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After more than a decade, Canadian soldiers are about to pull out of Afghanistan for good. Are Afghans ready to go it alone?
Acigarette butt and a half- eaten plate of rice lie on the polished stone of what used to be known as Camp Nathan Smith Memorial Square. The square was once a place of honour, where photos of some of the Canadian soldiers killed were displayed and Remembrance Day ceremonies were held. At the height of the war, the camp — named after one of the first Canadians to die in this volatile country — was home to 300 Canadian soldiers and 80 civilians, including development workers, diplomats and police, and was the cornerstone of Canada’s reconstruction and aid efforts in Kandahar province.
It now houses a small number of Afghan security- force personnel, but even they don’t want to stay. Afghans want to turn it into a women’s centre, but don’t have the money.
So the base sits and slowly falls apart.
Thirteen years after the West went into Afghanistan to take out al- Qaida and the Taliban and then build up the country so they could not return, there is a war- weary desire to cut and run that wasn’t here before.
Although it is expected that some training personnel and advisers from the U. S. and other nations will remain, the pullout is in full swing. In the north of the country, the Norwegians have closed down their provincial reconstruction team. Australian combat troops are gone from the southeast.
And in mid- March, a small group of Canadian soldiers will haul down the Maple Leaf flag at their base in Kabul and walk onto a transport aircraft for the flight home, the last to serve in Canada’s largest military deployment since the Second World War.
So as the remaining soldiers snap up T- shirts that say “Whoever leaves last, please turn out the lights,” the question on many people’s minds is simple: Can the Afghans, alone, find their way in the dark?
Early days
The first Canadian troops — a few dozen commandos — arrived in late 2001 in support of the U. S. bid to eliminate al- Qaida. Early the next year, 750 regular- force soldiers joined them. After those initial efforts in the Kandahar region, the military settled into what was essentially a peace support operation focused on Kabul. Security was provided for the 2004 Afghan elections, soldiers patrolled parts of the city, and some development work was done; wells were dug, buildings repaired.
The mission ramped up in 2005 when the Liberal government supported the recommendation by the Canadian military
The entire NATO exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure. HAMID KARZAI AFGHAN PRESIDENT
leadership to send combat troops to Kandahar province. The following year the Conservative government extended what was supposed to have been a limited mission, setting in motion a period of intense warfare that Canadians had not seen since the Korean conflict.
That same year, Canada signed on to the Afghanistan Compact, an agreement between the government of Afghanistan and the international community to support reconstruction in Afghanistan, including measures to promote security, human rights, the rule of law, and economic and social development. Those goals were amplified by the 2008 Manley report, which advised extending the military mission past 2009, and recommended the creation of “signature” projects to showcase Canada’s efforts on behalf of Afghans.
The government accepted many of the recommendations, and adopted three signature projects: rehabilitation of the Dahla Dam and its irrigation system, construction of 50 schools in Kandahar, and eradication of polio throughout the country.
For Canada’s senior diplomats and military leadership, the Kandahar mission unfolded in an atmosphere of optimism. Col. Steve Bowes, who headed the first provincial reconstruction team in 2005, predicted the insurgents would be defeated within two years. Two years after that, retired Gen. Paul Manson, once Canada’s top military officer, wrote that the Taliban could lay no claim to any military successes and that they were trouble. Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier went further, suggesting the insurgents were on the verge of defeat.
With the insight that comes with hindsight, Canadian Lt.Gen. Stuart Beare, who has commanded a number of times in Afghanistan, today acknowledges the gulf between the optimistic statements and how events unfolded.
“The list of how much we didn’t know was quite substantial, vis- à- vis the nature of the challenge that had been allowed to emerge,” said Beare, the commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command. “So our understanding of what we were getting into versus the reality had to be discovered by doing.”
But if not all targets were met, Canadian government and military officials look back on the 12- year Afghan mission with pride. Officers point out that coalition military efforts pushed al- Qaida out of Afghanistan, denying the terrorists a training base. The final government report on the Kandahar mission, released in March 2012, found that Canada had achieved 33 of its 44 development targets, including one of its signature projects — building 52 schools and training more than 3,000 teachers.
There is no doubt development efforts have had some success. When the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, an estimated 900,000 Afghan children were in school, all of them boys. Now there are more than six million, both boys and girls.
Fluid situation
Access to basic health care for Afghans has increased from 10 per cent of the population to 85 per cent. Canada also spearheaded a program to eradicate polio in Kandahar province.
But the situation in Afghanistan is fluid. Polio has made a resurgence in Kandahar. In 2012 the Taliban destroyed more than 100 schools, the UN reported. Others closed because there was no money to pay the teachers.
And while al- Qaida no longer uses Afghanistan as a training base, it and affiliated groups have moved to other locations around the world including Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Mali.
Most worrisome is the resiliency of the insurgents. The Taliban have footholds in nine of the country’s 34 provinces and fighters are battling government forces in the south, north and east of the country.
