Armed Conflict

Over a weekend of turkey and pumpkin pie there was also time to reflect on the sixth anniversary of the October 7, 2001 attack on Afghanistan – an attack that launched a war that not only continues, but by most accounts, apart from those of the Foreign Minister,[i] shows declining promise of victory.

The architects of war, those in the Bush Administration who were determined to convert a broadly supported diplomatic and law-enforcement effort to control terrorism into a literal and largely unilateral war, anticipated the early destruction of the Taliban, the regime that harbored the mentors if not the masterminds of the 9/11 terrorists, namely, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, which would also fall to the invaders.

But six years ago there were also those who said that a “war” on terrorism would fail.

A group of Canadian Ecumenical leaders wrote to the Prime Minister on October 12:

“We believe that a sustained and effective campaign against terrorism is fundamental to the safety and well-being of all people, and that Canada can and must make a vital contribution to that campaign. We fear, however, that the military attacks on Afghanistan which began on October 7 could seriously undermine the international community’s efforts, both to bring those responsible for the September 11 attacks to justice and to reduce the incidence of terrorism in the future.”[ii]

Paul Rogers, a particularly prescient analyst at the Peace Studies program of Bradford University in the United Kingdom, recalls the warning that he published on September 29, 2001:

“The extent of the devastation and human suffering inflicted in the [9/11] attacks means that support for the United States among its allies is far-reaching, and extends to a remarkable range of states. In this light, the immediate response should be to develop, extend and cement this coalition; base all action on the rule of law; and put every effort into bringing the perpetrators to justice.”[iii]

These themes were also elaborated in the Ploughshares Monitor before the October 7 attack.[iv] In particular, we argued that to struggle against terrorism is not so much a matter of defeating terrorists as it is addressing the conditions in which terrorism tends to thrive:

“If the world is about to embark on a major campaign against terrorism, it is especially important to strongly assert that it is possible to hear and address the grievances that are linked to terrorist activity without thereby in any way condoning it. Acknowledging that terrorism has root causes does not excuse it any more than acknowledging that higher than average crime rates tend to be linked to adverse social and economic conditions excuses individual crimes. Any serious crime reduction effort cannot be confined to more intensified police work; it must also address the economic and social conditions that tend to produce increased rates of crime. Similarly, any serious campaign against terrorism needs to address the social, economic and political conditions that nurture the emergence of terrorism.”

In anticipation of the October 7 attack, we also warned against a literal war on terror:

“While the television networks are drawn increasingly to footage of aircraft carriers, long-range bombers, and other heavy military equipment, implying major military assaults on non-cooperating states, many military analysts, including the United States Defense Secretary, point out that such states have no obvious military targets which, if destroyed, would aid the pursuit and apprehension of the accused. Punitive military strikes against civilian populations and infrastructure would themselves be heinous violations of international law and decency and would, to understate the matter, be counter-productive. They would inevitably spawn new generations of terrorists and aggravate, in Afghanistan for example, the humanitarian crisis which is already well advanced among one of the most vulnerable civilian populations in the world and from which all international humanitarian workers have now had to flee.

“And if military force is counter-productive or of limited utility in bringing the fugitives to justice in the current case, its role in the wider campaign against terrorism is even more marginal. Terrorism is not amenable to military defeat. The defeat of terrorism requires a broad range of domestic security measures, effective national and international law enforcement capacity, and urgent attention to the political and social conditions that nurture it.”

We also argued for a recovery of perspective in the struggle against terrorism.

“A campaign against terrorism is required, but not at all costs. Indeed, Afghanistan offers a prime example of the extraordinary damage that can be incurred through intense single-minded campaigns that in their zeal ignore the possible negative consequences. In the 1980s the United States committed itself to support the war against the Soviet Union, against the spread of communism, without apparent regard for any outcome other than the defeat of the Soviets. It was a spectacularly successful campaign, but at what cost? The supply of almost limitless quantities of small arms and light weapons through Pakistan continues to fuel the unending civil war in Afghanistan, and social chaos and escalating violence in Pakistan. Uncritical support for the mujahadeen rebels spawned the Taliban and made common cause with the same Osama bin Laden who is now one of the pursued fugitives.

“We can be sure that a single-minded campaign against terrorism will have similarly damaging consequences if it is not guided by due process and actions that honour the laws, values and freedoms that terrorism threatens. If our societies yield to growing pressures to permit increased invasion of privacy, reduced access to information, curtailed immigration, reduced access to safe havens for refugees, changes in national priorities to increase military spending at the expense of social programs, along with any number of other measures to erode fundamental rights and freedoms, the campaign against terror will have failed in its commitment to the victims of the September 11 attacks to honour their sacrifice with a new resolve to make the world they left behind a safer place.”

Six years later, the “war on terror” continues with largely unenlightened vengeance in Afghanistan and now also on Iraq. Today the drums of war are also beating for an attack on Iran – an attack which would add exponentially to the disaster and tragedy of the war thus far.

[i] Over the weekend the Globe and Mail reported that “Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier contradicted all publicly available assessments of security in southern Afghanistan yesterday with a bold claim that insurgent attacks have decreased in Kandahar, leaving the province more secure for humanitarian work.” Graeme Smith, “Upbeat Bernier contradicts UN reports,” The Globe and Mail, October 8, 2007.

[ii] Letter to the Prime Minister, October 12, 200, from a group of Canadian Ecumenical leaders with regard to the attack on Afghanistan begun on October 7 (http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Statements/MPletter.Eng%209-11.pdf).

[iii] Paul Rogers, “Afghanistan: six years of war,” Open Democracy, October 4, 2007 (http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/conflicts/global_security/afghanistan_six_years).

[iv] Ernie RegehrResponding to terrorThe Ploughshares Monitor,September 2001, volume 22, no. 3 (http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mons01b.html).

Some months back, in a not for attribution briefing on Afghanistan, a Canadian military official observed that the Taliban are skilled at luring foreign forces into tactical military victories that actually become strategic victories for the Taliban. A new report from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the situation in Afghanistan[i] essentially confirms that admission – with significant implications for current and growing calls to pursue a negotiated end to the fighting.

The Secretary-General reports that the “multiple military successes” of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan National Army in the most dangerous and insecure parts of Afghanistan continue to be accompanied by declining security and declining support for the Karzai government. Despite a significantly expanded ISAF, he says, “access to rural areas of south and south-eastern Afghanistan for official and civil society actors has continued to decline.”

It used to be called winning the battle while losing the war.

Military successes can lead to strategic setbacks for a variety of reasons, and in Afghanistan two important factors are battlefield victories accompanied by large numbers of civilian deaths and battles that are won on behalf of a government that many in the south in particular find corrupt and hostile to their collective interests. The UN mission in Afghanistan recorded over 1,000 civilian deaths from January 1 to August 31 at the hands of both pro- and anti-governmental forces, and independent monitoring indicates that the majority of these are attributable to pro-government forces.[ii] In addition, the Secretary-General says there exists in the Karzai government “a culture of patronage and direct involvement in illegal activities, including the drug trade, especially within the police force.”

