On NATO, Rick Hillier's Wrong - Dead Wrong

Rick Hillier has seen his place in Canadian history, and he doesn't like what he sees.

Hillier, the ex-general who, curiously, now denies being the architect of Canada's deeply flawed military mission to Afghanistan is, not surprisingly, indulging in America's post-Vietnam sport of ducking responsibility and deflecting blame onto others.

In his memoirs, the ex-general claims the decision to send a Canadian force barely a tenth the size needed to secure Kandahar province from a resurgent Taliban threat had almost nothing to do with him. The whole thing had been a done deal between the Department of National Defence and the office of prime minister Martin before Hillier got involved - he maintains, now that the stench of failure is inescapable.

After bemoaning that the whole mess isn't his fault, Hillier goes on to spew vitriol at NATO, claiming the alliance is done unless someone breathes air through its "rotten lips into those putrescent lungs." In Hillier's remarkable mind, if NATO can't win in Afghanistan it might as well be scrapped altogether.

Besides being self-serving, I believe Hillier's NATO remarks are seriously wrong-headed to boot. This guy would define an alliance that served the West remarkably well through a half-century of existential Cold War by how well it performs in a hopeless cause it was never intended to fight.

The problem isn't with NATO, it's with the political and military leadership of the alliance since the demise of the Soviet Union. No one, it seems, knew what to do with NATO after the Soviet threat receded and so it drifted, aimlessly, until some halfwit in the White House decided it'd make a dandy American Foreign Legion.

The core of NATO, the raison d'etre for the whole business, has always been mutual self-defence of any member state under attack. Now from what I've learned, America was never attacked by Afghanistan. Nine years after the Taliban were sent packing there's not been one scintilla of evidence suggesting they even were aware of the al-Qaeda 9/11 plot that was orchestrated out of Germany by a gang of mainly Saudi fundamentalists. Put that all together and it just doesn't correspond to NATO's mutual defence rationale. So what really happened?

In the wake of 9/11, we lost our senses and our backbone. The world's sole superpower was insistent on waging war against someplace and war-fighting tools are really pretty useless against criminal organizations, non-state actors like al-Qaeda. Washington couldn't bomb Germany for letting al-Qaeda plotters gather there. Couldn't bomb the House of Saud for its complicity in buying off the Wahabist extremists so long as they stayed out of Saudi Arabia. It couldn't bomb Florida for allowing al-Qaeda killers to leisurely while away their time at American flight schools either. Who are you gonna bomb? What's better than a fundamentalist Muslim regime, especially an extremist, contrarian bunch like the Taliban? Hey, if it's the best you've got, it's the best you've got.

NATO's mistake was in bending its own rules, actually tossing the rule book out the window. And so some NATO members, not all by any means, saw fit to send small packets of troops to aid the Americans in Afghanistan.

At first it was just routine security work defending the newly-installed Karzai government in the capital of Kabul. But then we looked up and saw that Bush and Cheney and Blair were in full rut to conquer Iraq and were pressuring everybody to lube up and jump into that mess with them.

Canada didn't want to go to Iraq. It was a bad idea from the outset. It was never sanctioned by the UN Security Council which made it illegal in any case. The political leadership behind it - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Blair and Straw - were doubtful starters at best. From the outset they were talking like school children about a war that would be over in 60-days and cost a few score billion at the outside. That's the sort of talk you hear from the bearded lunatic with the torn coat and soiled pants sitting at the back of the bus. You don't let that sort drag you into a war, especially not a war of choice based on the flimsiest of contrivances and prevarications.

But, of course, America's war-dodging War President was on a rampage, telling friend and foe alike that "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists!" Sadly no one had the guts to stand up and say, "George, you're nuts. Go fuck yourself." No, we dutifully fell into line behind the lunatic.

We weren't going to dive into the empty pool that was Iraq but, rather than risk being seen by the Americans as "Surrender Monkeys" we opted to assume some sort of combat role in Afghanistan. We would be the American army's place holders while they stepped out for a moment to set all straight in Iraq. We'd even fire guns and drop bombs and everything. Right.

Even then it was all wink, wink/nudge, nudge. We, Canada, decided to take over and secure Kandahar province, one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, with a force of but 2,500 soldiers, most of them support types. That was the first clue that we weren't serious. Why? One of the fundamental precepts of counterinsurgency warfare is that it's enormously labour-intensive. To succeed, according to the Pentagon's own doctrine, you need to commit a force of one counterinsurgent (fighting soldier) for every 25-50 civilians you must protect and secure. In Kandahar province that would represent a minimum fighting force of 20,000 combat soldiers (with the requisite support troops backing them up). We had but 2,500 all in - support and fighting troops.