There is less hope than in 2006, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai came to Ottawa and was heralded by Canadian politicians and generals on Parliament Hill as a great leader. Today, he is one of the strongest critics of the international mission.
“The entire NATO exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure,” he said in the fall.
The fragile nature of security and development gains, and how quickly they might be erased once western troops and aid dollars disappear, can be glimpsed in Kandahar, the province most closely associated with Canadian success and sacrifice and where security is in the hands of the Afghans themselves.
Two and a half years after we declared an end to the combat mission in Afghanistan and redeployed troops as trainers to Kabul and Mazar- i- Sharif, fighting continues on battlefields where Canadians bled and died.
For Tooryalai Wesa, the Kandaharborn Canadian governor, development is a bigger worry. Projects are proceeding in the province, but it’s unclear what will happen if aid money is pulled with the troops. The question now is whether roads and schools built by various countries can be maintained by the cash- starved Afghan government.
“The schools are nice, but the teachers are not qualified,” Wesa said. “The salaries ( are) very minimum.”
Across the city at the Kandahar Institute of Modern Studies, a nondescript yet functional building inside a walled compound, the organization’s founder, Ehsanullah Ehsan, is looking for funding to teach girls.
The institute used to be called the Afghan- Canadian Community Centre and had been partly financed by a $ 10,000- a- month grant from the Canadian government. For that amount, Ehsan taught several hundred girls everything from business skills to how to use the Internet. More than 400 students were employed after they graduated.
Critics in this conservative Islamic community didn’t deter him, but Canada’s decision to cut off funding to the school is proving to be a much tougher hurdle.
The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada ( DFATD) says Canada has now moved from focusing on Kandahar to a broader emphasis on national programs and institutions. It is working to establish 8,800 community- based education classrooms in Afghanistan where more than 265,000 students, including 205,000 girls, will receive basic education, spokesman Jean- Bruno Villeneuve said in an email.
The Canadian government spent $ 588,000 over five years on the former AfghanCanadian Community Centre, and considered it an excellent investment. But DFATD says it encouraged the centre to seek additional funding so it could one day stand on its own. “The ACCC was successful in advancing its sustainability, with many of its programs now self- funded through participant fees,” noted Villeneuve. “DFATD’s support was instrumental in advancing this result.”
That’s news to Ehsan. He changed the school’s name to try to attract a major funder from another country, but wasn’t successful. The toll is beginning to show. At one point the school had 1,700 students, half of them women, but that is dwindling.
The institute still provides training for boys, since Afghan families don’t mind paying for them. Girls, however, are another matter. More than 250 female students have already left because they can’t afford the school fees formerly covered by the Canadian government. A private Canadian donor is still financing the education of another 150 girls, Ehsan said.
“Without funding, we are collapsing,” Ehsan said. “Some programs have shut down. The Internet was cut down.”
His teachers are leaving because he can no longer pay them. Broken computers litter the school’s courtyard.
Ehsan is puzzled by Canada’s unwillingness to provide what to a wealthy nation is a small amount of money. “It is really frustrating,” he said. “When I look at these women, I say, ‘ Where are those world human rights and women’s rights champions?’”
The Green Zone
Unlike Kandahar, a centre of Islamic conservatism with a population of a little more than 300,000, Kabul has more of a cosmopolitan feel. Some women don’t wear burkas. In the mornings, schoolchildren fill the streets, many of them young girls. Traffic clogs the streets.
The capital’s population has climbed to around five million as Afghans flee violence in the outlying provinces. But as they pour in, westerners head out.
Kidnappings over the last year have forced employees of some aid agencies to keep a lower profile. Many NATO troops, including most of the 100 Canadian soldiers left in the country, are hunkered down in the Green Zone, a downtown enclave protected by tonnes of concrete and blast barriers. It’s a world separate from Afghanistan, with a Green Bean coffee shop and outdoor patios.
To take a 500- metre walk from the Canadian location inside the Green Zone to the Afghan Defence Ministry building, also in the enclave, people need to suit up in full protective gear, including bulletproof vests, and must be accompanied by a security detail of “Guardian Angels.”
There is more security around the city too. Afghan security forces have set up a “Ring of Steel,” a series of checkpoints across Kabul.
But the Ring of Steel isn’t always effective; On Jan. 17, a suicide bomber and gunmen attacked the La Taverna du Liban restaurant, close to the embassy district. Martin Glazer, 43, of Gatineau, Que., and Peter McSheffrey, 49, of Ottawa were among 21 people killed in the attack, the deadliest against foreign civilians in the country since the start of the war.
Outside the Green Zone, life continues to be a grind for the majority of Afghans, despite billions of dollars in foreign aid. Women in burkas beg in the streets. Children sit in the middle of the roads, hoping drivers will hand them a donation.
Across the city and a world away is an enclave of multimilliondollar homes, each looking like a cross between a Las Vegas casino and a bunker. They are owned by Afghanistan’s elite; the businessmen, power brokers, warlords and government officials who have done well from the military mission. A number are owned by Afghan cabinet ministers, who earn about $ 1,000 a month.
