Now that Parliament's adjournment has put a temporary pause to the debate on Afghan detainees, Canadians can turn their attention to another Afghan topic that deserves equally serious attention but has been largely ignored: how this country can respond to U.S. President Barack Obama's new “counter-insurgency” policy in Afghanistan.
The policy's basic premise is that an additional 30,000 troops can create conditions within the next 18 months that will halt the Taliban's growing influence. Central to the strategy is the focus on protecting civilians, mainly in the south where Canadians have been engaged, and the subtext is the assumption that the government of Afghanistan will reform itself sufficiently within this period to provide Afghans with enough trust and confidence that they will reject the Taliban.
During recent meetings in Washington with a group of former foreign ministers chaired by former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, I heard from top military and civilian officials of the Obama administration who laid out the rationale for the new policy. They made a convincing case that preventing the Taliban from a takeover and depriving al-Qaeda of its sanctuary in northwestern Pakistan is central to the security of both Afghans and the rest of us alike. As Mr. Obama argued in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, there are evil forces that must be stopped.
But there is a serious flaw in this thinking. While more troops can provide enhanced security to Afghans, it will not rebuild a war-torn economy or change the rampant corruption that prevails. A military surge by itself will not do the job.
What is equally needed is a “civilian surge,” involving a much broader coalition of countries to support the reform and redevelopment of the institutions and economies of the Afghan people. Based on our collective experience in the Balkans in the 1990s and other peace-building exercises, the former ministers agreed that “we all believe that the entire international community must do more in Afghanistan to build an effective civilian effort to match the military efforts on the ground. Without this, there will be no effective counter-insurgency strategy.”
A conference on Afghanistan security and development, hosted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London next month, is an opportunity to build an effective assistance package that enables Afghans to develop their own security capabilities and initiate meaningful economic and social reconstruction.
One key area is building regional trade links so that the Afghan people can make use of their natural advantages in mining, commerce and agriculture, and replace their dependence on the opium trade. This will require major infrastructure projects, which also become a source of jobs for the many young unemployed who are joining the Taliban simply to make a decent wage.
Of equal importance is the need to greatly expand efforts in education and training, and to be much stronger in protecting women's rights – areas under severe pressure not only by the Taliban but by the governing warlords in Afghanistan.
These are initiatives that must be seen in a full regional context. Just as the Americans have geometrically increased the number of drone attacks targeted at al-Qaeda chiefs hiding out in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan, so should the efforts at economic rebuilding, education and women's rights become a priority in dealing with Pakistan before it, too, loses to radical fundamentalists because the needs of the ordinary Pakistanis are being ignored.
It is important to remember that rebuilding is not a short-term fix; it requires a long-term commitment, as we found in the Balkans. The former ministers' statement makes the point that “more attention needs to be given to the challenge of educating each of our publics about the long-term imperative of sustaining international involvement in Afghanistan/Pakistan.”
This has special meaning to Canadians. There is a prevailing assumption that once our combat role is finished in 2011, we can walk away from the region. If we do so, we give up on the massive investment of lives and resources that have already been committed. But our involvement could change to a stronger focus on a “civilian surge” strategy and we could begin to carve out which areas of involvement we are prepared to undertake as early as the London meetings.
This would not only maintain our already substantial engagement, albeit by a different form, but also demonstrate to our North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners that we are not abandoning the field but contributing in another way, a way most Canadians would find compatible with our values and traditions.
Lloyd Axworthy is president of the University of Winnipeg and a former Canadian foreign affairs minister.
