In the Shadow of Occupation À L'ombre De L'occupation

We think we know what life in the West opening eyes Bank looks like. Forty-seven years of Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance have numbed us to the images of rock-throwing Palestinian youth and mothers mourning the dead; of checkpoints and settlers and houses flattened by Israeli bulldozers. It is a ritual of tears and rage. The pictures on the following pages show us the West Bank we very rarely see, either because it falls outside the preferred media narrative or simply because we choose to not look. They are pictures of Palestinians in moments of joy and pleasure. They show the need and determination to live, to love, to study and to play, despite the daily weight of occupation. This, too, is resistance. It should jolt us out of what we think we know. In the Shadow of Occupation by | par Alaa À l’ombre de l’occupation Badarneh

Nous croyons savoir à quoi ressemble la vie en Cisjordanie. Quarante-sept ans d’occupation israélienne et de résistance palestinienne nous ont en effet saturés d’images : jeunes Palestiniens lanceurs de pierres, mères éplorées, colons montant la garde aux postes de contrôle et maisons rasées par des bulldozers israéliens. Comme un rituel immuable de fureur et de larmes. Les photos des pages qui suivent révèlent une Cisjordanie méconnue. Parce qu’elle cadre mal avec le discours médiatique dominant ou parce que nous préférons l’ignorer. Elles montrent des Palestiniens partager des moments de plaisir et de joie. Elles témoignent d’une nécessité et d’une détermination qui consistent à vivre, aimer, apprendre et s’amuser malgré le poids quotidien de l’occupation. La résistance a aussi ce visage, qui vient ébranler 10 nosOPTIONS certitudes. POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 10 11 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 11 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem Alaa Badarneh opening eyes is an award-winning photographer based in Nablus on the West Bank.

12 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 12 13 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 13 AMARS-AVRILbove | Wedding 2014 day, Nablus City, 2011 MARCH-APRIL 2014 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Right | School, Bethlehem, 2012 Alaa Badarneh opening eyes

14 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 14 15 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 15 AMARS-AVRILbove | Music, 2014 Nablus City, 2011 MARCH-APRIL 2014 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Right | Graduation ceremony, Al Najah University, Nablus, 2012 Alaa Badarneh opening eyes

16 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 16 17 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 17 AMARS-AVRILbove | Olive 2014 season, Salim village, 2011 MARCH-APRIL 2014 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Right | Eid al-Adha, Askra refugee camp, near Nablus, 2012 Alaa Badarneh opening eyes

18 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 18 19 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 19 AMARS-AVRILbove | Exibition 2014 soccer, Palestine and Japan, Nablus, 2011 MARCH-APRIL 2014 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Right | Traditional wedding day, Der Istya village, 2012 Alaa Badarneh opening eyes

20 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 20 AMARS-AVRILbove | Ramadan, 2014 Qalndya checkpoint, near Al-Quds, 2013 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Right | Al Ein refugee camp, Nablus, 2012 SPECIALopening SECTION eyes specialopening section eyes

telling stories of secret US military warfare that the film fo- ual devices born in Hollywood that are becoming more and Take me cuses on: Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. more common in contemporary documentaries. All three are tales of black ops, where the US military The opening sequence could have come out of the to the front played a central role in acts of war against civilians, by Bourne series. The post-production grading of the video committing them or, in the case of Somalia, facilitating creates an effect audiences will recognize as a kind of half- them. As Scahill says, in the opening montage, “This is a way house between entertainment and documentaries. Call Richard Gizbert story about the seen and the unseen. And about things hid- it cinéma (slightly less) verité. den in plain sight.” The narrative winds through dusty roads in the Mid- In the documentary Dirty Wars (directed It seems rather easy nowadays, given what has hap- dle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa, pauses for by Rick Rowley) Jeremy Scahill shines a pened to the news industry, to hide such things. Jingo- breath at the reporter’s apartment in Brooklyn and fol- ism still mars a lot of the coverage of foreign policy coming lows Scahill into a congressional committee room in Wash- light into the darkness of America’s secret out of the US. Despite the mea culpas (or kinda culpas) we ington, DC. There, his shocking findings on an American wars, and on the culture of apathy and heard after all those anchor people helped cheerlead Amer- war crime are presented to a half-empty committee room ignorance that enables it. ica, indefensibly, into Iraq, they are basically singing from that just grows more empty as Scahill delivers his evidence. the same song sheet on Iran. One of the narrative threads the film relies on And with the economics of the news industry collapsing is Scahill himself, and he is uncomfortably prominent Dans le documentaire Dirty Wars de Rick budgets and Justin Bieber running amok and attracting those in the presentation of the film. “Uncomfortable” is his Rowley, Jeremy Scahill fait la lumière sur les coveted clicks, what sensible North American news outlet word, not mine. He told me in an interview that he had sombres guerres secrètes de l’Amérique. Et would devote its dwindling resources to chasing stories from to be convinced to front the story for marketing purposes. sur la culture d’ignorance et d’apathie qui which most North Americans would rather avert their eyes? Scahill despairs at that uncomfortable truth: that the best chance his documentary had to succeed with mostly white, les rend possibles. irty Wars gets at those stories through a combination Western audiences would be if he presented it, rather than Dof dogged journalism, thousands of miles travelled, allowing the participants — and victims — of the story to exceptional access and good storytelling, as well as the vis- tell it themselves.

