Afghanistan: Why we should be there (or not), how to conduct the mission (or not) & when to leave

[naks]

I'm just curious as to peoples thoughts on the matter. We've been told that the CF would be pulled out a while ago, the date always changes, and promises are always broken. What do people honestly think about this matter? How much longer will we be there? My guess.. atleast another 5 years. Thoughts?

 

[PuckChaser]

Find a Magic 8 Ball. Ask it the question and shake. The answer you get is the best guess on where we're gonna be after 1 Jul 11.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Viking update:

Afstan: Swedes hanging tough
http://unambig.com/afstan-swedes-hanging-tough/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

From Terry Glavin:

As I Was Saying: Get Real.
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/12/as-i-was-saying-get-real.html

Most recently here,
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/12/afghanistan-third-way-imperialism-or.html
which I was then pleased to find Christopher Hitchens reiterating here,
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/12/christopher-hitchens-on-critical.html
Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court judge, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and currently president of the International Crisis Group, asserts in clear and unforgiving terms here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/get-real-thats-the-road-to-afghan-peace/article1846170/

“Shortcuts and backroom deals just won’t cut it. Instead, Canada and other NATO members must focus their efforts on reforms that can give Afghans stability, security and rule of law. More attention and resources, not less, must be focused on building governmental capacity and combatting corruption…

…Canadians must recognize that their continued engagement in Afghanistan must rest not on wishful thinking but on a policy grounded in reality.”

Thank you, Justice Arbour. You’ve just neatly summarized everything the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee has been saying.
http://afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org/casc-report-keeping-our-promises

A truly eclectic meeting of minds.  But achieving their ends will take an awful lot of neo-imperial twisting of Afghan arms, primarily by the US.  And, I suspect, at least tacit Pakistani acquiescence.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Who's killing the civilians (a story our media persistently downplay)?  From Adrian MacNair:

Devil Is In The Details
http://unambig.com/devil-is-in-the-details/

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are up by 20 per cent from the first 10 months of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009, according to the United Nations. But here’s the important part:

"The report concluded that the number of civilian casualties attributable to insurgents increased by 25 percent during the 10-month period. It said insurgent groups were responsible for killing or injuring 4,738 civilians during that period, while 742 were killed or wounded by Afghan and international troops – a drop of 18 percent..."

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Well, well, well:

Canadian trainers likely to be sent across Afghanistan
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101231/canadian-trainers-in-afghanistan-101231/

The Canadian Forces is rushing to draw up a list of military trainers to send to Afghanistan once Canada's combat mission ends next summer, but senior officers say training positions in the safer regions of the country are already growing few and far between.

The federal government announced earlier this year that up to 950 Canadian soldiers would participate in a three-year mission to train the nascent Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police force.

The Conservative government insisted that the Canadian trainers would be based "inside the wire," working in secure bases in the relatively stable area around Kabul, the Afghan capital.

But the NATO training organization in Afghanistan is expanding rapidly and needs trainers at sites across the country.

Many of the training jobs in Kabul have been snapped up by nations who committed to the training mission much earlier and Canada may have to send its soldiers into riskier regions of the country.

Maj.-Gen. Stuart Beare, the Canadian deputy commander of the NATO training mission, told CTV News that the coalition needs military and police trainers in almost every province of Afghanistan...

Col. Paul Scagnetti is one of a group of Canadian officers that helped establish the Afghan Army Command College in Kabul, helping to train the Afghan army's future leaders.

"They know how to fight, there's no doubt about that: They've been doing it for 30 years," Scagnetti said. "What we're trying to do is give them a structure, an organization that'll make them more effective in their fighting."

But Scagnetti and his fellow trainers have been so successful that they've put themselves out of at least one training job: when the new Canadian-funded college opens next spring it will be run by Afghans.

Caught by surprise at the government's announcement of the training mission, the Canadian Forces is now working overtime to draw up plans for where the Canadian troops will go and what exactly they will be doing.