Ramazan Bashardost, an anti- corruption crusader and member of Afghanistan’s parliament, points to these megahomes as the most blatant examples of the massive graft that goes on in Afghanistan today. Hundreds of millions of aid dollars found their way into the pockets of well- connected Afghan leaders, including
If international community stops ( funding) Afghanistan it will not be a big change for poor people because poor people never used this money.
RAMAZAN BASHARDOST MEMBER OF AFGHANISTAN’S PARLIAMENT
Karzai family members and various strongmen, he says.
“If international community stops ( funding) Afghanistan it will not be a big change for poor people because poor people never used this money,” Bashardost says. “But it will be a disaster for a minority in power, the ministers, the warlords.”
Development assistance
This isn’t the first time foreign aid has poured into Afghanistan. During the Cold War the Americans and Soviets raced to outdo each other in providing help, each hoping to bring the country into its sphere.
The U. S. built dams and irrigation systems and sent teachers, engineers and doctors. The Soviets spent almost $ 2 billion on development and military aid and eventually invaded the country. They trained and equipped the army and air force with the most modern weapons of war. They built power stations, irrigation systems, factories, apartment buildings, bridges and tunnels.
The Soviets also put particular emphasis on education. More than 70,000 Afghans got advanced training in areas such as engineering. A technical institute was opened in Kabul, free to students from poorer families.
Like Canada, the Russians sent advisers to teach Afghans how to run a government — specialists in banking, transportation, foreign affairs and agriculture were embedded in Afghanistan’s bureaucracy. They also tried to promote the rights of women, who were brought into the civil service and military in large numbers.
Today, older Afghans remember the Russians with mixed feelings. The war conducted by the Soviets in the 1980s was brutal. But their development aid helped train a generation of Afghan engineers and doctors and built much of the modern infrastructure.
The most recent influx of development dollars, mainly from the U. S. but also from Canada and other nations, has helped boost Afghanistan’s economic indicators. Wages are higher, particularly for government employees. An educated middle class has developed. But there is concern that when western- financed infrastructure projects are finished, the economy generated by the Afghan government on its own amounts to around $ 1.8 billion a year.
And even with the large financial support from western nations, at least 35 per cent of the workforce is jobless.
“In the cities, there is a huge disparity,” said Ziggy Garewal, who has worked in Afghanistan for nine years for the French charity group ACTED. “You see a lot of very, very poor people and a lot of extremely rich people riding around in cars or living in properties that cost millions to build.”
The country’s economy is largely based on agriculture. At one point there was hope that significant revenue could be earned from mining and natural gas production — the country has an estimated $ 1 trillion to $ 3 trillion worth of mineral resources. But mining has yet to produce significant royalties for the Afghan government, and there is already concern that moneys earned could be siphoned off by corrupt officials.
What Afghanistan needs is more tax dollars but it will be a struggle to generate that income.
The war, at this point, appears to be at a stalemate. The Taliban were unable to launch a significant offensive in the summer, NATO officers say. Maj.- Gen. Dean Milner, the top Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, cites that as success and says government soldiers defeated the insurgency handily last summer.
“Sure there were soldiers killed, there were civilians ( killed), but the bottom line is that this country continues to build,” he said. “It continues to be able to improve their capabilities to fight the Taliban.”
Canada, the U. S. and the other NATO nations are resting their hopes on what Zahir Tanin, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, calls “Afghanization” — a word that harks back to Vietnamization, the training and support policy U. S. president Richard Nixon put in place to allow American soldiers to leave Vietnam. As in Vietnam, U. S. soldiers have turned over responsibility for security to indigenous troops and police.
Canada was among the key countries to help in equipping and training that Afghan force, which now numbers more than 340,000.
Whether Afghanization works remains to be seen. But NATO officers in Kabul contend it won’t happen if billions of dollars in international funding continue to be pumped into Afghanistan, to keep its government, economy and military afloat. With time and more money they expect the Afghans to get the upper hand on the insurgents.
Fading interest
Back in Canada, Red Friday rallies in support of the troops disappeared long ago and the Canadian public appears to have moved on, relegating the Afghan war to an annual acknowledgment during Remembrance Day ceremonies. The spotlight today is on mentally and physically injured soldiers as they battle the government for promised benefits.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers rarely mention Afghanistan these days. Canada’s foreign aid is now headed elsewhere .
Canada’s military is now preparing to shape its Afghan legacy. The narrative once was that Canada had all but defeated the insurgency in Kandahar and helped bring democracy, human rights and prosperity to Afghanistan. No more.
This time the messages are more basic: The Afghan mission denied al- Qaida a safe haven in that country; from 2006 to 2009, Canadian troops prevented the fall of Kandahar; and the country’s soldiers, diplomats and aid workers did the best job they could, essentially giving Afghans the breathing room they need to develop their nation.
It is now up to the Afghans to decide on what future they have . They are on their own.