An Offer Too Good to Refuse? Yeah, Sure

The Toronto Star has a John Wayne moment today, an article describing how Canadian army officers in Panjwai are getting all macho with the villagers. Here’s an account of an ultimatum given the local chiefs:

“Align with us against the Taliban, the Canadians told the chieftains, and the people of embattled Panjwaii will reap untold rewards, starting with a large stack of Ottawa-and-Washington-backed development dollars poised for the first whisper of actual security.

“Remain mere observers to lawless insurgency and – here comes the stick – Panjwaii will be forgotten. Unless the elders soon seize their tribal entitlement to power and influence and take a stand, the spoils of stability will go to a more hospitable patch of Kandahar province.

“Though the ultimatum came without a deadline, there was an unmistakable urgency in the Canadian message yesterday to a rare full quorum of the Panjwaii tribal council. Repeated separately by three different officers, the or-else scenario was clear. Just how deeply the warning registered with the Afghan elders, less so.”

The reality of the ultimatum is that it asks the chiefs to sign their own death warrants – for themselves and their families.

To accept this deal the villagers need to know that Canada will maintain sizeable forces in and around their villages, 24/7 for ever and ever amen. Because, if we don’t, (and we won’t) the Taliban will do what they always do. They’ll come into their villages and kill them and their families for collaborating. Barbaric as that is, it’s how insurgencies function. And, according to the report, the villagers know the deal:

“You tell me, how can we provide security?” asked Haji Ghulam Rasool, representative of the Noorzai clan in council, who said the foreign soldiers have an inflated sense of the tribal leaders’ leverage over the local population.

“We are empty, we don’t have weapons. I am a leader, but I am also really just a farmer. The authority of the tribe is weak. And until we have something in our hands to offer, plus stronger police and government to back us up, how are we supposed to act?”

The worst part of this ultimatum nonsense is that it has put the Canadian forces’ credibility on the block. We’ve given them an offer they can’t afford to accept and threatened them with consequences we can’t afford to impose. They don’t have much choice but to call our bluff. Are we going to let Panjwai fall under the control of the Taliban because the villagers don’t have the ability to hold them off? Whatever we do, the result will say a lot more about us than about the chiefs or the Taliban and it’ll be a message that’ll spread quickly throughout Kandahar.

What a boneheaded stunt.

 

We’ve Lost Our Bragging Rights

About a year ago Canada’s military leadership heralded a great victory in Panjwai District. We had met the Taliban and thoroughly defeated them. Those who hadn’t run away died where they stood. Sweet victory. We not only showed the Taliban but we also showed everyone else in NATO how it was done, that the insurgents could be crushed.

Well we got a few months out of that at least. Local Afghans returned to their homes. We got on with reconstruction and winning the hearts and minds.

And then the Taliban decided they’d like to return. They announced their arrival with IEDs, improvised explosive devices, a form of booby trap that took three Canadian lives in June and six more earlier this week.

Grame Smith of the Globe & Mail says our fortunes in Panjwai have taken a turn for the worse:

“…parts of the district are falling back into Taliban hands, locals say, after security duties were handed to a ragtag police force that quickly found itself overwhelmed by a lack of supplies and reduced to banditry for survival.

“The 05 Police Standby Battalion, a reserve unit, became notorious for corruption and desertions soon after it deployed to Panjwai this spring. The police unit also marked a new low point in the recent history of policing in the region when a police commander revived an old feud with an official from the National Directorate for Security, the Afghan intelligence agency.

“The personal dispute spiralled into open warfare between the two law-enforcement agencies around the villages of Mushan and Talokan in recent weeks, according to police who survived the battles, and village elders from the district.

“Ismatullah, a young police commander, said his 05 Battalion unit was assigned in April to take over security in Mushan, about 50 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city. By his own admission, Ismatullah says his men quickly resorted to thievery to supply themselves with things in short supply: money, food, bullets and fuel.

“Ismatullah says his unit contained 40 officers when they arrived in Mushan, but he now commands only a handful of men after 14 died, five were injured, and others ran away.

“Another police commander from the 05 Battalion, a middle-aged former mujahedeen fighter named Obidullah, said his unit in Zangabad has suffered similar losses. He commanded 50 police earlier this year, he said, but deaths and desertions have left him with 20 men.

“The recent battles in Mushan started without any Taliban involvement, Obidullah said: The conflict was only between tribal relatives of two factions who held grudges dating back to the 1980s. But the infighting weakened the government forces and insurgents were able to seize the western edge of the district, he said.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Rob Walker, Canada’s battle group commander, said in a recent interview that he knows the 05 Battalion has struggled. The district has grown more restive since early June, he said, but it’s hard to tell why the police have suffered so many casualties.

“‘They started getting hit,’ he said. ‘Was it because they were extorting people? Was it because they’re soft targets for the Taliban?'”