Current 9/11 commentaries frequently recall that “everything changed” on
that day, but ten years ago the everything-has-changed mantra didn’t so much describe a new reality as it fed the view that extraordinary times justified extraordinary measures – established values and the rule of law, was the implication, had become inadequate guidelines for action against terrorism.[i] Published as a letter in Sept 12/11 Globe and Mail.
There was all-party agreement in March on the House of Commons motion[i] in support of Canadian participation, for three months, in the UN-mandated protection mission in Libya, and while there are not sufficient grounds for withdrawing that support now, there is an urgent need to shift from bombing to talking.
Does the responsibility to protect doctrine (R2P) provide cover for unilateralist and imperialist adventures by major powers in pursuit of their
own interests? A new conference report[i] argues the opposite – that R2P’s strict requirement for UN-authorized collective intervention actually represents the reinforcement of multilateralism over unilateralism.
A conversation with David A. Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security and Interim Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, on civil society and peace advocacy.
It’s not surprising that F-35 briefings by officials in the Department of National Defence (DND) point to growing dangers in a threatening world – that’s their job. Nor is it surprising that DND wants the most advanced fighter aircraft money can buy – it’s been that way since the Avro Arrow. Those are understandable impulses, but how do you convert them into good security policy? At least it’s not too late to ask the question.
Among several interesting findings in the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report[i] on the likely costs of the F-35 fighter aircraft is the unambiguous statement that, despite the Government’s announcement of the purchase, no contract has been signed, no legal obligation to buy it exists, and no financial penalty or other costs would be incurred if the decision to buy was reversed. There is therefore no reason not to revisit the mission and requirements and to consider other options.
The primary mission set out by the Government is, as it has been since the 1950s, to patrol Canadian airspace so that, together with sea and land forces, security forces can “be aware of anything going on in or approaching [Canadian] territory.” Beyond that, the forces are tasked to deter threats and respond to contingencies, in Canada and North America.
Internationally, the mission is to contribute to international peace and security and the stated requirements are open-ended: “This will require the Canadian Forces to have the necessary capabilities to make a meaningful contribution across the full spectrum of international operations [the same phrase used by the Liberal Defence Policy statement of 2005],[ii] from humanitarian assistance to stabilization operations to combat.”[iii]
And it is in imagining potential combat environments that worst-case thinking is given free rein. Combat scenarios pitch Canadian fighter aircraft against an array of state-of-the-art air defence systems as well as the very latest in fifth generation fighters – Russia’s new version being exhibit number one of the kind of thing Canadian fighters must be prepared to face.[iv]
To that are added warnings of land-attack cruise missiles (LACM). The US Air Force says, for example, that “the cruise missile threat to US forces will increase over the next decade. At least nine foreign countries will be involved in LACM production during the next decade, and several of the LACM producers will make their missiles available for export.” Among them are Russia, China, India, and Pakistan[v] – and so the argument is that they could spread and could potentially be fired from off-shore aircraft at targets in Canada and other theatres of operation, with very sophisticated fighter aircraft a primary defence.
Such scenarios, which officials set out in much greater detail, in turn lead to a list of what DND calls “High Level Mandatory Capabilities,” a series of operational characteristics or capabilities that it says the next fighter aircraft must possess to meet all contingencies. There are at least eleven such features, eight of which, says DND, can be met by “fourth generation aircraft,” like the current CF-18:
But there are three additional characteristics, says DND, which can be met only by fifth generation fighters, i.e. the F-35:
So, there we have the constructed context – an expansive statement of threat and an ambitious definition of requirements. It is the job of security planners to prepare for the unforeseen, but to get a true picture of risk, threat needs to be tempered by probability. And to get a true picture of need, requirements need to be balanced by competing calls on resources.