Lt.-Gen. Marc Lessard, the head of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, acknowledged that Canada may have little choice but to send soldiers into more volatile regions of Afghanistan.

"The direction I have from (Chief of Defence Staff) Gen. Natynczyk is that it is to be Kabul-centric," Lessard told CTV News. "And what that means is that the emphasis is to be on Kabul, but not solely Kabul."

Details of the training mission may become clearer after a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels later in January...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Edward Campbell]

Well, well, well:

Canadian trainers likely to be sent across Afghanistan
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20101231/canadian-trainers-in-afghanistan-101231/


Mark
Ottawa

If we do not get what we sought ("inside the wire" in the Kabul area) then I recommend we walk away; NATO and Afghanistan can screw themselves, not us; not again; not after 2006/07. Obama needs us more than we need him or NATO or both combined.

 

[jollyjacktar]

ER, I agree if we are going to get the shaft once again from NATO we should tell them to get stuffed and come home.  We have done more than our NATO share.  Let some of the other lazy bastards who occupy seats in Brussels take up the slack for a change.

 

[HItorMiss]

I strongly disagree

What are we Cartman from South Park? "Screw you guys I am going home!" what are we a spoiled child throwing a tantrum because daddy wont give us what we want. We committed to a mission that is the end of it now we will do that mission.

Anything else is pure childishness!

 

[Edward Campbell]

I strongly disagree

What are we Cartman from South Park? "Screw you guys I am going home!" what are we a spoiled child throwing a tantrum because daddy wont give us what we want. We committed to a mission that is the end of it now we will do that mission.

Anything else is pure childishness!

We made, or at least the government through the media have led us to believe we made a deal with Obama and NATO. In exchange for not withdrawing, completely, as planned and announced, we would stay on, in a training role, "behind the wire," in the Kabul area. Now, IF the report Mark posted is accurate NATO might be trying for force a change on us - to make the Canadian mission more difficult to support, especially from from the administration and logistics areas. It is not "childish" to insist that NATO live up to its deals. I, personally, don't give a sweet rat's ass about what Afghanistan or NATO or the military commanders on the ground need or think they need; our participation in the Afghanistan mission is 95% political and only 5% military and the political aspects must prevail 100% of the time. This looks to me and smells to me like political chicanery and we have much, much more important political issues in play than kowtowing to Obama or NATO. We need to stand up for ourselves and if that means spitting in Afghanistan's, NATO's and Obama's eyes, all at the same time, so be it. The mission is irrelevant.

 

[Loachman]

My personal opinion of NATO has been dropping as a result of, but not quite as much as, my declining opinion of its European nation-members. I would favour a formal Anglosphere Alliance (UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as there is far more in common in terms of history, culture, and outlook over continued membership in NATO.

As for the issue of "doing our share", I believe that we will only be able to claim that when we have a military that is proportional to that of the US based upon our comparative populations, and have the same proportional representation in Afghanistan, and remain in theatre, in an active role, at least as long.

 

[Edward Campbell]

My personal opinion of NATO has been dropping as a result of, but not quite as much as, my declining opinion of its European nation-members. I would favour a formal Anglosphere Alliance (UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as there is far more in common in terms of history, culture, and outlook over continued membership in NATO.

As for the issue of "doing our share", I believe that we will only be able to claim that when we have a military that is proportional to that of the US based upon our comparative populations, and have the same proportional representation in Afghanistan, and remain in theatre, in an active role, at least as long.

I do not believe we could or even should ever try to match the US military. Our foreign policy goals do not require such forces and, in my guesstimation, the US cannot sustain the current levels of spending much farther into the 21st century. (Of the half dozen or so countries spending 4-5% of GDP on defence, as the US does (4.3%), only one, Singapore, has the economic muscle to continue to do so for a long time.)