To achieve strategic success – that is, a stable security environment and a government that earns the confidence of most Afghans – the Secretary-General says the counter-insurgency effort will have to include “political outreach to disaffected groups.” In other words, the disaffected community now confronted on the battlefield needs to be engaged through a serious negotiation/reconciliation process. His call was echoed with growing urgency by Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the weekend.[iii]

As these calls for negotiations increase they also generate cautionary voices, on two counts in particular. First, say some experts, though negotiation may almost always be appropriate in principle, such talks need to be pursued in situations in which the belligerents have real incentives to consider accommodation and compromise – in other words, the conflict must be ripe.[iv]Second, one incentive for belligerents to come to the table is provided by military pressure – in other words, a call for negotiations is therefore said to be incompatible with parallel calls for military withdrawal and thus an easing of military pressure.[v]

The question is, do these two conditions apply to the current situation in Afghanistan?

Ripeness for negotiation generally flows from military stalemate – a situation in which neither side is moving toward victory and both sides are suffering. There is a reason experts call this a “hurting stalemate.” In Afghanistan, because the insurgency is still on the rise, is still gaining strength, some analysts argue that Afghanistan has not yet reached that hurting stalemate. The international forces admit that this war is not militarily winnable and so have ample incentive to pursue alternatives, given the apparently growing strength of the insurgents, Taliban-led forces are unlikely to regard themselves as on the run and under pressure to seek a negotiated compromise. And Mullah Omar’s quick rebuff of President Karzai’s offer would appear to confirm that further “ripening” is still needed.

In fact, however, even if the insurgents consider their fortunes to be rising in the south, that does not lift them out of an overall stalemate. The Taliban cannot avoid the hard reality that their base is confined to the south and that they cannot credibly regard themselves on the ascendancy in the country as a whole. They have to understand that they face a long struggle in the south, and, even if successful, they cannot expect to push beyond the Pashtun-dominated south and southeast – and they also have to assume that a larger role for the Pashtun/Taliban in the country as a whole will only be achievable through negotiations.

The second point, the argument that negotiations should not be accompanied by an easing of military pressure, is relevant only if the tactical military victories of the government and its foreign backers actually produce strategic setbacks for the insurgents. But if ISAF’s military victories succeed mainly in building up resentment against the government and its international backers, it is doubtful that continuing military action will work toward more effective negotiations. Current military pressure is as likely to work against the negotiating interests of ISAF and the Government of Afghanistan if that military pressure generates more alienation than trust.

It is no wonder then that the Secretary-General points to the need for a shift in military focus away from assaults on insurgents. “Afghan civilian and military leaders,” he says, “need to play a greater role in planning security operations and ensuring that military gains are consolidated with the provision of basic security by State institutions.”

In other words, instead of trying to kill more insurgents, and a lot of civilians in the process, the focus needs to be on the delivery of genuine security and consolidating gains through reconstruction and improved government services in those areas already held by the government, and then, from that base, to engage populations and combatants in insurgent-held areas in pursuit of a negotiated consensus in support of a new Afghan political alignment.

[i] The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security, Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly and Security Council, September 21, 2007 (A/62/345 – S/2007/555).

[ii] See July 18/07 posting and,”Afghan investigation finds 62 Taliban, 45 civilians killed in southern battle,” International Herald Tribune, June 30, 2007. http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6428190

[iii] Dene Moore, “Afghan human rights official says talks with Taliban best option for peace,” The Canadian Press, Canoe Network News, September 30, 2007 (http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/09/30/pf-4538753.html).

[iv] Fen Osler Hampson, “Don’t rush to the negotiating table,” The Globe and Mail, September 18, 2007.

[v] Peter Jones, “Should we negotiate with the Taliban?, The Ottawa Citizen, September 23, 2007.

Political correctness aside, Pearson’s point has not lost any of its trenchant relevance. He made the comment in his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and it was followed by three decades of the kind of Goliathon war preparations that are, and we hope will remain, unmatched in human history.

Indeed, the legacy of those precocious giants continues to exact an annual toll of hundreds of thousands of lives as well as billions of dollars that might otherwise be spent on preparations for peace. The 600 million-plus small arms that flood the planet continue to kill at least 250,000 people annually, many in war and many more in homicides, suicides, and law enforcement killings in societies not at war.[i]

The worlds 27,000 nuclear weapons, a figure well down from Cold War highs, continue to threaten annihilation and continue to cost the world billions of dollars each year, either to maintain or dismantle them, to clean up the environmental contamination caused in their production, and to carry out the inspections needed to prevent their spread.

In 2005 global military spending reached $1.2 trillion.[ii]Some of that is spent to keep the peace, but keeping the peace, research and experience of the past decade in particular have been telling us, is rather more complex than suggested by the ancient Latin bromide: “if you want peace prepare for war.”

It should be both fundamental and obvious that preparations for peace, for the security and safety of people, should respond to the ways they experience insecurity. And the most immediate threats to human security derive from unmet basic needs, political exclusion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and political violence that invariably accompany these conditions of insecurity.

The primary threats to the safety and welfare of people, in most cases, are not external military forces bent on attacking the territorial integrity or sovereignty of their state It should follow, therefore, that the build-up of military prowess is not the primary means of pursuing the security of people. Clearly, it is favorable social, political, and economic conditions – that is, economic development, basic rights and political participation, control over the instruments of violence, and skill in the peaceful settlement of disputes – that are essential to advancing human security.

For the most part, these approaches to international peace and human security are funded out of aid budgets (official development assistance ODA). Governments also spend separately on diplomacy and disarmament, of course, but it is still instructive to compare the ODA to Military Expenditures of states[iii] to get a sense of how Lester Pearson’s giants and pygmies are doing.

Some states put a high premium on ODA. In Norway and the Netherlands the ratio is 1:1.7 and 1:1.9 respectively – that is, even though military forces are extremely expensive to maintain, in Norway and the Netherlands military spending is less than double that of their development assistance.

Other states have different priorities. In the United States the ratio is 1:25.1 – that is, Washington spends 25 times more on military preparations than on development assistance. The global average is much better than the US example, but a long way from the model of Norway and Netherlands. Among OECD countries, the ODA to Military Expenditures ratio is 1:7.5.

And Canada? Here the ratio is 1:3.5 – much, much better than the worst cases, but there is still some work to do to match the Norwegian model. Canada would reach the Norwegian and Netherlands achievements if we but implemented our declared policy. If Canadian development assistance was actually raised to the declared objective of .7% of our gross national income, and if defence spending continued as currently projected, the ODA to Military ratio in Canada would reach about 1:2.

