Afstan and patience

Will Canada have the staying power?

Afghanistan is a "success story" and Canada will have a presence in the country until the progress made cannot be reversed by Taliban extremists, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said Tuesday [April 3]...

"This government will support the mission — by our words and by our actions — until the progress in Afghanistan becomes irreversible [current Canadian action here--update: combat, apparently other NATO troops and ANA]."

Asked by reporters later to explain exactly how long Canada will stay in Afghanistan, O'Connor said Canada has pledged support over the next two to five years in the form of both troops and development aid.

He said Canada has committed itself to having troops in the country until February 2009 and to contributing millions in assistance through the Canadian International Development Agency until 2011...

A British view:

The CGS urgently needs to rebalance the Army's commitments because the growing demands of Afghanistan, with the Taliban spring offensive under way [seems rather the reverse - MC], otherwise threaten catastrophic overheating. The worrying thing is that, just as in Iraq, the reason more troops are needed in Helmand is to try to recover the situation tactically following miscalculations at the strategic and operational levels. Unless, however, the civil reconstruction effort, which is stalling there too, is revitalised, strategic failure will again be staring us in the face by the end of the year.

Then it will be a choice of another withdrawal that smacks of defeat, or committing even more troops to hold the ring while the policy is "revisited". Except that there are not the troops to commit without further erosion of the 18-month tour interval that the Army Board judges necessary for proper recuperation and retraining.

Of principal concern, though, is that the Government seems not to acknowledge that military force can only achieve so much. Quite simply, there is a lack of focus, intellectual honesty and rigour. Neither do ministers recognise that, without patience and the concomitant manpower and matériel, any strategy of forward engagement with al-Qa'eda will ultimately fail. No insurgency in which Britain has been involved has been won without patience. So if the Government wills these ends it must will the means. Or as Sir Mike Jackson, the previous CGS, said in his Dimbleby lecture last December: "If it expects its soldiers to pay in blood, the nation must pay in gold."..

And the Dutch approach on the ground:

...here in Uruzgan Province, where the Taliban operate openly, a Dutch-led task force has mostly shunned combat. Its counterinsurgency tactics emphasize efforts to improve Afghan living conditions and self-governance, rather than hunting the Taliban’s fighters. Bloodshed is out. Reconstruction, mentoring and diplomacy are in. American military officials have expressed unease about the Dutch method, warning that if the Taliban are not kept under military pressure in Uruzgan, they will use the province as a haven and project their insurgency into neighboring provinces...

[Dutch] Military officers... noted that successful counterinsurgency efforts typically required a decade or more — not months. Colonel van Griensven estimated that the task force’s approach would require at least 10 years. But the Dutch government has thus far committed to a two-year mission, ending in 2008, raising the question of whether their tactics will endure should the Dutch depart or reduce troop levels.

Colonel van Griensven said he understood the arguments over where the balance should lie between fighting and seeking friends. “There is no right answer,” he said.

“The only thing we believe is that using too much fighting is counterproductive. Will we be successful? I cannot tell yet.”

Army.ca comment thread here.

Now the Dutch approach may have some chance of success if the Taliban presence is limited and not too active--and remember Uruzgan province is sheltered from infiltration from Pakistan by Helmand (UK), Kandahar (Canada), and Ghazni (US) provinces. Yet the Dutch CDS says The Netherlands should end their mission in 2008 (update: Dutch defence minister will meet Canadian, American, British and Australian counterparts in Canada next week--nice of the Chinese media to let us know). Canada is only committed until 2009.

That clearly is not enough time either to be sure of 1) having restored a fair degree of security in the south and east (very doubtful the Afghan National Army, and especially Police, will be fully capable by even 2009); or 2) having put reconstruction and improved governance irreversibly on track. NATO can only gain and keep the confidence of the Afghans if they can be convinced we are there, benevolently, for a fairly long haul.

The military are all saying patience, patience, patience. Will governments be willing to fund the patience required? Will Canadian, British and Dutch voters have the patience, particularly if casualties go up again? And if these people do not have it, will any other NATO countries be willing to step in? Are an effective combination of IEDs and suicide attacks virtually unbeatable for Western troops engaged in counterinsurgency? What about Pakistan (another aspect here)? Food for an Easter weekend's thought.

Update: A good piece on the perils facing Pakistan, and a Pakistani official's defence of the government's Afghan policy. The Pak conundrum reminds me of what Churchill said about Russia in October, 1939:

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

Upperdate: A bad day. In contemporary terms.