So, how probable are the threats? What is the likelihood that Canada will or should be drawn into foreign high density combat environments against the most advanced of military capabilities? One way to answer that question is to ask how often that has happened in the past 30 years (during the life of the CF-18s) – and the answer is never. In fact, fighter aircraft are rarely deployed abroad by Canada, not because they haven’t been available, but because fighter aircraft have little utility in expeditionary peace support operations. Indeed, Canada’s CF-18 fighters, have been deployed beyond Canada’s borders on only four occasions: 1) 26 were deployed to the 1991 Gulf War; 18 to the 1999 NATO operations in Serbia/Kosovo; in 1997 six CF-18s did a three-month tour out of Aviano, Italy to conduct air patrols over Bosnia in support of NATO ground forces and to protect airborne warning and control aircraft; and in June 1998 six CF-18s went to Aviano to support peacekeeping forces in Bosnia.[vi] In none of those instances did they face sophisticated air defence capabilities or fighter aircraft [nor is that the case in Libya today (27 March 2011)].
What is the likelihood of Canada facing attacks in North America by the most advanced military capabilities? It certainly didn’t happened in the past 30 years, and the likelihood of it happening in the foreseeable future is even less – given that those dazzlingly effective fifth generation Russian fighters are now on our side. The primary airborne threat we do face comes largely in the form of small civilian aircraft carrying contraband. In effect, the day-to-day activity of NORAD, the Canada-US organization that monitors the air approaches to Canada, is to lend aid to the civil authorities in their drug interdiction efforts. Similarly, the more extensive operations related to the Olympic and the G8-G20 meetings were also assistance to civil authorities.
What are the opportunity costs of buying aircraft at a minimum of $150 million per copy, plus twice that much to operate them for 30 years?[vii] Prudent security planning ought at least to ask what peacebuilding capabilities and diplomatic resources could be financed, even by the equivalent of the cost difference between fourth generation and fifth generation fighter aircraft.
As argued in this space before,[viii] ongoing monitoring of Canadian airspace is certainly essential, as is the capacity to physically confront and intercept isolated intruders. But a wealth of experience tells us that the threats to and from within our national airspace can be met with a reliable surveillance and modest interception capability.
The current Government’s preference for “fifth generation” capability does not translate automatically into need. Domestic surveillance and air defence notably do not require stealth or other advanced capabilities. Internationally, Canada is in a position to decide what kinds of missions to pursue – indeed it must be highly selective since we obviously can’t do everything. There are many other non-military and military ways for Canada to make significant contributions to international peace and security.
At the very least, we need a thorough debate – and the report of the Parliamentary Budget Office confirms that it’s not too late.
Notes
[i] An Estimate of the Fiscal Impact of Canada’s Proposed Acquisition of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (March 2011). http://www2.parl.gc.ca/sites/pbo-dpb/index.aspx?Language=E.
[ii] “A Role of Pride and Influence in the World: Defence,” Department of National Defence, 2005, p. 26.
[iii] Canada First Defence Strategy, Department of National Defence, Ottawa. http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/pri/first-premier/index-eng.asp.
[iv] Steve Gutterman,“New Russian stealth fighter makes first flight,” Reuters, Moscow, 29 January 2010. http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/29/us-russia-fighter-idUSTRE60S0UW20100129.
[v] “Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat,” National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, 2009. Available at: http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/NASIC2009.pdf.
[vi] As documented by Dan Middlemiss in “A Military in Support of Canadian Foreign Policy: Some Fundamental Considerations,” Centre For Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova. http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/A%20Military%20In%20Support%20of%20Canadian%20Foreign%20Policy%20-%20Considerations.pdf.
[vii] An Estimate of the Fiscal Impact of Canada’s Proposed Acquisition of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (March 2011). http://www2.parl.gc.ca/sites/pbo-dpb/index.aspx?Language=E.
[viii] http://disarmingconflict.ca/2010/10/14/the-f-35-canada%e2%80%99s-air-defence-needs-compared-with-what/.
On January 17, 1961 President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned Americans that an emerging “military-industrial complex” would wield unhealthy and unwarranted influence – “economic, political, and even spiritual”—0ver their political life if it was left unchecked.