uring the national anthem at the recent Super Drones are the weapons of choice in more and more Bowl, the television audience got the now cus- conflicts these days. This is because they are the perfect Dtomary military component of the pregame pres- tool to fight the new kind of war, the asymmetrical con- entation: an Army colour guard on the field, live images of flicts that confound conventional armies. They also usually troops saluting from some base in Afghanistan followed by confound modern news outlets, which haven’t yet learned the customary fly-by, the strutting of overhead weaponry how to cover them. 1/2 page horizontal that Americans somehow find reassuring. These are the kind of conflicts Jeremy Scahill covers This year’s fly-by, however, was different. No jets. In- in Dirty Wars, the timely documentary that goes where stead, we got Apache helicopters, which makes sense when much of the Western world’s news media does not and tells QUEENS you think about it. Given what the US military seems to be important stories that usually go untold. up to around the world these days, it’s not really about jets. Getting into the shadowy areas around modern warfare It’s about close air support. is not easy. Doing it with a video camera is harder. And What would have made even more sense would have turning it into a watchable, Academy Award-nominated been a fly-by of drones. The skies over the stadium in documentary is harder still. New Jersey should have been filled with pilotless Preda- Scahill made his name and learned his way around the tors and Reapers. And the video feed shouldn’t have come nooks and crannies in and around the US military when he

from Bagram. It should have been from a secret location in wrote Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mer- 1 0 0 Nevada or upstate New York, at one of the many military cenary Army, his 2008 book on the giant military contract- bases where pilots do their remote control thing. ing firm that made billions during the American invasion 9 5 and occupation of Iraq. Like drones, Blackwater does most of its work in the 7 5 dark, off screen (and off the books, as far as Pentagon spending is officially concerned). Scahill’s reporting on

Richard Gizbert hosts Listening Post, on Al Jazeera English. Blackwater prepared him well for Dirty Wars and the three 2 5

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2 0 1 4 I R P P P M P A a d _ r e v _ b l e e d D e c e m b e r 9 , 2 0 1 3 1 1 : 5 8 : 5 8 A M Richard Gizbert opening eyes

There are a few moments where the filmmakers do o the nomination of Dirty Wars for a best documentary seem to take it a bit too far: the freeze-frames, with a tele- SOscar was welcome. As a story, the War on Terror Inc. Known unknowns photo effect and the machine-gun text across the bottom and its growing subsidiaries in the shadows will continue of the screen capturing a man heading into a meeting in to be a tough sell on the evening news and in the papers, Sherief Gaber Jalalabad. The technique would have been more effect- let alone with cinema audiences. ive had the target of the lens been a Bin Laden courier or But Jeremy Scahill and his production team have suc- an American operative, rather than Scahill himself. ceeded in doing just this. They have bucked some of the Most of the Egyptians fighting and dying But that’s showbiz. And I’m quibbling. disturbing trends in contemporary journalism, such as the in the country’s ongoing revolution are Because journalism, like warfare, has changed. There devotion to simple narratives of good vs. evil that reduce the anonymous to the outside world. In Jehane are techniques filmmakers rely on to attract audiences that struggles in the Middle East and other “foreign” places to a car- were unnecessary just a generation ago. Complaining about toonish grammar seen through the prism of domestic politics. Noujaim’s documentary The Square, we that is as pointless as moaning about the technology that Punching through that corrupted vision is the film’s meet some of the people who made the has driven the change. true achievement. It has taken us to the stories we are not revolution. Journalists have always had to fight to get their stories shown, or choose not to see, even though those stories lie, on the air. All that has changed is the rules of the game. as our reluctant narrator tell us, hidden in plain sight. n La majorité des Égyptiens qui luttent et meurent au nom de la révolution en cours dans leur pays sont totalement inconnus du monde extérieur. Le documentaire The Square, de Jehane Noujaim, en tire “This is a story about things quelques-uns de l’anonymat. hidden in plain sight.” Scahill in Somalia. richard rowley