On this International Day of Peace it is an objective worth rediscovering.

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[i] The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calls small arms “weapons of mass destruction” and offers background and figures (http://www.irinnews.org/IndepthMain.aspx?IndepthId=8&ReportId=58952), and the International Action Network on Small Arms provides additional evidence (http://www.iansa.org/media/wmd.htm).

[ii] The Military Balance 2007, The International Institute for Strategic Studies (Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2007)

[iii] All figures are drawn from the IISS (see note 2), the OECD, and Canadian public accounts and are for 2005.

The National Counterterrorism Centre of the United States delivers the cold hard facts:[i] in 2006 terrorist attacks rose by 25 percent and deaths at the hands of terrorists by 40 percent. But this time it’s not the devil that is in the details. It turns out that when you look closely, in Europe, Eurasia, East Asia, the Pacific, and the Western Hemisphere the already low levels of terrorism have declined even further.

Take the headline-making countries out of the equation – Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan, where incident of violence were up by 50-90 percent – and the trend is toward growing global safety.

Look at the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia – in 2006 there were no high-casualty terrorist attacks and 95 percent fewer victims of terror than in 2005. Of course, the US “counterterrorism” centre says this “is likely attributable to a more robust regional counterterrorism effort,” but it’s actually a lot more complicated, and promising, than that.

Less than a decade ago, Indonesia was a poster country for a world of never-ending war. Project Ploughshares tracks and tabulates wars for its annual Armed Conflicts Report[ii]and Indonesia has featured prominently, hosting six separate wars over the past decade (many at the same time), but now Indonesia is absent from the report. In the southeast, war ended when East Timor gained independence. In Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sulawesi inter-ethnic and Christian-Muslim tensions remain, but the violence has ended. Tensions also continue in West Papua (Irian Jaya), but the fighting has stopped. InAceh in the northwest a new agreement grants the province considerable autonomy, following a 2005 peace accord. The Molucca (Maluku) Islands have also largely returned to normalcy.

This is the first time since 1987, when Ploughshares began reporting annually on armed conflicts, that Indonesia has failed to make an appearance on the Armed Conflicts Map.[iii] Indeed, it’s a failure that is spreading – the current map shows 29 conflicts in 25 countries, the lowest numbers since 1987.

But conflicts don’t usually end by accident, and they almost never end because one side wins. They end because the participants are persuaded, as a result of a great deal of determined and multifaceted diplomatic, humanitarian, and political effort, to pursue other options.

In the last decade, 35 conflicts have ended in that way. In fact, while wars and rumors of wars remain all too prominent a feature of this planet, every war now raging could have been prevented (and that includes the tragedies of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan) and can and will be ended.

Ending wars does not end conflict, but it does demilitarize it and that is what the visionary drafters of the United Nations Charter had in mind. They wrote eloquently in the preamble about their intention to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and in Article 26 they sought to give their bold vision substance by mandating member states to establish “a system for the regulation of armaments” as part of a larger effort to “promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources.”

The headlines and taxes remind us daily that Article 26 still awaits implementation (taxpayers fund military expenditures at the rate of a thousand-plus billion dollars annually). But that doesn’t mean no one is trying to implement Article 26.

The postings in this space now begin a second year and they will continue to draw impetus from the international band of politicians, diplomats, researchers, and advocates who focus on pursuing the kind of peace and security arrangements that the Charter envisions. As promised here a year ago, postings in this space will focus on initiatives, policies, regulations, and security cooperation measures that are designed to control and reduce the arsenals of war, to reduce the incidence and impact of armed conflict, and to encourage states to devote a greater share of their resources to building conditions for sustainable peace. Topics addressed will include: nuclear non-proliferation, controlling conventional weapons, current armed conflicts, and defence and human security.

It is the effort to ameliorate the insecurities that face most people on a daily basis that has the truly disarming effect on conflict. The core of preventing and terminating conflict is therefore to be found in attention to unmet basic needs, to political exclusion, denied rights, and social and political disintegration, and to the criminal and political violence that invariably accompany these conditions of insecurity. In other words, there is still too much to write about.

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[i] “Report on Terrorist Incidents – 2006,” The United States National Counterterrorism Center, April 30, 2007 (http://wits.nctc.gov/reports/crot2006nctcannexfinal.pdf).

[ii] http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/ACRText/ACR-TitlePageRev.htm.

[iii]The Poster, http://www.ploughshares.ca/imagesarticles/ACR07/poster2007.pdf.

Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche, currently Canada’s top military commander in Afghanistan, puts it simply:[i] “I don’t talk to the Taliban.” In the same Canadian Press report, Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier is just as categorical: “Canada does not negotiate with terrorists, for any reason.”

For both comments, the immediate issue was the negotiated release of South Koreans held captive by the Taliban, but in both cases the comments were given broader context.

Gen. Laroche acknowledged that it will take more than military force to bring peace and order to Afghanistan, but he is right about not negotiating with the Taliban in the sense that he certainly has no mandate to do so. There may be tactical situations involving Canadian Forces in which negotiations would protect particular people in particular circumstances and his blanket dismissal of such an option does not generate confidence, but he is right in a strategic sense. Negotiations with the Taliban with a view to a more effective pursuit of peace and order are not up to foreign military commanders – that is the task of Afghans and the international community represented through the United Nations presence there.

And that is where Foreign Minister Bernier is certainly wrong.

Mr. Bernier is simply mistaken when he says that Canada never negotiates with terrorists. Canada has had officials present at current negotiations with the Lord’s Resistance Army to get it to end its campaign of unspeakable terror in Northern Uganda. Canada has similarly been represented at peace talks to end the war, and the extreme war crimes, in Darfur – sharing a table with the perpetrators of terror.

Canada, the United Nations, and virtually all governments enmeshed in protracted conflicts negotiate with individuals and groups guilty of heinous crimes. Minister Bernier is new to his post, but there are many seasoned negotiators in his department who are in a position to help him adjust, expand, and nuance his views.

As has been frequently argued in this space, a key measure of Canada’s effectiveness in Afghanistan will be the extent to which this country has used its presence there to encourage negotiations toward a new political consensus and a new governance structure that is understood by all Afghans to reflect and represent their best interests.

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[i] Canadian Press, “”General vows: ‚ÄòI don’t talk to the Taliban’,” The Record, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontarion, August 31, 2007.

It was a particularly arresting headline that warranted the further search: “Taliban, US in new round of peace talks.”

Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief of the Asia Times Online, has been writing a series of articles on continuing efforts to negotiate deals which he says “aim to stop violence in selected areas and give the Taliban limited control of government pending the conclusion of a broader peace deal for the country and the Taliban’s inclusion in some form of national administration.”[i] What he describes is really talks about talks, and he links the interest in negotiating to interest in the fabled oil pipeline to connect the oil fields of Turkmenistan and the other northern “stans” to south Asia and beyond, but there is no doubt that the undeniable futility of the fighting is increasingly turning heads to the possibility of alternatives.

