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28 December 2010

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Canada Extends

Afghanistan Mission

 

Canadian soldiers were supposed to all come home

by the middle of 2011, now almost a thousand

will be staying on to train Afghan troops

 

On September 11, 2001, suicide attackers crashed hijacked airliners into targets in the United States, killing almost 3,000 people (left).

 

The bombers were part of a terrorist organization called al-Qaeda. The group was based in Afghanistan where it received the protection of a Muslim extremist government that was under the control of a group called the Taliban.

 

In October 2001, a coalition of nations joined the United States in attacking Afghanistan and removing its government from power.

 

Since then, forces under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have been fighting against a stubborn and growing force of guerrillas. The coalition is a United Nations initiative called the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF).

 

There are about 120,000 personnel in the ISAF mission, the biggest contributor being the United States with more than 78,000. Other countries making significant commitments are: the United Kingdom (9,500), Germany (4,500), France (3,700), Italy (3,400), and Canada (2,800).

 

Canada Assigned difficult Mission

Since 2005, Canada’s military personnel have been in the hotspot of Kandahar in the south.

 

They live inside their razor-wire protected camps and every patrol outside is fraught with danger. That’s because the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have come down from their mountain hideouts. They have been joined by drug traders and outright criminals and they all mingle with the general population making it almost impossible to identify the bad guys from the good guys.

 

One of the most frequent threats Canadian troops face comes from improvised explosive devices, known to the military as IEDs. These are homemade bombs, usually hidden beside a road. When an army convoy goes by the IED is detonated, often with devastating consequences.

 

Canada’s soldiers also have to face the possibility of suicide attacks from cars or trucks loaded with explosives. These are the hazards likely to be faced in the city of Kandahar; on patrols into the villages and rural areas there are added dangers.

 

Canada Extends its Mission to 2011

Soldiers go to Afghanistan for a six-month tour of duty. Then, they return home for a period of rest and retraining. They are replaced by fresh units, usually about 600 at a time, who begin their six-month tour. So, Canada is constantly rotating soldiers in and out of the country.

 

The original commitment was for Canada’s combat role to come to an end in February 2009. However, in February 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Parliament to extend the mission by two years. The Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party opposed the motion, but it was passed with the support of Liberals.

 

But, Canada and Canadians became tired of carrying the heaviest load in Afghanistan in terms of casualties. The British and Americans have increased the size of their forces in Afghanistan. But, other allies, while increasing their troop strength refuse to help out in the dangerous Kandahar region.

 

Pressure to Stay

As the end of Canada’s combat mission drew closer, Ottawa has come under intense pressure, particularly from the United States, which is doing most of the heavy lifting, to stay on.

 

Prime Minister Harper firmly resisted these efforts, until the fall of 2010. Alexandre Deslongchamps of Bloomberg News reports (November 16, 2010) that “Canada will extend its mission in Afghanistan for three years until 2014, moving troops away from combat zones and assigning them instead to train local forces.”

Deslongchamps quotes Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon as saying: “We shall withdraw our troops from Kandahar and end our combat mission. But we are not abandoning Afghanistan.”

 

Having said that, Campbell Clark reports in the Globe and Mail (November 17, 2010) that “International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda said Canada will provide $100-million a year in development assistance for Afghanistan over the next three years, less than half the $205-million the government reported spending last year.”

 

Ottawa says a total of 950 Canadians will be deployed “inside the wire.” This means Canadian troops will be exposed to far less danger than has been the case when they have been going on patrols “outside the wire.” The training will take place in Kabul and other parts of the country that are safer than Kandahar.

 

There will still likely be casualties but the numbers should be lower than over the past five years.

 

Little Progress Shown

Despite all the blood and treasure that has been poured into Afghanistan over the past decade the country is still deeply dysfunctional.

 

The Economist noted in May 2008 that military problems facing the coalition are big but “The weakness and corruption of Afghanistan’s elected government matter more.”

 

Here’s the International Crisis Group: “Failure to tackle human rights abusers and war criminals of past eras sees discredited figures of the past embedded in every level of administration.”

 

Past elections have been characterized by sleaze and fraud. The most recent vote for parliamentary seats was held in mid-September 2010.

 

On November 10, 2010, BBC News reported that, “The people of Afghanistan are still waiting to hear who won their parliamentary elections…The independent election commission has thrown out nearly a quarter of the more than five million votes cast because of allegations of fraud. But the commission itself is being accused of rigging” the result.

 

Bribery and corruption are buried deep in the political and business cultures of Afghanistan. It’s been that way for centuries. If you want to be connected to the electricity supply you’ll have to pay a bribe to power company employees. A favourable ruling from a judge will usually involve an exchange of money. Police are known to kidnap workers and demand a ransom from their employers to release them. They also extort money from people wanting to drive on a particular road.

 

Meanwhile, the treatment of women in Afghanistan is an affront to Western values.

