Afghanistan detainees debate

For far too long, virtually any political discussion in Canada about Afghanistan has focused on events that happened back in 2005 to 2007. As noted many times on this site, the silence from our elected representatives on the future role of Canada in our most critical foreign policy venture of the decade has been deafening.

It seems that more and more opinion makers and journalists are coming to the same conclusion every week. One of the latest is Martin Regg Cohn, who describes in the Toronto Star how the taboo nature of the debate has gone from ridiculous to tragic, with an insightful comment on the Dutch experience:

The Dutch know a thing or two about the politics of pulling out of Afghanistan, ever since their coalition government collapsed last February over whether to extend the mission of their 2,000 troops in Southern Afghanistan.

Unlike the Canadians, the Dutch have come to realize that pulling out is hard to do. Even with an election campaign underway, a consensus is emerging to continue supporting the fledgling Afghan police force with a contingent of 50 police trainers on the ground, backed by a protection force of perhaps 300 troops.

That’s a far cry from the Canadian context, where talking about post-Taliban Afghanistan has become taboo. In 2008, the House of Commons adopted a resolution saying that “Canada will end its presence in Kandahar as of July 2011 . . . so that it will have been completed by December 2011.”

Nowhere does it say all Canadian troops must leave Afghanistan entirely, only that our front-line contribution to the Kandahar counter-insurgency should come to an end by the end of 2011. Harper’s determination to shut down the debate is a matter of expediency by a Prime Minister unwilling to risk any political capital on the mission...

Will we continue our police training presence in Kandahar? Follow through with our major polio eradication program and the Dahla Dam project? Protect Canadian aid workers and diplomats in Kabul? After all our squawking about torture, will we maintain a strong presence in Afghanistan’s penal system to press reforms?

For all the talk of winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan, Harper’s government has to make the case in Canada, too: why we went to Afghanistan (to help our allies stabilize the country post-9/11, after the Taliban were toppled and Al Qaeda terrorist bases destroyed); why there’s work still to be done on development and training; that we are there under a continued UN mandate; and that any serious polling shows the Afghan people very much want foreign forces to stay for as long as it takes to keep the Taliban at bay.