The second sign that we weren't serious was that our minuscule force strength remained static even as the Taliban numbers swelled. We crafted the mission according to the resources we poured into it, not according to the threat we were up against.

Missing during these several years was Hillier's voice. He was outspoken about just about everything else but he never spoke out publicly saying that Canada's force could not hold the Taliban and secure Kandahar without major reinforcement. He never said that we were losing. Yes, we were shooting up people and shelling and bombing the hell out of them but we were losing control of territory which is one way the insurgents win this type of war. We weren't keeping the population's villages safe at night, from the insurgents or from their own government's predations.

Yet, despite this track record, Hillier condemns NATO for failing to "win" in Afghanistan. Just what would winning look like? I'm not sure anyone really knows any longer. It's not the secure, secular and democratic state our delusional leaders fantasized about when this sorry business began. The Kabul government that we're propping up is what Chatham House, the Royal Institute itself, describes as a "criminal enterprise." Experience has shown us there has never been a viable Muslim state that didn't first overcome tribalism and warlordism and, when it comes to Afghanistan, those problems are both manifest and not even on the table for discussion. We know that, since we drove out the Taliban, Afghanistan has reverted to a narco-state. We know the Afghan government is so poor that it can't begin to afford the type and size of a national army it would need to secure its own territory.

Gee Rick, just what is there for NATO to win in Afghanistan or haven't you been reading the papers?

The fact is that neither Hillier nor anyone else can condemn NATO for Afghanistan when there is no proper role for the alliance in that country. It's entirely conceivable that the Taliban's war, the political war waged by all insurgencies, has already been decided - in their favour. Lord knows we didn't put up much of a fight in their war just as we fumed when they refused to fight our war, the military war.

But what of NATO and the future of the alliance? Is there any reason for its continued existence? What can it do for us? Despite Hillier's badmouthing, we're entering an era in which NATO may be more critical to the West than it ever has been even at the height of the Cold War.

Take climate change, desertification, deforestation, resource (particularly freshwater) depletion and exhaustion, species migration and extinction, air/land/water contamination, overpopulation and population displacement and migration, nuclear proliferation and global terrorism - add water, toss'em in a pressure cooker and turn the burner on "high." That is the world we're soon to be facing and that is why the West, or at least the original alliance members, need a NATO that is redefined, rationalized, refocused and reconstituted and we need to be giving that our immediate attention.

Both the British Ministry of Defence and Pentagon planners have released reports on the impacts of environmental threats on global security. The Pentagon is soon to release its Quadrennial Defense Review in which climate change will be identified as presenting a major security threat to the United States.

Are these threats real? Of course they are and they're already beginning. Are they serious? Ditto. In little more than a month the nations and blocs of nations that make up our world will be assembling in Copenhagen to seek consensus on some effective means to fight global warming. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that almost nobody believes Copenhagen will succeed, skip back two paragraphs to the list of challenges set out there. Global warming is the very first, listed as "climate change." Copenhagen isn't going to begin to resolve any of the other issues that are set out.

We're about to face a world in turmoil and upheaval and that has major security implications for the West, the industrialized nations that will ironically be the last and least impacted by the consequences of our own industry and consumption. Put bluntly, we may well need to defend ourselves as we never have before. For that we will need collective security, a revitalized North American Treaty Organization.

Who Isn't Talking With the Taliban?

As near as I can tell, the answer is "nobody."

Hamid Karzai has been negotiating with the Taliban for quite a while. Karzai's opposition, the United National Front, aka the Northern Alliance warlords, are trying to negotiate a separate deal of their own that would see an alliance of Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Taliban warlords (there's something to sit up and notice), the Brits have been dealing with the Taliban for a couple of years, we're now trying to get into talks with them and even the Americans, for all their swagger and John Wayne "gung ho" every now and then let slip that they're talking to the Taliban also. The Pakistanis are sure talking to them, even negotiating a ceasefire deal.

These must be heady times indeed for the Taliban leadership. So many calls, so many offers. That must be such a body blow to their morale, eh? My guess? I think they'll find the United National Front overtures most enticing. It's coming from their former enemies, the Northern Alliance tribal warlords, and it offers a means to marginalize both their Pashtun rival, Karzai, and the infidels, NATO and the US. I mean what's not to like in that deal?

Is it just coincidence that, at this very moment, both the Russians and the Chinese are firming up their interest in the region? Ya think? Look at it this way, if you want to build pipelines across Afghanistan to Iran (Russia and China) and railroads into Afghanistan (China), are you going to back Hamid Karzai, the guy who, seven years down the road, is still struggling to keep a grip on square one? Or are you going to look for a deal with the locals who have expanded their power and who effectively control most of the country, the UNF?

