What’s needed are two things that are harder to conjure. Without them, even a bulked-up, population-focused ISAF mission stands every chance of failing. The first is time. The population has lived in a near-constant state of civil, regional and global war for decades. In that kind of environment, hope is ephemeral and never to be trusted. Success lies in assuring the population that a better standard of living, free of harassment from insurgents, might be permanent.
Of course this requirement slams up against the Canadian Parliament’s decision to end the military involvement in Kandahar in 2011. Nobody I talked to would say a word against this decision for the record. “I would never want the Canadian army to stay somewhere that the Canadian people didn’t want us to be,” Leslie said. “Ever. We go where the government sends us, we fight the good fight or whatever else the role requires us to do, we come home when Parliament sends us home.”
Privately, others involved in the military effort express a lot of frustration with the 2011 deadline. But whatever Canada does, or even the Americans, all this COIN stuff will come to little without the second needed ingredient: a legitimate, competent, compassionate Afghan government capable of responding to the population’s wishes and ensuring some level of comfort and security for them.
Which is why Hamid Karzai’s reliably erratic behaviour causes so much consternation. The Afghan president is plainly in over his head, unable to stem rampant corruption if he is not actively benefiting from it. It got worse during my trip, with Karzai even threatening to join the Taliban if he didn’t get proper respect from the West. (This caused great amusement even among Afghans I spoke to. “I’m sure if he tried it,” one interpreter told me, “the Taliban would cut him into 12 pieces.”)
Remarks like Karzai’s “are killing us,” one Western diplomat told Leslie in Kabul. Soldiers and Western civilian authorities can do a lot, but they cannot hold this country’s hand forever.
But the 2011 deadline and the fitness of the Karzai government are problems for another day. Neither will matter if the massively expanded ISAF force in Kandahar cannot change the dynamic in the province quickly. “Is this just another summer? Oh no,” Menard said. “This is the summer. And I’ll tell you why. We will be in a position to break them. I truly believe this. The reason is resources, force ratio, and the establishment of the ring of stability so the population is supporting us. It’s not us fighting the Taliban. It’s the population saying, ‘You know what? We’ve had enough of the Taliban.’ ”
All a visitor could do was to wish him and his forces luck. I found more reason for optimism on this visit to Afghanistan than on either of my other two visits. But soon enough the guesswork will be out of it. By the first days of autumn we will know whether anything has really changed in Kandahar. From there it will be easier to decide, at last, whether there would be any point in staying further.