The negotiation track has been given a significant boost by the recent four-day joint (Afghanistan and Pakistan) “peace Jirga,”[ii] by all accounts an extraordinary gathering that has inspired both hope and considerable skepticism.

The hope owes to what some consider the broad base of the Jirga[iii] – some 700 delegates that included representatives of civil society, business, tribal communities, religious communities, Parliaments, and Governments – and the agreement to pursue a peace and reconciliation agenda within the Pashtun communities of both countries aimed at curbing violence and bringing the communities into credible participation in provincial and national governments.

The skepticism owes to what others regard as the narrow base of the Jirga – the President of Pakistan was key in the selection of Pakistan participants and the Taliban were excluded – and to the insistence that it mandates talks only with those who renounce violence and terrorism[iv] (a reflection of Washington’s reluctance to support an aggressive reconciliation program).[v]

The Jirga did produce two significant results. It authorized a smaller and ongoing Jirga of 50 members (25 from each country) with a mandate to “expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for peace and reconciliation,”[vi] and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan acknowledged at the closing session that indeed the Afghan insurgency did receive support within Pakistan (but denying it was with official connivance).[vii]

Although media shorthand frames the issue as “negotiating with the Taliban,” the point is not to seek accommodation with the Taliban as an ideological movement, but to engage the people of the chronically destabilized parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that means talking to the representatives of the Pashtun community on both sides of the border. Tarique Niazi of the University of Wisconsin argues that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who initially proposed the Jirga and who is himself a Pashtun, regards tribal leaders as the “foundation of Pashtun culture and believes in their primacy over all other cultural and political institutions to resolve internecine conflicts” and also believes “that the jirga is the most effective tool in Pashtun society for conflict resolution.”[viii] Niazi makes a clear and compelling case for focusing talks within the Pashtun community rather than on the Taliban as an organization:

“Although Pashtuns reject al-Qaeda and its terrorism, as the Kabul Jirga resoundingly demonstrated, they are resentful of their loss of power in Kabul, which they held for 200 years, to an ethnic minority-dominated and U.S.-backed Northern Alliance. The Taliban, who are predominantly Pashtuns, are drawing on this sense of exclusion among their majority community to sustain their struggle. An ethnic balance to the current distribution of power, therefore, will help drain the Afghan resistance of energy and serve as well the long-term security interests of the Northern Alliance.”[ix]

The calls for such negotiations are not new, of course. President Karzai had earlier asked a group of former Taliban to engage dissidents.[x]The Afghan Senate has called on the government in Kabul to open direct talks with native Taliban insurgents, and for NATO-led military operations against them to stop.[xi] Last fall a group of village elders told a UN Security Council delegation that the international community should make peace with the Taliban and turn from fighting the Taliban to a focus on reconstruction. They said stability would be advanced by increased financial aid and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.[xii] A former Afghan (Taliban) Minister, who now teaches at a university in New Zealand, writing in the International Herald Tribune, also argued last year that the international forces in Afghanistan have reached the limit of their contribution and that a new plan is called for, including renewed focus on development, greater focus on training Afghan army and police, a Muslim peacekeeping force, and in particular a new intra-Afghan dialogue.[xiii]

As has been noted here before, negotiating with one’s adversary is the rule, not the exception, in the successful termination of armed conflict and Canada should take advantage of the upsurge in the interest in talks and devote substantial diplomatic and material resources to supporting and promoting such negotiations. In the NDP’s dissenting opinion to the report of the House of Commons Defence Committee on Afghanistan, MP Dawn Black suggests that the success of the diplomatic element of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan

“should be judged by its capacity to support, facilitate and catalyze efforts towards the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan. Specifically, the diplomatic mission should be measured by progress in building international momentum for comprehensive peace negotiations at three levels: within Afghanistan; with international players; and in the regional context.”[xiv]

That is anything but a partisan appeal. Indeed, inasmuch as the safety and well-being of Afghans depends the emergence of a new political order, it ought to be the core objective of Canada’s presence in Afghanistan.

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[i] Syed Saleem Shahzad, “Taliban, US in new round of peace talks,” Asia Times, August 21, 2007 (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH21Df03.html).

[ii] A tribal council or assembly.

[iii] Tarique Niazi of the University of Wisconsin described it as “that grandest gathering of Pashtun leaders since the Durand Line was drawn in 1893 to divide Pashtun territories between Afghanistan and the British
Raj.” [“Talk to the Taliban,” August 16, 2007, Foreign Policy in Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4474).]

[iv] “Taliban leaders denounced the jirga, and refused to fulfill preconditions that would enable their attendance, namely a public renunciation of violence and recognition of the Afghan constitution’s validity.” [ Camelia Entekhabi-Fard and Richard Weitz , “Probing for ways to engage the Taliban,” Eurasianet.org, August 16, 2007 (http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav081607.shtml).]

[v] Shahzed reports on talks by Afghan representatives with Taliban leaders in both Afghanistan and Quetta, Pakistan seeking Taliban for ongoing talks, and in the meantime he notes “it remains for Washington to commit fully to a permanent policy for a political settlement.” [“Talks with the Taliban gain ground,” August 24, 2007, Asia Times (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH24Df01.html).]

[vi] The text of the Afghan-Pak Joint Peace Jirga Declaration” is available from the August 13, 2007 edition of the Daily Times of Pakistan (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH21Df03.html).

[vii] Taimor Shah and Carlotta Call, “Afghan Rebels Find Aid in Pakistan, Musharraf Admits,” New York Times, August 13, 2007 (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C14F73B5D0C708DDDA10894DF404482).

[viii] Tarique Niazi, “Talk to the Taliban,” August 16, 2007, Foreign Policy in Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4474).

[ix] Tarique Niazi, “Talk to the Taliban,” August 16, 2007, Foreign Policy in Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4474).

[x] Terry Friel, “Only peace talks can save Afghanistan – former rebel,” Reuters, April 12, 2007 http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2007/april/apr122007.html#4

[xi] Afghan Senate urges Taleban talks, BBC News, May 9, 2007.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6637473.stm

[xii] “Make peace with the Taliban, village elders tell UN,” CBC News, November 14, 2006. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/11/14/delegation-afghanistan.html

[xiii] Najibullah Lafraie, “The Way Out of Afghanistan Is to Get Out,” International Herald Tribune, September 6, 2006. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,435388,00.html

[xiv] Dawn Black, Dissenting opinion of the New Democratic Party to the Standing Committee on National Defence, Canadian Forces in Afghanistan: Report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, June 2007, 39 ^th Parliament, 1st Session. http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/Content/HOC/committee/391/nddn/reports/rp3034719/391_NDDN_Rpt01_Pdf/391_NDDN_Rpt01_Pdf-e.pdf

That the international effort in Afghanistan is faltering, most recently confirmed by a British House of Commons report,[1] is not in doubt.[2] Nor is it in doubt that sooner or later Canada will leave Afghanistan. But the latter should not be determined by the former.

