impact reconstruction and better coordination of the counterinsurgency effort, but refuses to acknowledge the need for political attention to the conflicts and grievances that fuel the insurgency. In the end, it turns to an intensified military effort (p. 35): “a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan requires more ISAF forces.” And the odds do not favor such a strategy.

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[i] See, for example, the Journal of Peace Research, vol. 41, no. 3 (2004). The focus of the entire issue is the duration and termination of civil war.

[ii] “Afghan Study Group Report: Revitalizing our Efforts, Rethinking our Strategy,” Center for the Study of the Presidency, January 30, 2008 (http://www.thepresidency.org/pubs/Afghan_Study_Group_final.pdf)] and the UN Secretary-General’s 2007 report on Afghanistan.

[iii] UN Security Council. 2007. The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security. Report of the Secretary-General. September 21. A/62/345-S/2007/555.http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/sgrep07.htm.

The Manley Panel clarified and actually generated consensus on at least one important element of a coherent Afghanistan policy, namely, that Canada should not be putting its soldiers at major risk in support of a military strategy that stands little chance of succeeding. That may seem obvious enough, but given that Canada took on the Kandahar assignment largely out of a misguided desire to curry favour in Washington and without a thorough understanding of the situation in Afghanistan’s south,[i] overt recognition of this key principle, that for the use of force to be appropriate or justified there must be a reasonable prospect for success, is significant.

In his Foreword to the report of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan (2008), chairman John Manley puts it this way: “Our Panel concluded that the sacrifice of Canadian lives could only be justified if we and our allies and the Afghans share a coherent, comprehensive plan that can lead to success.”

The Manley Panel also accepts the troubling, but well-documented, truth that under present conditions the counterinsurgency effort is not succeeding and will continue to falter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper also acknowledged this reality when he accepted the Panel’s report. The Manley-Harper acknowledgment is more than the oft-repeated statement that the Afghan insurgency cannot be defeated by military means alone. Rather, it is a recognition that even in the context of a 3D strategy (defence, development, and diplomacy), or whole-of-government effort, the military component of the Kandahar mission should not be continued as is.

Where Manley and the Harper Government part company with many critics of the mission is in their definition of winning conditions – that is, in their assessment of what is required to make the military component of the mission successful.

The Manley-Harper formula is set out in the Panel’s most discussed recommendation, and repeated in the mission extension resolution tabled in Parliament on February 8,[ii] that making the military mission in Kandahar effective and worth continuing will require 1,000 more soldiers from a partner country, as well as additional equipment, principally helicopters and drones. The Panel did not claim that these adjustments would produce an early defeat of the insurgency, but it argued that they would set the insurgency back enough so that, with further training of the Afghan National Army, by 2011 the Afghans would be in a position to take over the lead responsibility for military security operations from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kandahar province.

Critics of the military counterinsurgency effort argue that increases in foreign forces and equipment will not break the back of the insurgency, pointing out that several years of counterinsurgency warfare have actually seen the insurgency steadily gain strength. Some conclude that it is therefore time to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan, but others say Canadian and ISAF troops need to refocus on a mission to protect and stabilize those parts of the country (largely in the north and west) that are not heavily challenged by the insurgency.

The Liberal Party’s amendment to the Government Motion essentially adopts the latter approach, except that they say that Canadian Forces should be “providing security for reconstruction and development efforts in Kandahar.”[iii]To distinguish that military role from a counterinsurgency war would require the focus of operations to be largely confined to Kandahar city and its immediate environs – the only part of Kandahar Province, according to current reporting, in which the Taliban do not have a permanent presence. Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, who heads the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, was portrayed in theGlobe and Mail as being critical of the approach proposed by the Liberals, but from his description, current operations actually seem to following the model proposed by the Liberals:

“Gen. Gauthier said the military’s role as it is right now is to create secure conditions in regions around Kandahar city so reconstruction efforts can occur. He noted that the panel on the future of Canada’s role headed by former Liberal minister John Manley also concluded that reconstruction work cannot be separated from military efforts to make areas secure.