The Russians know all too well what happens to infidels when the Afghan tribes get together. I'm sure the Chinese know the same thing. Karzai knows, he was in on the last one. Maybe we're even figuring it out. That would certainly account for our recently lowered expectations, our seismic shift from idealism to realism. We're keeping one eye over our shoulder as we're busy with the other one looking for the door.

I think we're going to pay a big price for our years of demonizing the Taliban when we ought to have been focusing our very limited effort on al-Qaeda. Now we're trying to drive a wedge between the two of them after seven years of relentlessly driving them into each others' arms. My Lord, what must they make of our clumsy childishness?

One other event that I just can't write off to coincidence - the pending retirement of General Rick Hillier. Even ultra-right scribes like Peter Worthington were aghast that Hillier would step down after having just won a three-year extension on the war for his troops. No one can say for sure what's in Hillier's mind but I think he owed it to his soldiers to see this through - after all he expects nothing less of them, does he? Somehow my mind keeps coming back to that Vietnamese phrase - di di mau.

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.

It Only Took Them Six Years to Realize It's Broken

Afghanistan reviewed - top down, bottom up and even sideways. The US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO are beginning to scratch their heads and wonder why six years of war in Afghanistan has gone exactly nowhere?

NATO already has an idea, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer recently dropping the stinker that the alliance can expect to be in Afghanistan for "generations." As though the place was worth it!

Why all this sudden interest? As the New York Times puts it, the White House and NATO are "deeply concerned about the prospect of failure" in Afghanistan.

"The reviews are an acknowledgment of the need for greater coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, halting the rising opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control."

Greater coordination? Does that mean that, after six years of split and inconsistent leadership, they've realized the need for a unified command with something resembling real tactics? What a stroke of bloody genius!

And as for helping the Kabul government "extend its legitimacy and control," how can anyone hope to extend what's never been established? And how can Washington and NATO establish legitimacy and control in the Kabul government without ridding it of the warlords, drug lords and even insurgent collaborators within its ranks that leave it hopelessly compromised and corrupted? The Karzai government is one sick puppy, damn near terminal.

What this all comes down to is showboating, a bit of tinkering here and there, and that's about it. Proof of that comes in this line from the Times report: [the reviews] are not expected to result in a similar infusion of combat forces, mostly because there are no American troops readily available.

Typically, the White House and the Pentagon are trying to dump every bit of blame they can at the feet of NATO. Maybe it's just a coincidence that they never breathe a word of their boss's jackass decision to pull his troops out of Afghanistan to play quagmire in Iraq. Maybe not.

My take on what's needed, right now, in Afghanistan. It would begin with NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer acting, for once, like he had a pair (even though he doesn't). That would mean standing up to the White House and the Pentagon and telling them to get their finger out and start massive transfers of troops from Iraq back to Afghanistan. It would mean reminding America that Afghanistan is their deal and their primary responsibility; that NATO expanded its role to allow America to get things finished up in Iraq; and that fighting the sort of insurgency the Taliban is waging is enormously labour-intensive. It would mean Scheffer telling Washington and the Pentagon that NATO is no longer willing to play enabler to a dysfunctional US military effort, no longer willing to be stooges in a hapless "war on the cheap" in Afghanistan. It would mean telling Washington and the State Department to come up with an effective plan, now, to clean up the Kabul government and transform it into a functioning central government that's worthy of shoring up.

If America isn't willing to make a genuine commitment to Afghanistan - and that's measured in many scores of thousands of troops - we're just barely treading water in a hopeless cause. If the Americans want to win this thing, or at least pretend they want to win it, it's time they bellied up to the bar. If not, let's get out just as soon as we can.

Memo to Steve - It's About Futility, Not Morality

Our prime ministerial brain trust claims Canadians' rejection of the mission to Afghanistan isn't based on moral objections but on the casualties our forces have sustained.

If it ain't "A" then it's gotta be "B", eh? Maybe it's not really "B" either but "B" along with "C", "D", "E" and "F".

I don't believe that it is the casualties issue that is driving this as much as the combination of so many other factors. It's the haplessness of the Karzai government; the indifference of other NATO members; the ineptitude of George Bush and his stupid war in Iraq that keeps his military off the job in Afghanistan; the inability of our side to sort out Afghanistan's narco-economy; the corruption in the Afghan government, police and security services; the resurgence of al-Qaeda throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa; the resurgence of the Taliban and the wishes of Karzai and his parliament to negotiate with our supposed mortal enemy; our complete vulnerability to insurgents and terrorists operating with relative freedom across the border in Pakistan; the amount of time, effort and lives expended with no demonstrable result save for the resurgence of our opponents; the deaths of civilians caused by our addiction to artillery and airstrikes and - most of all - the total inability of our leaders - political and military - to present an understandable and convincing plan to win this thing.

