Afstan: Sometimes you just can't win

Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star writes a good piece:

In the gush of blood spilled over 24 hours in Kandahar province, Canadian troops were barely smeared.

Four lightly wounded, two treated in hospital and released, one kept overnight.

But they'll get blamed, on the ground, for not preventing the unpreventable, because Kandahar is primarily a Canadian custodianship. And their "failure" to protect citizens – upwards of 200 casualties in a brace of suicide bombings – will be cited as further proof of the mission's irrelevancy; indeed, as provocation for merciless attacks on the innocent.

Governor Asadullah Khalid wasted little time in chastising Canadian Forces for all but – he implied – inciting the suicide attack yesterday that claimed at least 38 Afghan lives at a marketplace in Spin Boldak, a deranged district capital, Taliban stronghold and bristling armaments clearing house a stone's throw from the suicide-bombers-enter-here Pakistan border...

Operationally, the Spin Boldak suicide bomber had a less than negligible impact on the situation in Kandahar. But when the governor starts yipping about Canadian patrols conducting normal business – and perhaps Khalid is still miffed at being implicated by Canadian diplomats in the alleged torture of an Afghan detainee – the Taliban has achieved their purpose. And this unwise apportioning of blame will only encourage bitterness among Afghans, who don't know who to distrust more these days – their oppressors or their liberators.

"It's the local population that defeats the insurgency," Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, veteran of UN peacekeeping command in the Balkans, reminded yesterday. "You have to show them that you're going to stick around and you're going to give them better security than they'll get from the other side.

"Unfortunately, when we secure one area, the (Taliban) move in somewhere else. It's like trying to connect the spots on a Dalmatian."

If the Afghan government doesn't want Canadians there in a military role that includes standard patrols, it should ask us to leave. They've never done so, quite the opposite.

But Canadian forces don't deserve this kind of admonition from the top provincial administrator.

"We regularly receive warnings," countered Lt.-Cdr. Pierre Babinsky, Task Force spokesperson in Kandahar. "We assess them and we decide what to do about them. But the bottom line is that we want to go wherever we want, whenever we want, in our area of responsibility. Our job is to be out there ..."

There were no Canadians in the area when a man in a suicide vest all but promenaded into the security perimeter around an Afghan police commander – the apparent target – and his men as they attended a dogfight in Kandahar city Sunday.

Some Canadians will not get past even that wincing detail, wondering anew just what kind of an uncivilized and cruel people we are there to help. Which only shows how little we understand Afghans. While moral relativism is embraced as justification for asymmetrical warfare – the right of the weaker side to employ any tactic necessary against the overwhelming firepower of the enemy – cultural relativism has no traction.

Lacerated and masticated dogs we can understand, feel pity for them. Shredded Afghans, their flesh flung into the trees, strike a lesser chord of pity. Who is the primitive here?

The Taliban, in their era of formal power, outlawed dog fights. And the proscription was largely observed because the punishment was death. Perhaps we should be in Afghanistan to defend the sovereignty of canines? That might at least get the animal rights constituency onside.

According to wire reports, Afghan police responded to calamity at the dogfight corral with chaos, firing indiscriminately into the crowd. It was unclear how many bystanders were killed by police bullets and how many succumbed to shrapnel.

This underscores a sad truth about Afghan security forces: No matter the spin put on it, the formation and training of a reliable constabulary will be a laborious and protracted challenge.

To a considerable extent, the blame for this can be placed on NATO training programs that aren't properly integrated, as MacKenzie points out. The French are training junior NCOs, the British junior officers, and the Canadians doing "collective" training.

There is no cohesion. This is contributing to disjunction and breakdown under the gun. But everybody wants to train and few want to fight. Or venture, by convoy, into the belly of the Taliban beast.