Diplomatic Counsel

I was the last Representative of Canada in Kandahar (RoCK), and worked with an outstanding team of Canadian civilian professionals to deliver development, humanitarian assistance, human rights and governance right through to the end of our combat mission in July 2011. This was followed by a non-combat, military training mission that ended yesterday, when the last troops came home.

General Dean Milner was the Commander who came home with the troops. He led the Canadian task force in its last combat rotation in Kandahar, and also brought our training mission to its correct completion and will be remembered by Canadian history as one of our great generals. It’s important that our troops have been properly honoured, but in this post I want to talk about the civilian work we did in Kandahar.

In 2011 when Canada completed its Kandahar military and civilian mission, PM Harper said that Afghanistan is no longer a threat to international peace and security. That remains true. It took a long time, a lot of learning and great sacrifice.  But reconstructing the Afghan state after its defeat and disastrous collapse, to where it is no longer an international security liability and can defend itself is no mean feat. Significantly, the international effort brought with it great achievements in the civilian domains of humanitarian conditions, social development, economic prospects, human rights and governance.  We can debate around the edges, but the historical fact of progress is plain. What’s more, when Canada found itself at the epicenter of the first geopolitical crisis of the twenty-first century, we performed with courage, proficiency and full depth of commitment.

To recap what happened after 9/11 – within 24 hours, NATO invoked the collective defense clause if it was determined that the attack originated outside the US. As we know, it originated in Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden planned and executed the World Trade Center atrocity. As a matter of fact, Mohamed Atta, pilot of one of the planes, delivered his last will and testament to Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms, the Al Quaeda stronghold in Kandahar. It did not take long for the United States with its allies to utterly defeat the Taliban government in their homeland, which is Kandahar.

But the very difficult part was reconstruction. And then, this difficulty was compounded in the extreme with the surprising emergence of the determined and elusive Taliban insurgency. However, there is no military solution to the problems of reconstruction and development.

In the distribution by NATO of reconstruction responsibilities across the country, and the establishment of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Canada received the province of Kandahar. Canada learned fast and adapted to put together a remarkably effective combined military/civilian response to the challenges of our area of operations. You will remember that in 2006 Prime Minister Harper tasked John Manley to prepare recommendations on Canada’s future role in Afghanistan for consideration of Parliament.

In his report, Manley said “The essential questions for Canada are: how do we move from a military role to a civilian one, and how do we oversee a shift in responsibility for Afghanistan’s security from the international community to Afghans themselves?”

The operational response on the civilian side was to create a large integrated team of some 80 civilians composed of brave and skilled professionals from across the federal government. Large scale project funding from CIDA and Foreign Affairs was key to support that effort. The RCMP trained Afghan policemen and policewomen. CIDA delivered schools, irrigation canals, vaccination programs and economic development. Corrections Canada brought the notorious Sarpoza prison up to international standards. Foreign Affairs advanced governance, democracy and monitored human rights in Afghan prisons. My American colleague, Bill Harris, described the Canadian reconstruction model as “wildly successful”. (Let me express here my thanks to our US friends and colleagues for their great partnership and the surge, which came to Southern Afghanistan when we needed it.)

It is utterly clear that the courage, skill and resolve of the Canadian Forces were absolutely a necessary condition for a civilian role. Without minimum conditions of territorial control and security, no development can take place and governance can never be more than tenuous. At the same time, once this minimum threshold is achieved, we discovered that security operations, development and governance can take place simultaneously and be mutually reinforcing.

Perhaps the most interesting innovation was in our own Canadian governance. Canada did away with the traditional departmental stovepipes and barriers between organizations to mobilize the assets of the public service to deliver a whole of government effort and an integrated reconstruction package in an active war zone. This is a great but hidden capability of the Canadian public service.

Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, and Afghanistan. The last generation of Canadian diplomacy has also been the story of states that catastrophically crash, catch public opinion by surprise and demand a complex international response. In many ways, Canada’s defense, diplomatic and humanitarian policies have been influenced by the tragedy of state failure.

I remember saying to myself in Kandahar that nobody, and certainly not the long-suffering Afghans, deserve the tragedy, pain, poverty and violence that attends state failure. Ultimately, we learned that it’s all about governance. If there was a civ/mil consensus on the challenge in Afghanistan, this is it. But sadly, when we look around, there are new candidates. Divided countries with predatory or incompetent governments end up in crises they cannot resolve without external intervention.

It’s all about governance because a state needs a certain level of legitimacy to defeat an insurgency.

As we look around, there will be other states that fail, and some we won’t be able to ignore.  In the meantime, I believe there are four core questions that international policy professionals should be working on so we are prepared when the time comes.

1. How to establish local governance in the absence of state legitimacy?

2. How to pivot from military counter insurgency to civilian peace building and reconciliation?

3. How to create justice before there is a functioning judicial branch?

4. How to combine the resources of traditional tribal community governance with the establishment of a basic national public service.

But really, Canada has not left Afghanistan. We are where Manley and Parliament wanted us to be. We have completely transitioned to a civilian mission under the leadership of Ambassador Deborah Lyons at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul. Afghans can take responsibility for their own security and a new chapter is unfolding. Bin Ladin’s old Kandahar HQ is now an agricultural research farm, thanks to Canadian civilian efforts.