Whether Canada stays beyond February 2009 involves a broad range of issues – especially the implications for other Canadian priorities and the ability to respond to urgent needs elsewhere – but exit strategies do not help us meet the responsibility to understand what is not working in Afghanistan and to fix it by encouraging the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) contributors to make the changes needed to mount a more effective Afghan mission.

NATO of course manages the ISAF command and its current chief intelligence officer, Canadian Brigadier General Jim Ferron recently told an international group of journalists[3] that the deeper causes of the insurgency are not religious fanaticism but are essentially a combination of nationalism and social grievances.

In the south there is the particular and traditional Pashtun wariness of foreign influence (by which they now also seems to mean Kabul), and throughout Afghanistan grievances are linked to poverty and lack of economic opportunity, corruption, and lack of education. “The enemy is illiteracy, it’s poverty, it’s unemployment,” he said.

The same point has been emphasized by the International Crisis Group which reports that when surveyed Afghans repeatedly point to a variety of social and political grievances that account for their opposition to the government:[4] p olitical disenfranchisement which favors some groups or tribes and excludes others from decision-making; disputes over land and water, exacerbated by the return of refugees and internally displaced people as well as a long drought; c orruption that includes misappropriation of state and donor resources by officials; the l ack of development by a government that has oversold the short-term benefits of democracy; and a buse by local and international security forces, involving mistreatment by local police or army as well as by international forces during village and house raids, the killing of civilians through aerial bombardment, and illegal detentions. [pp. 11-12]

In other words, the challenge of that we call “the Taliban” is focused less on irrational fanaticism than on very basic and familiar grievances – the kind you find in any conflict. These are grievances that are amenable either to negotiation or to accelerated development and good governance efforts.[5] As the Afghan Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies[6] reminds us, “the international community must realize that the centre of gravity of this conflict is not Taliban or even al-Qaeda. Rather, it is the Afghan people who have suffered immeasurably. Until the population is convinced that the battle is about improving their livelihood, Afghanistan will not proceed down the road of stability.”[7] The population in the south opts to support the Taliban, not out of loyalty to Taliban jihadist ambitions, but out of non-confidence in the international and Kabul forces and the political order they are there to advance.

In the southern heart of the insurgency there is no social stigma against young men selling their combat services to the Taliban to help keep Kabul and its backers at bay and that is the local political calculation that has to change. The political calculus at the village and family level won’t change by isolated reconstruction projects designed to win hearts and minds. Instead, it depends on the development of a new political framework and consensus – a kind of Bonn II exercise to integrate the Pashtun into a political/administrative order that they believe will respect their collective interests. Again, the Afghan Centre for Conflict and Peace points out that the 2001 Bonn Agreement brought together various groups opposed to and still fighting the Taliban. “The fault lines between these various groups were never resolved – the sought after peace agreement where people from opposing sides negotiate and come to a settlement never materialized. On the ground, the Taliban were isolated and on the run resulting in the premature conclusion that the Taliban was a spent force. Instead, they fled across the Afghan-Pakistan border and started to regenerate and where they re-organised, re-armed, and recruited from the local madrassas.”[8]

Until a process to bridge the basic fault line is thoroughly pursued, if not actually built, the counter-insurgency war in the south is more likely to fuel insurgency than to suppress it. And, perhaps most worrisome, it will continue to divert funds and attention away from consolidating the relative stability in the north, where the failure to address the long list of grievances noted above, threatens to further undermine political and economic conditions.

Re-thinking of the Afghanistan mission logically points to two kinds of changes.

First, it suggests a greater emphasis on consolidating the relative stability of the north through training support to security forces, especially training local police to reject corruption and to accept the demands of strict adherence to humanitarian and human rights standards, and support for good governance and reconstruction. Assistance in disarming non-state groups is also essential, but before local militias can be disarmed so that the government can reclaim its constitutional monopoly on the resort to force, confidence in that government and its security forces needs to improve. That means new economic opportunity to re-integrate members of armed groups into society, and it requires effective security forces to contain the criminal violence that is inseparable from poppy production and the drug trade.

On training, the Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier has been emphasizing a shift in that direction in the south. But without a change in the military-centred counter-insurgency strategy, training looks a lot like the tried and failed Vietnamization strategy pursued by the Americans in Vietnam. It implies a continuation of the same strategy, the attempt to forcibly suppress the Taliban without a new political process, except that the front end of the fighting gets increasingly shifted to Afghans in an accelerated civil war. ISAF officials, including Canadians, regularly remind us that the insurgency will not be militarily defeated – and it is a truth that applies to Afghan military forces as well.

The insurgency in the south will not be defeated and the strategy must be to contain it.[9] In part, containment means preventing the insurgency’s spread beyond the south by increased reconstruction and police training to build confidence in government and the rule of law in areas of the country not bedeviled by the insurgency.

Containment also points to the second primary change needed, that is to shift in the south from counter-insurgency combat to the political task of building an inclusive political order that has the confidence of southerners. It means pursuing that Bonn II-type effort toward a new political arrangement that has some chance of winning the confidence and loyalty of the Pashtun communities that dominate the south and that traditionally mistrust and resist control from Kabul. It means negotiating a new political order that the Pashtuns[10] will find clearly superior to what is on offer from the Taliban. And what constitutes a superior option? – one that addresses the needs and grievances that currently undergird the insurgency.

That may be described as negotiating with the Taliban, but what it really means is peace and reconciliation talks with the disaffected Pashtun communities in pursuit of a political dispensation that they regard as meeting their needs. If that means a Taliban role, that is a choice they are surely entitled to make within basic international human rights standards.

The challenge facing Canada is not to agree on a withdrawal date but to help transform the entire ISAF operation into a constructive and durable process toward an Afghanistan that meets the basic needs of Afghans.

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[1] “UK operations in Afghanistan,” Thirteenth Report of Session 2006-07, House of Commons Defence Committee, July 18, 2007 (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmdfence/408/408.pdf).

[2] See the sources listed in the last posting, “Closing the Afghanistan credibility gap,” closingt.

[3] Ahto Lobjakas, “Afghanistan: NATO Sees ‚ÄòTribal’ Nature of Taliban Insurgency,” Radio Free Europe, July 20, 2007 (http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/07/88253227-F287-4104-A336-0874C98978C2.html).

[4] “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).

[5] See Ernie Regehr testimony to theStanding Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Report 28, 1 ^st Session, 39 ^th Parliament, November 8, 2006 (http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?SourceId=184288&Lang=1&PARLSES=391&JNT=0&COM=10475).

