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Exit date demands exit strategy

Exit date demands exit strategy

Largely forgotten during the election, it may soon be impossible to ignore. Canada's 2011 withdrawal deadline, restated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in mid-campaign, will hang over the life of the next Parliament as more soldiers lose their lives in combat.

Now that we have an exit date, we need an exit strategy. For this country's biggest military operation in recent memory, this is just the beginning of the ending,.br/members/home.

Opponents of the war will argue that we need to recalibrate the 3D equation of development, diplomacy, defence. With more aid, better negotiations, less military might.

But when the 100th Canadian death comes, let's remember that one of the first to die was Glyn Berry. A veteran Canadian diplomat who volunteered for our Provincial Reconstruction Teams, he and other aid workers have been targeted by the Taliban.

This is a reminder that development and security are symbiotic. Without one, the other withers and dies. Reducing military spending wouldn't magically boost development aid, because a deteriorating security situation would swiftly leave NGOs even more exposed to Taliban fire. And Afghanistan's fledgling government lacks the capacity to absorb more funding just yet.

As for talking to the Taliban: Not so fast.

First, the Taliban are not of a mind to negotiate, because they are hardly of one mind,?id=611850&replies=1#post-629335. They are nowadays a loose coalition of tribal fighters, highway bandits, Islamist mujahideen and Al Qaeda partisans.

Second, even if the Taliban were chanting from the same prayer book as before, negotiation was never their forte. Nor mutual tolerance a ready tactic.

The Taliban deemed the ancient Buddhist images of that isolated region to be idolatrous - and dynamited the colossal limestone statues. I can recall the despair on the streets of Kandahar after the Taliban defied the pleas of Muslim scholars from Iran,?tid=258793&displayMode=1, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to spare Bamiyan's priceless heritage.

So negotiating isn't as easy as the NDP's Jack Layton makes it sound. It takes two to talk. And diplomacy without the threat of force is just empty talk. Which is surely not what Britain's commander in Afghanistan had in mind when he was breezily quoted out of context by Layton on the campaign trail this month.

Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith merely stated the obvious: There is no exclusively military solution,x. The battlefield is the means to a negotiated end - if and when the Taliban conclude they have more to gain by talking than fighting.

So if diplomacy and development won't work on their own, how can Canada help the UN-backed NATO mission consolidate the defence track? When a new American president transfers more troops to Afghanistan,?tid=259658&extra=, how should Canada respond?

Third, let's remember how insurgencies are defeated: almost never, unless by the local people themselves. Only by building up Afghanistan's army and security forces can we consolidate our own exit strategy for 2011, fully a decade after 9/11.

Can the Canadians coax the Americans and other NATO allies to train and support more local forces, while bolstering diplomatic efforts with neighbouring countries? That must be the plan. And the exit strategy. Related articles:

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