No, Stevie, Canadians aren't deciding this on an "A" or "B" call. You and your buddy, Rick Hillier, have given us any number of reasons to say "no" to the mission.

It's Called Democracy, Dammit!

There are many types of government and each of them comes in a variety of shades. Democracy is one and, yes, hands down the best.

Each form of government has its strengths and weaknesses. Democracy also suffers from weaknesses and foibles. It's when political leaders choose to ignore those weaknesses that problems often arise.

In a totalitarian state, warfighting is the exclusive ambit of the masters. They decide when to go to war, against whom, for how long and just how that war is to be fought. It's when democratic leaders try to exercise the same powers that things can go sideways quickly.

Democracies have to exercise their martial powers in accordance with the public will. The people will generally support what they see as a valid war but their support is inevitably conditional.

Popular support for a war is a function of numerous factors; things such as what triggered it (watch out for lies), the quality of their leadership (lies are toxic), the legitimacy of the cause, the duration of the fighting and the state of progress. As a general rule, leaders of democracies who institute wars need to deliver results.

Democratic populations will support offensive war but they want a reasonably quick war and they want a decisive result. It's football, not cricket they're after. Get the job done and win.

Winning, however, means winning within the rules. The rules are, in turn, defined by popular acceptance. Totalitarian states can get away with reprisals, for example, where democratic states cannot. That's not to say that democratic states don't have a rich track record of excesses, they do. Usually, however, they can get away with this sort of unpleasantness either by concealing it or thanks to a public that really doesn't want to know. Abu Ghraib and rendition are two recent examples.

Today's democratic wars are fought with precision-guided munitions, not bayonets. Fact of life. We've lost our taste for mutilation and blood flowing in the gutters. That's one of the reasons why we despise insurgents. Their is not a sanitized war and we find it repugnant.

How many times have we heard pundits, even our own military leaders, rebuke the guerrillas for not coming out and fighting like men? We get that all the time. It's pathetically ludicrous. That would mean their "men" coming out onto the playing field with antiquated assault rifles and RPGs to stand and face our "men" replete with the latest tanks, artillery, small arms, attack helicopters and jet strike fighters.

Unfortunately our war fighting machine, powerful as it is, won't win guerrilla wars. End of story. Counter-insurgency is the most numbers-dependent type of warfare there is. You need massive numbers of soldiers on the ground - not tanks, not artillery, not jet fighters. We don't have the numbers to pull it off, we don't.

We can't be defeated militarily by the insurgents. They don't have the high-tech toys and firepower to do it. But staving off defeat is anything but winning because their war isn't decided by military victory but political victory. They're not out to win our war, they don't have to win our war. They're not even going to try to defeat our forces militarily.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that guerrilla warfare is unpalatable to democracies. We are neither prepared nor willing to commit the troop levels necessary for this fight so winning is out of the question. That means we have to get somebody else to fight the insurgents and who better than the locals? In reality, they're the only group that can win if only because they have nowhere else to go.

We've squandered six years in Afghanistan, six years while precious public support for the mission bled out. We had six years to help forge a viable, central government; six years in which to raise and train an adequate security force; six years in which to establish some semblance of security in the countryside. I'm sorry to say this but that is the face of failure.

We're a democracy, we don't have six years to squander on indecisive warfighting.

Canada is a very small player in George w. Bush's incompetently managed war on terror. We like to look at our performance in isolation of the rest but we can't. It's sort of like focusing on keeping one room of a house intact while the rest of the place is burning to the ground.

We control very little of our own situation. Everything the big players do ripples through our domain. Our fortunes are affected by what goes on in Iraq, in Iran, in Pakistan, in Washington, in Brussels, and in the Middle East generally.

The lead partner in the ridiculously named "war on terror" is going through the DTs. Republicans have read the polls and know this war thing will break their backs in 2008 so they're scrambling to find a way out. Their already conclusive failure in Iraq is going to have serious repercussions on the NATO war in Afghanistan. All those gleeful jihadis will be looking for the closest bunch of infidels to lay into and who do you think that would be?

Our fate is now very much in the hands of the American people who must be the least sophisticated populace of the Western nations, the NATO members. Will they have any appetite for continuing the war in Afghanistan after the humiliation of Iraq? America is a democracy albeit both an incredibly powerful and clumsy one.

Thirty years ago we saw what happened to American public opinion when they lost a major, unwinnable war. If that pattern is repeated after Iraq, it means big trouble for us in Afghanistan. Then again, that's democracy.