n August 14, 2013, as Egyptian police were in the end to oppression, to impoverishment, to marginalization middle of perpetrating the largest single massacre and the abusive neglect of the state. Even after the initial Oin modern Egyptian history, Mahmoud Abdel 18-day uprising that saw the generals and tycoons abandon Hakim wrote on his Twitter account: “Tomorrow we’ll President Hosni Mubarak, Mahmoud continued to take to die the same death.” Three months later, during a protest the streets, fighting for the fall of a regime that promised commemorating the second anniversary of the battle of him no future. Mohammed Mahmoud Street, which marked a decisive Amidst the graffiti that has filled the walls of Egypt, moment in our revolutionary struggle, Mahmoud was shot been erased and been written again over the past three and killed by police in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. years, two tags in particular are repeated, hastily scrawled A charismatic, intelligent 22-year-old engineering in freehand: “Glory to the unknown” and “Freedom for the student, Mahmoud could have easily been a character in detained whose names we do not know.” Indeed, how can The Square, Jehane Noujaim’s street-level documentary we keep track of so many names, of the over 2,000 killed that takes us past the wide shots of drifting tear gas and and the 20,000 arrested just since the July 3 coup last year inside the personal struggles over Egypt’s fate. Perhaps if we that seized on the popular resentment toward the Muslim watched the film closely enough, frame by frame, we might Brotherhood’s failures and increasing authoritarianism by even spot him in the background in one scene or another. restoring those same generals to power. How many of these Mahmoud was there in Tahrir Square when millions across unknown and unnamed, mostly Brotherhood but increas- the country rose up to demand (and they still demand) an ingly secular, liberal and leftist activists among them, could have been in the film? Most of the earliest, most shocking video that came Sherief Gaber was born to Egyptian parents in Boston and out of the Egyptian revolution was of these unknowns: one grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He travelled to Egypt regularly standing in front of a water cannon, another opening his during his childhood and early youth, and returned to Cairo jacket and baring his chest to police before he is shot in when the revolution started. He was a cofounder of Mosireen, a cold blood, a masked teen on a motorbike carrying wound- nonprofit media collective that has documented the protests and ed from the front lines to a field hospital and others like the violations of social justice. this. We see only their backs in the video because they are

POLICY OPTIONS 25 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Richard Gizbert opening eyes

