Afstan: Matthew Fisher lays it on the line

While I think Mr Fisher makes good points, I remain uncomfortable with reporters' writing news stories that are actually op-ed pieces (or ones fitting an agenda):

Punching above Canada's weight
Ambassador in Kabul country's most important

Canada's most influential ambassador does not reside in Washington, New York, London, Tokyo or Beijing.

It is Canada's man in Kabul, Ron Hoffman, who lives behind blast walls and bulletproof glass in a fairly modest house at the end of a street that has swarms of armed guards and several metal barriers that look as if they could stop a tank. Mr. Hoffman's status has been won militarily, diplomatically and with a fat wallet...

...[Our efforts in Afstan] have garnered Hoffman and Canada a privileged place at the same table as U. S. and British ambassadors while the plenipotentiaries of France and Germany have had to watch from a distance.

Douglas Hurd, the former British foreign minister, always liked to boast that the UnitedKingdom "fought above its weight." That is something Ottawa utterly failed to do for decades before Afghanistan although during the long blue beret and blue helmet period in Cyprus, the Balkans [actually from late 1995 on almost all our forces in the Balkans were under NATO, not the UN--not wearing blue on top, see here, here and here] and Africa it sometimes deluded itself and its citizens into thinking that its international reputation was much higher than it actually was.

A key difference now is that Canada has soldiers, diplomats and aid works all closely work the Afghan file together. It is not yet a perfect marriage of hard power and soft power, but Canada is a lot closer to getting the military/civil mix right than ever before [more here and here].

To get to this point the military, which has so many of the necessary logistical tools and leadership skills, has had to become less hidebound. On the civilian side a cadre of smart, dynamic, less traditional, more flexible diplomats and development experts is being assembled who want to be where the action is.

It is not just Hoffman who is influential. A Canadian fighter pilot runs NATO's Afghan air war. A Canadian general is to replace another Canadian as ISAF's chief military spokesman this summer. A fourth Canadian general is to soon oversee the psy ops war in the south [earlier post on the subject here].

They follow, Rick Hillier, the armed force's former chief of staff, who was ISAF's top general in Afghanistan for nearly a year. The army's top general, Andrew Leslie, did a tour here as ISAF's number two. Marc Lessard, who is to assume command of all Canadian troops overseas next month, was ISAF's top commander in the war-torn south last year.

Everything is still to be played for in Afghanistan. But the hard-won reputation that Canada has earned as a respected international player by assuming a leadership role here will inevitably disappear if Ottawa decides to cut and run in 2011.

Since Mr Fisher's current tour in Afstan is ending, I suppose he felt the need to get things off his chest.