The Report of the Independent Panel chaired by John Manley is now, and will continue to be, a pivotal statement in governmental debate and decision-making. There is widespread unity in Canada, including the government, the military, the public, and now the Manley Panel, that the overall goal of our presence in Afghanistan is to bring peace and better living conditions to one of the poorest and most fragile nations in the world. As the Manley Report says,

“The essential questions for Canada are: how do we move from a military role to a civilian one, and how do we oversee a shift in responsibility for Afghanistan’s security from the international community to Afghans themselves?”

The specific steps for these changes are also specified in the Manley report: developing local and national government institutions that are respected and not corrupt, recruiting and training Afghan soldiers and police, reclaiming of agricultural lands from mines and opium poppy crops, roads, bridges, electrification. With the exception of recruiting and training soldiers and police, these are activities that the NATO military are not suited to perform. Diplomacy and development requires other people with non-military abilities, yet the solutions proposed by the Manley panel focus almost exclusively on the need for increased military resources. This focus on war rather than on peace-making and rebuilding is a concern for several reasons:

First, the field of political influence that is operative in the Afghanistan War is broad. Canadians need to achieve clarity on the leading role of the U.S. administration in their Afghan adventure. The U.N. and NATO are where they are now, in response to more than the U.N. Security Council’s post 9/11 declaration. I refer to U.S. initiatives that converted the basically policing task of containing and diminishing Al Qaeda into a U.S.-escalated War on Terror. Several commentators claim that Canadian troops are in Afghanistan because of a perceived need to make amends for refusing to go with the U.S. into the Iraq War.

Second, the level of Canadian, NATO and especially U.S. moral responsibility for substantially increasing the level of violence in Afghanistan needs recognition. In escalating the extent and level of conflict, NATO has taken on the role of increasing the level of armament of the region; with the Taliban and others reciprocating with their own increased armaments, much of it coming through Iran. This echoes the U.S. arming of the Mujahadeen and Taliban to drive out the U.S.S.R., and more distantly echoes what happened when the French left Vietnam to the U.S. The escalation of the technical capacity for violence makes the possibility of reducing violence and negotiating an end to war much more difficult, and the result is a sharp rise in people wounded and killed. In Viet Nam, the U.S.S.R. armed the Viet Cong to counter the American forces, the level of destruction went sharply up, and the U.S. lost the war. In the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. armament matched the Soviet armament, the U.S.S.R. withdrew, and left a potential for destructive violence that we have been witnessing in the current War.

Most of the other NATO nations have been loath to commit battle troops, and this should tell us something about the nature of this adventure. The U.S. administration’s position is one of unilateralism, and pre-emptive strike. This extraordinary self-image as the single global superpower is not shared by the other NATO member nations, who regard it as dangerous and unrealistic, especially in the light of the Soviet failure in Afghanistan and U.S. failures in Vietnam and Korea. It is now quite possible that NATO and the U.N. and the U.S. will all be seen to have failed again, and to have left Afghanistan in civil war with the bloody local purging of those suspected of having supported the U.S.

The comparison with the Korean War, including Canada’s level of participation in the U.S. adventure in Korea is instructive. I was there, with the First Marine Division, for the winter of 1951-52. A half-century later, I still do not understand why I was there. Sure, South Korea is wealthy now. And North Korea is poor and nuclear now. The U.S. did not win, and in the long (nuclear) run, may be seen to have lost in terms of global security. Will we wind up with two nations – a Northern Afghanistan that is developed, and a Southern Afghanistan that is militantly theocratic, with nuclear Pakistani neighbours?

A strength of the Manley report is its recognition of leadership limitations both within Canada, and more broadly, within NATO military. A striking phrase in the Report says that Canada is in Kandahar Province “for whatever reason”. Mr. Manley told us, via the CBC, that the person(s) responsible for this sustained commitment is not known even to the Independent Panel. The military leadership may be making decisions and operating without sufficient political leadership – as argued in Janice Stein and Eugene Lang’s recent book “The Unexpected War”.

Afghanistan was the first real test of the Three D policy, and officials from all three departments do not think that Canada has done as well as it could. The Three Ds are not working well together and some are not working well alone. In Ottawa, words like dysfunctional, debilitated, and broken are common descriptions of the institutions at the centre of Canadian foreign policy. These descriptions come not from hostile outsiders but from people who have spent years working within one of the three big departments—Defense, Foreign Affairs and CIDA—that are Canada’s face to the world. The balance among those three departments has shifted markedly in the last three years. Defense has been reinvigorated under strategic and focused leadership, while the other two have largely lost their way. (260)

We are encouraged by the recommendation that a high-profile UN special representative should be appointed for coordination of the NATO and other participants, since the poor coordination of Canadian policy is mirrored in the poor coordination of the Afghan government, NATO participants, the ISAF, and Canada. It is a UN responsibility to address the ownership of the Afghanistan project.

We note that the Report also faults both the Martin and Harper governments on more than a failure of honesty and full disclosure, and recommends that the PM take a personal leadership role and also establish a special Cabinet Committee with a mandate for political oversight of the Afghanistan project. Currently, oversight of this (and other) projects is hindered by chronic disarticulation within and between Canadian governmental departments, especially Defense and Foreign Affairs.

The establishment of a Canadian Department for Peace would provide an inter-departmental coordination structure with focus on peace-building strategy and project funding. An attempt at a coordinating structure has begun with START – the Stabilization and Reconstruction Taskforce. Foreign Affairs chairs the group. START is an interdepartmental body that attempts to coordinate and implement activities of the 3D policy of the government – Defence, Development and Diplomacy. However, START can only achieve part of the overriding task of peace-building. We propose that a full Cabinet-level Minister and Department of Peace, in place alongside Defence and Foreign Affairs, would be the best coordinating re-structuring plan to respond effectively to the diverse needs involved in helping Afghanistan to establish a long-lasting peace and rebuild. The Manley report states on several occasions, that there is currently no role for peacekeeping in Afghanistan because there is currently no peace to keep. This view is reactive rather than proactive and fails to recognize that peace is a process, not a stagnant state. This is precisely the time for active peace-making and peace diplomacy, leading to a large-scale peace-building effort.

In the recent Environics poll, 60% of Canadians, 60% chose Canada as a country that exerted a positive force in the world. Now is the time for Canada to take a major, forward-looking peace initiative by establishing a Canadian Department of Peace. Afghanistan is the current challenge, but certainly will not be the last. Canada needs to anticipate the larger challenge of reducing violence in the global world and at home. The CDPI now enjoys the support of such prominent Canadians as Sen. Doug Roche, the Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, the federal NDP Caucus and the Green Party. Discussions have been held with many Liberal members where there has also been a great deal of interest. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre-Liberal) is reported in Hansard to have called for a Cabinet Minister of Peace, April 24, 2006.

The overall mandate of a Minister of Peace would be conflict transformation by peaceful means, consistent with the UN Declaration and Program of Action for the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), of which Canada is a signatory. The proposed Department of Peace would have the overall responsibility for the coordination and timely implementation of peace-related policy and would be composed partly of existing offices that are now spread across several Federal departments, relocated to ensure coordination of their activities. The department would act as a sensor for the early warning of potential violent conflict, serve as an incubator of creative responses to violent conflict, and design effective long term peace-building projects responding to the root causes of violence.

Dr. Richard J. Preston, Professor Emeritus, on behalf of the Committee on a Response to the Manley Report, Canadian Department of Peace Initiative.
prestonr@mcmaster.ca 105 Hostein Dr., Ancaster, ON, L9G 2S9 905-648-1598