The Very Definition of Futility

"We have a long- term commitment vis-a-vis Afghanistan. . . . All 26 NATO allies are there, and we are there for the long haul." NATO forces are in Afghanistan "to support President [Hamid] Karzai and the Afghan people," he said. "But we are also there because we are fighting terrorism and we cannot afford to lose. We will not lose. We are not losing. We are prevailing."

Those inspiring remarks came out of the mouth of the increasingly incredulous NATO secretary-general, Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, following a 45-minute chinwag with George w. Bush yesterday.

So just how well are we "prevailing?" Paul Koring explains in the Globe & Mail that "the mission" is a bust:

"Most aid organizations quietly withdrew their international staff from Kandahar in recent weeks, the latest sign that the situation here is getting worse. It's now almost impossible to spot a foreigner on the city streets, except for the occasional glimpse of a pale face in a troop carrier or a United Nations armoured vehicle.

"At least the foreigners can escape. For many ordinary people the ramshackle city now feels like a prison, with the highways out of town regularly blocked by Taliban or bandits. Residents have even started avoiding their own city streets after dark, as formerly bustling shops switch off their colourful neon lights and pull down the shutters. There is rarely any electricity for the lights anyway, partly because the roads are too dangerous for contractors to risk bringing in a new turbine for a nearby hydroelectric generator.

"Corrupt police prowl the intersections, enforcing a curfew for anybody without that night's password, or bribe money. The officers seem especially nervous these days, because the Taliban hit them almost every night with ambushes, rocket-propelled grenades or just a deceptively friendly man who walks up to a police checkpoint with an automatic rifle hidden under a shawl.

"Insurgent attacks have climbed sharply in Kandahar and across the country. But some analysts believe the numbers don't capture the full horror of what's happening in Afghanistan's south and east.

The United Nations's count of security incidents in Afghanistan last year climbed to 13 times the number recorded in 2003, and the UN forecasts even worse this year. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization says insurgent attacks increased 64 per cent from 2006 to 2007. In the first two months of this year, some analysts have noticed a 15- to 20-per-cent rise in insurgent activity compared with the same period last year, raising alarm about whether the traditional spring fighting season has started early.

"Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan," concluded the Atlantic Council of the United States, a prestigious American think tank that deals with international affairs.


Hillier's Hubris

"It was widely believed that a few thousand troops could stabilize a province such as Kandahar.

"In retrospect, it was naive," said a Western security official in Kabul. "It was a mistake."

In a blunt assessment this week, Vice-Admiral Michael McConnell, the U.S. intelligence czar, admitted that the Karzai government controls less than one-third of the country. The Taliban hold 10 per cent on a more-or-less permanent basis while the rest is run by local warlords, he said, describing the situation as deteriorating.

Even that gloomy picture may represent an airbrushed version of events, some analysts say, because increasing collusion between Taliban and local powerbrokers — criminal groups, warlords, drug barons, ordinary farmers and even government authorities — allows the insurgents to operate freely in districts without exerting visible control.

Even if villagers aren't afraid of the Taliban, many join up because they find the new government unpalatable. No regime has ever been overthrown at the ballot box in Afghanistan, so political opposition often becomes part of the insurgency.

They watch government officials profit from the drug trade, and grow angry when eradicators destroy their small field of poppies. And in the battle-scarred landscape where Canadians operate, many people nurse deep grudges against the foreign troops after having their relatives detained or killed in the years of fighting.

On most days, fewer than 600 Canadian soldiers are "outside the wire" of NATO's sprawling base at Kandahar Airport, a number that everyone concedes is far too few to conduct a classic counterinsurgency campaign.

For rough comparison, NATO sent 40,000 troops into Kosovo — a place roughly one-quarter the size of Kandahar and with no active insurgency in 1999. More than one-third of them are still there eight years later. In fact, NATO has five times as many troops deployed in Kosovo as Canada has in Kandahar.

Nearly everyone agrees, however, that Afghanistan will likely see rising violence in 2008. Two Western security analysts predicted that the year will bring increased sophistication in the Taliban's technology; they're likely to use so-called explosively formed penetrators„© for the first time, adopting a technique often used in Iraq to puncture even the most heavily armoured vehicle with a specially shaped explosive.
Afghanistan's economic growth is also expected to continue slowing. Private investment was cut in half in 2007 compared with a year earlier, to about $500-million, and trade within the country will be hampered by Taliban and criminal roadblocks on the main highways."

This is the face of failure, plain and simple. Our soldiers are doing the very best they can, far more than we have any right to expect of them. Even if this was just a simple, straight forward, counterinsurgency war, we are fielding only a very small fraction of the force that would be needed for the job. The tactics we're using don't work. They've been tried before, over and again, and they don't work. But this isn't just a simple counterinsurgency campaign. It's complicated by a failed, central government in Kabul - thoroughly corrupt and compromised; a flourishing narco-economy; cancerous warlordism and religious fundamentalism; and, of course and as always, Pakistan.

The inane comments of Jaap De Hoop Scheffer should be a clarion call warning of how horribly NATO is being led. It's thinking like his and like Hillier's and like Bush's that explains why "the mission" has suffered steady and increasing setbacks in Afghanistan.

As I've said so many times before, if we're not in this to win, we have no business being in it at all. End the mission, bring our soldiers home.