The warning came in Eisenhower’s extraordinary farewell address to the nation, days before John F. Kennedy entered the White House. He described the unprecedented “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”[i]
A half century later it is clear that Eisenhower’s warning was both prescient and ignored. For what was unprecedented then remains unmatched today in the resources it consumes and the policy options it forecloses.
A globalized military-industrial complex now boasts more than 20 million men and women in uniform (another 54 million reservists are available), and with the arms and equipment they use, military forces cost some $1.5 trillion annually – spending that, adjusted for inflation, is now well over the highest levels of the Cold War era.[ii] Military industries, though concentrated in a few countries, are literally spread around the planet and sustained by, and in many cases dependent on, capital budgets of at least $400 billion annually.[iii]
But, as Eisenhower predicted, it is in the United States where this complex is most entrenched. US military spending, including the costs of current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is expected to reach at least $712 billion in 2011 – in real term a post-World War II high. If nuclear and other defence-related programs in other departments of government are added, including $122 billion for veterans, US military-related spending will reach $861 billion this year.[iv]
The Pentagon supports a network of suppliers and contractors to the tune of about $300 billion per year, and the industry relies on another $25 to $50 billion annually in export sales to other countries.
One arrangement that helps to assure a continued convergence of military and industrial interests and world view is the high incidence of retiring senior military officials signing on as senior executives of corporations doing mega-business with the Pentagon. Many, while working with Pentagon suppliers, also serve as paid consultants to the Pentagon. A recent major investigation by The Boston Globe elaborates at length on this “revolving-door culture,” pointing out that “from 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or executives.”[v]
The influence of that melding of military and industrial interests comes most clearly into public focus when, as is currently the case, there are prominent calls for spending to be brought under control and reduced. Eisenhower was not a conspiracy theorist, but he understood that when the gargantuan US military establishment became allied through shared interests to industrial elites, and was then supported by an intellectual army of strategic analysts and a national messianic spirit that understood America as destined to lead, it would have a profound impact on shaping American values and ambitions, and on models for global interaction.
So even though the US can already claim as much military capacity, measured in resources and technology, as all of the rest of the world combined, and even though its top military “rival,” China, spends only a fifth of what the US does on military preparedness, calls for military spending restraints in the US are predictably met with dire warnings of American vulnerability and the loss of American leadership in the world.
Newsweek headed its look at US Defense budget prospects with the heading, “The Risky Rush to Cut Defense Spending” – adding a tagline that “no one has figured out how to make cuts without jeopardizing security.”[vi] Polls show majority American support for defense spending cuts, but any “rush” to act on that has yet to materialize. Even after the recent announcements of cuts by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, spending on the core defence budget will continue to expand, if modestly, over the next few years[vii] — indeed some analysts assume that Gates is using heavily publicized pre-emptive cuts (to the rate of growth) to forestall actual and significant cuts which he said would be “potentially calamitous.”
Much of mainstream commentary in the US continues to lament “pressures across the board to reduce our level of expenditure at precisely a time when our challenges, at the very least, are getting more complicated.” They invoke everything from the dangers of North Korea, to the continuing gap in missile defence, to the political threats from Wikileaks to dramatize US vulnerability. Spending cuts are themselves understood as “attacks” – the Financial Times, speculating on the impact on defence industry stock prices of any cuts (by which they really mean slowed increases), referred to the need for debate on “the why, where, what and (against) whom” of defence spending cuts.[viii]
And when the tabloid press get involved the silliness is boundless. A new York Post column, referring to the Gates restraint package, put it this way: “Call it President Obama’s ‘conditional-surrender Pentagon budget’ – and bad news for the US economy.” And the Post ran it all under the headline, “Don’t let O disarm our military.”[ix]
As to the policy options that the military-industrial complex forecloses, we can again turn to Eisenhower and a speech from the early days of his presidency: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [x]
The truth of that lament is confirmed in the current Republican House “principle” that any new spending must be paid for, not by tax increases or even closing tax loopholes, but by cuts to spending in other government programs. Since security spending is largely exempt from austerity measures, the cuts will be focused on discretionary social programs. Furthermore, any savings in defence spending are to be “reinvested” in other defence programs. The costs of tax cuts, on the other hand, are exempt from this pay-as-you-go rule.[xi]
The cost to other urgent programs is illustrated by the continued impoverishment of climate change programs. Increasingly identified as having serious security implications, US spending on climate change responses is increasing significantly – even so, defence spending dwarfs it at a ratio of 41 to 1.[xii] What the ratio should be is hard to say, but the comparison does have something to say about priorities – or at the very least it confirms that the environment-industrial complex has yet to infiltrate the centres of power in Washington.
