The Torch: Who really cares about Afstan and our mission?

Not, according to John Ivison of the National Post, our politicians (especially as the subject of Afstan is becoming a real downer):

Operation sleepwalk

A political consensus has emerged over Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. That is, there are no votes to be won in talking about it, so our politicians have decided not to bother [see end of this post].

Even NDP leader Jack Layton, who could always be relied on to bang on about Canadian troops being withdrawn with immediate effect, has been strangely mute on the subject.

Since the Manley report on Afghanistan, and the motion adopted by the House of Commons in March 2008 that committed the government to end Canada's military presence by the end of 2011, it's as if politicians of all stripes have reached the conclusion their mission has been accomplished.

But as one Canadian with military, governance and NGO experience in Afghanistan put it, Canada is sleepwalking toward 2011, with no clear vision of what is going to follow the military mission.

"It's the latter half of 2009 and Canadians still don't have a picture in their mind's eye of what military pullout really means

"Are we going to leave development projects protected by the Afghan national army [well, there are already a lot more US forces in the area than Canadian, and maybe more in the future]? Are we still going to contribute to Afghan police and army training? Are we going to keep the PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] in Kandahar -- and if not, how is CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] going to operate?" he said [more ideas here on what the CF might do post-2011]...

...The lack of debate offers proof to the adage that, if diplomacy is about surviving into the next century, politics in a minority parliament is about surviving into next week. But the blood and treasure already paid by Canadians demands our political leaders take a more strategic view and start talking openly about the next step.

The lengthy article has a good, critical, discussion of Canada's aid and development efforts.

(Update: A comment by E.R. Campbell at Milnet.ca:

...
• No Canadian government, not Chrétien’s, not Martin’s and not Harper’s, ever wanted to succeed in Afghanistan. They all had and still have domestic, partisan political aims that always override every strategic consideration;

• Despite Ivison’s very legitimate demand, we will not hear much about Afghanistan because there is a broad, national consensus that “we’re done here.” )

But some people on the ground take a rather more, er, courageous stand than our "leaders", according to Matthew Fisher of Canwest News (in rather impassioned piece, as much advocacy as reporting; but, hell, almost all our reporters do that--see Globeite Ibbitson at this post, already linked to):

Confident voice of Canadian troops rarely heard in Afghan debate

Sapper Alexandre Beaudin-D'Anjou, his face still bloodied and badly swollen one day after a homemade landmine had killed two of his colleagues last week, announced he would answer questions about the awful incident, but only after making a statement.

In what was an exceptional "cri de coeur" to his countrymen on the home front, the young combat engineer from Quebec City declared: "I want to say that part of the Canadian population negatively views the work that we do here, above all because they don't understand what we do. In my opinion, the majority of the Afghan population benefits from what we do.

"Sadly, there are dangers in this, as you saw in yesterday's incident. All the soldiers feel deeply that we will finish this work for one another."

With Internet access, and radio and television stations streaming news programs to their forward-operating bases and strongpoints, soldiers are acutely aware that some commentators -- with little or no knowledge of what soldiers confront in Afghanistan -- have given up on them and their mission.

They say they are more than a little bewildered by all the discussion about "wither Afghanistan" and disappointed that the Liberals and Conservatives -- who ordered them to the far side of the world -- have become so terrified about the Afghan file's potential political consequences that they have fallen silent about the current mission and what Canada may do when Parliament's current mandate expires in 2011.

There could not be two more different views of what Canada is achieving in Afghanistan than that of the troops and of the mission's critics at home.

Unlike the U.S., where there is a robust, multi-faceted debate about Afghanistan in which senior soldiers can make their views known, all Canadian soldiers are under strict orders from Ottawa to remain silent about the Afghan mission's future and ways that Canada might adapt or change its mission for the better [this is relevant: "Canadian media watched closely in Afghanistan"].

However, in stark contrast to the talk at home, there is confidence among Canadian troops and civilians in Kandahar that a tipping point has been reached recently in the province, with the long awaited arrival of the U.S. cavalry [see end of this post]...

The view of many Canadian soldiers, which they have not been allowed to express publicly, is that the war in Afghanistan is far from being lost. There is much evidence that the Taliban is running out of room to hide and will find themselves in a dire situation if more U.S. troops are made available to cover the flanks and the routes they take to their winter sanctuaries in Afghanistan are cut off...