Canada has improved Afghan lives: general
10 million boys — and girls — in schools
History is full of gruff army generals. Nevertheless, there are always a few exceptions who prefer to keep things light and bright rather than scream.
Maj.-Gen. Dean Milner, who runs all NATO training for Afghan security forces, is one of them. But the affable tanker — who led Canada’s last combat mission in Kandahar in 2010-11 — became incandescent when I asked him recently whether Afghans were worse off now than before Canadian troops first set foot here in the spring of 2002.
“How can you say it’s worse? Milner shouted, the colour literally rising in his cheeks and neck after he referred to articles that appeared in Canada this fall that made this assertion. “They’re not right. I totally counter that,” he said.
“When you and I were down in Kandahar, schools were getting blown up and burned down. All those schools are running now. Ten million children are now at school.”
Some of the classrooms that Canadians helped build or refurbish in the deeply conservative south are now educating girls as well as boys, he said. Despite resistance from the Taliban, he continued, millions of children have been vaccinated. Food is plentiful. The economy is humming.
As his NATO trainers are spread across Afghanistan, Milner may have travelled more across the country over the past six months than any other coalition soldier. What he has seen convinced him that the security situation, had “definitely improved.”
“The Taliban have not had any gains. It has not been able to be successful in any way.”
Although there were still attacks from time to time, the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police controlled the highways, he said.
Providing a quick security snapshot, he said fighting continued around Jalalabad in northeastern Afghanistan and in parts of Helmand province. The north was generally quiet, although it had always been that way.
“And look at Kabul. We had one attack in 120 days,” he said.
There was still “a tiny bit of fighting in Kandahar,” which Milner has visited five times in the past half year. That was in sharp contrast to the first half of Canada’s five-year combat mission there, when “we helped hold the fort,” he said. “We were able to hold the ground but we could not build as much as we would have liked because we did not have the rightsized force to do that.”
That changed after Parliament accepted the recommendations of the Manley Report in 2008. It brought Canadian helicopters and drones to Afghanistan. One of the other conditions listed in the report was that Canada would only remain in Afghanistan if another NATO country came to Kandahar to help out. The U.S. responded by sending first one and then several more battalions.
“By the time I got there, during the U.S. surge, Dand District was really moving in the right direction and I took over a smaller area that was better for counter-insurgency,’’ Milner recalled. “We were able to expand out into the Horn in Panjwaii and that created more confidence in Afghan governance.”
These developments and persistent threats by the Taliban to close schools and demands for money pushed Afghans in Panjwaii to rise up against the insurgents last year. The move into what had always been the Taliban heartland caused a countrywide sensation.
“When I look at Panjwaii now, General (Ahmed) Habibi of the ANA is completely in the lead with a full, capable brigade with logistics and artillery specialist capabilities,” Milner said. “They are fighting the Taliban with a very limited number of foreign advisers. They conduct their own counter-ID operations and air assault operations. Those are abilities that we, the Canadians, helped build down there.”
While the overall situation had improved, there were still many challenges. One of the main difficulties was that it was still possible for the Taliban and other insurgent networks to cross over the border from Pakistan. Another was that although the Afghan police were much better than they had been and progress had been made in combating corruption within the force, Milner acknowledged that it remained an issue.
However, the biggest problem and “an absolute focus” was unacceptable attrition levels in both the army and the police, he said.
Despite these shortcomings, the last Canadian commander in Afghanistan took great pride in what he believes Canada will have accomplished before he and the last few of the 620 Canadians still here fly home in mid-March.
“We’ve seen some great changes,” he said. “We just saw the first fighting season (without large numbers of NATO combat troops) and they’ve been successful. They took casualties, but they are feeling more confident from day to day.”
Milner’s unequivocal message was that “this training mission, on top of what Canada did in Kandahar, has really assisted the coalition and the Afghans.”