Perhaps the most telling comment on priorities comes from New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. Referring to “a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy,” he says that “the U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service.”[xiii]
To say that military spending is sacrosanct is simply to acknowledge the truth of Eisenhower’s 1960s confession that the influence of the military-industrial complex is felt in every city, state, and federal government office, not to mention in every Congressional office and in quite a few University and Think Tank research offices.
(A shortened version of the above appeared in The Record of the Waterloo Region, 14 January 2011.)
Notes
[i] Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961. Available at: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm.
[ii] The Military Balance 2010, The International Institute for Strategic Studies (London, 2010), p. 462f.
[iii] SIPRI Yearbook 2010: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, p. 268.
[iv] Todd Harrison, “Analysis of the FY 2011 Defense Budget,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. http://www.csbaonline.org/4publications/publibrary/r.20100629.analysis_of_the_fy/r.20100629.analysis_of_the_fy.pdf.
[v] Bryan Bender, “From the Pentagon to the private sector,” the Boston Globe, 26 December 2010. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/12/26/defense_firms_lure_retired_generals/?page=full.
[vi] Douglas Schoen, “The Risky Push to Cut Defense Spending,” Newsweek, 8 January 2011. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/08/the-risky-rush-to-cut-defense-spending.html.
[vii] Gprdon Adams and Matthew Leatherman, “A Leaner and Meaner Defense,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2011, available at The Stimson Center. http://www.stimson.org/summaries/a-leaner-and-meaner-defense/.
[viii] John McDermott, “Defence stocks on the defensive against budget cuts,” Financial Times, 10 January 2011. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/01/10/453876/defence-stocks-on-the-defensive-against-budget-cuts/.
[ix] Arther Herman, “Don’t let O disarm our military,” New York Post, 10 January 2011. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/don_let_disarm_our_military_Vg8BTKN1WuODmeW4fCfumL.
[x] Dwight D. Eisenhower, from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953. Available at: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Dwight_D._Eisenhower/.
[xi] Robert Greenstein and James R. Horney, “House Republican Rule Changes Pave the Way For Major Deficit-Increasing Tax Cuts, Despite Anti-Deficit Rhetoric,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5 January 2011. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3359.
[xii] Miriam Pemberton, “Military vs. Climate Security: The 2011 Budgets Compared” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, October 25, 2010). http://www.fpif.org/reports/military_vs_climate_security_the_2011_budgets_compared.
[xiii] Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Big (Military) Taboo,” The New York Times,” 25 December 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26kristof.html.
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect warns that “an escalation in the situation [in Côte d’Ivoire] could easily lead to the commission of mass atrocities….”[i] Protection is far from guaranteed, but the international effort to date is serious.
All the ingredients for long-term strife punctuated by explosive violence are in abundant supply in the Ivory Coast: north-south regionalism that reflects an economic divide, ethnic conflict, a north-south Muslim/Christian divide, xenophobia borne out of a history of illegal immigration, and most recently of course a contested presidential election in which each of the final two contestants has access to partisan armed forces.