“‘It’s less a question of offensive actions than it is of taking the necessary measures to secure a zone of action,’ Gen. Gauthier said. ‚ÄòAnd I think the Manley panel recognized the fact that we cannot separate the needs of security and the security efforts from those related to reconstruction and governance.’

“He also said: ‚ÄòI think that security, reconstruction, the development of the capacity of the Afghan security forces, the development of governance, all these efforts go together. It’s as simple as that. They can’t be separated.'”[iv]

Keeping Kandahar city, like the rest of the country that is not now engulfed by the Taliban insurgency, from becoming a Taliban stronghold is an obviously significant objective and requires a combination of security support and development and governance reform.

In the language of the “clear, hold, and develop” strategy, it is logical to argue that priority should now be given to holding and maintaining security (which can also involve the resort to lethal force) and developing those parts of the country that are largely clear of insurgency. Those areas are in danger of slipping out of control, like much of the south, if residents don’t soon see major improvements in their security and wellbeing and the performance of their government. Thus there should be, as the Manley Panel also says, redoubled emphasis on security sector reform and training, especially of a national police force that respects basic rights and that serves the welfare of, and gains the confidence of, the people of Afghanistan. Accelerated development and reconstruction would not only enhance the welfare of Afghans, but would discourage support for insurgent forces.

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[i] The point is made clearly by Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang in The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar (Viking Canada, 2007): “A new consensus, led by DND, was rapidly emerging in Ottawa: Canada, and in particular the Canadian Forces, needed to do something significant for Washington‚Äîsomething that the Pentagon really valued‚Äîto compensate for the refusal to participate in Ballistic Missile Defence” (p. 181; see also pp. 181-188).

[ii] On February 8/08 The Government’s “Motion on Afghanistan” calling on the House of Commons to support “the continuation of Canada’s current responsibility for security in Kandahar beyond February 2009, to the end of 2011.”] [iii] Liberal Amendment to Government Motion on Afghanistan, February 12, 2008 (http://www.liberal.ca/story_13576_e.aspx).

[iv] Campbell Clark, ” Top general wary of Liberal positionCombat, reconstruction ‘can’t be separated’,” The Globe and Mail,February 15, 2008 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080215.AFGHANBRIEFING15//TPStory/Front).

This and the next five postings, on successive days, will review and elaborate the themes addressed in the Feb. 8 posting.[i] As noted then, the Manley Panel reinforced a prominent misperception in the current debate over the role of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, namely that “there is not yet a peace to keep in Afghanistan.” In fact, in large areas of the country, essentially the northern half, there is indeed a peace to keep. To be sure, it is a fragile peace, but if it is not protected, built upon, and genuinely nurtured it will yet be lost.

Security assistance forces in the north are critical to maintaining conditions that are conducive to moving from a fragile to a durable peace. International forces deployed in the north, unlike those in the south, follow the model of peace support operations intended to protect people in their homes, communities, schools, and places of work so that the regions of the country that are relatively free of the insurgency that increasingly plagues the south can develop and advance the human security of Afghans. The peace support forces operate under a Chapter VII mandate and can certainly involve the resort to lethal force, whatever national caveats may be in place, but it is a reliance on force that is clearly distinguishable from counterinsurgency combat that seeks to defeat the Taliban on their home ground in the south.

The harsh reality is that the counterinsurgency combat operations in the south are repeating history in their failure to stem, never mind defeat, the insurgency. The growing danger is that while ISAF and NATO focus on the south, the security, reconstruction, and governance challenges in the north will be neglected to the point that declining northern confidence in local and national government will lead to collapse there as well.

Accordingly, the military choice facing Canada in Afghanistan is not between combat and no combat, it is between counterinsurgency warfare and Chapter VII peace support, or peacekeeping, operations.

Tomorrow: The search for winning conditions.

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[i] This same material is also presented in Project Ploughshares Briefing 08-1, available athttp://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf081.pdf.

The Manley Panel seems to support, as does the Government resolution, the idea that, rather than concentrating only on counterinsurgency operations, Canadian forces should increasingly focus on training Afghan security forces. However, the Panel tends to define training as mentoring Afghan soldiers in counterinsurgency combat situations.