POLICY OPTIONS 25 MARCH-APRIL 2014 Sherief Gaber opening eyes

the furthest forward, past the eye focus on the symbolism of Tahrir gives short shrift to the of the camera and first to meet huge amount of work being done by activists outside the the police or moving too fast for Though the square, like that of Neighbourhoods in Name Only. Even us to take account of them. the film’s main characters are not spared this elision. We These anonymous individ- see only a fraction of the work and effort that they spent to uals are deserving of our respect, bring about change. remembered by the glory of revolution To say that The Square is a flawed film is not to insult it. their selfless acts. But as Egypt’s The attempt to capture any historical moment, not only so trauma goes on, we confront the soon after its beginnings but well before it has even begun fact we increasingly know the has not yet to end, must inevitably be partial and inconclusive. The names of the heroes, victims and events that began with the protests on January 25, 2011, activists the revolution creates. have roots in decades-old struggles. And everything after Of its villains, too. succeeded, them has changed. Though the revolution has not yet suc- In recent months the list of ceeded, it has left nothing untouched. Even the old regime arrested, detained and impris- has been forced to change its discourse as it attempts to oned has become deeply famil- maintain power, adopting a laughable parody of the radical iar. Friends, many credited with it has left new language that will ultimately sweep it away. organizing and championing the But where the film does succeed is in those moments revolution or telling its stories, are when it shows us that another world is possible. Despite the arrested and imprisoned. Alaa Abd nothing maelstrom surrounding them, it is through the personal strug- el Fattah. Ahmed Maher. Ahmed gles of the characters and their partial views of events that we Douma. Nazly Hussein. Abdalla El see the truly revolutionary moment that breaks with history. Shaamy — and too many more. untouched. These subjective views, while incomplete, are perhaps the only You can look these names up, way to truly understand the magnitude of what took place and learn about the people behind to recognize the power that these events still hold, despite the them, see the trumped-up charges seeming lack of concrete change. They come with the dawn- they face, how long they have ing awareness that at the moment people begin to organize been imprisoned and what abuse their own lives, futures and commons, they can reject the idea and even torture they have faced. that politics is a game for elites only. We know them not just At the moment, the outside world may see only an Egypt because they are our friends, seeking quick, dirty fixes in a desperate search for stability. But because they are tech-savvy or the spirit of January 25 and of Mohammed Mahmoud Street audience-friendly, but because sense of justice that has been drowned out by the false and the many struggles we do not even have names for, and they are most often the people choice between Brotherhood and Military. of the sacrifices of all those unknowns, still holds sway in who have spent so much time Repression is unsustainable. Things will change in the promise of a new world. The Square shows us how people and effort fighting for dignity, Egypt. It is not blind optimism or naïveté to think so, but freely chose to take to the streets to risk their lives for a world shutterstock social justice and freedom from an inevitability driven by a logic of necessity. The regime not governed by puppet dictators, unaccountable financial oppression. Even if we wish to admit that they are all computer equipment. I remember a night in 2011, sitting cannot maintain itself as it used to. The shrill chorus of institutions and thugs masquerading as State Security. And it flawed, even as we have had disagreements with them, to with Magdy during a period of respite from tear gas and nationalism and propaganda we are witnessing now has shows us that the sweep of revolution is made up of people, know that they are targets of the very repression they seek birdshot, hearing about his struggles with the Brotherhood a desperate quality to it, as frightened older generations both brave and flawed, struggling to resist the forces that buf- to end demands solidarity. and his treatment at the hands of State Security during the attempt to hold on to their perquisites and stand feebly in fet them and who, though they have not yet arrived at a better Beyond the din of Tahrir’s protests, Mahmoud Abdel long Mubarak years, which included torture and a mock opposition to demands for change that they fundamentally society, have at least revealed the foundation of justice upon Hakim was a member of Neighbourhoods in Name Only, execution. These experiences were such an inevitable part fail to understand. which it could be built. an informal coalition of activists, engineers, urbanists and of his life that State Security officers didn’t bother arresting The moral panic that set in during the last decade of When people first found themselves in Tahrir late students who worked on community organizing and de- him but simply called him twice a month asking him to Mubarak’s regime continues, fearful of youth and made at night on January 28, 2011, after the police had been velopment. Their mission was to help Egypt’s most margin- report to them at the station. more violent by an emboldened police force seeking broken, the greatest surprise of all was not in their numbers alized and poorest residents organize around issues of basic For all the differences between us, and even as recent themselves to recover a lost honour and respect. But this re- or even the achievement in having resisted the police, but services and a dignified place to call home. The word used events have caused him to rally defensively around his vanchism only breeds more resistance, more rebelliousness, that in this space, now made truly public, they could meet by the group for neighbourhoods is a double entendre. It Brotherhood identity, I know that Magdy’s mistreatment from those who will not stop until the old regime has been one another for the first time, engage in a radical commons also reads: “Alive in name alone.” has instilled in him a deep sense of justice. There are, I am pulled down and a new future becomes possible. where their old identities became changed or even done sure, others in the Brotherhood just like him. That does away with. What camera can capture the moment when he last I heard, Magdy al Attar, a member of the Muslim not exculpate the organization, which we saw appropriate mid this last gasp of the old regime, and after all that someone first becomes a citizen, not of a state but of a TBrotherhood and a central character in The Square, was many of the same means of repression once in power. But Awe have seen in the past three years, it is difficult to society, when one first realizes that beneath the accumu- in hiding after the State Security Investigations Service as we watch the cycle of oppression and torture repeating evaluate or even watch The Square. At times, the film seems lated pain of the old world, there is something new and came to his house looking for him and confiscated his itself, we must struggle even more to rehabilitate this too positive, too optimistic. At others, it is clear that its unexplored, something worth dying and even living for? n

