Don't blame NATO allies for Afghan problems
Published: Saturday, December 02, 2006
The apparent unwillingness of NATO allies to share the burden of our Canadian soldiers in Kandahar has caused many to claim that organization is a failure. This argument has many weaknesses.
First, Canada should never raise the issue of NATO burden sharing or mission caveats. For decades, we had the poorest defence spending performance of all NATO members except Luxembourg. Further, throughout the Balkan operations of the 1990s, we employed mission caveats as wilfully as any ally.
Second, the call for those operating in the north to send their troops south likely hazards the only visibly successful sectors in Afghanistan. In the north, attacks are down, reconstruction is progressing and the Afghan military and police are being trained in large numbers. None of this is happening to any significant extent in the south, so those nations working in the north have little incentive to abandon successful but only half-completed projects there.
Third, Canadian support of reconstruction efforts in Kandahar is a disgrace. CIDA has not spent not a penny in Kandahar from August, 2005, to August, 2006. In the same period we spent at least $810-million on our military deployment to Kandahar. This summer, when NATO commander General David Richards suggested that he would rather have $50-million in development assistance than 5,000 new NATO troops, Canada promptly spent $189-million to send battle tanks to Kandahar.
Fourth, things in the south may soon be getting much worse, as the U.S. intends to spray defoliant on the poppy fields. The American Council on Foreign Relations predicts this will drive poor farmers to the Taliban. Regrettably, alternative approaches, such as funding alternative crops, get token treatment.
Finally, many of our allies may be reluctant to send their forces south because they have plans in place that will allow them to work in the north for the 10 to 14 years needed to stabilize and reconstruct Afghanistan. We have not. We started with a seriously flawed deployment plan and are now desperately attempting to correct it. The decision not to send troops to Kandahar for a second rotation, ever, means we mathematically cannot sustain operations past 2008-9.
Make no mistake. I feel NATO and Canada must be in Afghanistan, but blaming our allies will produce nothing but ill will. We would have better luck attracting allies and supporting our courageous troops if Canada provided adequate resources and a coherent, sustainable military plan.
Commodore Eric Lerhe (ret'd) and former director of NATO policy, Dartmouth, N.
