The independent panel’s report on Canada’s role in Afghanistan is a quick read.
It should be widely read by Canadians as Parliament engages in debate over the question of either maintaining Canada’s military commitment to Afghanistan beyond February 2009, or changing the mission from a combat to non-combat role.
The Manley report – named after its chair, John Manley, the former Liberal deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs in the government of Jean Chretien – recommends extending the mission “fully consistent with the UN mandate on Afghanistan, including its combat role”.
Such an extension would be contingent on “the assignment of an additional battle group (of about 1,000 soldiers) to Kandahar by NATO and/or other allies before February 2009.”
The report also notes “the panel found no operational justification for setting February 2009 as the date to end the military mission.”
The panel’s recommendation provides political cover to the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper for maintaining Canada’s present commitment to the UN-mandated and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan, when the opposition parties are pushing for an end to it.
The failure of the present Conservative and the former Liberal governments to educate the Canadian public on the Afghan mission – its strategic importance, the costs, and Canada’s responsibility as a prominent member of the UN and NATO to meet its obligations – is addressed by this independent panel of former politicians and respected public servants.
“Afghanistan is at war,” the report states with admirable honesty at the outset, “and Canadians are combatants. It is a war fought between an elected, democratic government and a zealous insurgency of proven brutality.”
The panel frankly addresses a subject that politicians, given their partisanship and political opportunism, have failed to do.
The Afghan war of “ferocious complexity” is not the only issue of concern. Though the country is extremely poor and conflict-ridden, real progress is in evidence.
Some five million refugees have returned home since 2002, some six million children, a third of them girls, are enrolled in schools. Infant mortality is declining, roads and power lines are being built, and Afghans genuinely are striving for a better future with international support such as Canada’s commitment in development assistance of $1.2 billion for the period 2002-11.
“Warfare and reconstruction, bloodshed and progress,” the report states, “are the contrary and complicated realities of conflict and development in Afghanistan.” It then emphasizes, “None need doubt that the future of Afghanistan matters to Canada.”
The panel reminds Canadians that the international community abandoned Afghanistan after 1989 as a ruined state following the last bloody conflict of the Cold War waged there with devastating consequences.
Afghanistan is the profile of post-9/11 global security concerns, and the failure there in defeating an insurgency labelled an enemy by the free world will have a multiplier effect in a volatile, yet strategically important region and beyond.
Rich democracies, including Canada, have been slow in recognizing the need for intervention and peace-enforcement operations by deploying combat forces in failed states for human security, while assisting in state rebuilding.
Those advocating change of mission for Canadian soldiers in Kandahar, or pullout, have a grave responsibility in explaining how they intend to meet the development and security challenges of this new century in places such as Afghanistan.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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