Posts Tagged ‘current armed conflicts’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Canada in a sustained ground war for the first time since Korea, it is not surprising that the debate over our role in Afghanistan has become thoroughly polarized.

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

The Prime Minister sees Afghanistan as the kind of on-the-job experience that is making a better Canadian military. In fact, he implied in a CBC interview that the Canadian casualties are part of that process of shaping the military.[i] The whole experience, he said, is “certainly raising Canada’s leadership role.”

Mr. Layton in turn makes the point that withdrawing from the war and giving priority to reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan will allow Canada to “focus on building a made-in-Canada foreign policy that moves us toward reclaiming Canada’s place in the world.”[ii]

Both arguments make the place of Canada in the world a central issue, but is that really the primary preoccupation of Canadians when it comes to Afghanistan? And should it be?

Two recent polls suggest that Canadian attitudes towards the war have less to do with its impact on Canada as a player on the world stage, and more to do with its impact on Afghanistan. A Decima poll found that 59 percent of Canadians agreed with the pollster’s statement that Canadian soldiers are dying for a cause that can’t be won.[iii]And in September EKOS Research found thatCanadian views are not driven so much by the level of sacrifice as by a sense that “the mission is unlikely to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan.”[iv]

The evidence by now is well documented and mounting that the Canadian mission, indeed the entire International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation in southern Afghanistan, is not working. But neither of the two options in the polarized debate – stick with a failing enterprise no matter what; pull out because it is a failing enterprise – responds to a primary concern of Canadians, namely, how to build a safer Afghanistan.

In other words, we need a third option. Calls for new negotiations with the Afghan dissidents and for increased attention to reconstruction efforts point in that direction, and recently a “third way” proposal was put forward by Eugene Lang, a former chief of staff to two recent defence ministers and now chief policy advisor to Bob Rae.
The proposal is in fact close to the Layton/NDP option. The main difference is that the NDP calls for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Lang option calls for redeployment from the south to the north. Both, however, counsel withdrawal from the counter-insurgency war and call for greater non-military assistance.[v]

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

Of the three options, the least convincing is the stay-the-course focus of the Prime Minister. Even the Defence Minister now acknowledges that the Afghanistan conflict will not finally be settled on the battlefield, but it is the military prosecution of the conflict that is getting all the attention. Canadians are telling pollsters it won’t work, and conflict analysts and Afghan specialists have long been pointing out that if the objective of the counter-insurgency war is to stabilize Afghanistan and advance the well-being of Afghans, it is not getting the job done.

That leaves the other two options, complete withdrawal or the withdrawal from the counter-insurgency war and redeployment to peace support operations in the north while pursuing negotiations towards a more inclusive political order.Which of these options one supports depends on one’s understanding of the conditions that obtain in Afghanistan.

If the Government of Afghanistan has been discredited throughout the country and has lost the confidence of Afghans generally, and if the trend is thus toward outright and widespread civil war, then it is clear that foreign troops are there to support an illegitimate government and will themselves be regarded as illegitimate. In that case, foreign troops are more likely to fuel conflict than resolve it – with a pullout the logical conclusion.

If, however, the civil war is essentially confined to the south, and if in the north the Government still has the substantial support of the people, then the north is a post-conflict environment that, while still unstable, is amenable to security assisted peacebuilding efforts. In that case the redeployment of forces to the north to help in training security forces and in protecting newly funded civilian reconstruction operations would serve the greater well-being of Afghans.

Current reporting from Afghanistan is mixed, but it generally still suggests the latter situation prevails – with the clear implication that it will slide to the former unless major changes are made. That points to the urgent need to pursue the third option. But the fact that it is both urgent and prudent doesn’t guarantee, especially in the context of a polarized debate, that it will be chosen.

[i] “Canada’s military back on world stage: PM,” CBC News, September 19, 2006 account of interview on The National (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/09/19/harper-afghanistan.html).

[ii] ” Statement by NDP Leader Jack Layton on Canada’s mission in Afghanistan,” Aug 31, 2006 (http://www.ndp.ca/page/4119).

[iii] Keith Doucette, “MacKay slams Afghan poll,” The ChronicleHerald.ca, October 3, 2006 (http://www.herald.ns.ca/Canada/532054.html).

[iv] Bruce Campion-Smith, “Afghan mission impossible: Poll,” Toronto Star, Sept. 18/06 (available at http://25461.vws.magma.ca/admin/articles/TheStar18Sept2006.pdf).

[v] The Project Ploughshares materials have also called for an end to participation in a counter-insurgency war as counter-productive and a disservice to Afghans (e.g. “Towards counter-insurgency by other means,” http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/Briefings/brf061.pdf; “From good intentions to sustainable solutions,” http://www.ploughshares.ca/libraries/monitor/mons06f.pdf).

Talking to the Taliban

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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