 

Image credits

Carlos Latuff

Cliff

Ping News

 

Sources

“How the ‘Good War’ could Fail.” The Economist, May 22, 2008.

“Canada Extends Afghan Mission for Three Years With New Focus on Training.” Alexandre Deslongchamps, Bloomberg News, November 16, 2010.

“Afghan Conflict History.” International Crisis group.

“Elections in Afghanistan.” BBC News, November 10, 2010.

“Beginning of the End of NATO Involvement in Afghanistan at Hand.” John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail, November 15, 2010.

“The Quiet Professionals.” Lara Logan, CBS 60 Minutes, January 31, 2010.

“A Clean Afghan Handover is a Long Way from Reality. Geoffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail, November 17, 2010.

“Two Sides of the Coin.” Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman, November 26, 2009.

“Canada to Pull Civilian Staff from Kandahar, Base Trainers in Kabul.” Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail, November 17, 2010.

 

© Canada and the World, November 2010

All rights reserved

 

As of mid-November 2010, Canada has lost 152 personnel killed in Afghanistan.

DECLINING POPULARITY

 

Percentage of Canadians who said they approved of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan:

 

in 2002: 75%

in 2006: 50%

in 2008: 41%

in 2010: 36%

 

TRIBE

BEFORE COUNTRY

 

Afghanistan is not one country, but many. The south is dominated by Pashtun people who make up 42 percent of the country’s total population. But this ethnic group is divided into many tribes that are further split among clans and families.

 

A long history of conflict means that ethnic groups, tribes, and even clans are often hostile towards one another.

 

The other main ethnic groups are Tajiks (27 percent), Uzbeks (nine percent), and Hazaras

(nine percent). Then, there are scores of other smaller tribes and clans and few of them get along with each other in a cozy, neighbourly way.

 

Under the leadership of so-called warlords, these groups have been in conflict with each other for centuries. As Jeffrey Simpson pointed out in The Globe and Mail in March 2006, that Afghanistan “is essentially a post-medieval society, or rather collection of societies, with cultural habits and religious traditions that go back into the mists of Afghan time.”

 

It is the belief of many experts that once foreign troops have left, the country will revert to its tradition of tribal conflict.

 

HERDING CATS

 

The goal of Western nations is that the police, government officials, and the better-behaved Afghan Army will take over security. But, the training is not going well, as recounted by Lara Logan in a segment for the CBS program 60 Minutes (January 31, 2010). In her report, Logan followed a unit of elite U.S. Green Berets, who were teaching Afghan soldiers. The unit seemed to be accident prone; one trainee shot an American instructor, another shot himself in the foot, and then an American trainer shot an Afghan civilian.

 

Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson isn’t very optimistic about the outcome of the training programs either. In a November 17, 2009 column he wrote: “Like almost everything else in Afghanistan, a chasm exists between goal and realization. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been trying to ready the army and police, but it’s been like training a cat to bark.”

 

Canada and other NATO members have been training Afghan police for years and they still have the reputation of being one of the most corrupt forces in the world.

 

Meanwhile, Mr. Simpson describes the army as a “force of largely illiterate soldiers led by corrupt, incompetent officers.”

 

Will Afghanistan’s security apparatus be ready to defend the country after the withdrawal? Mehdi Hasan is a senior editor with The New Statesman and he thinks that outcome is very iffy; he also doesn’t have a very high opinion of Afghan soldiers and police. On November 26, 2009, he wrote “…the Afghan National Army is plagued by desertion: 10,000 recruits have disappeared in recent months. Soldiers are under-equipped and underpaid; some 15 percent of them are thought to be drug addicts.”

 

He says they are mostly Tajiks who will be trying to operate in Pashtun areas where the Taliban are active.

 

Hasan adds that the police are corrupt, poorly trained, and have been infiltrated by the Taliban. He writes that 1,500 police were killed by insurgents in 2009 “and around 10,000 policemen are absent without leave.”

 

The ISAF plan is to train and field 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 police. Hasan cites multiple sources that as of the end of 2009 there were only about 50,000 fully trained and good-to-go soldiers in the Afghan National Army.

 

“Under the best of circumstances, developing competent police and army forces takes years.” This is Margaret Wente writing in The Globe and Mail (November 18, 2010). “But these circumstances aren't the best. Currently, only 14 percent of the combined force can read or write - at the Grade 3 level.

 

“According to The New York Times, the official attrition rate is roughly three percent a month - which means that, for the army to grow by 36,000 more soldiers, it must recruit and train 83,000 people.”

 

 

 

 

“At the best, Afghanistan’s post-NATO future will inevitably involve warlords, the Taliban, and a weak and probably corrupt central government.

Victory, if that’s the word for it, would simply mean keeping the country from reverting to an incubator for terrorist attacks on the West.”

 

John Ibbitson

Globe and Mail, November 15, 2010

 

 

According to Transparency International’s 2009 report, Afghanistan is the 179th most corrupt country in the world, out of 180 nations. That is a drop of seven places since 2008.