Its report (p. 24) notes that the ISAF Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams link to Afghan National Army units to assist in planning and carrying out field operations; “in reality, training and mentoring Afghan forces means sometimes conducting combat operations with them” (p. 30). But in another context the Panel emphasizes the distinction between combat and training. It (p. 34) says, for example, that the report’s recommendations, if adopted, “would reorient Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan more systematically from combat to the intensified training of the Afghan army and police.”

The latter understanding of training seems to come a bit closer to what is needed. Serious training takes place in training academies and through field exercises and should prepare both the Afghan National Army and, more importantly, the Afghan National Police to maintain order in the context of a country no longer at war that has the benefit of a political accord that embraces all elements of Afghan society. The Manley Panel’s view of training as on-the-job training in counterinsurgency warfare assumes ongoing war, however, and seems to reduce the objective to leaving minimally trained or mentored Afghan government forces to their fate once foreign forces deem them ready to take over the fight.

Richard Nixon called a similar strategy “vietnamization.” This formula for long-term war is a formula for Afghanistan’s long-term loss of the state’s monopoly on the resort to force – the name for which is “failed state.”

The Panel (p. 32) says that “the Canadian combat mission should conclude when the Afghan National Army is ready to provide security in Kandahar province.” But the general strategy of transferring security responsibility to Afghan forces will be possible only if there is a new political accord that ends the insurgency and therefore drastically reduces the government’s security requirements. For Afghan forces to be trained and expanded to the point that they could take over the entire country’s security needs would mean that the war would first have to end. Afghan forces on their own will not defeat an insurgency that NATO/ISAF forces have not been able to even contain, never mind defeat. Furthermore, the Government of Afghanistan can obviously not afford to maintain the level of armed forces needed to keep up long-term combat operations against insurgents.

The alternative to permanent war must be to replace the military counterinsurgency strategy with a political counterinsurgency strategy. In the south the “clear” element of the “clear, hold, and develop” strategy must become a political operation that addresses the conditions that fuel the insurgency through processes that are inclusive and participatory in carrying out the negotiations, along with social reconciliation that will need to become part of a comprehensive peace process.

The Government’s decision to ask Parliament to extend Canada’s current mission to 2011 (2) is linked to one of the more wrong-headed but still prominent complaints voiced in the current Canadian debate over Afghanistan. It is the charge that the Germans and others with forces in the more stable north are not doing any “heavy lifting” and thus are undermining the fight against the Taliban and, what some seem to find even more disturbing, putting the future of NATO in question.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier echoed that line of argument when he told CTV News that “there is no job outside of the south where you actually need extra troops right now. In fact, there is contemplation all the time in military circles of “Can you move troops from the rest of the country into the south where the need is most definite?” (3)

It is a deeply counter-productive approach because the international forces in the north are in fact mounting credible and essential operations that could well turn out to be the most important for the long-term viability of development and good governance in Afghanistan. Cutting back forces in the north (we can take “north” as shorthand for those parts of the country generally onside with the Government and not heavily challenged by insurgent forces) and redeploying them to the counter-insurgency war in the south (with “south” being shorthand for the parts of country plagued by a growing insurgency and where suspicions of the Kabul Government run highest) would not reliably improve chances of suppressing the insurgency but would definitely put the stability of the north in further jeopardy.

Reports of deteriorating security in the north are now frequent, with the always present violence of crime exacerbated by growing political attacks. (4) Northern Militia leaders are said to be “exploiting Kabul’s preoccupation with the violence-ridden south and east in order to stake claims to their old fiefdoms.” Some are rearming in order to prepare what they fear may be another war with a resurgent Taliban.(5) A new Oxfam International report on development and humanitarian priorities for Afghanistan also warns that the focus on the south is leading to neglect of the north and the danger of spreading insecurity.(6)

Successful peacebuilding and stability in the north are critical to Afghan avoiding the descent into a civil war that engulfs the whole country. And for the north to remain stable and for human security to be advanced there, international stabilization forces must continue to contribute to conditions that are conducive to peacebuilding, that is, to reconstruction, disarmament, security sector reform, and accountable governance. The Manley Panel’s claim that “there is not yet a peace to keep in Afghanistan” ignores the fact that it is in the North where there is in fact a realistic prospect of gradually shifting security responsibility from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to Afghan forces.

