Afghanistan Committee on Nov. 17th, 2010

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Tying in, I assume, with your comments regarding an envoy and Canada mounting a peace mission, could you briefly describe what you see that as encompassing?

[John Siebert]

An envoy would offer the opportunity to focus renewed diplomatic activity toward a broader peace process and focus, within the governmental system, a series of activities and support for civil society—which admittedly is weak in many places in Afghanistan, but does exist. We have worked with our colleagues through Peacebuild Canada, the pathways to peace program that has been supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. We're grateful for that support, but it is grudging and very small and hasn't been renewed as yet, so we have direct experience of the difficulty in getting momentum within the overall Canadian Forces and the whole-of-government mission to Afghanistan to look at that priority.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Okay, we'll move to the Bloc Québécois.

Your turn, Mr. Dorion.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you for being here, sir.

I appreciate the presentation you gave, especially your insistence on how complex the situation is. The Afghanistan question is often presented in a really simplistic way, I feel.

You stressed the fact that simply substituting international troops with local government ones cannot be a solution, given the power relationships in Afghanistan. That is a very relevant comment, in my opinion. So how can we pressure the Afghan government to recognize in some way the type of motivation that keeps the warring sides fighting? What do we have to do to achieve that, so that we can end up with genuine reconciliation?

[John Siebert]

Certainly there are a lot of dialogues and conversations taking place involving the government of Afghanistan as well as various insurgent groups, including the Taliban, now.

Regarding the training and the substitution of Afghan national forces for ISAF or NATO, there are a couple of points worth making. First of all, ramping up the Afghan national security forces into the hundreds of thousands is never going to be a sustainable proposition within the Afghan economy and the Afghan government's ability to generate funds to support it. So it is always going to be an outside-supported effort.

Second, if you don't have the broader peace framework and the national stabilization through conversation and negotiation—which admittedly is very tough to do—then you can have 300,000, 400,000, or 500,000 Afghan national forces and you will still be stuck with this civil war situation that will still need to be resolved.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Yes, you did mention that military victory is not possible for any side in the conflict, at least not while things are going as they are.

You say that reports indicate that the insurgents are realizing more and more that they cannot win a military victory. Which reports are you referring to exactly?

[John Siebert]

Well, we can quote the Prime Minister of Canada to the effect that there is no military solution to this conflict. That's repeated by the U.S. administration and U.S. generals.

The question is, what is the role of the military in counter-insurgency currently? As I understand, they are trying to put the Taliban and other insurgents into a position of weakness and to force them to enter into negotiations in a weakened state.

Indications from the UN Secretary General's report and other independent reports are that even with the surge, particularly by the American forces in the last six months, the security situation has become worse, that areas like Marjah and Kandahar are actually in a worse security situation than prior to the surge. In other words, the surge in military activity has not necessarily led to the results the military was hoping for.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Okay.

Turning to the outside players in this conflict, you mentioned that the solution sort of runs through Lahore and New Delhi. What could Canada do to bring those two countries together in order to help the peace process in Afghanistan?

[John Siebert]

This would be the job of the diplomatic surge, both to understand the situation more clearly and to encourage movement. Some have described the activity of Pakistan and India in Afghanistan as proxy fighting for what are in fact bilateral conflicts between them. Those sorts of activities need to stop. I would not for a moment promote the idea that Canada alone can mount a white charger of diplomacy and resolve that one. But it could, in concert with others, move in that direction and encourage those sorts of things.

Frankly, we also need to engage Iran. We need to engage Russia and China. They all have security interests, and unless there is this widespread diplomatic effort, the prospect of resolving the conflict in Afghanistan is probably remote.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Chair, I am going to let my colleague Johanne Deschamps continue from here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You have one minute.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

You mentioned greater diplomatic efforts, or a diplomatic surge. You also mentioned a special envoy. Would his role be to be part of the diplomatic surge?

We know that the government has taken a position on the changes to and extension of the mission in Afghanistan. We have learned that development assistance will be greatly reduced. From what we have heard in your testimony, you are concerned by this reduction in development assistance, given all that remains to be done and all the monitoring of the Afghan situation that will be needed.

[John Siebert]

Certainly it's regrettable that a drop in development assistance to Afghanistan would take place at the same time as these other changes are taking place. Afghanistan is one of the poorest places in the world. The aid assistance would support a range of activities that could address the kinds of conflict sparks that exist in Afghanistan.

It's not just that there's al Qaeda or a terrorist network, or the Taliban and an insurgent problem, but there are also problems at local levels after more than three decades of war, including conflicts over water and land between various groups. These conflicts are very difficult to resolve, although they can be, and there are ways that Afghan society has of doing that. Canada, through aid and other mechanisms, can assist, particularly with civil society groups that are emerging and want to contribute to the long-term sustainability of peace in Afghanistan. A special envoy could contribute to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Abbott, please.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today.

I do want to put on the record personally that I don't share with you your assertion that the surge hasn't led to the desired results and that security has become worse. But rather than getting into a debate, I wanted to put that on the record. I consider that comment not to be at all accurate.

I do want to ask you, though, about the Afghan lead, which I think was the essential part of your presentation, as opposed to a government-led peace process led by Afghans and an inclusive political order. Could you briefly give us a picture of what that looks like, a word picture of what that looks like?

[Mike Hogeterp]

Indeed. It's fair to say that the Bonn process that formed the current government structure we're looking at was a meeting of victors, essentially, that was not broadly inclusive of all representatives of that diverse society that we've already talked about. So the exclusion of broad swaths of Afghan society from that process creates dislocation and disparity and an unstable political framework. It's important therefore to engage, yes indeed, the insurgents, but also the realities of a decentralized authority structure.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

But try to describe it for us, because those are words. We need a picture.

[Mike Hogeterp]

What we're talking about is village-level elders, village-level mullahs, district authorities that are similar. It's traditional and informal structures, which are very difficult to define. Nevertheless, they have traditionally been, as I said, an element of the power structure within Afghanistan, who can, at that local level, actually contribute to conflict mitigation.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

But let's presume within that society that there is a malignant force, the Taliban, who are actually trying to upset that order. How would they independently gain control, or what force would you see being required in order to have control? In other words, isn't there a place for the Afghan army and for the Afghan police in order to assist this local group, to be able to give some strength to them to resist the Taliban, to resist the malignant forces?

[Mike Hogeterp]

John's already acknowledged that there is certainly a place for security forces. The emphasis that we're talking about is the softer side of security, where creating new stability at the local level through the amelioration of those non-ideological conflicts, the conflicts over land and water and those sorts of things, allows a sense of stability and less vulnerability, as I said to Mr. Wilfert, to the influence of insurgents.

John, do you want to speak more about this?

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I want to hear that, but the Taliban have their courts. They actually hold a tremendous amount of sway in the villages right now. Would you see that being wiped out, replaced, or enhanced? I'm trying to visualize what you see, because I'm having difficulty.

[John Siebert]

They need to be brought into the process of national governance in an appropriate way that Afghans will work with.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

What does that mean?

[John Siebert]

It means that they're going to participate in the government through following a negotiated process. In other words, if I can go back to the notion of civil war, my understanding--we can disagree on this--is that effectively what happened in 2001 is that international forces worked with the Northern Alliance, which represented parts of Afghanistan against the Taliban and other insurgents that represented other parts of Afghanistan. They still hold sway in large swaths or have regained sway in large swaths of Afghanistan. A national peace process will have to acknowledge that that sway exists and that it needs to be brought into line with a new more inclusive governance structure in Afghanistan. In other words, there will have to be a form of national reconciliation that includes Taliban insurgents in some way.