National Defence Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2006

[Col M.D. Capstick]

The Afghan-Pakistani border is a very difficult issue. I know that at the political level, ministers of more than one ministry of the Government of Canada have done what ministers do, in terms of dealing with the Government of Pakistan. I know that the Canadian ambassador has done what Canadian ambassadors do, in dealing with the Government of Pakistan. Clearly there are people coming back and forth across that border, and clearly it is a difficult issue.

Militarily there's a thing called a tripartite organization at the national level, where the heads of the Pakistani military, ISAF, and the Afghan National Army meet to discuss these issues—and all the way down there are similar apparatus, telephone lines, and so on.

But at the end of the day, you have to picture that it's a rough piece of ground, to say the least. It makes the U.S.-Mexican border look like a cakewalk, and I'll leave that one at that. This is a tough issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Black.

Over to Mr. Calkins, and then back over to the opposition.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Colonel, for your testimony here today.

I want to get a better understanding of exactly how this whole strategic plan and everything works.

My understanding of a strategic plan is that obviously it's to get from point A to point B at the strategic level, and you're not too worried about the operational details. Those are worked out in operational plans at a lower level. So keeping that in mind, the strategic plan is evaluated every once in a while to make sure that you're achieving your objectives. I'm wondering if you could paint the scene for us when the Canadian Forces arrived in Kabul. What did the initial strategic plans look like, and how successful were the Canadian Forces in achieving the goals and objectives listed in that strategic plan? Because every plan must have goals and objectives.

What timeline were we looking at in order to have the ability, when it came time to rotate...? What did it look like when we rotated out of Kabul and moved down to Kandahar, except for the PRTs still in Kabul?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

I'll clarify first: the Canadian PRT is in Kandahar.

What we have in Kabul are staff officers at the International Security Assistance Force's headquarters and in the coalition headquarters. But to help ANA, the Afghan National Army, and the Afghan national police reform, we have 15 Canadians led by a major—mostly young officers and NCOs, non-commissioned officers—who are at a place called the Afghan National Training Centre. They put together Afghan army units and do the final stage of training before they go downrange. And we have the team that I led, the Strategic Advisory Team-Afghanistan. That's what's left in Kabul; it's sixty-five to a hundred-ish, depending on the day.

I can't really talk to whatever the Canadian Forces strategy or campaign plan is. The Canadian Forces are part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade-led country strategy for Afghanistan. So we have a campaign plan for Afghanistan, which is the operational plan, one level down.

What we worked on was the Afghans' plan for their country. So what we helped them do was take all the inputs they were getting—and believe me, they were getting lots of input, lots of bright ideas—and basically put them into a strategic framework with objectives, sub-objectives, etc. Now the next stage is to resource these, because of course they need to be resourced.

Does that help?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Yes, it does.

Could you please give me a comment on how successful the Canadian Forces were in meeting those objectives when we were in the Kabul region ?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

The record speaks for itself. The Canadian Forces in Kabul—both with battle group, as part of ISAF at one point, and then in the later days with the reconnaissance squadron and some engineers—we played our part in what's called the Kabul Multinational Brigade. That's part of the International Security Assistance Force.

For example, the reconnaissance squadron was instrumental during the parliamentary elections last September, providing overwatch, basic blanket security, presence patrolling in the streets, and so on.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

If you can refresh my memory, how long was the main bulk of the Canadian Forces in Kabul?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

I don't have the dates, but somebody can get the dates for you. The last operational task was the election in September, and then the focus through the fall and up until the new year was the move to Kandahar from Kabul. It was a pretty complicated exercise.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Given the fact that the Canadian Forces have left their strategic planning there but operationally have moved to Kandahar, given the differences between Kabul and Kandahar, and given that the planning must be a little bit different because of the terrain, the amount of resistance, and everything that's in that region, I'm wondering how the plan has changed. I don't need details, but has the plan changed? Are we meeting or seeing levels of success similar to what we did see up in the Kabul area?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

This one is outside of what I did. Whatever I could tell you about Kandahar would be opinion and not necessarily fact.