But that will take increased attention to training police that are trusted and to building the kind of economic and social conditions on the ground that are conducive to political stability. In the “clear, hold, and develop” framework, the north was essentially “cleared” of the Taliban in the 2001 invasion by US and Northern Alliance forces, and has since been “held” by a combination of Afghan (Government and militias) and ISAF forces. The “develop” phase (reconstruction and governance in particular) has however been chronically under-resourced, with governance reform often resisted by both central government and local officials and politicians (and militia leaders) in efforts to preserve their own advantages under a still prominently corrupt system.

The priority in the North, broadly speaking, is therefore now to focus on the hold and develop tasks in order to assure a stable future for Afghans there. And, of course, the name that is usually given such a process is post-conflict peacebuilding. International forces in the north are thus following the proven model of peace support operations, what contemporary peacekeeping has become, that are designed protect people in their homes, communities, and places of work so that reconstruction can proceed. They operate under a UN Chapter VII mandate and can certainly involve the resort to lethal force, whatever national caveats may be in place. Such operations include instances of combat, but of a kind that is clearly distinguishable from the counter-insurgency fighting that tries to defeat the Taliban on their home ground.

The latter operations in the south are in the process of repeating history√Ç — namely, that insurgencies rooted in a strong ethnic community, with independent means of support (the poppy trade), and with access to havens of retreat, are not generally amenable to military defeat.

The impending danger is not that NATO will fail to find another 1000 soldiers to operate with Canadians in the south, but that the focus on the south will result in the further neglect of security, reconstruction, and governance challenges in the north.

If Parliament passes the new Afghanistan resolution, we might well renege on the military imperative to keep the peace in the north and on the diplomatic imperative to seek the peace in the south.

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1) Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, Chaired by John Manley, reported at the end of January 08 (http://www.canada-afghanistan.gc.ca/cip-pic/afghanistan/pdf/Afghan_Report_web_e.pdf).

2) On Feb. 8 the Government tabled a motion calling for “the continuation of Canada’s current responsibility for security in Kandahar to the end of 2011.” (Available at http://www.canadaeast.com/news/article/207019.)

3) “German troops to stay in Afghan north despite pleas,” CTV.Ca, February 1, 2008.

4) “Afghan suicide blast kills 40,” “Fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former mujahideen leader who is battling the Kabul government independently from the Taliban are known to be active in Baghlan,” BBC News, November 6, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7081012.stm).

5) Ron Synovitz, “Afghanistan: Armed Northern Militias Complicate Security,” Radio Free Europe, November 4, 2007 (http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/11/ffca5de1-b96c-4cdf-810b-831bec1b5a6c.html).

6)”Afghanistan: Development and Humanitarian Priorities, Oxfam International, January 2008 (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/RMOI-7BE2T6/$File/full_report.pdf).

Stephanie Nolen’s incisive New Years Day report in the Globe and Mail on Somalia[i] was a welcome and informative antidote to the dearth of attention to the ongoing tragedy there. One key assertion – that the current troubles are rooted in the 2004 peace deal that “produced a transitional government made up largely of warlords” – invites a small quibble, but the unending horror faced by Somalis, and vividly portrayed in her report, is the only history that matters.

As noted once before in this space, I had the privilege of being present as an observer at the first meeting of the new Parliament of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) established by that deal, and neither it nor the subsequent Cabinet was, or was thought to be at the time, dominated by warlords. There were warlords present, not least being President Abdullahi Yusuf, but the problem was really the opposite. That first Parliament was built on a careful and complicated formula for balancing clan representation, and one important reason that it failed to establish itself in the capital, Mogadishu, was that it lacked the backing of warlords, or at least the support of any credible national or multilateral security forces.

