It has been months since defence department officials first broached the subject of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan. Not casualties resulting from “friendly fire” or traffic accidents, but from enemy action.

This was the first indication that the government wished to prepare Canadians psychologically for the unthinkable: Canadian troops taking the lives of foreigners and having their lives taken in the process.

picture curtsey of DND

Since early 2005 there have been one or more “take note” debates in the House of Commons, where MPs were given the option of learning what dangers Canadian troops might face as they moved from the relative stability of Kabul to the turbulent environs of Kandahar. Opposition members, including their respective party leaders, have had ample opportunity to put forth their concerns, call for a full parliamentary debate, or argue for a change in policy.

It is surprising, therefore, that NDP leader Jack Layton waited until the campaign to voice reservations over the government’s decision to assume a greater degree of responsibility for the stability and recovery of a faraway land. More recently he asserted that neither his party nor Canadians in general were supportive of a role that went beyond peacekeeping.

Some of this can be attributed to a need to lay out a unique political platform (both the Liberals and the Conservatives support a more robust deployment to confront the insurgency). It may also be intended to play to public suspicion of the US and its role in Afghanistan. But how decisive should the US presence be in our decision to carry on after last week’s deadly suicide bombing? If the Americans were not on the scene would Mr. Layton see the mission in a different light? Or is Afghanistan just too far removed from the home front to be worthy of Canadian blood and treasure?

picture curtsey of BBC News

In September of 1938, with war clouds looming, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously observed: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

The country in question was Czechoslovakia, and shortly after Britain and France sacrificed the Czechs in the vain hope that Hitler’s appetite would be satisfied; that he would cease efforts to spread Nazi control throughout Europe. It had the opposite effect. Driven by an a political zeal that would impress today’s Taliban, the wily dictator sensed that the allies would purchase their own peace with the peace and freedom of others; that when push came to shove, the Western democracies did not have the courage of their convictions.

Canada knew that to enter any armed conflict against Germany would, inevitably, offend millions of Germans and bring the war to Canada’s shores. But as the political agenda and value system of the Nazis were not considered to be ones to which decent people could reconcile themselves, a decision was made to enter the fray. Not long afterward, the great C.D. Howe, Minister of Munitions and Supply, declared: “We are in this war with everything we have.”

Skip ahead a few decades. Most Canadians do not perceive themselves to be locked in a titanic struggle for the future of civilization. Despite the globalization of radical Islamic terrorism there is little outward sense of national vulnerability. The country is not on a war footing. Many undoubtedly feel that so long as our pleasant little status quo is not disturbed back here, Canada can safely remain aloof from troubles in distant lands – even when those troubles have migrated close to home, knocked down buildings, and killed Canadians sitting at their office desks.

picture curtsey of CTV.ca

Yes, Mr. Layton may have hit on something. Perhaps there is a limit to what we are prepared to do for our own the security and for the security of others. So long as we are “peacekeepers”, that’s fine. But fighting for what we believe is not the Canadian way – at least not anymore. That belongs to our primitive past. Thus entering into a physical struggle with jihadists – who, through repeated assassinations, beheadings and suicide bombings have shown their contempt for the people they profess to represent – cannot be condoned because, well, it’s just not the progressive thing to do. Of course, we are loath to acknowledge these self-imposed limitations publicly, lest friends and allies call us to account. What does it say about a self-proclaimed multilateralist who declines to shoulder a share of the burdens and risks of bringing stability to regions of the world in dire need of it? Few seem to recall that, whatever their misgivings about

Canada’s NATO commitments or the foreign policy of the United States, the United Nations charter requires members states to make available armed forces to restore international peace and security – not just keep it. Indeed, the Security Council has given its blessing to NATO’s Afghan operation, thereby satisfying a key NDP condition for the deployment of Canadian troops overseas.

Mr. Layton’s remarks should be welcomed as an opportunity – at election time, no less – to ask who we are and what we stand for. But the remarks are also untimely – the issue could have been raised in the months leading up to the deployment – and not a trifle misguided.

The intent of the Kandahar mission is identical to previous peacekeeping operations: to give a battered country time to recover and administer to the needs of its people. The difference is that, this time, the recovery process is being opposed by groups who wish to re-impose a medieval political order (a goal not shared by the vast majority of Afghans) and who see no problem in employing extreme violence to establish it. If they must slaughter aid workers, diplomats, as well as thousands of their countrymen and co-religionists in the process, then so it must be. 

