Saturday, February 23, 2008

looking for clarity, imagination and some truth...

Canada has been involved in Afghanistan since October 2001. Almost seven years and two governments later and what exactly we're doing there, let alone what we've done, is not really clear. And further to this, why we're there, which is certainly related to what we're doing and have done, is not terribly obvious to the average citizen either. So you'll forgive me if I find the question of how much longer we plan to stay both a little premature and without purpose until we can get a handle on the present tense state of affairs. The future becomes a convenient distraction in this context.

But let's backtrack to the past for a moment. Last Remembrance Day I was in Ottawa and made it out to the War Memorial for the large national commemorative ceremony, accompanied by two friends, one who'd recently moved to Ottawa for graduate school, the other a visitor from Northern India. The out-of-town guest was in thrall to the whole spectacle, having never experienced such a ceremony in her part of India, she enthusiastically criss-crossed the periphery of the War Memorial to snap as many pictures as possible. My other friend is a committed advocate for peace, doing her PhD in an area directly related to peace-making. She and I were in what I can best describe as existential shock when the voice at the podium began to intone: "We love our troops, repeat after me, 'we love our troops'." And of course the large crowd did repeat after him. And everybody broke into loud applause. And that was the shocking part - it didn't take much to make a case for war.

As a nation we have essentially lost our right as citizens to criticize Canada's role in Afghanistan because to do so would be to launch a personal attack on the men and women in uniform. This is ridiculous logic, of course, because a person is capable of supporting our troops without supporting THIS mission. And no matter how many intelligent people point this out, the "repeat after me" mentality gets louder and more single-minded, making a clear understanding of our present role in Afghanistan extremely difficult, if not impossible.

There are some very good reasons for Canada to be in Afghanistan right now. Our traditional role as post-conflict peacekeeper, and our unique identity as a rich and non-European neutral power without any history of international conquest, makes us a strong agent for diplomatic compromise in a country that been the plaything of Empires for most of modern history. But we need clarity on our activities, the public should be informed of the actual objectives of the mission, our current capacity to realize them, and an honest representation of both our victories AND our losses.

We also need imagination. A vision of the future that is limited to legalistic bickering over an exact withdrawal date is a disservice to all the work we are currently undertaking, as well as a failure to support the independent nation we hope to leave behind. Our vision should be one broad enough to encompass hope for Afghanistan, and yet realistic enough to admit that a timeline for withdrawal may not yet be possible. Commitment to a vision, and not to an election cycle, is what Afghanistan needs from all NATO countries, and Canada especially since we maintain close relations with both the United States and Britain, the other key agents in this complex reality.

And we need truth. Without honest reporting, and up front political accounting, we will never be in a position to make a positive difference because we will be working from imperfect information which will inevitably lead to poor decisions.

And so I offer up a series of what I consider to be insightful pieces, all published in
The Walrus magazine over the past year, which have greatly increased my understanding of the current state of the mission in Afghanistan, and some of the particular challenges we still face:

3D Vision by Taylor Owen and Patrick Travers (published July/August 2007 issue)
Road of Fire by Hugh Graham (published December 2007 issue)
Review of "Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan" by Ken Alexander (December 2007 issue)

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