Of course the plan changed. The insurgency developed to the extent that it did while we were there, so we, the Canadian Forces, have adapted to deal with that threat as it has presented. But on the actual details of the planning itself, you're going to have to wait for the brigade commander to come home.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I'll just follow up with a couple of comments that I thought were quite interesting in your presentation. You spoke about the fact that the folks in Afghanistan appear to be tired of the fighting and all the chaos in their day-to-day lives. We're moving toward trying to replace the rule of the gun with the rule of diplomatic law and diplomatic societies. You commented about how there are millions of girls in school, there's irrigation, and so on. And then you made a comment to the effect that these reconstruction successes have proceeded with little or no fanfare, while we seem to have lots of fanfare every time we have a soldier coming home in a casket.

What could the Canadian Forces do or what should be done, in your opinion, to bring the other side of this message, about all the good work that's being done in Afghanistan? From a strategic planning perspective, how do we get that message out to the Canadian public?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

That's a tough one. The best we can do is to keep talking and keep trying to demonstrate these things. But it's natural. As I said in my statement, these are the most intense combat operations we've been in since the Korean War. I'd be concerned if Canadians weren't concerned, if Canadians weren't interested. If Canadians weren't discussing, debating, and following this issue, then I'd really be concerned, as a soldier. You can only do what you can do within the limits or reality, but people need to keep talking and get the rest of the story out, which I've been trying to do for the last month.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

We'll start our second round. We're down to five minutes per questioner, so keep that in mind.

We'll start with Mr. McGuire, go over to Mr. Hiebert, then come back to Mr. Bouchard.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

There are probably not that many similarities between Bosnia and Afghanistan, but you have experience in both countries. It appears that NATO will be in Bosnia for quite some time before the wounds are healed there sufficiently for us to withdraw our military.

In trying in this committee to get a timeframe on Canada's commitment, when can we look forward to the day we can bring our troops home? We are now committed for three years, and you said in your remarks that it's going to take a long time before the civil apparatus can be put in place to the point where the Afghans can actually run a system of government, a system of justice, social programs, the whole system.

How long do you think we will have to stay in Afghanistan in order to get them to the point where we have reasonable expectations that our sacrifice will have been well spent and worth the effort?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

I really can't answer how long the Canadian Forces will be there or how long Canada will be engaged there. What I can say is that the international community, if it's to be successful, is going to have to be involved for a long time. Define “a long time”. That's tough, but I know these kinds of institutions of government, these institutions of state, and even as a soldier, an army, are not built in one year, two years, four years, or a decade.

The Canadian regular army was, I don't know, fifty-plus years old when the First World War began. Our militia was in many cases far older than that. You don't have to have a PhD in history to recall the rather ad hoc method of mobilization in 1914. By reading history, I know exactly what our British mentors thought of us until Easter Sunday, 1917, at Vimy Ridge.

It takes decades to build an army and a police force. It takes a long time to rebuild a system of governance in a place that never...it was never like a strong democracy in the first place. When you go back to the mid-seventies, when the internal communist coup overthrew the Daoud government, which was the last sort of progressive-looking government, there's a lot of damage to fix.

How long will Canada be there? That's a political decision made by the political leaders of our democratically elected government, one or another. But it will take a long time to repair the damage in Afghanistan.

That said, there are a lot of dynamic, visionary—and I hate to sound corny—inspirational Afghan leaders. People have come back two and three levels down. People have come back and given up very nice middle-class lifestyles as professors, engineers, and business people in the States, Canada, Australia, and Europe, come back to a certain degree of physical discomfort—living in Kabul is not like living in Orleans, Ontario—and in some cases a certain amount of personal risk. Knowing these people and having worked with them, the stuff is there, the parts are there, and that's why I'm more optimistic than not about the way ahead.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Given that they have a population almost equal to ours, with over 30 million people in Afghanistan, if the desire is there among the population to live normally, or more normally, you would think there would be a lot bigger effort by the local population to ensure that the Taliban and their ilk are confronted more aggressively. We don't see or haven't seen any reports of what you just indicated, that people are going back to help make Afghanistan a better place in which to live.

