Afstan: Reality and prospects

Paul Wells of Maclean's magazine talks to the former Representative of Canada in Kandahar:

...
After the Saraposa prison break, I went out every single day that week, out and about into the city to see how things were going. The first three days it was a ghost town. And you went through Kandahar City, you know that it is a bustling place. It was by the Thursday and Friday that people started to come back into their normal routines. Fast forward to July-August when we had the bombing of the provincial police headquarters. Things dipped in the city for maybe 24 to 36 hours and then they started to go back to normal. Fast forward to November and the bombing of the Provincial Council building. No perceptible shift in the pattern of life in the city. So in some ways it’s almost like people are starting to accept these acts of violence as part of the day-to-day, but it has a psychological impact on the population over time. And we see that in the polling, in terms of their overall confidence, their willingness, for instance, to put themselves at risk, to participate in the civic enterprise. And that, we need to be concerned about. And that’s why we need to continue to reinforce ANP… why the ISAF forces containing the insurgency, keeping the insurgents busy in the top crescent is going to be so important. So I expect that violence will increase over the next 8-9 months, just because we’ll have more dragons butting up against each other, as Denis (Thompson, former Canadian military commander in Afghanistan) would say. But the hope is that, at the same time, you’re creating a space to continue to improve the ANSF so that continues to increase the confidence of the Afghans.

Q: What does ‘winning’ mean in this context for what has been a bloody expensive, very painful Canadian investment?
A: If by winning, we mean an Afghan government that is viable, that is accountable and representative of the whole of the country, that can provide basic services and basic security and protect its own border, that’s what we’re aiming to achieve. And I do think that’s viable. But it’s going to take time. It takes strategic patience. People forget that it’s only been seven years that this country has emerged from 30 years of devastation.

Q: Does Canada have a strategic interest in that outcome?
A: Absolutely...

It's all about the Afghans (Pathans) in the south having confidence that the Taliban are not coming back. Taliban tactics--terrorist suicide bombings against the Afghan population in places that represent the government, along with murdering those representing that government at any level (especially if they are good at their job)--are their effort to implement a strategy to make that return seem either unlikely, or opposing which not worth the cost. To the population at large or to individuals trying to make that government work. That, people, is terrorism pure and simple.

In the face of which Afghans, Canadians, and everyone else should simply submit. As should Shia Muslims in Pakistan, also perhaps targets of the Sunni Pakistani Taliban.