Afstan: Let's hope Lew MacKenzie is right

Excerpts from an article in the Globe and Mail by Canada's best known retired major-general:

Canada will not abandon Afghanistan
Come 2011, we'll be there one way or another
...
It's an embarrassing fact that Canada, a G8 country presumably because of its wealth, is incapable of maintaining 1,000 combat soldiers abroad indefinitely [Update: emphasis added; it's actually shameful]. This, despite the fact that previous white papers called for the capability of maintaining a combat brigade (4,000 to 5,000 combat soldiers) overseas in support of coalition operations.

During the 1990s, the “decade of darkness,” a sleeping public paid scant attention to the devastating impact of a 27-per-cent reduction to an already modest defence budget that left only one option to commanders – dramatically cut the number of personnel in uniform...

With a deployable full-time army of fewer than 15,000, we now have many soldiers with multiple tours in Afghanistan. By 2011, some will have four and possibly five. Add to each tour a year-long training regime before deployment and you start to understand the challenge of maintaining a modest-sized fighting force in the field.

The infantry that provides the bulk of the battle group's strength is doing so with fewer than 5,000 deployable full-time soldiers. Without augmentation by an even smaller and invaluable part-time militia, we would have been forced to abandon the Afghan mission before now...

As far as Canada's abandoning Afghanistan in 2011, even without reading between the lines, you can bet this won't happen. Afghanistan is the largest recipient of our foreign aid, with a number of signature projects that will continue. An ever-growing civilian presence assisting with governance and other aspects of nation-building also will continue.

The very effective Provincial Reconstruction Team and its protection element will no doubt stay, along with an increased number of mentors to help train the Afghan army and national police [but see BruceR on this]. The United States will probably lobby for retention of our outstanding medical facility at Kandahar airfield, along with the recently deployed helicopters and perhaps our artillery unit. The latter two will be controversial and lead to heated parliamentary debate because of their association with that dreaded term “combat [see end of this post].”

Let's face it: The Americans know as much about our army as we do, and they're probably surprised that we have been able to maintain a battle group in theatre as long as we have. By 2011, that will have been longer than the two world wars combined. I doubt very much we will be asked to extend a combat task they know we would find exceedingly difficult to do.

Canada will not abandon Afghanistan in 2011, no matter what the headlines suggest for the next two years.

Lewis MacKenzie is a retired major-general who was the first commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.

Here's a rather cynical (and honest) comment by E.R. Campbell at Milnet.ca (keep reading the thread):

...
It is, pretty much, the party line from Moscow Ottawa; viz:

• We have done great things;

• We have done more than our “fair” share;

• The army is tapped out – it needs a “time out;”

• We will still be “engaged” – just not in combat. We’ll have our very own caveats that will – everyone hopes – keep the casualty lists down;

• Parliament has spoken – if you like the pull out it’s a good, Conservative, idea; if you don’t like the pull out you can blame it all on Iggy and the Liberals; and

• We – Canadians, Conservatives, whoever – can have it both ways.

Meanwhile, an American defence expert speculates that the Aussies might take up some of the Great White North's burden:

CANBERRA - Australia has been advised to increase its military commitment to Afghanistan as it slips below Washington's horizon in the new priorities of President Barack Obama's Democrat Administration.

Reflecting similar United States messages that saw New Zealand agree to send the SAS back to the deepening war against the Taleban, Canberra has been told that it is not pulling its weight and should do more...

"Absent a huge crisis in Indonesia, the Taiwan Strait or perhaps Korea, Australians are unlikely to become the key ally of the US in handling a major issue," Dr Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said...

O'Hanlon, whose other distinguished posts include the Secretary of State's international security board, made his remarks in an analysis of the emerging relationship between Obama and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor Government...

Even with an increase that will lift Canberra's commitment to about 1550 troops in Afghanistan, putting the nation among the top 10 of the more than 40 coalition partners, Canberra was still punching beneath its weight.

"This situation should be addressed seriously by Australians," O'Hanlon said. "If they consider the Afghanistan war to be a reasonable enterprise with reasonable goals and a true importance, they should not be content with their present contribution."

O'Hanlon said Obama would probably be too polite to ask for another increase of any size, but a deployment closer to Canada's 2800 soldiers should be within Canberra's reach, and could partially replace Canadian troops when they were withdrawn in 2011 [emphasis added].

This would help the mission in Afghanistan, and cement the visibility and importance of the Australia-US alliance as Obama neared the halfway point of his first term...