February 27, 2007
James Travers
For mostly the wrong reasons, Afghanistan is again the talk of two villages. In the tiny one on Parliament Hill, Stephen Harper is committing more aid and Stéphane Dion, with an equally sharp eye on the coming election, is promising to bring home the troops in 2009. In the bigger global village, the United States and Britain are rediscovering the front on the "war on terror."
All that chatter is a warning. Progress in Afghanistan's relatively stable north isn't mirrored in the wobbly south where generals now warn the situation is precarious.
It's not just that the Taliban is regrouping for a spring replay of the last offensive that for months put Canadian casualties in headlines.
Half a world away in Washington, the intelligence community that waved red flags before 9/11 is again sniffing trouble in the easterly wind.
Those currents converge along Afghanistan's disputed border with Pakistan. Protected by overarching regional and international preoccupations, the Taliban and its malignant parasite Al Qaeda are free to raid and plot.
Countering those threats is suddenly an allied priority.
As Canadian soldiers again brace for the worst, the not-so-new Conservative government is throwing more money at the hearts-and-minds campaign there hoping both voters and the anti-war NDP here will support the tactical shift toward reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are refocusing their attention from the lost Iraq cause to the central Afghan one that might still be won.
Since governments prefer root-canal surgery to candour, no one anywhere is confirming the obvious.
Stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan on the cheap isn't working and the job is now more problematic than on the day when the U.S. wandered off to topple Saddam Hussein.
Students of current history will recall that the Bush administration justified that gross miscalculation by fancifully connecting Iraq's secular despot with Islam's sectarian fanatics.
They will remember, too, that Harper saw merit in a reckless invasion that more savvy foreign policy analysts correctly warned would create a power vacuum and a civil war.
Pointing to past misjudgment is more than churlish hindsight.
It's also a more useful reminder that, like the rest of us, politicians suffer from human frailty as well as the compulsion to arrange selected facts in the most favourable order.
That puts the onus on voters to subject government explanations to microscopic scrutiny when lives are at risk.
On one level, applying that examination to yesterday's announcement isn't particularly scary for the Prime Minister.
Bitter experience proves it will take many more millions and many more troops to rescue Afghanistan.
By adding $200 million to Canada's current $1 billion, 10-year commitment, Harper is making a significant contribution to reconstruction while the U.S. and Britain add the commitment to security so urgently needed immediately after the Taliban was driven from Kabul and power.
But two nagging questions remain: Is this renewed effort too little, too late and is this Afghanistan strategy in Canada's best interest?
The wait for the first answer will be short.
NATO commanders are now making it unusually clear that Kandahar is now at the tipping point.
In a place where decisions are life-and-death, ordinary people must now choose between local insurgents apparently willing to fight forever and foreigners who say they will stay as long as it takes.
As this month's Senate report found, geography and history tilt to the Taliban. Worse still, there are legitimate doubts about the effectiveness of the Afghanistan model.
It's awkward to admit, but in important ways this mission is at least as much about us as it is about them.
Canada's Afghanistan fixation is a post-9/11 phenomenon driven by everything from Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor's disturbing appetite for "retribution" to Ottawa's eagerness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington.
Neither is as widely appealing as the notions that we are there to free Afghan men and, particularly, women, or that Canada's security rises as the Taliban and Al Qaeda fall.
Those arguments were front and centre again yesterday as the government offered a generally upbeat "progress" report.
But optimism alone isn't about to dispel lingering skepticism about the effort to morph tribal country with an opium economy into a model market democracy.
No compelling argument can yet be made that the three Ds of defence, development and diplomacy is making a successful transition from public relations sloganeering to successful strategy. Pumping even more millions into a sea of corruption is self-evidently risky.
And it's mostly wishful thinking that war over there makes anyone safer here, while there's reason to fear that infidel boots on Muslim soil may stimulate the opposite.
Aligned against those negatives is this positive: The Afghan project is now facing an acid test and the more thoughtfully it's discussed, the greater the hope of moving past flag waving to creative responses.
