Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members. It's an honour and a privilege to address the committee today on a subject as important, timely, and sensitive as Afghanistan, and on Canada's role in that tortured country.
I'm not an expert on Afghanistan like Barnett Rubin. I'm not a historian, although I hold the title of professor. I'm a journalist who has been engaged with Afghanistan, as with many other Asian countries, for many years, since driving across that rugged land in 1961 and nearly not making it to the Khyber Pass on roads as non-existent then as they are now, and in 1966, which may seem a long time ago, writing the first series of articles on Afghanistan in a Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail.
I might just add that as a journalist I'm used to asking questions and reporting speeches and I'm not used to giving speeches or taking questions, but I think it's very important for me to say at the outset that I believe journalists have a responsibility, as well as a right, to come to their own consensus about any situation, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to express any opinions as such, as that word is usually used.
What I'd like to do briefly this morning is note some relevant history of Afghanistan and its neighbourhood that may be ignored or forgotten with the too often tragic impact of the lives and deaths of brave Canadian soldiers.
As you know, Afghanistan was the focus of what the British called “the great game” to protect the Raj in India from Russian imperialism. I've written a book called The Greater Game: India's Race with Destiny and China.
Afghanistan is a key battle of the greater game, the conflict in many countries between free, tolerant peoples and global terrorists. Democracies and would-be democracies near and far will suffer a severe defeat in the greater game if Afghanistan, Canadian credibility, and NATO effectiveness are lost.
For more than 1,000 years, Afghanistan has been the historic gateway to India for conquerors and would-be conquerors going back to Alexander the Great. Afghans are tough tribesmen who come by suspicion of farenghi, or foreigners, naturally, since Genghis Khan nearly obliterated Afghanistan in the 13th century. Three times in the 19th and early 20th centuries they defeated would-be British conquerors, who nevertheless made Afghanistan a classic buffer state against Russian imperialists in central Asia.
When the British left India and the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, Pakistan, with the North West Frontier Agency made famous by Kipling, became Afghanistan's eastern neighbour. Pustun or Pashtun tribesmen, called Pathans in Pakistan, live on both sides of the British-drawn Durand Line dividing the two countries. Russia never gave up its designs on Afghanistan. Pakistan, next to attaining its highest territorial aim, which is control of the Indian-held Vale of Kashmir, made control of Afghanistan its highest territorial aim.
In the mid-1960s, however--and I think it's important to go back to that period for reasons I'm going to briefly sum up--Afghanistan made its first attempt to emerge into the modern world. I watched in justifiable disbelief as the Afghans under King Muhammad Zahir Shah built new roads, allowed women, especially at Kabul University, to go unveiled, and even held constitutional parliamentary elections, but with no political parties. Canada joined the U.S., the Soviet Union, and other countries in competing economic aid projects--but a series of tragic events jolted the Afghans back to the Middle Ages: a Soviet-backed coup in 1973 overthrew the progressive king; a Soviet-backed Communist coup succeeded in 1978; when ruling Afghan Communists faltered, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan at the end of 1979; a decade of insurgency by U.S.-armed Mujahadeen fighters compelled the Soviets to leave in 1989; and three more years of war against a brutal Communist regime were followed by civil war among victorious Mujahadeen.
Then Pakistan created an army of benighted Pashtun Islamist extremists, called the Taliban, that conquered most of the country by 1996. This led to a steady, unresisted invasion by al-Qaeda terrorists led by Osama bin Laden.
Finally, on September 9, 2001, in what may have been a signal of what happened on the other side of the world two days later, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary commander of the Northern Alliance who had defeated the Red Army in the Panshir Valley northeast of Kabul and had blocked total Taliban conquest of Afghanistan, was killed in a terrorist suicide bombing.
But with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Afghans quickly adapted to the greater game. Their country shared only devastation with the World Trade Center. But they seized a way out of fanatical Taliban rule, which was demolished along with world al-Qaeda headquarters by a temporary U.S.-led invasion, including Canadian troops, notably JTF2.
In 1989, a miracle saved Afghanistan from Soviet rule. In 2001, a second miracle saved Afghanistan from Taliban rule.
The Afghans are still finding it difficult to rebuild a nation that Sir Henry Rawlinson, the first westerner to describe Afghanistan in detail, called in 1875 “a mere collection of tribes”--the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Turkmen, the Hazara descendants of Genghis Khan.
These armed tribes were symbolically held together by Zahir Shah, the reformist king who in 1933, following assassination of his father, had assumed the Pashtun Durrani throne dating back to 1747. In 2002, at the age of 87, he convoked a loya jirga, or grand gathering, of the Afghan tribes that confirmed Hamid Karzai, a highly educated tribal chief related to Zahir Shah, as leader of the Afghan government. He was later elected president, and of course he visited Canada last September.
Afghans have made a start toward democratic government, including election of a parliament, still with no political parties, and with recognition of equal status of women. But tribal rivalries persist. Warlords control some parts of the country. Corruption is endemic. The opium trade thrives. Worst of all, the Taliban have been revived by Pakistan, a key fact we must never forget. Pakistan allows bases for Pashtun insurgents and sanctuaries for al-Qaeda leaders, who have moved their world headquarters from Kandahar to Karachi and Quetta.
It was clear in September 2003, when Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf visited Ottawa, that engagement of Canadian troops and Taliban forces was inevitable. The Canadians were moving out of Kabul to provide stability and reconstruction in the provinces. Taliban fighters--trained, armed, organized, and advised by ISI, Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence--were moving back into Afghanistan in large numbers.
Three years later, in September 2006, Canadian troops with U.S., British, and Dutch air support decisively won the biggest battle in Afghanistan since late 2001. Hundreds of Taliban insurgents were killed in the Panjwai district near Kandahar, the movement's original base, and hundreds fled back to Pakistan.
Now the war in Afghanistan has entered a critical new phase. Both sides have promised spring offensives, but the Taliban appear to be avoiding major battles and are counting on roadside bombs and suicide bombers to wear down the will of NATO forces.
NATO, while training Afghan soldiers and police, is stepping up efforts to win the support of Afghan villagers by providing civic improvements as well as military protection. Both are necessary. Reconstruction in Afghanistan is not possible without armed force. That is a fact.
Canada's 2,500 troops in Afghanistan have played a major, I would say magnificent, role. Canada is committed to continuing this difficult task to 2009--I know the time beyond is controversial, and I will just leave it at that--and is acquiring better armoured tanks against Taliban bombs. If Canada pulled out before Afghanistan was safe and stable, the impact on all NATO forces and on the Afghan government would be devastating at a time when the U.S., Britain, and Australia--Australia is not a NATO member--are increasing the number of their troops in Afghanistan.
To answer the most asked question about Canadian troops in Afghanistan, yes, it is worth it. If Afghanistan falls under Taliban rule again, a deadly combination of Islamist terrorism and Pakistani militarism will spread in South Asia and Central Asia and make further conflicts inevitable, whether or not conditions in the Middle East continue to deteriorate.
More than patience and understanding is necessary, but those two things are necessary. Economic and possible military pressure needs to be put on Musharraf in Pakistan to call off the Taliban. Karzai's government needs to reduce corruption and ties to tribal warlords. Canada and its allies need time to defeat the Taliban, rebuild a free Afghanistan, and win the greater game.