That said, it is Canada's largest daily, and is very influential. There is no doubt that it does some very fine reporting and has good writers.
Given that The Star tends to oppose the use of the Canadian military in any role other than glorified social work the Renaissance Man was greatly surprised to find the following article in The Star's online edition this Sunday. It is not an article by one of the paper's own writers. Normally, when views are held that are so diametrically opposed to Star policy they simply cannot find their way into the pages of the newspaper.
Somehow this article made it. The Renaissance Man has no illusions that this heralds a dew dawn of intellectual honesty at The Star. He simply has enjoyed the experience of reading the article, and commends the piece to everyone.
CANADA'S REALITY IN KANDAHAR
Jan. 22, 2006. 01:00 AM
SEAN
M. MALONEY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR (Toronto)
The spectacularly lethal suicide attack against the Canadian Provincial
Reconstruction Team in Kandahar last weekend has raised concerns about Canada's
viability in the region and generated spurious comparisons to the American
experience in Iraq.
Let us be clear: Kandahar province is the Canadian-held portion of the
front line in the global war against Al Qaeda, a war that is as much fought in
the psychological realm as in the physical. Succumbing to a terrorist act like
this, particularly by withdrawing any component of the PRT, is exactly what
Canada's enemies are counting on.
Unfortunately, there are myths and misperceptions of the nature and
extent of Canada's war in Afghanistan that lurk in the Canadian consciousness,
myths that over-simplify a complex and dangerous but critical environment. If
not addressed, our ability to accomplish our goals in Afghanistan may be put at
risk.
First, Canada's involvement in Afghanistan is not and has never been
"peacekeeping."
Canada joined the Operation Enduring Freedom coalition in
2001 in order to destroy the Taliban shield that was protecting Al Qaeda's
infrastructure in Afghanistan. In the transition from major combat to
stabilization operations after the collapse of the Taliban government, another
international force was introduced into Afghanistan: the International Security
Assistance Force.
ISAF was never a peacekeeping operation. Its job was to
back the emergent Afghan interim government and, when that government was
legitimized through elections, to build the Afghan security forces' ability to
protect their government from its enemies.
Canada contributed to both
Enduring Freedom and ISAF. Both missions used lethal force; there was no
impartiality involved.
Canada's decision to assume command of a Provincial Reconstruction Team
has presented the Canadian people with some confusion, particularly with the
last-minute replacement of the word "regional" with "reconstruction" at the
insistence of the Afghan government.
The PRT is not a peacekeeping tool Ñ it is a counterinsurgency tool.
The organization has a number of functions, but the primary ones involve
assessing Kandahar province in all areas, delivering developmental assistance
and facilitating capacity-building in the provincial government. The objectives
of these programs are to ensure that the Afghan government has a functional
bureaucracy in the region, that the bureaucracy has a relationship with the
central government in Kabul, and that local needs, both in the security and
livelihood realms, are addressed effectively.
Canada and Afghanistan are engaged in a counterinsurgency war. Canadian
non-lethal assistance goes hand in hand with the conventional and special
operations being conducted by Canadian and allied troops. The elements cannot be
separated, no matter how many skittish Ottawa bureaucrats would like them to be.
The ultimate objective is to limit and then destroy the remnants of the
Al Qaeda-supported Taliban, and prevent them from interfering with the
construction process. After nearly 30 years of war Ñ beginning with the
pro-Soviet coup of 1978 and the Red Army invasion of Dec. 25, 1979 Ñ this
activity is not "reconstruction," it is "construction." Indeed, Canada also
deploys a Strategic Advisory Team in Kabul, a military and civilian organization
to assist the Afghan government with national-level projects.
Regarding the enemy Ñ a term some Canadians are afraid to use after
years of successful social engineering designed to convince us that Canada has
no enemies Ñ insurgent forces employing both terrorist and guerrilla warfare
tactics have killed and maimed Canadian soldiers and civilians who are in
Afghanistan specifically to thwart the Al Qaeda-trained and supported Taliban.
Unfortunately, simplistic media analysis asserts that, because there are more
suicide attacks lately, the situation is deteriorating, the war is getting worse
and the Taliban are poised to take over Afghanistan all over again. This is
nonsense.
The Taliban movement will never regain the allegiance of the bulk of
the Afghan population, no matter how many of their operatives liquefy themselves
against coalition armoured vehicles or in the midst of Afghan sporting events.
Afghans saw how the power-drunk Taliban, heady from successes against small
criminal groups, converted the country into a violent, terroristic theocracy.
The Afghan peoples do not want a return to this state of affairs.
Within certain Pashtun tribal areas in the south, however, the Taliban
ideology still resonates, though it does not have widespread support. It is
unlikely that it will ever again grow to be a mass revolutionary movement. It is
considered to be an import from Pakistan, a country that is viewed with fear and
loathing by numerous Afghans I spoke with on several research trips.
The
movement can continue to detonate its members, but that will not sway the
population to realign itself with the movement. The classic 1960s terrorist
concept, in which extreme violence demonstrates the impotence of the state and a
revolutionary movement takes control on the backs of it, does not apply in the
Afghan environment.
Afghans turn in Taliban cells all the time. Indeed, Afghans assist
coalition forces in hunting guerrillas in the hills. The Pashtun code deems the
Canadian military to be guests and the violent Taliban outsiders, based in and
supported from Pakistan, are an embarrassment.
The media's simplistic
interpretation of the violence is, however, a danger to the coalition effort.
The enemy wants the media to do its dirty work and undermine support back in
Canada and the other coalition countries. This has succeeded with the Dutch, who
will not thus far contribute to operations out of fear of what one opponent to
Enduring Freedom operations repeatedly called the possibility of "a second
Srebrenica," in reference to the 1995 massacre in that Bosnian town.
If the
enemy were to be successful in convincing Ottawa to withdraw soldiers and recall
highly effective development workers, it would reduce the the PRT's ability to
perform, generating a loss of confidence between Canada and the national
government in Kabul, and between Canada and the Kandahar provincial government.
If Canada is seen to cut and run too often, our ability to influence
events and support the ongoing effort to limit Taliban influence and ultimately
to destroy the movement will seriously decrease. The only people who benefit
from this are the Taliban and, by extension, Al Qaeda Ñ and perhaps the careers
of risk-averse individuals in Ottawa or those who oppose what Canada is doing in
Afghanistan because it doesn't fit their mythological notions of Canadian
"peacekeeping."
The Afghan and Canadian peoples, partners in the global war to thwart
Al Qaeda, do not benefit from this behaviour.
Kandahar is our part of the line, as Vimy Ridge was our part of the
line in World War I.
Developmental aid deployed by civilians and protected
by soldiers is an integral part of today's battle. And our enemy does not
distinguish between soldier and civilian.
Sean M. Maloney, author of Enduring The Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan, teaches in the War Studies Program at the Royal Military College in Kingston.
You can link to the piece at the following website:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1137845786787&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home
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