Afghanistan's Failing Grade

"We will have to judge it in the years to come [whether the value of the long mission in Afghanistan reached its original military mission] to destroy al-Qaeda sanctuaries]"
"In 2006, there was the very real chance that could have been a schism between the Northern Alliance and the southern Pashtun belt. That in and of itself would have been destabilizing across the Pakistan border. It would have destabilized Pakistan, a nuclear armed state, with unknown consequences."
You can, with hand on heart, say that the individual prospects of citizens in Afghanistan have improved."
Britain's chief of defence staff, Gen. Sir Nick Houghton

"[It was] morally incumbent upon the international community to assist the Afghans in regaining their balance in the post-Taliban world."
"Yes, progress in terms of reconstruction was not what it could or perhaps should have been. Yes, gender equality is not in general practice. Yes, schools remain unmanned. But the alternative was far worse."
Canadian military historian Sean Maloney

Canadian soldiers stand guard as an Afghan soldier, background, attends a graduation ceremony at a military training center in Kabul, Afghanistan in March 2012. Canada’s 12-year mission winds down this Wednesday.  Photograph by: Musadeq Sadeq, AP

 

Canada is now formally withdrawn from Afghanistan after a twelve-year span of active collaboration with NATO troops in stabilizing the country and helping its national police force and its military stave off Taliban attempts to recapture the country as an medieval Islamist stronghold. No one can even begin to guess at what all the sacrifices on the part of the West in those attempts will come to in the future.

The Taliban has proven to be extremely flexible, they have few problems recruiting new members, and they have effectively gained major control in the provinces furthest from Kabul. Afghanistan's central authority does not extend too far from its major urban areas. President Hamid Karzai, in refusing to sign an agreement for security purposes with the United States has diminished opportunities for a skeleton foreign military presence to remain in Afghanistan.

Government officials in Western capitals that have invested time, troops, funding and hopes in Afghanistan face concerns that everything they worked toward was but a temporary lull in the ongoing traditions and the culture of tribalism and religious tyranny that has always ruled the country. Simply amplified beyond endurance for the population under the rule of the Taliban.

Only the fact that they harboured Osama bin Laden was responsible, after 9-11 for their ouster.

The fledgling democracy that NATO leaves in its wake as all the allied countries pack up their troops and the aspirations to normalize the country as a civil, democratic nation where gender equality, education for the young, and economic opportunities might prevail, stand the real risk now of shuddering back to the past with a return of the Taliban overturning western-style government looms large.

Graeme Smith of the International Crisis Groups feels Western forces leave behind a security, economic and humanitarian mess with the failure of NATO's goal of extending the authority of the Afghan government everywhere in the sprawling country. But is that the fault of NATO, or can it be attributed to the fact that the Afghan government itself made little effort to wean itself and its infrastructure from graft and corruption, paying less attention to asserting control and security?

"What they're leaving behind is a growing internal war", asserted Mr. Smith. The group he represents is preparing the release of an exhaustive, post-mortem report, tracking a 15% to 20% rise in violence throughout the country since 2012. Responsibility for the outcome of the NATO investment's lack of full success cannot be laid at the lack of will of the West.

Foreign forces could not, after all, remain there indefinitely, draining the resources of their own countries.

Afghanistan has a decided deficit of patriots concerned enough about the welfare of their country and its population to ensure that a transition period from barbarity to civilization succeeded. The responsibility, in the end, is theirs and theirs alone. Despite all the effort and aid, sacrifices and funding from the West, Afghanistan failed itself.