[Stopwar-l] Ex-soldier urges blunt talk about Afghanistan mission

[StopWar]

Nanaimo Daily News

http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=87ad40bb-57b1-45d6-8fb1-da4f230db0ab

Ex-soldier urges blunt talk about Afghanistan mission

Canada has failed to meet its goals, believes former military officer

Derek Spalding, Daily News

Published: Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Peter Dimitroff returned from another lengthy stay in Afghanistan just three weeks ago. It's been a year-and-a-half since he left his fianc?e and her horse ranch on Jingle Pot Road, and it's a relief to be home.

His long stints overseas may be coming to an end as he looks forward to settling into his new home and putting down roots in the city he was raised in. The former Canadian military officer has spent years in the Middle East, working as a security adviser for non-governmental operations. Four of those years were in Afghanistan.

More than six years ago, he was in the region as head of the National Democratic Institute, a U.S.-based organization that encourages democratic institutions in developing countries.

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Former Canadian military officer Peter Dimitroff spent the past year-and-a-half working as a civilian security advisor in Afghanistan.

Derek Spalding/Daily News

Dimitroff was overseeing preparations for the 2005 Parliamentary elections at the time. He then spent a few years in Yemen before returning to Afghanistan in 2009. Dimitroff could see that people's hope for a unified and stabilized country was even further away than it was when he left.

He considers the mission in Afghanistan to be a failure for a variety of reasons. He says there has been a lack of centralized governance and ingrained corruption at all levels of Afghan civil service. Even coalition forces failed to understand Afghan values. The Taliban has also effectively kept the NATO forces from winning the hearts of local Afghanis.

"People don't realize that the Taliban are the locals. They are someone's brother, someone's father. . . and they are incredibly canny," Dimitroff said. "The Taliban have been able to hold on all this time."

The Taliban have been particularly effective with two different strategies, according to Dimitroff. In the early half of the nine years of occupation in Afghanistan, the Taliban were effective in preventing the coalition's campaign to win over local support.

Troops were supposed to be on the ground with as little armour as possible, but heavy attacks made that impossible. Armoured vehicles and heavy weaponry only caused tension and fear. When the cavalry roll through a community, residents are scared because they are now targets.

The battle gets worse as armed forces train a local military to take over for NATO forces and instill a democracy. The Taliban, meanwhile, have launched an ongoing campaign to assassinate many people within the civil service. They're not targeting high profile officials. They want to discourage support for a democracy by making it a dangerous environment to work in. So they kill mid- to low-level bureaucrats.

"There has been this huge wave of assassinations, but you don't hear much about it because the international community only hears about the bombings that kill 15 or so people," Dimitroff said.

He wants to see politicians talking about Canada's role in Afghanistan. To his disappointment, he hasn't seen enough discussion. People's opinions are usually trampled if they speak critically of the war effort. Any form of criticism is considered a threat and a disservice to the men and women who have fought and died. But that attitude negates any healthy conversation about Canada's role, he explained.

"There is no mistake. We are winning the battles, but we are definitely losing the war," he said.
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