It was the warlords of Mogadishu who kept it out, partly because they did not want their own self-defined power and authority supplanted by a more broadly-based Government and partly because Abdullahi Yusuf, with links to Ethiopia, assembled a Government that was perceived to be overtly pro-Ethiopian (and antagonistic to the Hawiye clan dominated warlords of Mogadishu).

The peace process, brokered by Kenyan diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat on behalf of the Horn of Africa regional organization, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, involved more than 500 delegates in broadly based negotiations involving clan representatives, women, civil society groups, and, to be sure, some warlords. The TFG it produced had its share of internal difficulties, but it especially faltered when the pleas for international peacekeeping forces to support it fell on deaf ears and when the warlords with the clout to protect it refused to accept it.

But that is history, and whatever hope there was at the time has now been thoroughly dashed. When the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) brought welcome stability to the Capital in mid-2006, as it had to other parts of the country earlier, there were hopes, and talks toward that end, of the UIC and TFG working out a power-sharing arrangement. The failure to pass through that briefly opened window of opportunity is a mixed tale of conflicting clan, Islamist, warlord, and foreign interests.

The Ethiopian invasion at the end of 2006, accompanied by some independent US attacks on claimed al-Qaeda strongholds, was ostensibly to support the TFG, but its only achievement was the return to chaos and inspiration for an insurgency that shows no signs of abating. Since then half of the population of Mogadishu, 600,000 people (a million in the country as a whole), have fled the fighting. The promised African Union peacekeeping force of 8,000 has reached only about 1,700 (1,600 Ugandans and 100 newly arrived Burundians).[ii]

The Security Council has instructed UN Secretary-General to develop contingency plans for a possible UN deployment, despite Ban Ki-moon’s own statements earlier that the situation was too dangerous even to send an assessment team.[iii]

In the meantime, the fighting is as intense as ever and hope is as remote as ever.

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[i] “Ferocity of conflict threatens Somali,” January 1, 2008 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080101.wxsleepersomalia01/BNStory/International/).

[ii] “Burundi soldiers arrive in Somalia,” December 23, 2007, Aljazeera.net (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/530BA7EA-8C4E-4021-B81C-55A318660BA4.htm).

[iii] Claudia Parsons, “UN Council urges more support for AU in Somalia,” Reuters, December 19, 2007 (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19627596.htm).

Canada’s provision of helicopters to Pakistan’s military deserves the same kind of scrutiny that is finally raising serious questions in Washington[i] about the utility of showering President (and former General) Pervez Musharraf with cash and weapons to prosecute the “war on terror.”

At least some US experts on South Asian political and military affairs were pointing out well before the assassination of Benazir Bhuto that Islamabad sees its strategic interests running more toward fomenting terrorism than fighting it. In its conflict with India, a country that far outstrips it in military, economic, and diplomatic power, Pakistan depends on the asymmetric tactic of inducing militant insurgents to disrupt Kashmir. As for Afghanistan, Christine Fair of the US Institute for Peace[ii] points out that Pakistan sees it more as a client state than a neighbor and thus shows little interest in promoting its stability, especially in support of a factional government whose sympathies lean more toward New Delhi than Islamabad.

Doug Saunders of the Globe and Mail sums up the Pakistan card that the west has been playing: “For seven years, Western governments have been making an expensive bet: that by an alliance with Pakistan’s military dictatorship, we can make Afghanistan more stable and peaceful, reduce international terrorism and, eventually, have a Pakistani leader who is not an unelected general. Canada spends $50-million a year on aid, much of it intended to achieve this goal. The U.S. spends 20 times more. And NATO is betting much of its Afghan mission on it.”[iii]

Since 2001 US military aid to Pakistan has exceeded $10 billion, much of it unaccounted for and intended as a general reimbursement for Pakistan’s hoped for anti-terror initiatives, with some of it used, as the New York Times reports, to buy refurbished Cobra attack helicopters.”[iv] But, along with the Cobras, in 2004 and 2005 there were shipments of $240 million[v] worth of Canadian-built Bell 412 utility helicopters:[vi]