My proposal is that, initially, we should match, in defence spending as a percentage of GDP, countries like India (2.6%), Britain (2.5%) and France (2.3%) for a few years (say 10) before settling into a near permanent groove alongside Taiwan (2.1%), Malaysia (2.0%) and Australia (1.9%). Spending 2% of GDP on defence would require defence spending to rise, quickly, by 60% or $12.5 Billion, before settling down into a 2%, steady state, level with spending growing from about $35 Billion per year, year after year, decade after decade, starting about 2025.

 

[observor 69]

Wouldn't that require a government prepared to do a rational objective apolitical analysis , and prepared to pay the political price ?

Ya it's a rhetorical question

 

[The Bread Guy]

This from CP:

The Harper government has quietly shut down the powerful cabinet committee that steered the mission in Afghanistan.

The decision to dismantle the committee came Tuesday, after Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minor cabinet shuffle, The Canadian Press has learned.

The committee had been chaired by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and included Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda.

The committee tried to meet at least once a week while Parliament was sitting.

It was responsible for sending quarterly mission progress reports to Parliament.

A government official confirmed the decision was taken because Canada's combat operations in Kandahar will end this summer.

"Yes, the cabinet committee on Afghanistan has wrapped up, having fulfilled its purpose," said Harper spokeswoman Sara MacIntyre ....

The now-cached version of the page dealing with the committee here (or screen capture at Scribd.com here) says this was the Committee's job:

The Cabinet Committee on Afghanistan has the mandate to consider diplomatic, defence, development and security issues related to Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.

So if the committee's job is done, the mission in Afghanistan won't need any DDD/Security "consideration" anymore?  I know political oversight will continue, but am I the only one reading this to mean that the mission has just become a WAY lower priority for the government?

 

[MarkOttawa]

More here:

Afstan to the back burner
http://unambig.com/afstan-to-the-back-burner/

Our government, i.e. the prime minister, has basically lost interest (if they ever really had much)–even while the CF have some six more months of combat...

Actually it’s been clear for three years or so that Mr Harper had lost any real commitment to the military mission:

    Prime Minister grumpy about Afghanistan

Meanwhile his tardiness while finally flip-flopping to agree to an ongoing CF training mission is leading to its own problems:

    Well, well, well: The consequences of delaying our Afghan decision

Great way to run a (serious?) country’s war effort.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Well, well, well:

Dutch government wants a return to Afstan…
http://unambig.com/dutch-government-wants-a-return-to-afstan/

…to train police...

    "…The Dutch trainers would be deployed under the auspices of the European Police Training Mission (EUPOL)…

    …Four Dutch F-16s would have to stay on in Afghanistan to provide protection to the troops. The jet fighters would have to be relocated from the southern province of Kandahar to the north of the country. The F-16 unit includes about 120 troops, bringing the total number of personnel for the mission to about 500…"

So much for those quittists hoping for a grand Western bug-out...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[The Bread Guy]

Good luck with that, General Caldwell....

The top commander of NATO's training mission in Afghanistan says Canadian military trainers are skilled and experienced and the alliance needs them especially in Kandahar, an option Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ruled out.

U.S. Army Lt.-Gen. William B. Caldwell made the remarks in an online paper published by the The Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

He says police, air, and medical trainers are needed in Kandahar, and Canada has the capabilities to provide more training teams in the southern province, where about 2,800 Canadian troops are currently based.

The paper was apparently written before Nov. 16., when Ottawa announced a three-year extension to its Afghan mission, which has claimed the lives of 154 members of the Forces.

  More from The Canadian Press here.

NATO's top training commander in Afghanistan says Canadian military instructors are needed in Kandahar, not the safer confines of Kabul, where the Harper government says the extended non-combat mission be redeployed until 2014.

U.S. Army Lt.-Gen. William Caldwell, in an online paper for the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute, praised Canada's efforts to train the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police as "invaluable." Additional Canadian trainers, he wrote, are especially needed in the Taliban-infested Kandahar region that 2,800 Canadian combat troops are to leave this year.

