Walkom: Clock ticking on Kandahar role
Dec. 6, 2006. 01:37 PM
THOMAS WALKOM
Canada is on the way out of Afghanistan — or at least out of the battle zones in that country's south.
This is not official. It has certainly not been announced. But both the governing Conservatives and now the Stéphane Dion Liberals are signalling that this is where they intend to go.
The Liberals, originally the architects of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, have become, under their new leader, some of its harshest critics.
"(Trying to) kill the Taliban in every corner of the mountains doesn't work," Dion said on Monday. "So we will try to propose to the government an approach that makes sense."
He has said in published interviews that he is not committed to the current government's decision to keep Canadian troops in Kandahar until 2009 and that, if he became prime minister, he would look for a way to withdraw "with honour" from at least the hot zones in Afghanistan's south.
"Canada must say (to its NATO allies and the Afghan government): `Look, we are very willing to work with you, to design something that makes sense,'" he told the CanWest News Service two weeks ago.
"Because I don't want to risk the lives of our soldiers if we are not making progress."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives have been more circumspect about extricating themselves. In September, Harper pledged to stand shoulder to shoulder with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his battle against Taliban and other insurgents.
But the Prime Minister too appears to be laying the groundwork for the eventual withdrawal of Canadian troops from the killing fields of Kandahar.
In particular, Harper ministers have been emphasizing the unwillingness of other NATO countries — such as Germany and France — to commit their troops to the southern battlefields.
"We cannot continue to do this without further support," Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said bluntly in October.
Last week, Harper flew to a NATO meeting in Latvia to ask for that support. He didn't get it.
Which means that the Conservative government now has a perfect excuse to shift gears. It can plausibly say — at the appropriate political moment — that Canada has paid its price in blood and that it is now someone else's turn to die.
That won't necessarily mean bringing the troops home. Polls show that while Canadians oppose their soldiers being killed in Afghanistan, they do support their being there to help rebuild the country.
The most face-saving way for Harper to square this circle would be for him to quietly insist that NATO reassign Canadian forces to a safer task.
That appears to be Dion's preferred option as well.
"When we say we leave (Afghanistan), it is not exactly that," Dion said two weeks ago in an interview with the National Post. "It is that we decide to change the mission in a way that will be much less dangerous for us."
"The burden on our soldiers is becoming unrealistic," he told the Toronto Star editorial board in September. "Other (NATO) countries have the feeling that the Canadians will take care of it, so they are less engaged than they should be."
For the new Liberal leader, this is quite a switch.
Just nine months ago, as his party's foreign affairs critic, Dion was a staunch backer of the decision to send Canadian troops head-to-head against Taliban fighters in Kandahar.
"It's a very important mission and we want to be there," he told a Canadian Press reporter in early March.
"We will succeed in Afghanistan if we show a lot of determination," he said on CTV a few days later. "We need to be resolute and to succeed."
When New Democratic MP Alexa McDonough questioned the wisdom of having Canada shift its focus in Afghanistan from development to full-scale fighting, Dion was dismissive.
"We need to be there. Canada is a good citizen of the world. We are very courageous. We have been in Yugoslavia. We are ready to be in tough situations."
True, he voted against the Harper government's decision in May to extend the Afghan mission to 2009. But he made it clear at the time, that he was voting against the way Harper made that decision, not the decision itself.
In September, when NDP Leader Jack Layton called on the government to withdraw Canadian troops by early 2007, Dion was caustic. "No one wants us to get out now, like Mr. Layton, in dishonour," he said on Sept 17.
Now, it seems, the new leader of the Liberal party has changed his tune.
And with Harper preparing the ground for what looks to be his eventual reversal, the political momentum for Canada to get out of Kandahar looks unstoppable. The only question remaining is when. Or, to put it another way, how many more soldiers will have to die before the inevitable occurs