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mission in a positive light may be understandable, but avoid- fighters, who could not prevail in a conventional battle The truth about ing painful truths is not an effective way to learn — and Can- against better-equipped foreign forces backed by aircraft. ada still has much to learn from its Afghan experience. Operation Medusa was undoubtedly a victory for the Afghanistan This much seems clear: the international mission to Canadian Forces, but the gains were only tactical. That stabilize Afghanistan following the toppling of the Tali- did not stop Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hope from ban regime in 2001 has not succeeded. Early hopes for a declaring at a press conference following the fighting, “We Roland Paris democratic renewal gave way to mounting disillusionment, beat them… Four successive strikes against the Taliban Tactical gains, corruption and violence. Although important gains were broke the back of their insurgency here.” Despite the Canadian military’s claim of achieved in national development indicators — including What Lieutenant-Colonel Hope did not know at the success, the mission failed to extinguish the number of children in school, women’s rights, and ac- time, however, was that Operation Medusa was also a critic- while often cess to health care — these improvements rested heavily on al learning experience for the Taliban, which thereafter Afghanistan’s insurgency or stabilize the the presence of an enormous foreign military presence and shifted its strategy to small-group guerrilla-type attacks and country. a deluge of aid money, all of which is now waning. subterfuge. The Taliban would return to the same territory hard won, soon after the Canadians left. Panjwa’i and Zhari, like other Malgré les succès revendiqués par etermining what our military accomplished during areas of the province, would fall under increasing Taliban Dthese years is not a simple task. For one thing, Canada influence over the ensuing years, despite repeated Can- l’armée canadienne pendant sa mission was part of a large coalition of countries contributing forces adian sweeps to try to clear the area of insurgents. were rarely en Afghanistan, elle n’a pu mater to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which Yet rather than adopting a more cautious approach l’insurrection ni stabiliser le pays. set out to secure first the Afghan capital after the Taliban before claiming victory in future engagements, subsequent regime was routed, and then the rest of the country. It is Canadian military commanders tended to follow Lieuten- sustainable. difficult to identify the impact of Canada’s contribution ant-Colonel Hope’s imprudent lead in overselling battle- in isolation from this larger enterprise, and the long-term field accomplishments. With each new operation came results of the mission are still unknown. Afghanistan may reports of progress and achievements — insurgents killed, limp toward greater stability in the coming years — or, weapons caches discovered and destroyed, Taliban leaders alternatively, it may collapse back into civil war, or even captured — along with the suggestion that security condi- anada’s military mission in Afghanistan officially become a haven for al-Qaeda once again. These outcomes tions were either improving or on the verge of improving. ends in March 2014. It began in 2001 with the dis- will inevitably colour future assessments of ISAF’s legacy, These reports were almost always incomplete and mis- Cpatch of a small number of special operations troops including Canada’s contribution to the operation. leading. Tactical gains, while often hard won, were rarely to oust the Taliban and punish al-Qaeda militants in wake What, exactly, was Canada trying to achieve in Kan- sustainable. Indeed, security in the province deteriorated infiltrated were districts immediately north of Kandahar of the 9/11 attacks, and grew to include the deployment of a dahar? One useful guide is the May 2006 campaign plan, over time as the Taliban extended and deepened its influ- City, including Arghandab, where few Canadian or other battle group to secure the southern province of Kandahar be- which was produced around the time the Canadian battle ence, including in areas immediately around Kandahar City. ISAF forces were located. They then used Arghandab as a tween 2006 and 2011. At its peak, the Kandahar deployment group deployed to southern Afghanistan (originally classi- One of the most comprehensive open-source accounts launching pad in June 2008 for a brazen attack on Sarpoza numbered over 3,000 Canadian soldiers. Of these, 158 died, fied secret, it has since been released with redactions). This of the Taliban’s campaign during this period is by Carl Fors- prison inside Kandahar City, a short drive from Canada’s in addition to one Canadian diplomat, and thousands more plan states that Canada’s mission was “to conduct oper- berg, a former research analyst at the Institute for the Study “provincial reconstruction team” headquarters. suffered physical or psychiatric injuries. ations in Afghanistan in order to support the [Government of War in Washington, DC, who describes how the insur- Once established in districts to the north, west and In visits to Kandahar in 2008 and 2010, I saw Canadian of Afghanistan’s] effort to create a secure, democratic and gents adapted their strategy, using ambushes, improvised southwest of the city, the Taliban were better able “to move soldiers and government officials performing with profes- self-sustaining nation state.” explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide bombers to disrupt weapons, fighters and IEDs or IED components into safe sionalism and courage under extraordinarily difficult cir- It also identified two “strategic objectives” for Canada ISAF’s lines of communication. The Canadian battle group houses in several neighbourhoods of Kandahar City,” writes cumstances. To suggest that their sacrifices may have been in Kandahar: first, to “help maintain a secure environ- was forced to devote ever-greater attention to defending Forsberg. The infiltration routes also allowed insurgents to in vain seems like wretched recompense. ment” in its area of operations; and second, to “support itself and to building safer road links between its bases, all directly intimidate the city’s inhabitants and to carry out Yet anything short of an honest assessment of the mis- the establishment of efficient and durable Afghan security of which had to be patrolled and defended. a campaign of targeted assassinations that were “carefully sion’s legacy would do a greater disservice to the military structures.” This included helping to build “the human For a contingent that was already too small to estab- chosen both to degrade government capabilities and exert and civilian veterans of the Afghan operation, as well as to capacity and processes in [Government of Afghanistan] in- lish a permanent presence in most parts of the province, a psychological influence over the population,” by meth- the soldiers and diplomats who may be sent to risk their stitutions while extending their reach and credibility” and the growing demands of “force protection” left even fewer ods that included killing leading figures who were work- lives elsewhere in the future. Canadians deserve nothing less “supporting reconstruction activities.” troops available for clearing operations. Moreover, when ing with, or for, the Afghan government or international than an unvarnished presentation of the operation’s balance These orders reflected the then-prevailing view that the the Canadians moved into new areas or reentered areas forces. By 2009, a Globe and Mail article reported, Taliban sheet, even if the bottom line is written in red, not black. Taliban had been largely defeated and that Kandahar prov- they had previously cleared, the insurgents continued to fighters had become “nightly visitors” in the city, creating a Canada’s military and political leaders do not seem ince, the Taliban’s erstwhile homeland, was now relatively slip away or melt into the local population, only to re- climate of acute fear for residents. to share this perspective. For years, they have described calm. The reality, however, was that the Taliban had been appear once the foreigners had left. Canada’s Afghanistan operation as a success — against con- busy reconstituting itself in Pakistan and quietly reinfiltrat- In the meantime, the Taliban were developing parallel espite extensive evidence to the contrary, Canadian siderable evidence to the contrary. Their desire to cast the ing fighters into Kandahar. The newly arrived Canadians institutions of informal governance as a means of winning Dmilitary leaders continued to suggest that the strategic soon learned that Taliban fighters were gathering in the rural the support (or, at least, the obedience) of the local popu- situation was improving. In January 2010, senior officers I Roland Paris is founding director of the Centre for International districts of Panjwa’i and Zhari near Kandahar City. In Oper- lation. They threatened and sometimes assassinated local interviewed in Afghanistan were downplaying rumours that Policy Studies and associate professor in the Graduate School of ation Medusa, launched in September 2006, the Canadian tribal figures and government officials, thus eliminating op- Kandahar City was under threat. In fact, these were more Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. contingent attacked and decisively defeated these Taliban ponents who could not be co-opted. Among the areas they than rumours. A few months earlier, the overall commander

