National Defence Committee on Sept. 20th, 2006

[Col Brian MacDonald]

The northern part of the country has been making good progress, in terms of both stability and then in the development that can follow once stability is in place.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

We have to move on. I apologize. As you've noticed, I'm very flexible, as in the past, and I try to be fair to everybody.

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for coming up with what I think will be fairly quick answers.

In your view, based on some of the discussions we've had about the Taliban monitoring what's going on over here, would you agree or disagree with a statement that the Taliban is not just targeting Canadian soldiers and others, but the Taliban is targeting the Canadian population and, more specifically, members of Parliament in Canada?

[Dr. Sean Maloney]

This gets into my rant about where al-Qaeda fits into all this. When you talk about several enemies, the Taliban are only one of the enemies we're engaged with. We're engaged with the al-Qaeda movement, an organization called HIG, run by Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, and we've got the Khani tribal organizations. We've got a number of enemies, of which the Taliban are the most numerous. I believe that through their cohorts in al-Qaeda, who provide them with most of their information operations support, Canadian politicians and the Canadian public are the targets of information operations. I have no doubt about that.

[LGen Richard Evraire]

I would add simply that the timing of the VBIED, the bicycle-borne IED, and the lives of the four Canadian soldiers at the opening of Parliament was not just a coincidence.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

We talk a lot about the message not getting out because the media clearly have another agenda. Who, in your view, Colonel MacDonald, should be getting the message out to the Canadian public about what's actually going on?

[Col Brian MacDonald]

First of all, if you take the case of media--because as you know, I have more than an occasional contact there--the old rule of thumb was that if it bleeds it leads, and that determines, of course, the stories that go on the screen, and the quiet stories don't get on the screen. I have also observed over the years that the media attention span has shortened. When I was doing a talk-back during the first Persian Gulf war with Lloyd and CTV, we would be having perhaps two minutes and forty seconds in one of those. By the time of the second Persian Gulf war, we were down to one minute and twenty seconds, and as a consequence you are then looking at very fast glimpses, very shallow glimpses of what is going on.

So in that sense, the media is doing the things that the media will do, because that's the way the media operates. In terms of who should be responsible for getting things out, I would strongly encourage the defence department and the Government of Canada to continue their program of explaining over and over again to Canadians what is going on.

[Dr. Sean Maloney]

Could I augment that?

I'm going to speak from a very personal perspective here. When I was there in July, I was subjected to a suicide vehicle-borne IED attack, which my driver and I walked away from. But 10 people in the crowd didn't. I later found out that a stringer who was associated with a Canadian media outlet allegedly filmed the attack, knowing full well we were going to be attacked. So I think we need to start really looking at the media interface on this very carefully.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

To the last gentleman, General Evraire, there are organizations in Canada, like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, that have recently come out with what I feel are fairly simplistic predictions of casualties. What's your view of the accuracy of those--and obviously you don't know--or the usefulness of that kind of commentary?

[LGen Richard Evraire]

I would point out that I'm not familiar with their statistics. I suspect, though, that focusing on that aspect of the operation over there is less than instructive and is alarmist, to say the least. We can't verify the accuracy of their statistics, and so I don't spend a lot of time looking at those.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I think it's just simplistic arithmetic.

Professor Maloney, you touched a little bit on how Op ARCHER, which is assisting the Afghan National Army and the Afghan police force, and Op ARGUS, which is assisting the development of the Afghan government, are ultimately probably the things that will allow the Afghans to carry on themselves. How are we doing there, and can we do more than just continue?

[Dr. Sean Maloney]

Yes, we can do a lot more in those areas, specifically ANA training, specifically police training--absolutely. I can give you specific numbers. When I was there in December 2005, we had two RCMP officers from Kandahar at the PRT. That was increased to ten, of which eight were deployed. That's not enough. We need to have a more coherent approach to police training coming from Canada. That's absolutely critical.

When I visited the National Training Centre this summer, I was told that we had very few--about 12--people for the embedded training team there. We should triple that, easily. With the Americans running the training, one of the other problems we have is that the Afghan army is becoming dependent on American air power. We can't have that. When the Americans take their air power away, you still have to have an army that can function. So still a lot needs to be done.

I've tracked ANA development since 2002, and it's bounced back and forth between different missions. We're starting to get somewhere with it, but a lot more needs to be done in that area, and that means that if this is going to be part of our “exit strategy”, we've got to invest more in that, and it has to be much more coherent.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I have a really quick question on equipment, and I'll give it to anybody. We have some of the best equipment of any of the allies over there right now, though perhaps not enough of it. Is there a critical item of equipment--and we've talked about Leopards, so forget those--that you think we should have? Anybody?

[Dr. Sean Maloney]

Yes. I think we should have Predator B.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I know what it is, but could you quickly describe it?

[Dr. Sean Maloney]

It's an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of delivering Hellfire munitions and of performing surveillance. Or we could have AH-64, possibly, the attack helicopter. I'd go for Predator. I'd get rid of the existing tactical UAVs that are there, and I would definitely get Predator B, right now.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

Are there any other quick responses?

[Col Brian MacDonald]

A quick response is that there are a number of items in the government's long-term equipment program in terms of heavy airlift--heavy helicopters, for example--that would be enormously useful if they were present.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

Great.

