Over at The Torch, a serving army officer has laid down in writing his thoughts on problems facing the Afghan mission, and some potential solutions. He speaks for himself, not for the Government of Canada or the Department of National Defence. But he has numerous overseas operational deployments, including two tours in Afghanistan – one as a Company Commander in Kandahar in 2002, and another as Chief of Joint Operations for ISAF Regional Command South Headquarters, Kandahar in 2006. He holds three post-secondary degrees, and is an award-winning author on military affairs.
As I said in the introduction his article:
While you may or may not agree with each point he makes, I believe we need to listen more to credible people like [the author] Schreiber before forming our own opinions. He is but one example of the thousands of men and women (civilian and military alike) in this country who, each individually, have amassed more academic and hands-on knowledge and experience in Afghanistan than any dozen journalists and pundits you care to name.
I think you’ll find it worth your time to read the whole thing, but I found this particular paragraph stood out starkly for me:
If the bad news is that we need to significantly temper our expectations as to what can actually be accomplished in Afghanistan, especially in the next 1-3 years, then the good news is that we are already well on our way to “victory.” From a personal perspective, having done a military tour of duty in Kandahar in 2002, and again in 2006, I was completely buoyed by the progress that had been made during that time. In 2002, there was virtually no infrastructure to speak of – no real roads, electricity, medical facilities, agriculture, industry, and no contact with the outside world. Afghanistan lived as it had during Alexander the Great’s time, save for the addition of a few beat-up trucks, and the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. When I returned in 2006, Kandahar had advanced nearly 2 millennia – the electricity worked (sometimes), there was a real and effective highway that allowed a flourishing if nascent commerce to begin, there were cell phones (sometimes), and houses, and investment in construction and agriculture and business. And hope. If I had seen at the end of my tour in 2002 what I saw in 2006, I would have said that our mission in Afghanistan was complete: we’d taken a nation in ruins and despair, and given it a real if fledgling hope for a new future. And it is likely that this hope – the rising expectation that the immediate future will be better than the immediate past – that has been part of present consternation in Afghanistan. Hope begets hope, and rising expectations have a way of outpacing our ability to deliver on them. It should have been no surprise that Afghanistan could not maintain the pace of progress established, as the simpler development tasks were achieved largely in a vacuum. Further progress now faces both increasing complexity and entropy. If Afghanistan had advanced centuries in the few short years between 2002 and 2006, it has perhaps come but decades since, and now deals with all of the problems of an ethnically riven, economically challenged, politically fragile post colonial postmodern state – just like approximately 50 other nations in the world. That the election in Afghanistan has been tarnished by fraud should not be the headline; rather, the miracle is that there was a Western style election at all. That opium dominates the economy should not be seen as catastrophic, but rather as a potential source of income for Afghanistan. Concern that the radical Islamic Revolution spearheaded by the Taliban and their ilk is gaining momentum needs to be balanced by acknowledging and supporting the coalescing of moderate forces against this movement. One may despair over the wide swath of territory that the Taliban claims to reign over, but the fact is that it controls only the hinterlands, and can prosecute its campaign solely through the use of terror tactics, thereby creating the seeds of its own destruction. While much remains to be done in Afghanistan, one would be wise to look back at how far it has come in the last decade.
The piece is lengthy, so I’ve broken it down into two halves – Part 1 and Part 2.
And to be clear: the author’s intent with such a piece isn’t to end debate with an appeal to authority, but to kick start it with truly informed opinion. That’s the way forward.
