Finishing the job by starting to talk in Afghanistan
The coming months will no doubt bring some extravagant pleas from certain Afghan and NATO politicians that Canada not follow through on the commitment to withdraw its combat forces from Afghanistan in 2011, but an effective antidote to such pressures is available in beefed-up diplomacy.
“You have to finish the job,” says Ahmad Wali Karzai – head of the Kandahar provincial council, half brother to President Hamid Karzai, controversial politician, entrepreneur with rumored links to the drug trade, and survivor of at least one assassination attempt.
Losing and recovering strategic consent in Afghanistan
A recent NGO conference in Afghanistan, sponsored by Ottawa’s Peacebuild, explored various dimensions of reconciliation and the need for a comprehensive peace process. The following is an adaptation of my presentation on the role and functioning of multilateral military forces in the absence of such a process.
Reconciliation in Afghanistan: At what price?
While the battles of the US-led military surge rage with renewed intensity in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, off the battlefield, much of the talk and not a few questions focus on the merits reconciliation.
Reintegration and Reconciliation in Afghanistan: In what order?
It remains a prominent hope of at least some of those managing the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan that a combination of reintegration and escalated fighting will create openings for the diplomacy that is essential to finally ending the war that, in the words of Prime Minister Harper,[i] will never be won.
Afghanistan: Situation Normal
CIGI Senior Fellow Mark Sedra has launched an excellent new blog on Afghanistan, “Dispatches from the Field: Perspectives on the Afghanistan Conflict,” available athttp://www.cigionline.org/publications/blogs/dispatches. In addition to his own commentaries, Mark regularly invites guest postings. The following is my January 24 post from Kabul, sent during my recent visit there.
Towards a two-pronged peace mission in Afghanistan
Canadian churches “encourage Canada to mount a peace mission and to accord it the same level of political energy and commitment, along with requisite material support, as has been accorded the military mission to date.”
Afghanistan: in search of a “high-level political settlement”
It’s hard to dispute the prevailing conclusion that all options in Afghanistan have become bad.[i] That includes the option that still earns only occasional and grudging mention – negotiation. But what distinguishes this option from all the others is its inevitability.