The current crisis, in which the descent into major fighting has thus far been avoided, has already imposed huge costs on the people of a country still trying to recover from the last civil war. The UN reports that violence has claimed the lives of nearly 200 people and investigators have found evidence of extrajudicial executions, torture and arrests.[ii] A week ago NGOs working in northeastern Liberia estimated that some 30,000 refugees had arrived from Côte d’Ivoire, many of whom were “reporting widespread violence and intimidation from both Ivoirian government troops and soldiers from the former rebel Forces Nouvelles operating in the west.”[iii] In the midst of deeply entrenched poverty, the crisis is putting food prices on the rise – doubling in some cases.[iv] The public unrest and political chaos are currently blocking a nationwide vaccination drive against yellow fever.[v]
A National Post columnist, in another run at the failures of the UN, complained that “once again the UN finds itself with a problem that has no apparent solution”[vi] – but that is exactly where the most intractable problems are taken. The UN and the international community are indeed already deeply involved in the crisis: through the presence of UN peacekeeping forces, a succession of Security Council resolutions, the African Union,[vii] the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),[viii] and most especially a declared commitment to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, when their own governments fail to do so.
Protection from that list of crimes means preventing them, which is the point emphasized by Francis Deng and Edward Luck, special Advisers to the Secretary-General respectively on the prevention of genocide and the responsibility to protect. In a public statement on the crisis in Ivory Coast they said the protection responsibility “entails the prevention of those crimes, importantly including their incitement,” and they warned all the involved parties “that they are accountable for their actions under international law.”[ix]
The UN Security Council similarly reminded Ivorian leaders that they “bear primary responsibility for ensuring peace and protecting the civilian population” and called on the UN peacekeeping forces to assist local authorities in that mission and to “implement [their] protection of civilian mandate.”[x]
There is inevitably reluctance to formally invoke the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), not least because it is taken by some as code for military intervention. The UK Independent newspaper launched a pre-emptive headline against military action with the declaration that “the last thing Ivorians need is an invasion”[xi] – which is a sentiment that could be appropriately applied to all states virtually all the time, but which offers rather slight help in sorting out the means by which the international community might best act on its R2P obligations.
To date, it is worth noting, the international community has been pursuing its responsibility cautiously but seriously in the spirit of the R2P doctrine approved by the UN in 2005.
International intervention or assistance is already partly military, inasmuch as UN peacekeeping force of over 9,000 international military and police personnel are already deployed there through the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoir (UNOCI),[xii] including a few hundred seconded from UNMIL in Liberia. More may be added, but the primary focus is on the diplomacy envisioned under Chapter VI and non-military coercion under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
In Chapter VI diplomacy the international community has been united in calling for the election results to be respected, for President Laurent Gbagbo (a southerner) to step down, and for election winner Alassane Quattara (a northerner) to assume that role. Measures under Chapter VII include a military embargo, a ban on diamond exports, frozen bank accounts and other assets, and travel bans against key individuals.
Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group reflects the general wariness of the international community when she says “a military solution to the crisis in Côte d”Ivoir is unlikely.”[xiii] ECOWAS and the AU have clearly put military intervention, beyond the UN forces already there, on the table, but neither is keen, or has the ready means, to go that route. So, for now, we are seeing R2P in a prevention mode in Ivory Coast, along the lines envisioned by the framers of the 2005 R2P commitment.
The outcome is far from certain, and it is an uncertainty that holds the well-being of millions of people in the balance.
Notes
[i] “Open Statement on the Situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 17 December 2010. www.globalr2p.org.
[ii] BBC News, 28 December 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11916590.
[iii] “Back to square one?”, IRIN, 30 December 2010. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91496.
[iv] “Political impasse sparks food price hikes,” IRIN, 28 December 2010. http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportID=91472.
[v] “Chaos blocks yellow fever vaccination drive,” IRIN, 5 January 2011. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=91530.
[vi] Kelly McParland, “The UNs dilemma in Ivory Coast,” National Post, 2 January 2011. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/02/kelly-mcparland-the-uns-dilemma-in-ivory-coast/.
[vii] Communique, African Union, 9 December 2010. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/index/index.htm.
[viii] Extraordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government on Cote D’Ivoir, 24 December 2010. http://www.africa-union.org/root/au/Conferences/2010/december/situation/Final%20Communique_Eng.pdf.