Though built in Canada, the 26 helicopters were shipped as part of the US military sales program – initially provided under a US financed lease arrangement, but then handed over to the Pakistan military in late 2007.[vii] The helicopters are defined as civilian in Canada, but in Pakistan they are specifically earmarked for “war on terror” activity – at a November 2007 handover ceremony, the Pakistan Director General of Army Aviation, Major General Syed Taqi Naseer Rizvi said he hoped the Bell 412s “would go a long way in fortifying the country’s capability to effectively combat the menace of terrorism.”[viii] (The company prefers to highlight the humanitarian role of the Bell 412s, which, following the 2005 Pakistan earthquake was substantial – “In the 45 days following the earthquake, the 16 Pakistani Army 412s flew 4,580 missions, an average of 102 missions per day. They logged 2,743 hours and were credited with rescuing 54,960 people. The Pakistani Army 412s were supported by the nine-member Bell Team located in Pakistan.”)[ix]

Canada currently prohibits the shipment of any military equipment to Pakistan – a policy in place since Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear weapon tests.[x] However, the helicopters get through to the Pakistan military because they are designated civilian and thus are not on the Export Control List and do not require an export permit. The most recent Foreign Affairs report on military exports explains that “civilian goods and technology that are not covered by any group in the Export Control List are not normally subject to export controls, even if they are intended for sale to a military end user” – adding, disingenuously at best, that “these are items such as fuel and food.”[xi] The report is silent on the helicopters.

Exporting utility helicopters to the Pakistan military is an explicit but unexamined foreign policy statement by Canada. Having absolved itself of the responsibility to grant or withhold an export permit for these helicopters, Ottawa abdicates its responsibility to carefully assess the wisdom of relying on Pakistan to militarily defeat insurgents, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Seven years into Washington’s “war on terror,” insurgents in both countries have proven themselves not to be amenable to military defeat. President Musharraf, at the same time, finds this less alarming than might be expected and is certainly a less than enthusiastic ally in the effort to stabilize Afghanistan. Like its Afghanistan policy, Ottawa’s Pakistan policy requires some careful assessment – an assessment that should have preceded the shipment of helicopters.

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[i] “Between Cheney and a hard place: America wants its counter-terrorism money’s-worth from Pakistan,”The Economist, March 1, 2007 (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8776347).

CNN, Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, November 6, 2007 (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/06/acd.02.html): Joe Johns, CNN Congressional Correspondent: “Ever since the horror and shock of 9/11, some say the U.S. war on terror has meant a blank check for Pakistan. Since 2001, the United States has kicked in $10.5 billion in funding to Pakistan. In fact, it’s probably more. Some of the money is off the books because it’s called covert spending. Experts claim U.S. officials have no idea what the money is really buying.”

[ii] Christine Fair, a specialist in South Asian political and military affairs at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute for Peace (October 2006, PBS programs on the “Return of the Taliban.”)http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/pakistan/fair.html.

[iii] Doug Saunders “Back off, but don’t walk away,”Globe and Mail, December 29, 2007 (http://ago.mobile.globeandmail.com/generated/archive/RTGAM/html/20071228/wessay_saunders29.html.

[iv] By David Rohde, Carlotta Gall, Eric Schmitt And David E. Sanger, “U.S. Officials See Waste in Billions Sent to Pakistan,” The New York Times, December 24, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/world/asia/24military.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print).

[v] Ken Epps, Statistics Canada search, http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrkti/tdst/tdo/tdo.php#tag.

[vi] Ken Epps, “Canadian helicopters to Pakistan armed forces,” The Ploughshares Monitor, Summer 2004 (Vol. 25, No. 2) (http://ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/monj04f.htm).

[vii] “As part of a 235-million dollar project, Pakistan leased the Bell-412 helicopters from the US, which provided the resources and manpower training to run them, the US embassy said.” (“US gives 30 copters to Pakistan,” Agence France-Presse. Islamabad, October 23, 2007,http://www.newagebd.com/2007/oct/23/inat.html.)

[viii] “US gives 30 copters to Pakistan,” Agence France-Presse. Islamabad, October 23, 2007,http://www.newagebd.com/2007/oct/23/inat.html.

