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We agree, again

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Link to original article on ruxted.ca

We agree, again

About six months ago The Ruxted Group was pleasantly surprised to find that we and the Senlis Council were in rough accord on the need for more development in Afghanistan, delivered in a more effective manner. Once again we find ourselves in broad accord with most of the conclusions and recommendations of The Senlis Council’s most recent (November 2007) report.

Some of The Senlis Council’s recommendations – such as extending NATO’s military mission into Pakistan – will be quite controversial and will not be well received by many in NATO’s HQ in Brussels, in Kabul or in Canada. Leaders should not, as Canada’s CDS appears to have done, discard any conclusions before reading the full report. Pakistan is, undeniably, providing a secure base (al qaeda means base) for the Taliban led insurgents; Pakistan is part of the problem. Somehow, in some way, we have to deprive the insurgents of their Pakistan support base.

Other recommendations, such as those dealing with how to manage the poppy crop, are somewhat less controversial but still difficult. US domestic political considerations drive the current poppy eradication programme which we continue to find wrong headed. Senlis calls for: “Pragmatic solutions to Afghanistan’s drug crisis: Alternative livelihoods and Poppy for Medicine. The Afghan government and the international community must deliver on their promises to create economically sustainable opportunities and thus incentives for stakeholders to move away from the illicit trade. Alternative development programmes must involve community participation at all stages of planning, implementation and evaluation.” We do not challenge their conclusion but we are certain that many will argue with their methods.

There are some statistical problems with The Senlis Council’s analysis of troop levels. The Canadian Council of Defence Associations Institute (CDAI) has explained that:

" - The comparative measures of NATO “standing armies” that are provided are misleading. For example, Canada’s army -which is about 20,000 in strength- is listed as “60,000” strong, while in reality this is the total size of the Canadian Forces. The US’ army is listed as half-a-million; however, this excludes the considerable size of the Marines, with a strength of some 200,000.

- The calculation of national troop contributions on the basis of 2.3 soldiers per billion GDP, while clear in its measurement, has an unknown lineage; it is unclear where the SENLIS Council took this measure from."

The Ruxted Group also agrees with the CDAI when it says that, “There is a major difference between the Taliban “holding” territory and the Taliban “controlling” or “administering” territory, and we believe that the two should be differentiated.”1

`NATO Plus,` as envisioned, by The Senlis Council is partially achievable. But, we cannot, must not expect or even hope that ‘old Europe’ (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc) will agree to remove the caveats that keep their troops out of harm’s way. On the other hand, the goal of adding some Muslim troops to ISAF should be manageable. There are some ‘militarily capable’2 Muslim nations beyond Turkey  – Jordan and Malaysia, for example – which should be invited to join ISAF.

On balance, however, The Senlis Council has produced a worthwhile report that deserves a full reading by Canada’s leaders. The fact is that no matter what many Canadians think we should be doing in Afghanistan, what we are doing is helping the Government of Afghanistan defeat an insurgency. Counterinsurgency campaigns are all about hearts and minds, not body counts. The goal, put simply, is to make life under the lawfully elected Government of Afghanistan, with all its warts, preferable to life under the Taliban and its fellow travellers. Canada’s 3D approach is well suited to accomplish this goal. It is, as we have suggested, in our submission to Mr. Manley’s Independent Commission, not working because only the military (Defence) `D` is working.

The Senlis Council and The Ruxted Group are calling for more and better 3D – from Canada and the world.



1. CDAI circular date/time stamped November 22, 2007 2:34:56 PM
2. See Ruxted’s Changing the Guard for our use of that term – following that of the UN’s Director of Peacekeeping Operations.
 
John Robson is an Ottawa Citizen columnist with whom I sometimes agree, very broadly, but rarely in detail. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright from today’s Ottawa Citizen is one of his columns which struck a chord:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=72d73405-7b24-41fd-b208-1e980a617662 
Afghanistan's no quagmire, it's an anti-malarial swamp

John Robson
The Ottawa Citizen

Friday, December 07, 2007

With everyone off in Bali dealing with the urgent menace of global warming or panting over Karlheinz Schreiber's semi-revelations, might I interest you in some malaria?

No thanks? Lacks glamour? OK, malaria doesn't hand you $100,000 in cash and not ask for a receipt. It doesn't excite Hollywood celebrities or in a pinch make you one. But it is the No. 1 killer of children in Africa. Plus I found something new and encouraging to say about it in an unexpected venue: a Senlis Council press conference on Afghanistan.

