Canadians cursed him or praised him depending on their own prejudices. In some cases, a majority supported his pragmatism, as in federal spending to fight off the 2008 economic slowdown. The same applies to his latest flip-flop — vowing never to “cut and run” from Afghanistan but now doing so.
He even conceded at the NATO summit in Chicago that he wished “it was earlier. But I think we are doing it as early as is feasible.”
That’s not true. Since 2006, the window opened more than once for us to get out. He chose not to — with Liberal support.
Many Canadians did die in vain, as difficult as it is to say it.
The argument for an earlier orderly withdrawal was not — as the hoary cliché had it — that Afghanistan was not fixable but rather that we had proven incapable of fixing it.
The historic opportunity that had been opened up with the toppling of the Taliban had been squandered, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that the American army was too trigger-happy, too inefficient and too ignorant to succeed in an endeavour that entailed patient cross-cultural nation-building.
The longer NATO failed, the more legitimacy the Taliban “resistance” gained, despite their terrorism and endless brutalities. The sooner we got out, the sooner the Afghans could get on with the inevitable challenges posed by the end of a foreign occupation — just as the Iraqis are doing, following the American pullout.
While NATO has finally acknowledged the need to get out and at the same time not abandon Afghanistan, it’s still looking for a military solution — propping up a big Afghan military. It is mostly to that enterprise that Harper has pledged $110 million a year between 2015 and 2018. If NATO with all its might could not defeat the Taliban, why do we think Kabul can?
The solution will have to be political and economic. That means — besides reconciling old traditions with modernity, a struggle not confined to Afghanistan — a proportionate distribution of power between the majority Pushtuns and other tribes. That means making peace with the Pushtuns who live across the border in Pakistan. That entails making peace with Pakistan.
But the U.S. and Pakistan are at loggerheads. Washington has had it with Pakistan providing havens and support for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Pakistan is fed up with impossible American demands and with drone attacks that kill Pakistani civilians. It wants such bombing to cease (CIA won’t agree). It wants an apology for the killing of civilians (which Barack Obama can’t give in an election year). It wants more money for NATO supplies going by land through Pakistan to Afghanistan, supplies it has held up for six months (the Obama administration can’t agree, given the mood on Capitol Hill, where a congressional committee this week suggested holding up $900 million in aid to Pakistan).
“This is a Mexican standoff in which both sides lose,” says Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.
But the two sides have no choice but to deal with each other. If abandoning Afghanistan is dangerous, abandoning Pakistan would be even more so. Not because of that silly proposition that Pakistani nukes might fall into the wrong hands, but because Pakistan is sinking deeper into militant lawlessness and economic breakdown.
Other regional powers have a stake in Afghanistan as well, in varying degrees — Iran, India, China and Saudi Arabia. There’s no solution to Afghanistan without regional co-operation, either.
“Creating stability in Afghanistan does not create stability in the region but creating stability in the region creates stability in Afghanistan,” Nawaz told me Wednesday. “Yet no framework for regional co-operation emerged out of the Chicago summit.”
The U.S., exhausted from the Afghan and Iraq wars,need not play a direct role. But it must help stabilize Pakistan with assistance from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank and Muslim allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And it should act as a facilitator to bring the regional players to a conference, if for no other reason than to minimize their meddling in Afghanistan.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Haroon Siddiqui
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