The limits of armed force
Adapting to the political reality in Afghanistan
Derek Rosin
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan announced a short time ago that he would be open to negotiations with the Taliban. A peace agreement with the Taliban, he stated, could involve their inclusion within the national government.
Karzai’s call shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Taliban, led by women-hating fundamentalists and warlords, should have no problem eventually settling accounts with the women-hating fundamentalists and warlords that make up Karzai’s theocratic “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.”
What’s interesting is why this statement created such a ruckus within the ranks of the people who brought Karzai to power and keep him there: NATO. One of the most idiotic reactions to this announcement came from Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Maxime Bernier, who said that negotiations should only take place with groups that renounce violence. This statement of Bernier’s gives way
Reality check: Karzai serves NATO, not the other way around.
to two possible interpretations: either Bernier is a dilettante and doesn’t know how politics actually work, or he’s trying to snow the Canadian public.
First of all, meaningful negotiations (ones that actually settle questions of power) in Afghanistan will take place only with armed groups. Unarmed groups have no leverage with which to negotiate. If the Taliban were suicidal enough to renounce violence, then NATO and their boy Karzai would have no reason to meet with them because it would amount to a Taliban surrender. The only card the Taliban could play in this case would be the threat of a resumption of violence, which is hardly a pacifist rejection of armed actions.
A friendly reminder to Bernier: negotiations only get you on paper what your armed forces would have been able to get you on the battlefield, anyway. I presume that Canada’s government, with its thousands of armed soldiers and heavy weapons in Afghanistan (that has hardly “renounced violence,” by the way) understands this well enough. Funny, too, is that Bernier felt statements like his need to be made. Silly naive me thought that NATO was just aiding the sovereign government of Afghanistan. Won’t they serve this government led by Karzai unequivocally?
No. Reality check: Karzai serves NATO, not the other way around.
Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that the war in Afghanistan will not be solved through military force alone. This is due in part to the nature of the type of war the foreign forces are fighting. The foreign occupation, as tends to be the case, is deeply unpopular among the people of Afghanistan. Because of this, NATO troops have been forced into a vicious cycle typical to many counter-insurgency operations.
The insurgents can draw some support from the local people, allowing them to blend into the population, which in turn creates a hostile feeling among occupying troops towards the locals in general. This leads to cases like the one in which Canadian troops accidently shot and killed children and youth on motorcycles because they were driving “too close” to military convoys. Understandably, incidents like this enrage Afghans and help fuel the insurgency.
As worse “accidents” take place — like air strikes on villages — a tipping point is reached and a decisive majority of the population becomes resentful of the occupiers. This seems to be the situation in southern Afghanistan right now, as shown by the ability of Taliban forces to continually bring in new recruits despite heavy losses, scenes of villagers demonstrating while chanting death to Canada, and the fact that Canadian troops can’t go anywhere now without groups of youths throwing stones at their vehicles. When Canadian military spokesmen describe how villagers are being “forced” and “coerced” into supporting the Taliban, they are deliberately glossing over this very real dynamic.
Recently the Manitoban carried an article from an Afghan-Canadian who visited Afghanistan and interviewed an NGO staffer who claimed that Canadian troops are now bulldozing pro-Taliban villages. If true, this amounts to collective punishment of civilian populations and is a war crime. It also shows the inevitable intensification of the cyclical repression/resistance dynamic discussed above.
If Karzai is ignored, and a purely military solution is insisted upon, how far can this intensification go? A survey of other insurgencies in the past such as Vietnamese, Algerian, or even Russian efforts in Afghanistan suggest that it can get truly horrific, with millions of people dying as a result.
Canadians will have to think long and hard about whether they to want to join this infamous group for the sake of subduing a people halfway around the world that they know nothing about.
Derek Rosin is a recent graduate from the University of Winnipeg
