Harper finally catching up to public opinion on Afghanistan

PM realizes unpopular mission becoming too costly politically

Steven Staples, Edmonton Journal, 28 Jun 07

OTTAWA - He wore his poker face right up until the last day of Parliament, but by the end of the week Stephen Harper showed his cards: The war in Afghanistan is ending for Canada.

The prime minister told reporters last Friday that "this mission will end in February 2009." In the press conference he sounded subdued, resigned to the fact that despite using all of the government's resources to build support for the war, two-thirds of Canadians still want it to end in 2009.

He blamed the opposition, saying that he will put the decision to extend the mission to a vote, but he wants a "consensus" in Parliament first because he doesn't want to "send people into a mission if the opposition is going to, at home, undercut the work."

This was a very different Stephen Harper than the one who only weeks ago shouted across the floor of the House of Commons that the opposition parties cared more about the Taliban than our troops when they raised concerns about the possible torture of former detainees. Surely, that was the lowest point of the debate.

The truth is that Harper has caught up with most Canadians -- he has reached his tipping point.

Harper now realizes that his embrace of the war effort is too costly politically for him and his party. The war that he made an unofficial cornerstone of his government turned out to be a millstone instead, grinding away at his popular support.

First, casualties are rising too quickly. Canada has lost 52 soldiers since moving to Kandahar 16 months ago, compared to only eight deaths in the entire preceding four years. Add to this hundreds of serious injuries, and the human toll is staggering for such a small force of 2,500 troops.

Second, our share of the load is excessive. Canada accepted too much of the burden in NATO by taking on a three-year deployment in the most dangerous part of the country. Canada's fatalities account for almost one-third of all non-U.S. deaths, even though Canada supplies one-tenth of the troops contributed by U.S. allies.

Third, there are few signs of the progress that Canadians have waited six years to see. Despite reams of nice-sounding statistics quoted by government officials, it's obvious that Afghanistan's problems are too deeply rooted. What's worse, the battle for hearts and minds is being lost to corruption, lack of aid and civilian deaths caused by NATO air strikes.

Two events of last week are a metaphor for Canada's war efforts. In a painful lesson, three soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb placed in an area thought to be safely under our control. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer came to Ottawa to urge Canada to fight on beyond 2009, but made no promises of help from other NATO members.

Now that Harper has opened the door an inch for a change in Canada's military role in Afghanistan, there will be tremendous pressure to kick that door wide open. Calls for action will only intensify when more casualties are incurred while fighting a mission that the government has already lowered the curtain on.

If there is a consensus among opposition parties, as the prime minister puts it, they will want the government to notify NATO that the bulk of the Canadian troops, which are currently involved in a counter-insurgency combat role, will be moved out of Kandahar province by February 2009 -- or sooner, if the NDP has its way.

As a sop to NATO, opposition parties would likely agree to some of the soldiers in the battle group being redeployed elsewhere in Afghanistan, along the same lines as Canada's uncontroversial peace support mission in Kabul before 2006.

It may also be acceptable to opposition parties to leave behind a few hundred troops in the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team to train Afghan forces.

At home, it will be impossible for Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor to oversee the demise of the mission that he so strongly, if ineffectively, defended on behalf of the government.

His handling of the war, especially the treatment of detainees, is a factor in the prime minister's grudging acceptance that the mission must end. A change in defence minister will have to accompany the change in government policy.

In a broader context, Harper's remarks last week may signal that the current military buildup and transformation of the Canadian Forces from peacekeepers to war fighters has reached its zenith.

The war has been used to justify an increase of billions in military spending, a reorganization of the Forces to better fight the U.S.-led "war on terror," and more than $20-billion in planned equipment purchases.

The Liberals and NDP have already called for a freeze on new major military contracts until the federal auditor general reports on the government's non-competitive procurement process in the fall.

With the war all but over, what support will there be for billions of dollars worth of tanks and helicopters intended for Afghanistan?

The Canadian public has never been comfortable with the U.S.-friendly shifts in Canadian foreign policy that Afghanistan has been used to defend, and now they will want our government to be doing what Canadians have always supported -- participating in United Nations peacekeeping missions and paying more attention to diplomacy and aid.

That's probably the best news of all.