Team Canada: World Police

Here’s an article about the stalemate in Afghanistan that I both buy and roughly agree with.

I don’t believe in the Team America: World Police mentality that says western troops can drop into a country, pop off a few assholes and leave rainbows behind. I am concerned that once again western troops, including Canadians this time, believe that a semi-permanent occupation is enough to right wrongs.

What is the objective of this war? Is it to eliminate the Taliban to a man? If so, it is doomed to fail. I am not a student of history, but in this war torn region I believe few, if any, foreign armies have ever prevailed.

More importantly, though, a “might makes right” attitude is not a crowd pleaser with the local population. Without the widespread support of the Afghani people, the project cannot succeed. As long as the Taliban (if that really is a single group… is there an organization chart out there?) have a stronger claim on local government than the central Afghan government, then that support will not occur. Even if the Taliban do threaten and abuse local people, they also pay some of them and most importantly protect their cash crop. The Taliban may not be friends of ordinary Afghans but the situation is far too complicated to say that the Taliban are the enemies of ordinary Afghans.

The only reason foreign troops are in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and not in Colombia fighting the FARC is that George Bush wanted to kick some people after September 11th. And then there’s that nasty question of religion, which I’m steering away from.

The only reason that we are in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban is because we were sold a reconstruction mission in a country that was growing more stable by the day. I am not happy with the devolution of that mission into random melées and open war.

It looks like the West keeps trying to salvage the old Afghanistan plan through a few more choppers, or another load of tanks and troops. This is not going to work. We need to chuck the old plan, and start a new one.

A new plan needs to consider specifically what a foreign military presence can do on the ground to support the afghan government in its internal struggle against extremists and poppies. We can’t just be their army for them, and certainly not their generals. President Karzai has criticized the “reconstruction team” for its focus on dealing death: “It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying. In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed. [Even] if they are Taleban, they are sons of this land.” This remark was widely panned in the west, but if Karzai sees another way, shouldn’t that be reason enough to question what we’re doing?

It’s about time we chucked the paternalistic crap that we are in Afghanistan saving the day and faced up to the fact that what we’re doing — if well intentioned — isn’t helping.

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› political     2006-09-16 11:02   ...0