I confess to going in with vague suspicions that the council were among the usual suspects on foreign policy. They seemed to be calling the Afghan mission a disaster and most people who do so are engaged in wishful thinking like, of course, most of those calling it a success.

One of the weird and wearying things about issues like Iraq or Afghanistan is the way people's assessment of what is happening so often reflects what they wish was happening. Like the Wednesday New York Times headline, "A Calmer Iraq: Fragile, and Possibly Fleeting." Who knew they'd say that?

I started reading the Senlis handouts about Afghanistan unravelling and the Taliban taking over and I'm thinking "Yeah, yeah." And then suddenly they're demanding that NATO double its expeditionary force and the Euro-slackers send more troops into the dangerous south and into parts of Pakistan. Then Senlis warned that setting a timetable for Canadian withdrawal was a recipe for another Rwanda or Srebernica.

I already knew the Senlis Council thought paying Afghan farmers to cultivate poppies for medical purposes instead of heroin is far better than U.S.-backed crop eradication that alienates Afghans without staunching the flow of illegal drugs. And I suppose ideas make strange bedfellows because I already agreed. But I was pleasantly surprised when council president Norine MacDonald told the press conference CIDA was doing such a wretched job of delivering aid in southern Afghanistan that the Canadian Forces should take over.

When questioned later about the impression it would create if we militarized aid, she said it would create the impression starving people were getting food and she wasn't going to heed "theological" objections from the "aid and development community" who didn't have a better plan or any plan at all. Cool. She also reminded us how horribly the Taliban treated women last time. Are you listening, Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton?

Then she handed the microphone to Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa, to discuss the link between Afghanistan and fighting malaria.

Yes, he's also the guy in a dispute with DND over treatment of Afghan prisoners and Access to Information. Which again made me skeptical because while I dislike government secrecy, I'm not inclined to fuss unduly about the fate of irregular combatants in hideous guerrilla wars, nor to reproach the Afghan government for the quality of its paperwork when it can't even pay its police.

Anyway, the good professor turned out to be a malaria enthusiast. Uh, let me rephrase that. He's a passionately committed expert who wants the "international community" to do more about malaria.

There is no "international community" (fortunately) but let me recommend the rest of his plan. I had somehow acquired the impression malaria was manageable, not curable, that retired Indian army majors tended to start shaking every few months for the rest of their lives and downing quinine cocktails (a.k.a. gin and tonic) to suppress symptoms. It turns out one type of malaria does recur but not the lethal Plasmodium falciparum variety ravaging Africa. And that one, falciparum, is curable. Dr. Attaran says a simple course of pills, usually for three days for about a dollar, does the trick. Here's the punch-line: The medicine he advocates (Artemisinin Combination Therapy or ACT) is in short supply but is principally derived from a hardy plant called Artemisia, or "sweet wormwood," easy to grow in Afghanistan. So his idea is to raise charitable funds to pay Afghan farmers to grow sweet wormwood, pay other Afghans to extract the key ingredient, then donate it to the World Health Organization to process into medicine.

I don't think this idea, alone or combined with the medical poppy plan, would completely stop the flow of illegal drug money to the Taliban. But it would contribute to the success of the Afghan mission while saving hundreds of thousands of lives a year cheaply. When the muckamucks get back from their Bali yak-fest and finish shovelling their snow maybe they should look into it. Or we could just go ahead without them.

John Robson's column appears weekly.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

Robson has had a couple of Ruxted moments. The Ruxted Group, with which those who both to look will know that I am a member, has twice found itself in accord with the Senlis Council.

We did not expect to be. We knew, from some research, that Senlis had been all about drug policy. After their May 2007 Policy Paper and  presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development Ruxted changed its collective mind.

Some Ruxted members visited the Senlis Council’s staff and were pleasantly surprised to learn that we shared some, perhaps many of their views on development and security. I think it is fair to say that Senlis has, gradually, moved much closer to Ruxted than Ruxted has to Senlis – but that’s just perception.

Ruxted, like Robson, agreed with Senlis again, just last month. As has been reported here, Senlis seems quite close to Ruxted in some of its proposals made to the Manley Commission.

Similarly, evidently Mr. Robson found some good in Dr. Amir Attaran’s ideas about growing sweet wormwood in Afghanistan to help deal with malaria in Africa. So, I suggest, should we – even as we continue to disagree with him on e.g. the Afghan detainee non-issue.

Afghanistan as a society, like counterinsurgency as a function, is complex, multi-faceted and difficult. We must not be afraid to look well beyond our, traditionally narrow, military domain to find ways to win the counterinsurgency campaign for Afghanistan and the Afghan people.


 
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