Why isn't there more commitment? Maybe there is and we don't know about it. Why isn't there more local support out of these 30 million people? We're in there, along with 36 other countries, spending a boondoggle amount of money on their behalf to make life better for them. So why aren't they more visibly active?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

I think they are, but you're just not seeing it because of our focus in one certain area. For the people in Kandahar, we need to be able to provide that basic security first so that they're confident enough to be able to do that. These are people who have been run over by the forces of history multiple times in the last 35 years. The ones in Kandahar, Helmand, and those areas are not going to commit until they're pretty sure we can keep them safe. In the rest of the country, they have committed. I stood on election day last September 18 and watched people line up for over two hours in the hot sun to vote. It was pretty impressive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you, Mr. McGuire.

We'll go over to Mr. Hiebert, then back to Mr. Bouchard.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I was wondering if you could give us a bit more of a detailed update in terms of the progress that's being made with the training of the Afghan National Army. I have a multiple-part question, so you might want to take some notes here.

Specifically, what are their general capabilities? What specific duties are they engaged in at the present time? What sort of contribution are they able to make to the NATO-led mission in the south?

And as a bit of a follow-up from the previous conversation you just had with Mr. McGuire, at what point do you think we'll be able to say the Afghan army is now trained to the point where they are no longer in need of our services in terms of training? We understand that the military can evolve on its own, but at what point do you think they will be in that position?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

The general capabilities of the Afghan National Army are small-unit combat operations, offensive and defensive. By small unit, I'm talking about the section, platoon, company level of operations, a couple of hundred troops at a time in a combat operation. They can conduct, as I just said, both offensive and defensive operations.

In the south, they are engaged in every operation with the brigade led by General Fraser, which encompasses the six provinces in the south, plus British troops, Dutch troops, some Americans, Romanians, etc. The ANA participates in almost every one of those operations, and those operations are coordinated with the Afghan National Army corps commander, who is located in Kandahar City and is responsible for that same area. So it's not like we're conducting operations without them. They're coordinated operations.

I'm far too old and decrepit to have participated in direct combat operations, but the people who have will tell you that the ANA troops fight like tigers. They drive around in unarmoured Ford Ranger pickup trucks provided by the Americans, with a lot of pretty old Warsaw Pact-style weaponry—AKs, RPGs, and those kinds of things—and everything to them is a frontal attack. Everything.

The tradition in Commonwealth armies is fire discipline: teach your troops to control fire, conserve ammunition, and aim shots. The guys have given up trying to teach the ANA that, and they're teaching them ammo resupply instead. The ANA soldiers do not shirk.

How long will it take? It will take years before they're ready to go without any trainers at all. You could see a point where they may not need as many manoeuvre forces from the international community, but they will need trainers, mentors, and helpers into the future. How long? I can't answer that.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

All right.

My second question has to do with the Afghan National Police. We had a witness before this committee not that long ago who suggested that we should be considering increasing our commitment when it comes to the training we're offering to the Afghan National Police. Apparently just a handful of RCMP personnel are providing that training at present.

In your view, is the commitment that we've made adequate to achieve our goal of training the Afghan National Police to a point where they're efficient and capable of doing the job they need to do?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

I'll try to give you some context here.

The Afghan National Police program is an international program. Germany is the lead nation on that program. Forty-some-odd German police officers in the Kabul area run the program, if you will. It was slow getting off the mark. The United States has put a lot of money into Afghan National Police reform, and there are a large number of international police officers and contractors from I don't know how many countries helping to train the ANP right now.

Our RCMP officers are in the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar. They have been focusing on mentoring and bringing along and helping to professionalize the Afghan National Police who are in Kandahar. That's the context and flow.

We do have a Canadian contribution in the headquarters. The Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan, CSTCA, is the title. It was led by Brigadier-General Gary O'Brien. I think he's still there, and he has some significant Canadian staff resources that are helping the Americans with their end of the program. So that's where we are on police reform.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Is it sufficient?

[Col M.D. Capstick]

I don't know if the Canadian contribution is sufficient. I know the international contribution needs to be accelerated and upgraded across the board.