[ix] From a Bell Helicopter press release, January 23, 2006,

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?prod=66040&session=dae.32119770.1199017253.9Xi4x38AAAEAADsRbe0AAAAU&modele=jdc_1.)

[x] Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada 2003-2005, Export Controls Division, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, p. 2 (http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/trade/eicb/military/military-reports-en.asp).

[xi] Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada 2003-2005, Export Controls Division, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, p. 2 (http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/trade/eicb/military/military-reports-en.asp).

Warnings of the disaster that would come of an American attack on Iran are plentiful, increasingly urgent, and persuasive[i] – but it is not at all clear that they are working on the one vote that matters. The NewsHour on PBS television ran a short feature on the growing irrelevance of George Bush, but on security matters he’s still very much in charge, and when it comes to Iran he still likes to say that all options remain on the table.

Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding, Pentagon planners and presidential advisors seem to have an inexplicable capacity to infuse their attack scenarios with an irrepressible optimism. In their computerized simulations, otherwise intractable problems, like Iran’s nuclear programs, are swept aside like so much hi tech chaff once the missiles start flying. The Christian Science Monitor recently observed that “perhaps the most egregious error policy planners make is their assumption that once wars are started, their outcome is predictable.”[ii]

It is true that some outcomes are predictable enough. No one could have doubted that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would lead to the overthrow of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Nor could anyone doubt that if the United States attacked Iran it could manage to destroy, at least for a time, its nuclear programs, set its economic infrastructure back a generation, or overthrow its government. Regime destruction can be accomplished with dispatch – but after that all bets are off.

Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford has offered a careful and cautious account[iii] of the consequences of a concentrated air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and defence infrastructure. He rules out a ground offensive and a regime overthrow by the United states as unfeasible given American commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He says “an air attack would involve the systematic destruction of research, development, support and training centres for nuclear and missile programmes and the killing of as many technically competent people as possible.” In addition, the attack would “involve comprehensive destruction of Iranian air defence capabilities and attacks designed to pre-empt Iranian retaliation. This would require destruction of Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities close to Iraq and of regular or irregular naval forces that could disrupt Gulf oil transit routes.”

Civilian and military casualties would be difficult to monitor, but would be in the many thousands, given that much of the technical infrastructure in support of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs is located in urban areas.

After the attack, he says, “Iran would have many methods of responding in the months and years that followed.” He includes disruption of Gulf oil supplies and support for insurgents and anti-Israel forces in the region. Rather than end Iranian nuclear programs, an attack would ignite Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions. Iran would emerge united and determined to build a bomb and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That would presumably occasion further attacks and propel long-term and widening confrontation in the region.

After that come the unpredictable consequences, including the environmental impact of exploding nuclear facilities – at this point with limited quantities of nuclear materials present – and various political fallout possibilities. President Bush and his army of upbeat advisors and analysts obviously did not anticipate that their 2003 attack on Iraq would be a major boon to Iran. But, says the former Ambassador and current Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control, Peter W. Galbraith, “of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran’s strategic victory is the most far-reaching.”[iv] Similar unintended consequences would also ensue from an attack on Iran.

Mr. Bush seems rather more aware of folly when the issue is the military action of others. It is almost touching to hear his kindly reprimand of Turkey for having the temerity to threaten attacks on northern Iraq in an effort to deny rebel Turkish Kurds sanctuary there. “There is a lot of dialogue going on,” he explained to reporters at the White House, “and that is positive.”[v]

To measure his own actions he uses a different calculus. There may, after all, be a lot of dialogue going on with Iran as well, but in this case he finds nothing positive in it. Talking to Iran, whether it is the Russians or the International Atomic Energy Agency, only emboldens it in its wicked ways.

Left to his own devices, and bolstered by the authors of triumphalist attack scenarios, President Bush is eminently capable of crowning his disastrous presidency with another military misadventure – this time in Iran. In other words, he shouldn’t be left to his own devices.

The Parliament of Canada would perform a worthy service in support of international stability through a unanimous and two-fold call: for the United States to unequivocally reject military action against Iran and for Iran to unambiguously resolve all outstanding issues with the IAEA and provide it ongoing and unencumbered access to all Iranian nuclear facilities and programs.

