Canada can still help Afghan women.
Who lost Afghanistan?
Not Canadians. No, not even Americans.
Afghans “lost” Afghanistan to the Taliban.
Yet you wouldn’t know it from all the anguished Canadian laments, uttered in lockstep with American breast-beating over the fall of Kabul interspersed with orations about declining U.S. military might and fading Canadian resolve.
Even by asking the question — who lost Afghanistan? — we betray our historical amnesia and geopolitical pretensions, echoing the 1950s-era Washington witch-hunt over “who lost China.” Afghanistan never was “ours” to lose — not America’s to surrender, nor Canada’s to coddle.
So too the endless secondguessing about an improvised — and therefore imperfect — humanitarian evacuation: It is easy to criticize an airborne exit on the fly, yet any flight plan will appear chaotic amid capitulation on the ground.
This wasn’t an exit strategy gone awry, it was exit tactics bereft of strategy. In truth, this was a war without end — only endless losses.
Canada came to U.S. aid in Afghanistan’s hour of need. But then-prime minister Stephen Harper soon realized the limits of power and the lessons of history, withdrawing the last Canadian combat troops a decade ago, and the last military trainers seven years ago.
When Canadians wag their fingers at Americans for following in our footsteps — retreating, in fact, in our footsteps — we are in no position to preach. When anti-war activists demand that western troops keep pacifying Afghanistan, that we might evacuate all those in need — including those who helped us when we needed it most — they are in no position to moralize.
When nation-building democrats argue that we have abandoned the women of Afghanistan to their Taliban persecutors, they have a point — but they also miss the broader point: Canada’s exit strategy was to tutor Afghan troops in the exigencies of war and the urgencies of defence — with an emphasis on self-defence.
The onus was on Afghans to stand their ground and fight their own battles, using the tools and guns and aid they were given. Instead, they gave those arms away, gave way to the conquerors and ran for cover — or fled the country.
That so many more wanted to follow them out of Afghanistan is only human nature. But after all the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers and diplomats in the field, and all the blood and treasure expended by Americans over two decades, it defies credulity and reality to demand more, as recent events reminded us in the desperation of evacuation.
The suicide/homicide bombing that claimed the lives of at least 169 civilians and 13 U.S. troops was big news, but one of hundreds of such attacks to befall the country every year. And the pre-emptive drone strike launched against another suspected suicide bomber may have been a case of mistaken identity — the only certainty being the ambiguity of such attacks over the past two decades, with untold civilian deaths chalked up as innocent collateral damage in pursuit of terrorist targets.
The problem is not so much that the West lost the war on terror as that it got bogged down in a civil war — with only one side displaying the patience to wait it out and fight it out. We were just passing through, with no one to pass the baton to.
An earlier evacuation of Afghans would only have telegraphed that the experiment was already over, triggering a full-blown panic and premature collapse of the country. There is no easy way to withdraw, for it is always a balancing act that sometimes succeeds but usually fails.
Those who mourn the Taliban conquest today would have been even more critical if the Americans had set off the process four months earlier by announcing that all was lost. There was at least an arguable case that 300,000 troops in uniform, armed with the latest American equipment, could fend off Taliban irregulars and protect all 39 million Afghans rather than forsaking them without a fight and rescuing only the favoured few.
To expect more Americans troops to risk their lives propping up a failed experiment was a non-starter in the end. That Afghanistan collapsed in a matter of days is not a condemnation but a validation of the U.S. withdrawal.
And yet some Canadians, or many of our commentators, have been caught up in the American debate. We are not part of that failed power play because we haven’t been players in Afghanistan for years.
A better question is how we can help going forward, rather than looking backward at an evacuation beyond our control. We cannot rescue an entire country, but we can help those who need it most — not least the women of Afghanistan.
Having interviewed Taliban leaders and fighters two decades ago on my trips to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, I saw up close their disinterest in dissenting views over women’s rights. Today, amid their triumphal return, the women of Afghanistan are risking their lives to be liberated.
A declaration from Canada (and other like-minded countries) offering sanctuary to any Afghan woman would send a fresh signal to the new regime before it reverts to its old ways. The idea of unconditional refugee status for all women — on grounds of presumed persecution — might be more political than practical, but fear of losing so many females might yet put the fear of God into all those Taliban terrorists, terrified of being left behind by the women they want to keep down.
No, Canadians did not lose Afghanistan. Yet we can still help Afghan women find their way.