Voices on Afghanistan

I wish Stephen Harper would take a break in his busy day and settle in for a bit of TV. If he'd done that today he might have caught a CBC Newsworld interview with Gwynne Dyer on the subject of Afghanistan. For those of you who don't know Dyer, he's Canadian and an expert on military affairs. He holds a doctorate in Military and Middle Eastern Affairs from the University of London and has held teaching appointments at both Oxford and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

Dyer doesn't see what we're doing in Afghanistan as likely to accomplish very much. He noted that what we're trying to do now - defeat the Taliban, restore Afghanistan's infrastructure and stabilize the Karzai government - ought to have been begun five years ago when the Taliban was toppled, long before the country lapsed into the state it is in today. He pointed out that NATO's 20,000 strong force is far too small for the task they've taken on and, despite their claims to the contrary, its military leadership is falling into the same mentality that led the U.S. to defeat in Vietnam.

Mr. Dyer also criticized NATO commanders for resorting to air power in battling the Taliban. Aerial bombardment, he pointed out, causes inevitable civilian casualties that, in turn, create brand new enemies where none existed before.

Another voice heard was that of Hamid Karzai himself who appeared before the UN General Assembly yesterday. He laid it on the line: NATO and American troops in Afghanistan can't defeat the Taliban unless its 'terrorist sanctuaries' (he couldn't bring himself to say 'Pakistan') are destroyed. Karzai is right but you're not going to hear that from our beloved leaders. As Mr. Dyer noted, Karzai can see the writing on the wall. That's why he's already making overtures to the Taliban if only to improve his personal chances of survival once the foreign troops leave. Karzai has already made his deals with the warlords and drug lords of the north.

Checkmate. We can't attack Pakistan. We can't win without attacking Pakistan. Attacking Pakistan is a non-starter. Musharraf would be toppled and would probably be replaced by Islamic extremists. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal could be turned against us or even Israel. It would take a huge force to occupy and tame the mountain tribes and the Taliban sanctuaries and there's no political will to make that effort. Without destroying these sanctuaries, the Taliban is a perpetual-motion machine.

No, this is going nowhere and it's time Mr. Harper was honest about that. If Karzai isn't going to treat the Taliban as his government's mortal enemy, why the hell are we wasting Canadian lives trying to hold them at bay? As Gwynne Dyer puts it, to win this thing we would need a time machine. We just can't make up for the fleeting opportunities squandered in the first five years.