Harper and the Taliban Insurgency

In an interview with CNN's Farreed Zakaria on Sunday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke with surprising candor about the future of Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Although many sources, including the Globe and Mail, reported that he had claimed that the NATO effort could never defeat the Taliban insurgency, what he in fact said was quite a bit more nuanced.

Harper did in fact argue that Canada and its allies cannot simply "win by staying" and cannot on their own defeat the insurgency. He insisted, however, that we can bring about improvements, and he suggested that the most important improvement that might be made is the emergence of an honest and competent government that can "manage the insurgency" and govern capably. Success against the insurgency, he argued, must be indigenous, and the proper role for Canada and others must be to help bring about sufficient Afghan governance and military capacity to achieve such success. It is this, he insisted, that is the essential element of our engagement and ultimately our exit strategy.

The issue for Harper, therefore, is not "whether to stay or go" but "whether we are being successful" in building this local capacity. To my mind this is scarcely defeatist. It is simple common sense coupled with an accurate reading of history. Western democracies have seldom prevailed alone in foreign counterinsurgency efforts. And indeed such efforts have often destabilized the very societies mounting them. France in Algeria and the United States in Viet Nam are obvious examples.

John Nagl, a co-author with David Patraeus and others of the U.S. Army's widely regarded counterinsurgency field manual suggests that

[i]t is perhaps only a slight exageration to suggest that, on their own, foreign forces cannot defeat an insurgency; the best they can hope for is to create the conditions that will enable local forces to win it for them.

If this is the approach that an expanded U.S. role force in Afghanistan is going to take, and this would appear almost certain, then there is real hope that the type of success that Harper envisions will be realized. And if this is the case, then an argument can be made for our continued presence. However, I think Harper is right that if we are not making progress in this direction, then it might be better to recognize this and curtail our efforts.