Why it is too late to save Canada's honour in Afghanistan
Canada has promised to take in up to 40 000 Afghan refugees over two years, but given the disgraceful way we left our allies behind, it's a matter of much too little, far too late.
Ian Rockwell is a graduate student at the Max Bell School of Public Policy. Originally from the U.S. state of Vermont, Ian’s background is in political science and U.S. government. He has previously worked in Washington, D.C. as a government relations manager and for Senator Bernie Sanders. His views are his own.
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ON JANUARY 11, 252 Afghan refugees landed in Calgary, including 170 human rights defenders. Their arrival is well overdue, coming almost five months after the Taliban recaptured Kabul, but it’s too little too late as Canada tries to salvage some honour from its Afghanistan mission. Given what Canada leaves behind in Afghanistan, the mission was not a success.
Canada’s Afghan mission was the consequence of two defence realities: that Canadian defence is inexorably tied to U.S. defence, and Canada’s membership in NATO. The September 11 attacks triggered both of these commitments. Canada was obligated to support NATO and the U.S. in Afghanistan, that is not in dispute.
But Canada’s mission in Afghanistan began to lose its footing after the initial invasion and stabilization efforts. The U.S. turned its focus to Iraq, a war Canada opposed, turning Canada’s Kandahar deployment into something less honourable than an ally helping an ally; it was a crude trade-off for political purposes. Canada held down part of Afghanistan to placate the U.S.
The deployment to Kandahar was doomed to fail. While Canada had peacekeeping expertise, as the number of Canadian casualties indicates, there was no peace to keep in Afghanistan. Canadian peacekeeping experience was of little use in Kandahar. More importantly, the Taliban only had to bide their time across the Durand Line in Pakistan, supported by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Canada couldn’t criticize Pakistan lest it cut off Canada’s supply lines, but in so doing it left the Taliban a safe harbour.
In this context, Canada still had a way to achieve some success, by doing right by the Afghan people. Canada failed on this point in three ways. One, it didn’t complete key signature infrastructure projects like the Dahla Dam. Two, it helped turn Afghan citizens against the post-Taliban Afghan government by supporting corrupt provincial officials. And three, Canada left its Afghan allies at the mercy of the Taliban after the 2021 collapse. While the first failure can be partially excused because of the combat environment, the other two are less forgivable. Canada drove justifiably upset Afghans back into the arms of the Taliban through ignorance or a misplaced belief that the new central government had to be placated. As for leaving one’s own behind, meanwhile, the disgrace of that should speak for itself.
One might argue this is an overly pessimistic analysis of Canada’s role in Afghanistan. The Manley Report acknowledged there was no peace to keep, and it did after all call for “forceful representations” with Pakistan. The Report provided a way forward that accepted the realities on the ground. Moreover, as the professor of international affairs Roland Paris had noted, Canadian assistance did, for a time, improve living conditions in Kandahar. And on a narrower scale, Canada improved its standing with the U.S. and NATO (at least temporarily).
But Paris also notes this improvement was transitory. The Manley Report, meanwhile, failed in the long term. It saw a path to stabilization based on an increased troop presence and better civilian-military cooperation on aid and reconstruction. It placed its faith in the Afghan National Army once it had been sufficiently trained. But Afghanization in the Afghan war was doomed to failure just like Vietnamization in the Vietnam War, given the corrosive effects of corruption and the fact that the insurgency had a safe haven in Pakistan.
In the context of Afghanistan being a counterinsurgency and reconstruction mission, success should be measured by how the Afghan people benefitted. That includes Canada departing with dignity. It did not do so. After Canada ended its Kandahar combat mission in 2014, Canada knew that Afghans who worked for Canada were in danger. That Canada (or any other Western country, especially the U.S.) did not have a contingency plan in place to rescue them is unfathomable. These individuals put their lives and the lives of their families on the line to save Canadian lives. The least Canada could do is resettle them in Canada as quickly as possible, paperwork be damned. Canada owes them an almost unpayable debt.
If Canada had evacuated with honour, then an argument could be made that Canada did all it could do, and that such an effort was a limited success. For the sake of Canadian veterans and aid workers, one wishes it could be so. That we could say with confidence their efforts were not in vain. But no country that abandons its own can say it succeeded. What’s left now is for Canada to learn from its mistakes. Shortly before Christmas the opposition parties in Parliament forced the creation of an all-party committee to examine the Kabul evacuation. Here’s hoping the committee does a thorough job. What happened in Kabul must not be repeated. (IR)
The Bell is edited by Jaclyn Victor, Jason Kreutz, Shweta Menon and Phaedra de Saint-Rome of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.