[ix] “UN Secretary-General’s Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect on the situation in Côte d’Ivoire,” United Nations press release, 29 December 2010. http://unclef.com/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/Special%20Advisers’%20Statement%20on%20Cote%20d’Ivoire,%2029%20.12.2010.pdf.
[x] Resolution 1962, United Nations Security Council, 20 December 2010 [S/RES/1962 (2010)]. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N10/702/17/PDF/N1070217.pdf?OpenElement.
[xi] Adrian Hamilton, “The last thing Ivorians need is an invasion,” The Independent, 30 December 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-the-last-thing-ivorians-need-is-an-invasion-2171654.html.
[xii] Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2010, A Project of the Center on International Cooperation (Lynne Reinner Publishers, Boulder and London, 2010), pp. 89-94.
[xiii] Louise Arbour, “Open Letter to the United Nations Security Council on the Situation in Côte d’Ivoir. 20 December 2010. http://www.crisisgroup.org.
“You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” These are said to have been the last words of US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke.[i] He didn’t say how to do it, but he left behind enough other words to make clear his view that the focus of his country’s efforts would have to shift from fighting to talking.
In a tribute to Holbrooke, Canada’s Chris Alexander, who offered extraordinary service in Afghanistan, both as Canada’s Ambassador and as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, called his passing “a tragedy for Afghanistan.” Interestingly, Alexander then went on to say, in The Globe and Mail, that Holbrooke “had seen enough to know that reconciliation could never involve the appeasement of terrorists with little to lose, now bent on wrecking both the Afghan and the Pakistani states.”[ii]
There is little doubt that Holbrooke did not favour an appeasement strategy, indeed it’s hard to imagine that anyone might, given the World War II etymology of that term, but, intended or not, Alexander’s account of Holbrooke’s rejection of appeasement should not be taken as evidence that Holbrooke also rejected negotiations or diplomatic engagement with the Taliban and other elements of the Afghan insurgency.
Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars,[iii] portrays Holbrook as having joined Vice President Joe Biden in opposing escalation of the war through a military surge (Location 2968).[iv] While he didn’t then see the way open to high-level treaty or cease-fire talks with the top Taliban leadership, he expressed frustration with much of the background briefing that failed to acknowledge a central truth — namely that America would not produce a military victory in Afghanistan (L2963).
The recent White House review of US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan,[v] as well as President Barack Obama’s accompanying statement,[vi] once again makes clear that the defeat of the Taliban is not the objective. Instead, President Obama has defined the core objective as defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and as preventing it from threatening the US or others from that base.
Indeed, it can be credibly argued that the Taliban and their Pashtun base are central to keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan in the future. In the long run, only the Pashtun community can ensure that al Qaeda is not harboured in its midst.
And, according to Woodward, Holbrooke understood that keeping al Qaeda out of Afghanistan did not require that the Taliban also be kept out of Afghanistan. He agreed with Vice President Biden that “even if the Taliban retook large parts of Afghanistan, al Qaeda would not come with them” – it was a conclusion that, Holbrooke remarked, might have been “the single most important intellectual insight of the year” (L2970).
The question thus becomes not whether the Taliban return to governance in some form in some parts of Afghanistan, but how that return is to be managed so as to preserve hard won constitutional and practical gains in human rights, especially the rights of women and access to education for females. Holbrooke may not have answered that challenge directly, but he was on a promising track when he urged that much more emphasis be placed on good governance at provincial and district levels, instead of focusing only on Karzai and Kabul (L4094).
As difficult and irascible as Holbrook apparently sometimes was, by all accounts he would have continued to be a major asset in pursuit of the goal that was his final command – “you’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”
Notes
[ii] Christopher Alexander, “Afghanistan: A critical task Holbrooke would want us to finish …,” 15 December 2010 (Former Deputy Special Representative to the UN Secretary General in Afghanistan and formerly Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan).