If Canadians, including Mr Layton, believe that the end – a peaceful, stable Afghanistan - is truly worthwhile, then they have little choice but to support appropriate means to achieve it. And the means must include not only the “stabilization” tasks that Canadian troops have performed for the last four years, but also more proactive operations that will keep the insurgents off balance. Why? Because the aim cannot be achieved by having Canadians standing on street corners or patrolling the perimeters of their base while those who would kill and maim are left to roam the countryside or infiltrate the cities and set off car bombs. Put simply, peacekeeping and counter-insurgency operations (a.k.a. “limited war”) are complementary. One cannot succeed without doing both simultaneously. Afghanistan is too far gone for blue berets to ride to the rescue.

To be sure, peace restoration is not solely a military matter. The rehabilitation of a war-torn country will require diplomatic, economic, social, and technical assistance. Troops simply provide a secure environment in which the other partners can do their vital work. They buy time for the host government regain its footing and take care of its people. This noble goal takes place in a dangerous environment. Minimizing the danger will require good intelligence on what mischief the insurgents are planning, and the will to physically subdue them.   

Still, Mr. Layton’s stance is attractive. It is tempting, even preferable, to believe that Canada has no enemies, and that it is not our destiny to offer offence to anyone. It is equally tempting to that believe that our values – which we constantly trumpet but have not defended in earnest for two generations – will simply prevail on their own. And it is easy to be beguiled by the credit our troops have brought to this country when deployed abroad as peacekeepers. How fortunate we have been to have the luxury of embarking, for the most part, on low-risk missions where our forces adhere to a latter-day version of the Hippocratic Oath, and do no harm.

 

How unsettling, then, is Afghanistan, where harm must be visited upon the enemies of the very progressiveness that Mr. Layton champions back home. How unusual that a self-proclaimed “peacekeeper” has taken sides, throwing its lot in with - wait a second - a democratically-elected government battling the forces of regression. And how haunting are the exhortations of President Hamid Karzai after last week’s suicide bombings in which Canadians and Afghans died together. Like a voice from the past imploring us not to succumb to the isolation of the 1930s, the Afghan leader beseeched the outside world not to abandon his country to the extremists who wish to usher in a new dark age.   For Canadians this is not merely a (limited) call to arms.Mr. Karzai,

picture curtsey of DND

unwittingly, is asking us to take a good look in the mirror. When the risks are high, what are we prepared to do for a people “of whom we know nothing”? To what degree are we our brother’s keeper? How deep runs the responsibility to protect others? Are we even entitled to export our values? In doing so do we become imperialists?

Doing nothing for Afghanistan would be a legitimate, if unfortunate, policy choice. So is doing the bare minimum. Canada could send money for reconstruction but not troops, although without the latter there is no guarantee that the former would have the desired effect. Whoever forms the next government can choose either course without paying a domestic political price. Aversion to risk may be rewarded at the polls rather than punished.

The great German statesman Otto von Bismarck once said that the Balkans were “not worth of the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier.” Yet Canada spent a decade there trying to bring peace to peoples of whom they had little knowledge or natural affinity. Will Canadians give Afghans the same chance for a better future, or conclude that that battered country is not worth the life of one Royal Canadian Dragoon?

The answer may take some time to become clear. But the odds are on the side of the insurgents.

It is in their neighbourhood that we are operating, and it is their rules of war with which the allies must come to terms. It is difficult to vanquish those who believe their god is speaking to them, directing them to sacrifice themselves.

picture curtsey of Afghania Portal

In the seminal Viet Nam war film Apocalypse Now, a renegade American officer reflected on the ferocity of the communist enemy, whose tactics included the deliberate killing of children. Said he: “That’s when I realized that they were stronger than we were. Because they had the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our problems here would be over very quickly.”   Canada does not field such men, nor should we. We would lose too much of ourselves in what would be a pitiless struggle, a war of annihilation. But the point that fortitude and commitment, not to mention “horror and moral terror”, are the keys to victory is instructive to those preaching engagement. Is there

reason for hope for peace and stability now that the suicide bomber reigns supreme? Will the international community have the stamina to persevere? Will the embattled Karzai government be worthy of the sacrifices that are being made on an almost daily basis?

Osama bin Laden doesn’t think so. His call for a withdrawal of US (and Western) forces from Muslim lands in exchange for a truce is both shrewd and timely. It will resonate among those sections of Western pubic opinion weary of Iraq and skittish of the need to get a handle on the Afghan insurgency. Having threatened Canada before, his offer could be taken up by Canadians who fear attacks by home-grown militants, such as those who sowed carnage in London last July.

Look for calls to strike a deal with the devil, although it won’t be called that. If the price of “peace” is abandoning Afghanistan to its fate, it is a price many in Canada might be willing to pay. It would be Czechoslovakia all over again, but a sort of stability would be restored. What that stability would look like and how long it would hold is anyone’s guess.

David Rudd is the President and Executive Director of the CISS.

Copyright CISS 2006

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