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of ISAF, US Army General Stanley McChrystal, had written a classified (but quickly leaked) report to Washington indi- cating that the Taliban’s influence over Kandahar City and neighbouring districts was “significant and growing.” At the time, I found it strange but not inconceivable that Canadian officers would disagree with the ISAF commander’s assessment. It later emerged, however, that the Canadian military’s own secret quarterly campaign assessments were also underscoring the degree of danger felt in the city. A March 2010 Canadian Press report based on access to one of those assessments said it noted that “most provincial committee members have left due to security.” Moreover, Canadian officials were well aware that security in other parts of the province had deteriorated. In partially redacted documents I acquired through an access-to-information request, briefing materials prepared for an interdepartmental meeting of assistant deputy ministers in January 2010 noted that “Afghanistan-wide, [the] insurgency appears stronger than at any time since 2002” and charted a steady increase in the number of “violent events” in Kandahar province from 2007 until the end of 2009. Furthermore, the released documents show Ottawa’s regularly commissioned surveys of the province’s population were exposing a decline in support for the ISAF presence and a marked decline in support for the Afghan government from early 2007 to late 2009, along with growing perceptions of insecurity within the populace. But in public, Canadian commanders gave little indica- tion that anything was wrong, continuing to deliver positive reports of progress. Canadian troops always seemed to be handing defeats to the Taliban, clearing areas of insurgents and establishing promising new partnerships with local communities.