On Nov. 16, the government announced Canada's combat mission, centred in Kandahar since 2006, will be replaced by about 1,000 Armed Forces personnel who will train the Afghan National Army "behind the wire" in Kabul, the Afghan capital, until March 2014.

The move is seen as a way to reduce casualties, and associated political liabilities, while satisfying U.S. and international calls not to abandon the mission. Moving the mission from Kandahar also fulfils a condition agreed to by Parliament when it voted in 2008 to extend the mission to 2011.

But Caldwell seems to take no notice.

"Your nation has the capabilities to provide more air mentor teams in Kandahar, police trainers in Kandahar, trainers at the ANA medical facility in Kandahar, and logistics facilities across the country," he wrote in the paper, dated December, but clearly written before the November announcement ....

  More from Postmedia News here.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Note authors of report are quite conservative:

Is the tide turning in southern Afghanistan?
http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan/2011/01/11/is-the-tide-turning-in-southern-afghanistan/

The American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War  has a new report out
http://www.understandingwar.org/report/defining-success-afghanistan
that says rather unequivocally that the United States is starting to turn the war around in southern Afghanistan following the surge. Since the deployment of U.S. Marines to Helmand in 2009 and the launch of an offensive there followed by operations in Kandahar, the Taliban has effectively lost all its main safe havens in the region, authors Frederick  W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan argue. 

The Taliban assassination squad in Kandahar has ben dismantled, the insurgents’ ability to acquire, transport and use IED materials and other weapons has been disrupted, and narcotics facilitators and financiers who link the drug market to the insurgency have been aggressively targeted.  Above all,  NATO and Afghan forces continue to  hold all the areas they have cleared in the two provinces, arguably the heart of the insurgency, which is a significant departure from the past...

By all accounts, the war has turned ultra-violent as Danger Room blog called it a few months ago,
with Petraeus bringing in the full weight of the U.S.. military to bear on the insurgents.  U.S.  Special Forces stepped up raids, taking out hundreds of militants, surface-to surface missiles were fired to clear the Taliban in Kandahar, and tanks deployed in Helmand to crush them.

Air strikes, the weapon of last choice under previous General Stanley McChrystal’s winning the hearts and minds strategy, rose to their highest level since the invasion in 2011, with 1,000 attacks in one month alone.  U.S. generals are again talking of ”shock and awe” to destroy the Taliban, a far cry from the population -centric-strategy pursued earlier with its stress on avoiding civilian casualties. The level of civil casualties in the past few months, though, doesn’t seem to have risen in proportion to the intensity of the war effort [emphasis added], which means operations are much more accurate probably because of better intelligence,  more involvement of the ANA, and perhaps foreign forces have just gotten better  over a period of time...

ISAF and the ANSF have established reasonably solid security in Herat and Kabul, the authors say. They are maintaining more tenuous security in the Jalalabad Bowl and fighting to push stability up the Konar River Valley. Regaining control of Helmand, Kandahar, southern Uruzgan, and parts of Zabul has been ISAF’s main effort for the past 18 months and has seen much progress. The situation in Loya Paktia, Ghazni, and parts of Logar and Wardak has not yet received adequate attention.

Insurgents retain the ability to move through and attack in Wardak, Logar, Parwan, and Kapisa Provinces, although their ability to stage from those provinces into
Kabul itself has been significantly degraded. South of Kabul, direct-action teams have taken a toll on the Haqqani Network and its affiliates in Greater Paktia, Logar, and southern Wardak Provinces. An American battalion pushed into the Andar District of Ghazni Province (directly south of Ghazni City and a significant insurgent stronghold) to support the Polish Task Force that has responsibility for that province. But Ghazni remains heavily under the insurgency’s influence, as evidenced by the almost total failure to persuade the province’s large Pashtun population to vote in the parliamentary elections in September.