As an emergency statement onIranby a group of concerned Canadians puts it, “an aerial assault on Iran would be an environmental and human catastrophe that our already damaged world cannot afford.”[vi]

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[i] Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher, “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East,” The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, September 2007 (http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf).

Barnett Rubin, “Thesis on Policy toward Iran,” Informed Comment: Global Affairs, September 5, 2007 (http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/09/theses-on-policy-toward-iran.html).

Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?” The New Yorker, April 17, 2007 (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/17/060417fa_fact).

[ii] Walter Rodgers, “The folly of war with Iran,” The Christian Science Monitor,” October 16, 2007 ()

[iii] Paul Rogers, Iran: Consequences of a War, Briefing Paper, Oxford Research Group, February 2006 (http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers/pdf/IranConsequences.pdf), 16 pp.

[iv]Peter W. Galbraith, “The Victor?,” The New York Review of Books, October 11, 2007 Volume 54, Number 15 (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20651).

[v]By Paula Wolfson, “Bush Urges Turkey to Refrain From Cross-Border Operations in Iraq,” Voice of America, October 17, 2007 (http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-10-17-voa49.cfm).

[vi] From an “emergency statement” of concerned Canadians. The statement remains open for signature through Jillian Skeet of Vancouver who can be reached at jillianskeet@telus.net.

Without a negotiated settlement – that is, without a broad political consensus to support a new national order – inserting international military forces into any ongoing armed conflict risks prolonging and intensifying that conflict and puts the international community on one side of a civil war.

And experience and logic tell us that political consensus is not forged on the battlefield: that presumably is what our own political leaders, as well as Afghan and NATO leaders, mean when they frankly agree that peace in Afghanistan will not be won by the military effort alone.

The Prime Minister made no mention of diplomacy when he listed the options that the Afghanistan Panel should consider, but diplomacy must be at the core of the Afghanistan effort. The pursuit of national accord requires its own dedicated peace and reconciliation process, and as the security situation continues to deteriorate, especially in the south, there is growing recognition that contemporary Afghanistan has yet to go through that transformative process.

Lessons learned from other contexts also tell us something about the essential components of such a peace and reconciliation effort. It is not a matter only of offering dissidents amnesty. It is not a matter of elites and militia leaders making deals to divvy up districts to control.

It is about engaging all sectors of society and communities of interest to build national institutions and practices that Afghans trust. That means:

• a peace and reconciliation process based on inclusivity (involving all local stakeholders, but also regional actors);
• it means a locally owned process that is broadly based (that includes women and civil society, as well as political and military groupings);
• it requires international backing that lends legitimacy and authority to the process, and
• it benefits from external facilitation (the government of Afghanistan obviously needs to be a key participant, but it cannot itself facilitate the reconciliation process).

So what of the role of Canada in this? What should the new panel of Afghanistan say about diplomacy?

At a minimum Canada can become a tireless advocate for a comprehensive peace process to build the political consensus that is now absent. Current Canadian leadership has too often treated the very idea of negotiation as if it were a denigration of the military effort. But peace and reconciliation efforts are not tactics to assist a faltering military effort; the military effort must be oriented to support an essential political peace process.

That means engaging our ISAF partners, the government of Afghanistan, and the key regional actors, to encourage those talks that are already underway, but especially to encourage the broadening of such efforts into a comprehensive reconciliation process. Canada can also provide technical and financial resources to facilitate initiatives and to ensure that Afghan women and civil society have the resources to participate effectively.

We have to be appropriately modest about what we can do, but a fundamental and urgent requirement is that we infuse the extraordinary commitment that we have made to this country with a palpable energy toward supporting Afghans in the pursuit of a new political order that earns the confidence of Afghans in all parts of the country.

What moves conflicted societies from the “failed states” column to the functioning state column is not of course the end of conflict, but the presence of national political and social institutions capable of mediating conflict without the resort to violence. That is a large part of what the collective struggle in Afghanistan must finally be about.