here were exceptions. Brigadier-General Denis Thomp- Tson, who commanded the Canadian mission from May 2008 to February 2009, offered an unusually honest assessment of conditions in Kandahar near the end of his tour of duty, telling the Globe and Mail, “People’s sense of security has absolutely plummeted.” But the determination to present a misleadingly upbeat line would persist to the end. The last Canadian commander of Canada’s Kandahar contingent, Brigadier-General Dean Milner, said in October 2010 that the Taliban were on the verge of being pushed out of a strategic part of Kandahar province. The strategic location in question was none other than Panjwa’i, the scene of Operation Medusa in 2006. Canadian troops had undertaken clearing operations in Panjwa’i many times in the intervening years but never succeeded in dislodging the Taliban, who always returned, often stronger An Afghan man carries an injured boy to a hospital east of Kabul after than before. That Milner would stand in the same place two roadside bombs in November 2013. A UN report says the number of and, without any apparent chagrin, stick to the same script children killed and wounded in Afghanistan’s war jumped by 34 percent in 2013 as the Taliban intensified armed attacks across the country. displayed the Canadian military’s enduring commitment to cp photo reporting progress — no matter what was actually happen- ing in Kandahar.

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have yet to agree on whether a limited number of US n the end, the Canadian exertions and sacrifices in Kan- troops will remain in the country beyond 2014.) Idahar did little to change the underlying conditions of The results of the surge in Kandahar already seem this conflict. Perhaps recognizing the limited prospects evanescent. After several years of steadily worsening vio- of the operation, Canadian political leaders also began lence, the number of insurgent attacks in the province scaling back their description of the mission’s objectives. The relentlessly positive dipped in 2012, but sources cited by the respected Inter- By May 2011, Harper had boiled these purposes down to national Crisis Group suggest that the number of attacks preventing Afghanistan from becoming, once again, a shot back up in 2013. source of global terrorism. Speaking in Kandahar, shortly These and other indicators are not encouraging. A before the termination of Canada’s military and develop- spin smacks of a deliberate December 2013 US intelligence assessment representing ment effort in that province, he said, “You have to look the consensus view of the country’s 16 intelligence at this mission as a great success. The world came to Af- agencies reportedly predicted that conditions in Afghan- ghanistan because Afghanistan had become such a terrible communications strategy aimed istan would erode in the coming years, and that a rapid and brutal place — it had become a threat to the entire descent into chaos would likely take place if all Western world. Whatever the challenges and troubles that remain, troops were to leave. In most scenarios for Afghanistan’s Afghanistan is no longer a threat to the world.” at maintaining popular support future, the Taliban are likely to gain further control over But as the May 2006 campaign plan made clear, Can- rural areas of southern and eastern parts of the country, ada’s mission to Kandahar had once been considerably including Kandahar. Preexisting patterns of local politics more ambitious. Like other Western politicians, Harper will return to the fore, and the Taliban have already dem- kept reducing these objectives until all that was left was for the war. onstrated their skill at navigating and exploiting these the goal of preventing Afghan territory from becoming a patterns. terrorist haven. It was reminiscent of US Senator George Another argument put forward by the war’s defend- Aiken’s famous 1966 recommendation to President Lyndon ers is that establishing security was not the sole objective Johnson regarding American strategy in the Vietnam War: of Canada’s Kandahar deployment. On several occasions, declare victory and withdraw. Prime Minister Stephen Harper characterized the purposes A truly accurate measure of success or failure remains of this operation as “helping rescue Afghanistan and its dependent on what happens in Afghanistan after we The relentlessly positive spin may simply be an expres- from advancing on strategically vital Kandahar City. “That long-suffering people from violence and oppression” and leave. The Governor of Kandahar was one of the many sion of the military’s can-do ethos. But it also smacks of a Kandahar City did not fall was a victory for Canada,” said assisting them to “realize their vision of a successful and who found Harper’s self-congratulatory assessment to be deliberate communications strategy aimed at maintaining Michel Gauthier, the now retired general who was respon- secure democracy that is not a haven for terrorists.” This “a bit of an optimistic statement at this time of Afghan- popular support for the war. “I was willing to tell the Can- sible for all Canadian forces overseas between 2005 and included a substantial amount of development assistance, istan’s situation.” Indeed, some analysts have suggested adian public a positive spin on the mission, not a lie, but 2009 (quoted in June 2011). which