The authors said reports  about the hitherto peaceful north slipping into Taliban control were somewhat overblown [emphasis added].  The insurgents do not have the momentum and the  major inhabited areas in the north and the west —Balkh Province (where Mazar-e Sharif is located), Herat City and Province, the famed Panjshir Valley, Bamian Province, northern Ghazni
and northern Day Kundi Provinces (which, together with Bamian, form the Hazarajat, the area inhabited by the Hazaras)—remain generally stable and do not face an increasing Taliban threat...

...the gains made so far will be lost if the U.S. were to withdraw prematurely, the report said.  Any attempt to seek reconciliation with the Pashtun Taliban runs the risk of  igniting an ethnic conflict with Afghanistan’s northern minorities [emphasis added]—the Tajiks, Uzbeks,and Hazaras – the kind which destroyed the country in the 1990s before the Taliban take over.  The authors say these minority groups are already considering their options in the event of a U.S. withdrawal and are possibly beginning to re-arm themselves  in preparation for renewed inter-ethnic conflict.

Worse, other regional powers will likely flex muscles...

Update thought: It's perhaps telling that there appears to be no mention of the CF's work at Kandahar in the report.  There is this, p.29:

...
Taliban efforts to encircle and penetrate Kandahar had gone almost unchecked before 2010.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

On TVO's "The Agenda", Jan. 10.  Well done, esp. about the Canadian media and how the country now reacts to casualties.  Take the time to view  it, please:

Matthew Fisher: A Year in Afghanistan
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?videoid?746480670001

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Very interesting:

'A Decisive Transformation'
Berlin Exudes Optimism in Extending Afghanistan Mandate
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,739140,00.html#ref=nlint

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet is confident that improvements are just around the corner in Afghanistan. The government in Berlin agreed on an extension of the mandate authorizing its presence in the war-torn country by one year on Wednesday -- and hope was in no short supply.

The international mission in Afghanistan, the German government is convinced, will see significant changes in coming years. On Wednesday, the cabinet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on a mandate that would extend by one year the presence of Bundeswehr troops operating in Afghanistan. "Overall, the international engagement in Afghanistan will undergo decisive transformation in the years 2011 to 2014," the seven-page document approved by the cabinet reads hopefully.

That change, the document makes clear, is to come about as a result of a renewed focus on the training of "effective Afghan security personnel as a prerequisite for a step-by-step handing over of security responsibilities" to the Afghans and a resulting reduction of the international military presence.

Hope, in other words, is in no short supply. A clear description of the realities on the ground in Afghanistan, however, is avoided. Nowhere in the document is the word "war" mentioned. The Taliban likewise don't make an appearance.

The extension of the mandate, which still must be approved by the German parliament, would allow for the continued presence of 5,000 German troops in Afghanistan in addition to a 350 emergency reserve at the ready in Germany [emphasis added]. The vote came after weeks of cabinet infighting as to when the Bundeswehr might be withdrawn. Prior to Christmas, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle gave a speech in an apparent effort to capitalize on the fact that some 70 percent of Germans are now opposed to the mission in Afghanistan. "Today," Westerwelle said, "I can say with sufficient confidence that we will be able to reduce our Bundeswehr contingent in Afghanistan for the first time at the end of 2011."

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg responded almost immediately, saying that, while he was in favor of withdrawal sooner rather than later, he was opposed to setting a firm date. Any such decision, he said, had to be dependent on the situation Afghanistan...

...the document avoids outlining exactly what that situation looks like. Whereas the paper is careful to emphasize military training and the provision of equipment to Afghan security personnel, it fails to mention the increasing number of combat missions against the Taliban currently undertaken by German troops. The document speaks of supporting the Afghan government, but does not speak of the fact that increased patrols against Taliban strongholds have become a key part of Germany's new strategy in Afghanistan [emphasis added]...

And now for gloom:

AfPak's Strategic Blinders
One month after the Obama administration's strategic review of the Afghan war, it's become clear that there's little willingness to change what increasingly looks like a failure in the making.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/11/afpaks_strategic_blinders?page=0,0

Mark
Ottawa