[6] The Centre’s web site describes it as an independent research centre based in Kabul that conducts action-oriented research aimed at influencing policy-makers in key areas including state building, governance, narcotics, conflict resolution and peace building. The Board of Advisors includes: Canadian Paul Evans of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (and formerly of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia); Robert Rotberg, Director of the Program on Interstate Conflict and Conflict Resolution, Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and Surin Pitsuwan , the former Foreign Minister of Thailand. The web site is at http://www.caps.af/.

[7] Hekmat Karzai, “Why isAfghanistanfacing a serious insurgency?” Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Afghanistan (http://www.caps.af/detail.asp?Lang=e&Cat=3&ContID=100).

[8] Hekmat Karzai, “Why is Afghanistan facing a serious insurgency?” Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Afghanistan (http://www.caps.af/detail.asp?Lang=e&Cat=3&ContID=100).

[9] Rory Stewart, “Where Less is More,” The New York Times, July 23, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/opinion/23stewart.html?ex=1342843200&en=fbd9aaaadcd57a21&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss).

[10] A May Strategic Counsel survey indicates that 63 percent of Canadians support negotiating with the Taliban to end the violence in Afghanistan. The Strategic Counsel, A Report to the Globe and Mail and CTV: ” Trusted Canadian Institutions, Afghanistan, and Foreign Ownership,” May 18, 2007 (http://www.thestrategiccounsel.com/our_news/polls/2007-05-18%20GMCTV%20May%2014-17.pdf).

The Toronto Star recently described Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier as optimistic about the mission in Afghanistan.[i] At the same time, an impressive (and depressing) array of independent reporting from Afghanistan is consistent in describing Afghanistan’s security situation as dire and deteriorating.[ii]

Background briefings and roundtables involving Canadian military officials are consistently informative and upbeat about Canadian military operations in Afghanistan. The same officials also have a keen appreciation that ultimately success depends on progress in meeting the non-military challenges of reconstruction and good governance. But their official optimism that the Taliban have been knocked back on their heels is not, to put it delicately, widely shared. Nor is this a new discrepancy.

Last fall the Minister of Defence, Gordon O’Connor told the House of Commons Defence Committee that “o f [Afghanistan’s] 34 provinces, the insurgency is a great challenge in maybe six or seven. In the remaining provinces you have, in Afghan terms, relative stability.” But the report of the Secretary-General of a just a few weeks earlier described an upsurge in violence and described the insurgency as covering “a broad arc of mostly Pashtun-dominated territory, extending from Kunar province in the east to Farah province in the west; it also increasingly affects the southern fringe of the central highlands.” The swath of insurgency described by the Secretary-General was closer to including 15 to 20 provinces, and he concluded that “at no time since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 has the threat of Afghanistan’s transition been so severe.”[iii]

In his next report, March of this year, the Secretary-General noted that “since the last reporting period, there was a marked increase in insurgent forces prepared to engage in conventional combat operations against Government and international security forces, and a significant improvement in the insurgents’ tactics and training.”[iv]

So, Canadian official reporting notwithstanding, the insurgency in the south appears to be at least as disruptive as ever.[v] In the north, dissatisfaction with the Government in Kabul is also growing, and while the north is still largely free of insurgency,[vi] there are reports of new arms coming to competing and newly assertive warlords,[vii] and some analysts warn of renewed inter-ethnic fighting if corrective action is not soon taken.[viii]

Canadian Forces and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) can certainly point to military victories and to numbers of insurgents killed. But some tactical victories, won at huge political cost, turn out as strategic victories for the Taliban. As we’ve been hearing with disturbing regularity, successful battles against the Taliban frequently involve the significant loss of civilian lives, disruptions to local communities, and displaced populations. To be sure, and this should not be forgotten, the insurgent forces have to date been responsible for the majority of civilian killings in Afghanistan – according to Human Rights Watch, in 2006 there were 492 civilians killed in bombings and another 177 by other attacks and executions.[ix] Nevertheless, Afghan authorities report that in the first 6 months of 2007 American and ISAF forces killed more than 130 civilians,[x] and other reports claim that in the first half of 2007 more civilians were killed by ISAF and American Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) forces than by insurgents.[xi]

Indeed, the Taliban appear adept at luring ISAF forces into battles that are tactical defeats for the Taliban but which they know will advance their strategic prospects. The Secretary-General’s March 2007 report on the situation in Afghanistan put it this way: “Despite high losses of personnel during the past year, indications pointed to an insurgency emboldened by their strategic successes, rather than disheartened by tactical failures.”[xii] In other words, the International Security Assistance Force may well be fuelling the insurgency, in part because of the political costs of tactical victories and in part because Pashtun southerners widely believe that the Afghan military forces and their international backers are supporting a government and political order that is not in their interests.

Too much of the Canadian response seems guided by the old adage that, “having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.” Despite the now widespread recognition that a military solution is not possible,[xiii] one military expert proposes a fourfold increase in NATO troops on the ground.[xiv] Another political analyst wants Canada to leverage its presence by offering NATO a Canadian military presence beyond February 2009 on condition that other NATO countries match our effort.[xv]

It seems some Canadians want to end the military effort in Afghanistan because isn’t working; others want to increase and extend the military effort because it isn’t working yet.

Frank assessment[xvi] of what is and what isn’t working is essential for the debate in Canada to transition from its current focus on exit strategies to explorations of how the international community collectively can best make progress toward a stable security situation in Afghanistan – characterized by a genuinely representative and accountable government, an economy that works and ends its drug dependency, and a political-legal culture that respects basic rights.

February 2009 is nobody’s end date in Afghanistan. An active international presence, with a significant security element to it, will be required well into the future. Under international burden sharing it is entirely legitimate for particular countries, including Canada, to depart after they have made a meaningful contribution, but only on condition that others are available to fill in – not to continue a counter-insurgency fight that is in danger of advancing the strategic interests of the insurgents, but to learn the lessons of experience and to change to a more effective course.

For the time being, Canada remains in a mission that is difficult and faltering. That means we should be talking less about getting out and more about what is needed to make it work for the people of Afghanistan. More on that soon.

[i] Bruce Campion-Smith, “General says he’s no politician-in-waiting,” Toronto Star, July 16, 2007 (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/236269).

[ii] Report of the Secretary-General, “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security,” report to the General Assembly and Security Council, March 15, 2007 (A/61/799-S/2007/152).

Taliban Politics and Afghan Legitimate Grievances, policy paper by the Senlis Council, London, 2007 (http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/documents/taliban_politics_policy_paper).