turned Afghanistan into Canada’s number one re- that al-Qaeda may experience a “renaissance” in the large- a positive spin on the mission, for the effect of buying These claims have some truth to them. As noted above, cipient of bilateral development aid. ly ungoverned tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan time,” said Ian Hope, now a full colonel, in an interview Canadian forces were stretched thin, and it is difficult to In 2008, Canada identified three “signature” develop- border when Western forces leave Afghanistan, just as the in the January 2014 issue of Legion Magazine, six years after imagine that they could have done much better under the ment projects in Kandahar: the rehabilitation of the Dahla Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda recently gained control of two claiming that Canadian troops had broken the back of the circumstances. And preventing the Taliban from gaining Dam and its irrigation and canal system, the building or major Iraqi cities. Should this happen, even the minimal- Taliban. “If I could buy six more months, if I could buy one physical control of Kandahar City was certainly important, repair of 50 schools and expanded support for polio im- ist basis that some observers still use to characterize the year so that somebody else could build an institution that holding it until the American surge arrived. munization. It is still too early to reach definitive judgment Afghanistan intervention as a success would evaporate, could take over this fight, then we’ve contributed.” The fact remains, however, that security conditions about the outcomes of these projects. Will the schools leaving us facing the uncomfortable but unavoidable truth Yet the gap between these claims of progress and the in Kandahar worsened every year from 2006 to 2010 and that Canada built remain open after foreign forces leave that the ISAF coalition failed to achieve the operation’s reality of a mounting insurgency grew larger with each that the Taliban appeared to outmanoeuvre the Canadian the country, or will the Taliban use intimidation to shut strategic goals in Afghanistan and that Canada failed to attempt to “buy more time.” By March 2010, when US contingent by infiltrating Arghandab and other close-in them down (or prevent girls from attending classes)? Given do so in Kandahar. “surge” troops send by President Barack Obama began to suburbs of Kandahar City, which the insurgents then used that Canada completed only part of the work required to Canada made an extraordinary expenditure of lives arrive in Kandahar in large numbers, a survey conducted as footholds to conduct a mounting intimidation and as- rehabilitate the Dahla Dam system, will this project be and resources during its dozen years in Afghanistan, par- for the US Army found that among the nine districts in and sassination campaign within the city. In late 2009, ABC finished by US or Afghan authorities? ticularly during the Kandahar phase of the mission. The around Kandahar City, three were under Taliban control, News described the Canadians’ “failure to secure — or de- The effort to immunize Kandahar’s children against country can be justly proud of how most of our military five were under a mix of Taliban and Afghan government velop — Kandahar [as] one of the most glaring failures of polio was also incomplete, which led to new cases in the and civilian personnel performed under the circumstances. influence, and only one was under government control. the eight-year war.” province and elsewhere in Afghanistan, while the fate of But this experience raises questions about the capacity of The arrival of additional US troops provided some the inoculation campaign remains uncertain. In February our political and military leaders to speak frankly with Can- iven all this, what can we say about the results of relief, but American forces now faced the same challenges 2013, Afghanistan’s minister of public health reported- adians on a matter of utmost seriousness — one involving GCanada’s military efforts to secure the province? One that had bedevilled the Canadians for years. By mid-2011, ly remarked that insecurity in the southern provinces of the loss of Canadian lives, the taking of Afghan lives and conclusion, which now appears to be a dominant narrative when Canadian soldiers were removed from Kandahar and Helmand and Kandahar prevented “about 40 percent of the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars. within the Canadian military, is that Canada’s forces kept tasked with training Afghan military and police units in children” in these areas from being vaccinated. These and There is no shame in admitting that we did not suc- the Taliban at bay — specifically, that a relatively small other parts of the country, the American surge had reached other Canadian development projects undoubtedly bene- ceed in Afghanistan. It is a necessary step to learning number of Canadian troops performed with distinction on its peak. Thereafter, Washington began withdrawing its fited many Kandaharis. But the sustainability of these gains from this experience. The only real shame is to pretend a critical front of the Afghan war by preventing the Taliban troops — a process that continues. (Washington and Kabul remains in doubt. otherwise. n

32 OPTIONS POLITIQUES POLICY OPTIONS 33 MARS-AVRIL 2014 MARCH-APRIL 2014