Facing Reality Is Patriotic

The Global War Without End on Terror isn't doing too well today but, then again, it was launched with some huge misconceptions.

Misconception One, the Big One, is that this is a war at all. Sure, we're fighting it as a war and how well is that working? Could it be that we're not making any headway, that we're simply radicalizing the Arab Street, that we're breeding Islamic extremists faster than we can knock them off?

When it comes to war fighting, we've got every advantage. We have the artillery, the attack helicopters, strike fighters, armoured vehicles, all manner of hi-tech sensors, spy satellites and aerial drones. Our forces are highly trained in using all this gear and they do it very well. Why, then, haven't we rolled up these homespun insurgents like a tattered Persian rug?

One reason is that we're treating this like a war. Now our war-fighting abilities, impressive as they are, tend to be based on the idea of fighting an enemy that we can find, identify, fix in place and destroy. We've designed our equipment to do that. We've trained our troops to do that. That's what war is all about.

These insurgencies aren't our kind of war but rather random ambushes, hit and run attacks and occassional skirmishes from which the enemy vanishes into the land when and as they choose.

When our soldiers go out into the countryside and villages they can't tell whether the guy they're looking at is a peasant farmer or a Taliban insurgent. He might be both. How do you deal with that sort of problem? How do you bring your war to this guy?

The insurgents are having some success in driving a wedge between villagers and their government in southern Afghanistan. They're aided in this by police who tend to be corrupt and oppressive. We're enduring Taliban ambushes while the local cops are de facto recruiting agents for the Taliban. The bad guys are reported to have been reasonably successful at infiltrating the government, the army and the police. Given that they also have access to a fair bit of cash, imagine the damage they can do once they get inside.

These realities make war-fighting pretty difficult. We're reduced to fighting a battle resembling "whack-a-mole." They pop up, we try to whack them. You can play that game a long, long time.

Of course NATO is merely a branch plant operation in the Global War Without End on Terror. Head office, the real deal, is in Iraq - not that it ever needed to be. However, as goes Iraq so may go Afghanistan.

The insurgents have one, huge advantage: they're not constrained by notions of western, liberal democracy. They know that our strength is also our greatest weakness. They live in and want to preserve what is a feudal society. They have a very cut and dried philosophy and it's called radical Islam. It is their strength.

We of liberal democracy aren't suited to "wars without end." We tire of them and then we turn against them if they don't produce results in short order. We don't tolerate, at least not for long, the sort of "top down" government necessary to wage a war of many years, perhaps even decades.

There's our Achilles' Heel. We need to get these problems sorted out efficiently and counter-insurgency is anything but efficient. When you rely on the war-fighting option you run out of steam at home much sooner than the guys you're fighting. They pay a hefty price in lives but it's a price they're willing to accept. You pay a hefty price in draining your treasury so you can keep fighting without paying a huge price in lives but even then you take too many casualties for the electorate to accept.

War-fighting an insurgency is usually something you do until the day you're ready to call it quits. Then you fashion some notion of peace with honour and go your way. Usually you leave when you realize (a) that fighting isn't resolving the conflict and (b) that you have foreclosed any diplomatic options.

Look at Afghanistan today. In the south, most Afghans, we are told, don't want the Taliban back but they would sooner have the Taliban return than have the fighting drag on endlessly. Those are people who, if they think it necessary, may be willing to turn on us. We know that the portion of the population that supports the Taliban is growing and everytime we bomb a bunch of houses into rubble and kill villagers we hand the Taliban even more supporters.

This means that the war-fighting option has a short shelf-life not only at home but also in the war zone. That means we need to win quickly or find some other solution.

Misconception Two is misleading ourselves about our enemy. It would help if we cut out the contradictions and looked at our enemy much more realistically. Our leaders have described the Taliban as a thoroughly evil bunch that oppress their own people and that will come over to Canada to kill us if we leave their country. How is it then that the guy we're propping up, Hamid Karzai, is sending out overtures to negotiate with them?

As we become more aware of Afghanistan's culture and ways, it's becoming obvious that a lot of the evils we were blaming on the Taliban are really just part of their culture that continue today. Sharia law is back. Dads still trade their daughters as though they were cattle. Girls of single-digit age are sold into marriage. Girls who refuse forced marriage are slung into prison. Women who are raped are killed. This is the society whose way of life we're fighting and dying to protect. What then do are we to make of the Taliban?

