Sending message we're tired of fight boosts taliban;
Afghanistan: To Stay Or To Leave? Two Points Of View
Nigel Hannaford
Calgary Herald – Editorial
01 Sept 2009
What's happening in Afghanistan would be easier to get if those delivering the news did not so often seem to relish anything that seemed a setback for NATO forces. Thus, "The bloodiest summer for NATO . . . August the worst month . . . widespread allegations of election fraud . . . massive bomb kills scores in Kabul."
Sure, if it bleeds it leads, as we ghouls are supposed to exclaim to each other, (although I have never personally heard it said in earnest.) And that bomb story resonated with me, the device having exploded right where I was standing on July 16, near NATO's Kabul headquarters. Timing really is everything.
But some writers, having estimated how great are Afghanistan's challenges, then conclude easily that defeat must be inevitable and our present attempts to meet those challenges should consequently be abandoned. (The accompanying piece by George Will for example: I did not expect to disagree with him so profoundly, so soon after he joined our roster.) Meanwhile, there's that voice television anchors use to signal their feelings, that often leaves me wondering what they think would be so bad about a stable government in Kabul, that denied the use of a country the size of Alberta to terrorists contemplating a rerun of 9/11. Maybe it's just an alias for anti-Americanism: Heaven forbid history justify George W. Bush.
Anyway, we'd be better off on this side of the world, if those forces were defeated that are now arrayed against us on the other.
What of the case for discouragement? NATO casualties have indeed been numerous. The Taliban acted on their threats to disrupt the presidential election, hanging a few voters. There was a rocket attack on Kabul's airport, which missed, and the aforementioned bomb intended to show Kabul's inability to guarantee security in its own Green Zone. Finally, pessimists point with gloomy delight to Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently did the talk-show circuit declaring the situation was "serious," and "deteriorating."
There, if the top guy says we're losing, what hope is there? Cut and run.
Well, Mullen didn't say we were losing, but that the Taliban had become "a more sophisticated foe."
And the criticism of U. S. intervention in both Iraq and Afghanistan was that they didn't go in big. But now the Obama administration has decided to repeat in Afghanistan the surge that so changed the tempo in Iraq, the president still needs the support of the nation. Ergo, what else was Mullen going to say, but things were serious?Why else, indeed, was he even on TV? Clearly, the man was preparing the ground for a presidential decision to build up U. S. forces in Afghanistan.
Finally, how does the situation look from the Taliban side? It's no fun.
To the credit side of their ledger, they're still in business, have safe havens in Pakistan (although none in the Swat Valley, since Pakistan's army decided to take them down there,) and have huge influence if not quite outright control of an area of Afghanistan that is equivalent to Alberta north and west of the Peace River, but which contains only about six per cent of the country's population. They can blow things up in other parts of the country, and sometimes do.
However, if you were a Taliban leader expecting to soon reclaim the country you once ruled, you would have your own angsts.
First, you could not stop the election. Flawed as the result may be, it happened, and was good enough. Then, those people who experienced your exercise of power are not eager to endure it again, not even in the supposed Taliban heartland around Kandahar, where Canadian Forces continue to receive discreet tips and information from local people. Elsewhere, that half of the population that is not Pashtun abhors the idea of a penal code based not so much on sharia law as the Pashtun tribal interpretation of it. If the Taliban win Afghan hearts and minds, it can only be through intimidation.
Nor is time necessarily your friend. Nation-building is painfully slow, but thanks to western intervention, Kabul is well on the way to an effective, battle-ready army with looser rules of engagement than NATO. And while you have bloodied NATO, what western governments find it indelicate to point out is nevertheless true: you have lost far more men than they have, and America has the battlefield edge. There can be no successful set piece engagement with NATO forces, as you learned from the Canadians a few years ago. Therefore there can be no triumphant march on Kabul, only more bombings in an attempt to shake western resolve to stay long enough to give the central government the tools it needs to maintain power.
That, you can do, of course. But it's not a shortcut to power.
So, we all have the same problem. The difference is that the Taliban don't send the message that they're tired of the fight.
We do. And to the detriment of the troops on the ground.