[iii] Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Kindle Edition.
[iv] Instead of page numbers, these references are to Location numbers in the Kindle edition.
[v] “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review,” The White House, 16 December 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/overview-afghanistan-and-pakistan-annual-review,
[vi] President Barack Obama, Statement by the President on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Annual Review, 16 December 2010, The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/16/statement-president-afghanistan-pakistan-annual-review.
If Canada’s newly announced post-2011 military mission in Afghanistan is to amount to more than training Afghan forces for perpetual war, it needs to be accompanied by a parallel diplomatic surge in pursuit of a political settlement of the conflict.
Read further at the Globe and Mail online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/since-we-cant-beat-the-taliban-focus-on-reconciliation/article1803418/.
In an enviable display of political maturity, Afghans express overwhelming support for negotiations with insurgent groups, even as public sympathy for the insurgents and their aims and methods is in significant decline.
This is one conclusion to be drawn from the 2010 survey of Afghans conducted by The Asia Foundation.[1] The survey addresses, as it does annually, a broad range of issues; the findings on attitudes towards reconciliation and negotiations are especially timely in the context of recently reported speculations about political initiatives.
The survey found that “83 per cent of respondents support the government’s attempts to address the security situation through negotiation and reconciliation with armed anti-government elements.” A year ago that support stood at 71 per cent.
While support for negotiations increased by more than 10 percentage points, the level of sympathy for the insurgents with whom negotiations and reconciliation are sought dropped by 16 percentage points. The level of “sympathy with the motivations of armed opposition groups” fell from 56 per cent in 2009 to 40 per cent in 2010. The majority of the 2010 respondents (55 per cent) say they have no sympathy at all for armed opposition groups, a significant increase over 2009 when only 36 per cent they had no sympathy for insurgents.
A population that is losing sympathy for the Taliban is increasingly interested in negotiating with them. Thus, almost three quarters of all respondents (73 per cent) think that “the government’s reconciliation efforts will help stabilize the country.”
All of this suggests that Afghans are comfortable with the notion that the pursuit of peace requires that you talk with your adversaries – those with whom you have the deepest, most fundamental differences.
Not surprisingly, support for negotiations is highest in those areas where respondents are most like to declare that they have “some level of sympathy with the motivations of armed opposition groups” – and that sympathy is highest in the South West (where 52 per cent), the South East (50 per cent), and the West (50 per cent). Support for negotiation and reconciliation is thus highest in the East (89 per cnt), South East (85 per cent) and North West (85 per cent). Support for negotiations is lower in the Central/Hazarajat region (78 per cent), but is obviously still very high.
Reintegration efforts also enjoy broad support – that is, 81 per cent agree with programs that offer government assistance, including the provision of jobs and housing, to those insurgents who lay down arms and want to reintegrate into society. That is up from 71 per cent in 2009.
Overall, reconciliation and reintegration programs have strong support among both men and women – 88 percent support from men and 78 percent from women.
The survey also indicates that the high level of support for negotiations does not imply any acquiescence to the limits on personal and public freedoms that are broadly associated with insurgent aims. Support for talks is matched by 81 per cent support for “the democratic principle of equal rights for all groups to participation and representation.” Support for “allowing peaceful opposition” stands at 83 percent.
A variety of gender-related issues were also addressed in the survey. It found, for example, that 87 per cent of respondents say they agree that women should have the same opportunities as men in education. The survey reports that 81 per cent of Afghans support equal rights under the law, regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion.
Support for negotiations, therefore, is not evidence of diminishing support for the freedoms that Government and international military forces say they are fighting for; instead, it is fair to say that Afghans simultaneously reject the Taliban, value freedom and equality, and favour negotiations.
It seems Afghans have the idea that prospects for achieving freedom and equality, and peace, are better at the negotiating table than on the battlefield.
Notes
[1] “Afghanistan in 2010: A Survey of the Afghan People,” Key Findings, The Asia Foundation. http://asiafoundation.org/country/afghanistan/2010-poll.php