Afghanistan again .. Canada’s new interest in foreign policy bolstered by UK report

Sep 6th, 2006 | By | Category: Countries of the World

Not too long ago, it almost looked as if a tricky vote on the Harper minority government’s softwood lumber deal with the USA today might monopolize the drama when the Parliament of Canada returns to work on Monday, September 18. But it now seems that, here as elsewhere, the Bloc Quebecois will probably keep the Conservatives in office for a while longer yet. Somewhat unusually, it is foreign policy that currently looms largest in Canadian federal politics this fall. “Why are we in Afghanistan?” may no longer be the exact question. But something like “What exactly are we supposed to be doing in Afghanistan now?” is still being asked loudly by many Liberals and New Democrats – and Bloquistes. And in the wider world of the global village a rather jagged related critique has just been advanced in a fresh report from the UK. [LINKS UPDATED SEPTEMBER 8].

Is UK think-tank asking the same questions as Canadian MPs … ?

From Prime Minister Harper’s own perspective, it may be that Canadians just have to develop stronger stomachs, when they see such headlines as “Soldiers bid farewell to five fallen comrades” and “Canadians come under co-ordinated attacks.”

Yet especially given the current and apparently rising mood in the land of the elephant next door, it finally just seems weak when Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay can do no more than mouth the same mindless “support-our-troops” boiler plate, that has now been at least quite badly damaged by various popular programs piped across the unfortified border on US TV.

An early September think-tank report from the United Kingdom, called “Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taliban,” has also just added some wider international fuel to the fire. Some 50 field researchers “working on the ground in the [southern Afghanistan] provinces of Helmand and Kandahar” have apparently gathered data for this document.

The UK report’s main thrust is that the “NATO forces in southern Afghanistan [which now include more than 2,000 Canadian troops] are caught in a cycle of violence against the Taliban which is sparking poverty and starvation on a grand scale … Ongoing fighting is turning the average Afghan against British and US-led forces.” The “British and United States-led international coalition … has failed to achieve stability and security.'” The “Taliban is becoming increasing popular due to the West’s failure to tackle Afghans’ extreme poverty.'”

The only serious response to this kind of criticism now … ?

The UK report “blames military priorities and flawed’ poppy eradication policies for Afghanistan’s plight.” And it argues that there is “an urgent need to refocus on the broader cause of instability by tackling the problem of poverty.” The “military strategy needs to be changed so that relieving poverty becomes the international community’s main goal in Afghanistan.”

The British Foreign Office, not surprisingly, “has vigorously rejected the report, insisting that progress in Afghanistan was being made and said it did not recognise the picture being portrayed.” And in Canada retired major general Lewis MacKenzie has written a column for the Toronto Globe and Mail, arguing that “The Afghan mission is not a failure.”

But even the always civilized Major General MacKenzie can only finally cast vague hints about how “the NDP’s Jack Layton” may be just “following the polls and playing domestic politics on the backs of our soldiers.” And neither this nor a lot of accompanying technicalese about obsolete illusions of traditional Canadian international “peacekeeping” among the Canadian people at all seriously respond to the kind of critique of NATO’s current Afghanistan strategy in the new UK think-tank report.

In Canada, as in the UK, US, and all other coalition countries involved, the only effective response to this kind of critique will come if and when the current seemingly flawed military-dominated strategy in Afghanistan actually does start to work, down on the ground. I.e., if and when the Taliban just finally closes up shop and goes home to worship Hamid Karzai’s alleged new Afghan democracy (if you can still believe that is ever really going to happen).

Trying harder not to do what Osama bin Laden has wanted all along … ?

Meanwhile, as the title of the UK think-tank report underlines, it is now “Afghanistan Five Years Later.” And, one way or another, Canadian troops have been involved in this important mission of the international community right from the start.

(Even if your latest summer travels stateside suggest that this is still not widely understood down among the sheltering palms. And the latest write-ups in the UK press do not even mention Canada at all. That is just part of the international burden all Canadians must bravely bear, etc.)

All the major and minor great democracies of the global village today do seem at least quite close to the point where the key question about Afghanistan becomes: Just how much longer can the Bush administration and the Blair government (to say nothing of the pushy new Harper minority regime in Ottawa, etc) keep saying that if we just stay the course, and don’t cut and run, all will be well in the end – before some quite drastic tragedy actually does happen?

To very aggressively sharpen the edge of the emerging new critical argument (albeit no doubt a little too much for the ultimate real world), it is almost starting to seem conceivable that if the international community just carries on with its current too-military-dominated strategy in Afghanistan, the place just might finally become what Osama bin Laden has hoped for all along, ever since 9/11. Viz., the same kind of death-trap for the American empire of the early 21st century that it did finally prove to be for the Soviet empire of the late 20th century (which Sheik bin Laden, if that is a correct way of putting things, also virulently opposed).

As the Canadian people can appreciate better than most – including, it sometimes seems, their present prime minister – if anything even remotely like this ever were to come anywhere remotely close to happening, that really would not do any of the rest of us great democracies any good at all. (And that’s what supporting the troops really means in the end.)

So maybe it is finally getting closer to the time when NATO and the international community at large have to start figuring out something more sensible to do in Afghanistan. There are of course stark limits on how much of a role Canada can play in all this. But it might be able to help get some kind of new and more effective ball rolling, somewhere, somehow. And that could actually be something worth talking about constructively in Parliament this fall. Substantial numbers of Canadian people will no doubt be watching to see what finally does happen.



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