Afghanistan‘s Endangered Compact, The International Crisis Group, Asia Briefing #59, January 29, 2007 (http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4631&l=1).Center for Defense Information, Afghanistan Update, May 1-31, 2007 (http://www.cdi.org/program/issue/document.cfm?DocumentID=3991&IssueID=48&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=39&issueID=48).

[iii] Report of the Secretary-General, “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security,” report to the General Assembly and Security Council, September 11, 2006 (A/61/326-S/2006/727).

[iv] Report of the Secretary-General, “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security,” report to the General Assembly and Security Council, March 15, 2007 (A/61/799-S/2007/152).

[v] The British Parliament’s Commons Defence Committee has just issued a report acknowledging worrying signs that the Taliban are growing stronger. Luke Baker, “Taliban growing stronger in Afghanistan: report,” Reuters Canada, July 18, 2007 (http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-07-18T094341Z_01_L17163224_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BRITAIN-AFGHANISTAN-COL.XML&archived=False). Haseeb Humayoon, ” The Iraqization of Insurgency in Afghanistan,”July 12, 2007, The Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Afghanistan (http://www.caps.af//detail.asp?Lang=e&Cat=3&ContID=2549).

[vi] “Suicide bombings continued to define the security situation in Afghanistan with two particularly worrying attacks in relatively peaceful Regional Command North.”

Center for Defense Information, Afghanistan Update, May 1-31, 2007 (http://www.cdi.org/program/issue/document.cfm?DocumentID=3991&IssueID=48&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=39&issueID=48).

[vii] Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif, “Northern Afghanistan Faces New Security Threat,” Institute of War and Peace Reporting, July 16, 2007 (http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=337148&apc_state=henh).

[viii] In Afghanistan’s north the insurgency is largely absent but “the potential for wider intra-ethnic and intra-regional conflict remains,” especially if the development and reconciliation objectives of the Afghanistan Compact are not pursued more effectively. Afghanistan‘s Endangered Compact, The International Crisis Group, Asia Briefing #59, January 29, 2007 (http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4631&l=1).

[ix] “Taliban accused of war crimes for killing civilians,” Associated Press, International Herald Tribune (Asia Pacific), April 16, 2007. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/16/asia/afghan.php

[x] Barry Bearak and Taimoor Shah, “7 Children Kill in Airstrike in Afghanistan,” The New York Times, June 19, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?ex=1182830400&en=c7cda1ad17b2a811&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS

[xi] “Afghan investigation finds 62 Taliban, 45 civilians killed in southern battle,” International Herald Tribune, June 30, 2007. http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6428190

[xii] Report of the Secretary-General, “The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security,” report to the General Assembly and Security Council, March 15, 2007 (A/61/799-S/2007/152).

[xiii] “We know the success of our mission cannot be assured by military means alone.”Department of National Defence,Backgrounder: Canadian Forces Operations in Afghanistan, BG-07.009 – May 15, 2007 (http://www.mdn.ca/site/newsroom/view_news_e.asp?id=1703).

[xiv] Bill Doskoch, “Time for a strategic re-think in Afghanistan?” a July 7, 2007 CTV report quoting retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie as saying that NATO needs four times the number of troops it now has on the ground in Kandahar (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070704/afghan_strategy_070704/20070704/).

[xv] Norman Spector, “An Afghan solution: Redefine the mission,” The Globe and Mail, July 12, 2007 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070711.wcoafghan12/…).

[xvi] Spector calls on Prime Minister Harper to give “Canadians the unvarnished truth about the mission’s prospects.” Norman Spector, “An Afghan solution: Redefine the mission,” The Globe and Mail, July 12, 2007 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070711.wcoafghan12/BNStory/Front/home).

A BBC Television report on Northern Ireland ‘s transition into a new era of self-rule under a government of unity felt obliged to warn viewers that the old hatreds have not vanished.[i] Or, as the BBC’s website puts it, “Old enmities have been foregone, rather than forgiven or forgotten. It is just that [the old enemies] have decided jointly to manage the present.”[ii]

Well, even “foregoing” the active prosecution of enmity, despite its ongoing presence, is a cause for celebration when active cooperation is the substitute behaviour. And just as cooperation between two communities does not require that they be linked by love, war between communities does not require that they be divided by hate.

A recent report in the Washington Post,[iii]unrelated to the happy events in Northern Ireland, makes that point by refering to the work of the American scholar Barbara F. Walter and her findings that it is wariness or a lack of trust rather than hatred that prolongs armed conflicts.[iv]

Communities and regions that find themselves in bitter armed conflict have usually lived harmoniously together for generations, even centuries, and when they come to blows the cause is not innate hatred but is invariably linked to a range of changed economic and political conditions that cast doubt on the reliability of hitherto trusted public institutions to mediate competing interests.

Communal identity remains a prominent factor in contemporary wars, but more as a product than a cause of conflict. When states fail, when they lose their capacity to maintain stability and meet the security needs of their citizens, the first casualty is trust in public institutions. With growing doubt that those public institutions really have the interests of their families and communities at heart, people appeal to other social and political entities, notably ethnic communities, through which to pursue individual and collective security.

And when mistrust of public institutions extends to security forces, including the police, then private and community militias inevitably emerge – illustrating an advanced stage of state failure, namely the loss of the state’s monopoly on the resort to force.

The point is persuasively, and tragically, illustrated in the conflict and chaos that have gripped much of Somalia for almost two decades now. Here is a people that has lived together in peace for centuries. One has to be careful not to romanticize the past, of course. Somali history is actually conflict ridden in the sense that it is a region inhabited by nomads and farmers that have always had to compete for access to land and water in harsh conditions, but it is a history of conflict that also produced a sophisticated set of communal (clan) institutions to mediate conflicts and to prevent disintegration and chaos.

But when national leadership developed that did not support the delicate diffusion of power among the country’s multiple clan communities, the result was a wholesale distrust of national institutions that led to their eventual overthrow. And since then, the “civil war” in Somalia has not been about venting old hatred or about competition for power – it has really been a fight to prevent any group from acquiring inordinate power and to prevent the emergence of any national authority or institutions that would be open to manipulation in support of some at the expense of others.

Conflicts in which the rights and political/social viability of particular communities are central issues are not evidence of ethnic chauvinism or of hatred for “the other”. Such conflicts are reflections of a more fundamental social conflict, borne out of a community’s experience of economic inequity, political discrimination, human rights violations, and pressures generated by environmental degradation. Identity conflicts emerge with intensity when a community loses confidence in mainstream political institutions and processes and, in response to unmet basic needs for social and economic security, resolves to strengthen its collective influence and to struggle for political recognition as a community.

In Afghanistan , in other words, achieving relative peace is not a matter of overcoming age-old hatreds; it is more a matter of addressing communal and regional wariness. The southern Pashtun are of course wary of a Kabul Government that has been constructed in such a way that it is regarded as unable, or at least unlikely, to understand and cater to the needs and interests of all Afghans.

