Disarming Conflict

This week’s vote in the House of Commons to extend the Canadian military mission to mid-2011 includes an explicit shift away from counterinsurgency combat to protection of reconstruction. A serious criticism of such a change, especially if it were to reflect a general shift in the security strategy of international forces in southern Afghanistan, is that withdrawal from the counterinsurgency effort in the south will leave the population there to the not-so-tender mercies of the Taliban.

The switch from counterinsurgency combat in Kandahar, assuming that the additional 1000 troops that Canada has made a condition of its extension beyond 2009 would join Canadian forces in the switch, essentially calls for a new focus on protecting (and stabilizing and developing) those parts of the country under Government rather than insurgent control. If it were true that the counterinsurgency efforts of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were now effective in protecting Afghans in Kandahar Province, then ISAF’s withdrawal from that role could subject the people their to the wrath and reprisals of the Taliban.

The critics are certainly right to insist that the fate and safety of Afghan communities in the south should be a central concern and objective. But that begs the question of just how much of the south is now under the effective protection of Canadian and other ISAF forces.

By most accounts, very little of Kandahar province can be said to be currently safeguarded by foreign or Afghan forces. Recent maps seem to show even the Panjwai district, which has received prominent Canadian attention, to be in the "extremely hostile" category and hosting a permanent Taliban presence.

There is little evidence, therefore, that a pullback from counterinsurgency engagements in the province will actually leave a new security vacuum. Reports, as well as conversations with Afghans, suggest that in Kandahar province there is very little territory that is under the ongoing, that is 24/7, protection of Canadian or ISAF forces. In towns with district headquarters or Provincial Reconstruction Team projects, for example, the coverage of Afghan security forces, assisted by ISAF forces, may cover such a town in daylight hours, but at sundown the security perimeter is often said to be reduced to the headquarters building.

On the other hand, the pattern of military counterinsurgency operations actually tends to place the population in particular and heightened peril. Combat operations to clear certain areas of Taliban insurgents inevitably lead to elements of the population being displaced. The newly cleared territory is held for a time and thus the displaced people are able to return to their homes. But given current levels of foreign troops and the very limited capacity of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police forces, ISAF forces inevitably withdraw to pursue operations elsewhere and the Afghan security forces that are left to protect communities are unable to sustain the situation. The Taliban thus come back and drive out the Afghan security forces. Back in control, the Taliban then visit their reprisals on accused "collaborators." Then, at a later date, ISAF decides those areas must be retaken again for important strategic reasons, and the whole process begins again.

The military counterinsurgency effort creates this kind of see-saw that puts the population in extreme peril. The key lesson that seems to emerge is that ISAF forces should not take offensive measures to “clear” regions of Taliban fighters if they are not capable of “holding” them for the long term. The capacity to offer reliable and continuous protection does not appear to extend much beyond Kandahar city and its immediate environs. That argues for an ongoing presence in Kandahar city, coupled with protection in other parts of the country that are relatively stable, to pursue the "hold and develop" parts of the strategy.

It now seems clear that for most of the south and east, military efforts to permanently clear out the Taliban are failing[i] -- hence the need to hold what has been cleared (rather than trying to clear more areas that cannot be held for the long term), to ensure the insurgents do not return, and to pursue a political process with the Pashtun communities of the south for an acceptable political arrangement that either ends the insurgency or, at least, turns the majority of the population against the extreme al Qaeda and radical Islamist elements of the insurgency.