The Foreign Fighters MacKay Really Needs to Worry About

While tackling a job suited to his actual abilities - serving Christmas dinner to Canadian troops in Kandahar - DefMin Peter MacKay took time out to accuse Iran of funnelling weaponry into Afghanistan for use against NATO troops. Naturally, Wacky MacKay was long on accusation and very short on evidence but, no matter, he said it anyway.

In an opinion piece in today's Halifax Chronicle, Espirit de Corps editor Scott Taylor tells MacKay to ditch the egg nog and sober up:

"In a media scrum held shortly after he landed at the airfield, and reading from notes prepared before he left Ottawa, MacKay used the opportunity to point the finger of blame at Iran. That’s right folks, six years after the toppling of the Taliban by the U.S. coalition, it is Iran that is to blame for the renewed insurgency.

...Since Canada does not have an independent intelligence agency like the CIA or Britain’s MI6, it is not surprising that MacKay’s allegations of Iranian interference echo those currently emanating from the U.S. State Department.

Those who have been even casually following the bouncing ball of blame for the Afghan mess will recall that up until only a few weeks ago we were being advised that Pakistan was the problem.

Foreign fighters (who are actually Pashtu tribesmen sharing a common clan and religious belief with their Afghan neighbours) entering from Pakistan were the root of all evil. Despite the fact the Pakistani military has lost more than 1,000 soldiers fighting Taliban supporters along the northwest frontier, they were being demonized by NATO commanders in Afghanistan for their failure to close the border. Now, instead of looking eastward at the Pakistani border, MacKay is telling us the enemy is coming from the west — and bringing weapons. We need to stop this flow of military hardware if we are to be successful in Kandahar, runs MacKay’s logic.

The problem with this naively simple theory is that there is no need to bring munitions into Afghanistan. After three decades of continual warfare, wherein bordering states and global superpowers poured weaponry into their factional proxies, there remains an almost limitless supply of hidden munitions caches.

To be fair to MacKay, foreign fighters operating in Afghanistan are a major obstacle to NATO’s potential success and eventual withdrawal. However, these are not the idealistic Muslim jihadists, but the roughly 20,000 Western mercenaries employed as private security contractors. Unlicensed and unregistered, these yabobs operate completely outside both Afghan law and coalition forces’ military discipline. Any violence committed by these Rambo wannabes negatively impacts the reputation of legitimate coalition special forces and combat troops.

Local Afghans do not differentiate between private security, U.S. coalition or NATO forces, they simply lump the responsibility for the killers of their families at the hands of the "foreigners."

If MacKay is serious about plotting a new course for our mission he would be wise to quit reiterating American-generated "blame Iran" rhetoric and start challenging the uncontrolled use of so-called private security mercenaries in Afghanistan.

If we start by eliminating the "foreign fighters" under our own control, maybe we can break the circle of violence.