Monsieur Bouchard.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses and to thank them for joining us today.

My first question is directed to Colonel MacDonald.

You're familiar with the situation as far as our inventory of military equipment is concerned. Is the equipment being used by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan suited to this mission? In your opinion, what kind of equipment not currently available do our troops need the most?

[Col Brian MacDonald]

I think the Canadian Forces have taken advantage of the more flexible equipment procurement processes, which involve unforecasted purchases that allow them to bypass the very slow normal equipment procurement process. And I think of such things as the acquisition of the M777 howitzers and the Nyala armoured vehicles, which are precisely the types of equipment that are necessary for the forces there and which have been procured in a very short time. So in that sense, I certainly have confidence in the government's willingness to respond to the statements made by the General Officer Commanding in Afghanistan in terms of what his requirements are and then taking steps to use a procurement process that will deliver those needed pieces of equipment in very short order.

At this point, I'm not sure I would be prepared to superimpose my judgment over the judgment of the people who are on the ground there who know intimately what is required. I would simply say that if General Fraser determines that a piece of equipment is appropriate, then my position would be that I'm quite prepared to accept his judgment.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

My second question is for Mr. Maloney.

You teach courses on military warfare at Canada's Royal Military College. You stated that a culture of violence existed in Afghanistan, at least among a certain number of Afghani. You also said that you have travelled to Afghanistan several times and spoken to the people.

Who are the Taliban? To what do they owe their existence? What do they want? What outcome are they seeking? What is their stated mission?

[Dr. Sean Maloney]

I'll start off with the origin of the Taliban. I'll keep it short, but fundamentally the Taliban was a creation initially of the merchant class in Quetta, which was concerned about the routes leading through from Quetta to Spin Boldak to Kandahar for trade. At that time, Afghanistan was wracked in what we call the civil war or the war of the commanders, so there was essentially warlordism.

The Taliban then became augmented by the Pakistani intelligence services and the Pakistani armed forces and essentially became a tool of Pakistan to assert domination on Afghanistan, on what it saw as a chaotic situation. Then there's a radical Islamist thread that comes into that as well.

When they achieved control of part of Afghanistan--remember, they were resisted mostly by Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek populations, keeping in mind that the Taliban are predominately Pashtun, which is 38% of the population--they basically took control of large chunks of Afghanistan by the sword. Then they invited al-Qaeda in to create a series of base areas, and al-Qaeda developed a parasitical relationship with the Taliban.

Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 strips away the Taliban shield so we can get at the al-Qaeda meat. So the Taliban disperses as an institution and flees to the south, and al-Qaeda tends to flee east and then into Pakistan.

Who are the Taliban? Fundamentally, we have different types of Taliban. One type would be the hard-core people from that period who have melted back to their particular villages or towns in the south. They may have been fighters at the fighter level. Then there's sort of a leadership caste, who decamp from Pakistan. They're mostly in Quetta and Balujistan. On top of this, you have hard-core jihadists. They're entering into Afghanistan, facilitated by Taliban cells. They're usually trained by al-Qaeda or affiliates. They could be Chechen, they could be Punjabi, or they could be Canadian. You get all sorts of people coming in who are facilitated into the country to do particular things. Then the Taliban has sort of a militia. They're trying to gain a constituency with teenage boys by approaching them with weapons, motorcycles, and money, and saying “Join us”. So you have these different layers.

The debate centres right now on what they want. The only thing we can infer is by their actions. As far as we can tell, they are interested in the southern part of Afghanistan. They do not appear to be interested in the non-Pashtun parts of Afghanistan right now, maybe later, but it's very evident to me that they're trying to create some kind of enclave. They're trying to drive us out of the south and create what I would call flippantly Pashtunistan, under a radical Islamic sort of caliphate structure, create this enclave that can't be assailed by the international community.

That serves a number of purposes. It serves the Taliban's purpose of trying to gain some form of control or domination over the tribal groupings in the south on both sides of the border. It serves an al-Qaeda purpose, because that becomes a psychological defeat of the west.

The fact that we're in Afghanistan and we kicked the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of it in the first phases of the war is our first victory over the al-Qaeda movement globally. This is very big, and you can look at it in the al-Qaeda documentation. They lament the loss of Afghanistan. When we're talking about different enemies and different objectives, it tends to be going in the same direction.

So if we're going to target those populations, we want to target them with different resources. The kid with the AK-47 and the motorcycle we may be able to convince away from that particular lifestyle. The jihadists we're not going to be able to convince; we'll have to kill them. The leadership caste we'll probably have to kill too. That's the way I'm looking at it right now. I'm not saying this is the only way of looking at it, but given the information we have right now, that's the best way of looking at what the objectives in insurgency are. They appear to be limited to the south right now, but they may have larger designs later.

I hope that answers your question.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, John Cannis]

You're well into the flexible time. You get five minutes, and I'm usually more flexible to allow questions and answers.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here today.

I want to talk a little about the NATO aspect of this operation. Afghanistan is geographically a relatively small country, yet despite the presence of numerous international forces, NATO has asked its members to commit additional troops. Given the evolution of what NATO was created for, what it did in the past, and what we're asking NATO to do now in the present, does NATO have the resources and expertise to command this mission?