You don’t defeat that wariness; it has to be dispelled through concrete acts of inclusion and accommodation. Military commanders, Afghan and NATO, make the point, over and over again, that the struggle in Afghanistan is not ultimately a military struggle, but neither they nor their respective political masters have yet managed the wit or the will to give priority to the non-military struggle.

Behind ethnic or communal or regional conflicts are basic economic, social, and political grievances. Failure to redress them has made group solidarity an increasingly attractive political strategy, throw some religious zeal and easy-to-use and easy-to-get small arms into the mix and the result is persistent social/political chaos and public violence – conditions that can be expected to bestir hatred, but that makes it a symptom not a cause.

Does it make a difference that conflict is much more likely to be rooted in distrust than hate? Yes it does – a lot. It means solving conflict doesn’t require a change in human nature, just in human institutions. And institutions can be built, and built to function according to agreed rules – and when they do, they become conveyors and purveyors of public trust.

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[i] May 8, 2005 BBC World News, WNED TV New York.

[ii] Kevin Connolly, “A benchmark for improbability,” BBC News, March 8, 2007 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6636371.stm).

[iii] Shankar Vedantam, “Wariness, Not Hatred, Keep Civil Wars Raging,” Washington Post, May 7, 2007 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/06/AR200705…).

[iv] The particular study cited by Vedantam is not cited, but brief references to the work of Barbara F. Walter are available at http://www.princeton.edu/politics/people/bios/index.xml?netid=bwalter.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor explained the decision to extend Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan to 2009, the tone they set was one of hard-nosed defence of the Canadian interest.”Our rationale for being in Afghanistan is clear,” Mr. Harper told the House of Commons in the May 17/06 that preceded the extension vote. “It is in the interests of this country.”

Mr. O’Connor put it this way in the same debate: “The bottom line is that the mission in Afghanistan supports one of the enduring goals of Canada’s foreign and defence policy: to protect Canada ‘s national interest. We must commit to seeing our mission through. Our national interest is straightforward: to ensure the security and prosperity of the Canadian people. This government has summed it up in two words: Canada first.”

It was a very practical kind of talk, but when we receive home the bodies of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, the language of self-interest fails us. In these moments we quite properly reach for a larger and more ennobling purpose. When the ultimate sacrifice is asked and courageously given we are drawn to the more fundamental values of freedom and a common global humanity. In that same May 2006 debate, when Mr Harper spoke of sacrifice, he said ” Canadians accept risks when those risks are in the service of a greater good.” Some Canadian interests may well be included in that greater good, but they certainly don’t define it. And when, from the recent Vimy anniversary event in France, Mr. Harper announced the deaths of more Canadian soldiers, he said that “when the cause is just, Canada will always be there to defend our values and our fellow human beings.”[i]

The inadequacy of appeals to self interest when thinking about Canadian peace-making efforts abroad is also highlighted in the opening entries of a compelling on-line debate on peace support operations currently hosted by the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (CPCC).[ii]

Doug Bland, Chair of Defence Management Studies at Queen’s University, and Peggy Mason, Chair of the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee and a former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament, both agree that the current ISAF operation in the south is “war.” Mr. Bland calls it a “stability campaign” by means of “warfare” and argues that Canada should join such campaigns/wars when the fight is in “our interests and those of our close allies.” But I find it interesting that when he makes a strong statement in support of Canada’s role in Afghanistan he calls it a “war of liberation” consistent with Canadian “traditions,” not interests.

There is no question that Canadian interests are involved, inasmuch as it is broadly within our interests to promote a rules-based international order that serves the well-being and safety of people, but when we ask our fellow citizens to make the extraordinary sacrifices that await them in Afghanistan, we quite rightly find we can’t bring ourselves to do it on the basis of the national interest. Instead, we appeal to more enduring values, all of which, we should be proud to acknowledge, find resonance within Canadian traditions.

That these traditions live within a national story of constructed mythologies is not in doubt, but the point of creating a national story is the expectation that it will help shape our action when it matters most. Collectively, we sometimes honor and frequently betray our myths, but it is still our aspiration and responsibility in particular circumstances like Afghanistan to muster the conviction and especially the skills to effectively serve the ideals of protecting fundamental rights and peacemaking that our national story invokes.

And that’s where Mason’s detailed attention, in the CPCC hosted debate, to peace processes comes in – to define the kind of intervention that is needed if we are to have any chance of meeting those ideals. Bland includes a description of continuous warfare, and it really proves Mason’s point that you don’t win the peace by entering one side of an ongoing civil war and fighting it out. Her argument and the lessons of peacebuilding make it clear that winning the peace is a political, social, economic, military enterprise – and the most immediate problem in Afghanistan is that the political component has fallen apart, and the social and economic components have fallen seriously short of expectations.

The Afghan Government that the ISAF operation supports has for a variety of reasons – some self-inflicted, some owing to the failure of the international community – lost the confidence of Afghans to such an extent that the essential ingredient of “a credible peace implementation process” is no longer present, certainly not in the south. Hence, the military operation has become an effort to militarily impose order – as Bland puts it, “to create ‚Äòharmonious law-based conditions'” – but it is predictably proving to be impossible because too many Afghans, especially in the south, believe that the particular Governing order that the foreign military intervention supports will lead neither to harmony nor the fair rule of law.

So, how to restore a credible peace process? Well, there are some good ideas around. Increasingly the talk about negotiating with the Taliban is getting serious [iii] and needs international support to generate a political culture of inclusion, rather than sticking to a strategy of exclusion. The lessons of the Dutch are also gaining credence – that is, focusing less on fighting the spoilers and more on making their cause irrelevant. The ongoing need to generate economic opportunity is well understood and needs to be well funded.

All this has to happen in a dangerous environment, reminding us that the resort to lethal force will remain a part of the reality for some time to come. Calling for a switch from a military to a diplomatic/humanitarian strategy, or focusing debate on military withdrawal deadlines, will not yield the strategy and insight needed to integrate the political, social, economic, and military elements of peacemaking in Afghanistan. But you can do what Peggy Mason counsels, and that is to “find the proper balance between coercion and consent” – recognizing that producing consent is a political process.

The key in peace operations is to ensure that the resort to military force is a support to the peace process rather than a substitute for it.

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[i] Bruce Cheadle, “Harper breaks sombre news of deaths in Afghanistan on eve of Vimy anniversary” (http://www.brooksbulletin.com/news/world_news.asp?itemid=61829), Sunday, April 08, 2007.

[ii] http://forum.peacebuild.ca/content/view/13/27/

[iii] Afghan President Hamid Karzai has now asked a group of former Taliban to mediate with rebel Taliban. Terry Friel, “Only peace talks can save Afghanistan – former rebel,” Reuters, April 12, 2007 [http://today.reuters.com/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=SP206760].