Right up to the day Cheney left the company to become George W's running mate, Haliburton was lobbying the Clinton government to lift sanctions against the Taliban so that it and Unocal could ink a deal to run a pipeline across Afghanistan. Unocal even brought the Taliban leadership on a friendship visit to Sweetwater, Texas. You can find their pictures on the internet.

I have been able to find no evidence that the Taliban ever collaborated with al-Qaeda in any terrorist attacks. What they did was they tolerated al-Qaeda's training camps in their remote countryside while they were engaged in an exhausting, no-win civil war with the Northern Alliance warlords. So, after 9/11 they had to go. Fair enough.

The Taliban, along with al-Qaeda, might have been effectively destroyed in 2001-2002 when they were driven into the hills but that opportunity has come and gone. The real bad guys, al-Qaeda have decentralized and expanded their operations into places they once didn't dare go, places like Iraq. The Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and returned to renew their never-resolved civil war.

Know your enemy. What do we really know of the Taliban? What do they want? Better yet, can they be brought around to compromise and accept some arrangement we can tolerate?

The fiercest battles are often the clashes fought just before a ceasefire. Lower intensity warfare is more common when neither side anticipates a breakthrough. Warfare in Afghanistan has followed a seasonal pattern. The insurgents come out of the hills and do battle on a hit and run basis during the summer season and then retreat to their mountain strongholds to wait out the winter months while they rest, regroup and rearm for the next season of battles.

NATO commanders are desperately hoping for a winter respite this year so they can accomplish some civil reconstruction to shore up public support for the government, the hearts and minds stuff. They've had a tough summer of fighting during which the Taliban kept them too busy to do much of the civil reconstruction.

This winter, however, the Taliban say they're staying to continue the fight. What are they thinking? First they must believe they're now strong enough to keep fighting without a break. They must also believe they have achieved a significant level of local support and domination, enough that they're not completely dependent on their operation in Pakistan any longer. They must have concluded that they can take what NATO and the Afghan army dishes out and still keep going. And, of course, they must also believe that there is some strategic gain to be had that justifies the risks they assume in staying.

Can the Taliban be brought to heel? There's only one way of finding out. Time isn't on our side so the clock is ticking on the military option. We need to start the clock ticking on the other guys also. This might be possible by doing a little wedge driving of our own. The Taliban may be a bunch of low-tech, low-cost warriors but they still need a hefty amount of support, at least by their standards. We need to isolate them from their supporters.

Misconception Three is our notion of who our allies are in this war. Who is backing the Taliban? At first it was radical Sunni (wahabbi) money, a lot of it from some influential guys in Saudi Arabia, our ally. They myth holds that the Taliban were supporting al-Qaeda where, in reality, al-Qaeda was giving money and help to the Taliban. So Saudi Arabia is an obvious place to start looking for a money trail. The next destination is the one we keep hearing about, Pakistan. Money and arms and fighters are coming from Pakistan to sustain the Taliban. We have to find some way to cut that off, to sever those lifelines.

The NATO nations simply don't have enough clout to successfully pressure the Saudis and the Pakistanis to sever their support for the insurgents. If any country has any hope of that, it's the United States. Unfortunately, the U.S. hasn't shown much stomach for coming to grips with these challenges. That's a reality we have to face. If our side can't bring Saudi Arabia and Pakistan into line, if we can't shut down their supply lines to the insurgents and to the terrorists, we're in for a long and unhappy war.

Misconception Four is that Afganistan is ready for liberal democracy. Is our branch plant getting undermined by our head office? Yes. If we're willing to accept that, we can look realistically at our options. If bringing secular, western-style democracy is a "non-starter" for Afghanistan, let's figure out the best style of government we can establish that will be self-sustaining and will oppose terrorism. That's probably the best we can hope for. Next we have to find some means of engaging the Taliban to join this political process.

We're not going to like the cut of any stable government that emerges for Afghanistan, especially when we've sacrificed the lives of our men and women in the quest for democracy. That means we're going to have to hold our noses and settle for something far less. That still isn't going to get us off the hook for nation-building. How can we hope to ensure a stable regime that won't tolerate those who do threaten us without establishing some viable economy in Afghanistan?

We're still going to have to fix the roads and build schools and get the farmers to grow something other than opium but, in the process, we may have to tip our hats to a few Taliban officials on our way to work.

There are so many ways this thing can go wrong because so little of it is within our (NATO's) control. But we do have to give this an honest try. We owe that to the people who've given their lives and their limbs to this venture in our name. But we owe them something else. We owe them a duty not to lose more lives and more limbs unless we can secure some sort of lasting achievement for their sacrifice. That's facing reality and that's infinitely patriotic.