James Travers's national affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/185888
James Travers
For mostly the wrong reasons, Afghanistan is again the talk of two villages. In the tiny one on Parliament Hill, Stephen Harper is committing more aid and Stéphane Dion, with an equally sharp eye on the coming election, is promising to bring home the troops in 2009. In the bigger global village, the United States and Britain are rediscovering the front on the "war on terror."
All that chatter is a warning. Progress in Afghanistan's relatively stable north isn't mirrored in the wobbly south where generals now warn the situation is precarious.
It's not just that the Taliban is regrouping for a spring replay of the last offensive that for months put Canadian casualties in headlines.
Half a world away in Washington, the intelligence community that waved red flags before 9/11 is again sniffing trouble in the easterly wind.
Those currents converge along Afghanistan's disputed border with Pakistan. Protected by overarching regional and international preoccupations, the Taliban and its malignant parasite Al Qaeda are free to raid and plot.
Countering those threats is suddenly an allied priority.
As Canadian soldiers again brace for the worst, the not-so-new Conservative government is throwing more money at the hearts-and-minds campaign there hoping both voters and the anti-war NDP here will support the tactical shift toward reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain are refocusing their attention from the lost Iraq cause to the central Afghan one that might still be won.
Since governments prefer root-canal surgery to candour, no one anywhere is confirming the obvious.
Stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan on the cheap isn't working and the job is now more problematic than on the day when the U.S. wandered off to topple Saddam Hussein.
Students of current history will recall that the Bush administration justified that gross miscalculation by fancifully connecting Iraq's secular despot with Islam's sectarian fanatics.
They will remember, too, that Harper saw merit in a reckless invasion that more savvy foreign policy analysts correctly warned would create a power vacuum and a civil war.
Pointing to past misjudgment is more than churlish hindsight.
It's also a more useful reminder that, like the rest of us, politicians suffer from human frailty as well as the compulsion to arrange selected facts in the most favourable order.
That puts the onus on voters to subject government explanations to microscopic scrutiny when lives are at risk.
On one level, applying that examination to yesterday's announcement isn't particularly scary for the Prime Minister.
Bitter experience proves it will take many more millions and many more troops to rescue Afghanistan.
By adding $200 million to Canada's current $1 billion, 10-year commitment, Harper is making a significant contribution to reconstruction while the U.S. and Britain add the commitment to security so urgently needed immediately after the Taliban was driven from Kabul and power.
But two nagging questions remain: Is this renewed effort too little, too late and is this Afghanistan strategy in Canada's best interest?
The wait for the first answer will be short.
NATO commanders are now making it unusually clear that Kandahar is now at the tipping point.
In a place where decisions are life-and-death, ordinary people must now choose between local insurgents apparently willing to fight forever and foreigners who say they will stay as long as it takes.
As this month's Senate report found, geography and history tilt to the Taliban. Worse still, there are legitimate doubts about the effectiveness of the Afghanistan model.
It's awkward to admit, but in important ways this mission is at least as much about us as it is about them.
Canada's Afghanistan fixation is a post-9/11 phenomenon driven by everything from Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor's disturbing appetite for "retribution" to Ottawa's eagerness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington.
Neither is as widely appealing as the notions that we are there to free Afghan men and, particularly, women, or that Canada's security rises as the Taliban and Al Qaeda fall.
Those arguments were front and centre again yesterday as the government offered a generally upbeat "progress" report.
But optimism alone isn't about to dispel lingering skepticism about the effort to morph tribal country with an opium economy into a model market democracy.
No compelling argument can yet be made that the three Ds of defence, development and diplomacy is making a successful transition from public relations sloganeering to successful strategy. Pumping even more millions into a sea of corruption is self-evidently risky.
And it's mostly wishful thinking that war over there makes anyone safer here, while there's reason to fear that infidel boots on Muslim soil may stimulate the opposite.
Aligned against those negatives is this positive: The Afghan project is now facing an acid test and the more thoughtfully it's discussed, the greater the hope of moving past flag waving to creative responses.
James Travers's national affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/185888