Canada in the ‘stan’

A Decima Research survey, published October 2, concluded that 59 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win."

The same day, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" and their allies into the government. It was reported that Frist learned through briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield. "You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a visit to a military base in Qalat, Afghanistan. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

The conflict in Afghanistan is quite complex, to be sure, but it may be premature to call it a lost cause. A cause is lost when all options have been exhausted, which they haven’t been in this case (particularly not the obvious - though bolder – ones). These measures centre around three main elements:

First, the free movement of Taliban and other insurgents across the border with Pakistan has to be staunched. Second, the poppy crop has to be eradicated. Third, NATO member countries must contribute fighting forces without qualification. All three of these two things need to be done in order to increase NATO’s chances of winning the war in Afghanistan.

Writing in the October 3 Globe and Mail (Canadian soldiers are not enough), Sarah Chayes, author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban comments that “What is being called a Taliban insurgency is not, in my view, a true insurgency. It is not an ideological, grassroots uprising against the Western presence in Afghanistan. Rather, it is a low-grade invasion primarily orchestrated across the border in Pakistan. The evidence for this conclusion is abundant. Top Taliban leaders reside openly in the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan province; Taliban crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan get preferential treatment from Pakistani border guards; training camps have dotted that border; Taliban fighters -- often underage youths too immature to form ideological convictions -- are paid and equipped by Pakistani military intelligence.”

In a September 7 speech in Kabul, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in no uncertain terms acknowledged that al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents were crossing over from Pakistan to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. However, he denied that Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence agency was helping them (the agency is said by many to be teeming with fundamentalist Muslims).

One of the problems lies with a truce agreed to by Musharraf’s government and the Taliban in the border region of Waziristan. The truce has resulted in the withdrawal of the Pakistani army from all frontier posts in the region, allowing the Taliban to cross the border with impunity. As a result of this move, and others (including recent public comments by Musharraf that former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” if it didn’t cooperate with the war in Afghanistan) Frederic Grare wrote in the August 2006 issue of Foreign Policy (Worse than a Mistake) that “The Bush administration does not know it yet, but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may have just outlived his usefulness.”

For this statement not to be true, Musharraf has to control his country’s border with Afghanistan. This will largely put a stop to the ‘hit and run’ tactics of the Taliban, who cross the border to strike NATO troops, then cross back again to regroup, lick their wounds, and fight again another day.

Next comes the poppy crop. According to the UN’s anti-drugs chief on September 2, Afghanistan’s opium cultivation rose 60 per cent in 2006; translating into 6,100 tons, enough to make 610 tons of heroin. According to the CIA Fact Book, expanding poppy cultivation and a growing opium trade may account for one-third of the country’s GDP. Most of the end product will be sold on the streets of Europe. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan reportedly produced no opium in 2000 (though there is data contradicting this statement).

It is, largely, drug money which nourishes the insurgency. In the opium-rich southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, Taliban commanders are said to protect growers in return for a 30 to 40 per cent tax, which is spent to recruit fighters. It is also said that the money from the poppies is used to bolster anti-U.S. elements in Pakistan’s intelligence service.

What’s more, the drug trade greatly feeds rampant corruption in Afghanistan, as Afghan police, armed forces and government officials are paid off to facilitate the trade. According to Chayes in The Globe: “…while southern Afghans, in my view, are not fostering the current Taliban resurgence, some of them are making room for it. The main reason they are doing so is not ideological, but practical: They are deeply frustrated with the post-Taliban government. Far from serving or protecting them, it seems just as hostile to their legitimate interests as the Taliban are. Even before I arrived in Kandahar, in December, 2001, I was worried about what kind of government would replace the Taliban regime. For it seemed that U.S. officials were ushering discredited warlords into positions of power, though the Afghan people wanted nothing of them, and gave President Hamid Karzai a resounding mandate to expel them from the body politic. In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. government prevented Mr. Karzai from moving against these warlords, and then he, discouraged, gave up trying. The result is a government that is devoured by corruption, with offices up for sale, and officials whose entire motivation is to extract money and favours from their countrymen.”

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai reportedly opposes the aerial spraying of poppies with herbicides, citing the health risks associated with such a measure. Perhaps with memories of Vietnam and Agent Orange still in mind, the U.S. military is also reportedly against doing the job, stating that it should be left to others (crop eradication is not their area of expertise).

One option is to use the poppy crop for the production of legitimate pharmaceuticals, such as morphine and codeine. However the U.S. is opposed to this, perhaps because it would be too difficult to secure poppy fields, to ensure that the crops don’t fall into the wrong hands.

In the meantime, the White House is applying great pressure to push Karzai to make a decisive move on the opium trade, for good reason. Once the Taliban’s main source of funds are cut off, there will likely be a reasonably quick downslide in the insurgency.

Finally, NATO members need to commit more forces to combat roles in Afghanistan. At present, a number of countries have forces in the country which are restricted from fighting offensively, leaving the “heavy lifting” to the United States, Britain and Canada. A recent call by NATO for an additional 2,000 combat troops met with the sound of crickets chirping, and countries such as Canada ended-up increasing their burdens.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty clearly states: “... an armed attack against one or more of them [members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." There should be no options as to how a NATO member country deploys its troops when an Article 5 mission is declared. Troops should be sent without question. Like when an “officer down” call goes out over police radios, the allies should send their unqualified support. With NATO, you are either all the way in, or all the way out. Perhaps there should be a discussion about a permanent NATO rapid reaction force.

The three actions that need to be taken are known. Some may say they are glaringly obvious. The political will just needs to exist to implement them.

In the meantime, while the country’s biggest export continues to be opium, its greatest import will continue to be bodybags, with no end in sight.