Taliban On the Run? Hardly.

We've become accustomed to the Afghanistan rituals. There are the grim ramp ceremonies and the coverage of the flag-draped coffins of the dead being "repatriated" to Canada.

Then there's the ritual of the embedded reporter telling us of the bravery and commitment of our soldiers in the combat zone.

We also get the ritual briefings from mid-level and senior officers about the latest mission and how we're capturing this and driving the insurgents out of there and there and there. They always make sure to get out the message that it's a tough struggle but we're slowly winning. We just need a couple years more. Hmm.

It's these boastful and often groundless claims by the colonels and generals that sully the sacrifice of their soldiers. Remember how they gleefully pronounced Panjwai clear of the Taliban? They told us they were going to keep it that way. Yeah, sure. Didn't happen. The Taliban left, more or less intact, and returned when it suited them. They didn't have to wage a fierce battle to reclaim Panjwai, they just walked back in.

A report just released by the Senlis Council paints a grim picture completely at odds with our military leaders' glowing optimism. From The Guardian:

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into the group's hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.

Despite the presence of tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid, the insurgents, driven out by the US invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries," the Senlis Council says in a report released today.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people, who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".

The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm for Afghanistan before time runs out".

The Senlis assessment is confirmed by Oxfam and, according to The Guardian, is also affirmed by "senior British and US military commanders."

We need to realize that our military's bag of tricks is just about empty. It's a matter of too little, too late. The question now is how many more ramp ceremonies we're going to permit before people like Rick Hillier come clean with us?

We're not fighting the Taliban's war and they're not fighting ours. The trouble is, it's the outcome of their war, the political war of insurgency, that will decide the future of Afghanistan. Centuries of fighting off foreigners has shown them how to defeat massively superior armed force. A couple of decades ago it was the Soviets. They had all the toys - special forces, armoured vehicles, tanks, artillery, strike fighters and attack helicopters - and they were willing to be awfully brutal in using them. But they didn't win.

Here's something else to ponder. Once the Taliban achieve a critical mass of legitimacy, how long will it be before the others - the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, throw in with them and drive out Karzai? If that happens, what are we going to do then? It's time to start watching the other players, the warlords such as Dostum, Hekmatyar, and Gul Agha.

The Miserable Truth of Afghanistan

Another report stating the truth about Afghanistan - we're losing the hearts and minds of the Afghan people to the Taliban.

A Senlis Council survey found that fully half the men in the hotspot provinces of Helmand and Kandahar believe the international community will be defeated by the Taliban. In a counter-insurgency situation, half is not a 50/50 proposition, it's not even a C-minus, it's an F.

According to Senlis founder, Norine MacDonald of British Columbia:

- woefully inadequate aid and development, and misguided counter-narcotics policies, are turning people against NATO forces and making their work much more dangerous

- the survey shows alarming gains in Taliban support in the south, with 27 per cent of respondents backing the militants, compared with only 3 per cent in December 2005

- Eighty per cent of people surveyed said they worry about feeding their families, and 70 per cent know how to fire a weapon. People are hungry and angry, and when bombing campaigns level villages, it's not difficult to see how those facts come together

- In Kandahar and Helmand provinces, 80 per cent of respondents said the international troops were not helping them personally, and 71 per cent believed the Afghan government was also unhelpful.

"Meanwhile, a survey by the independent monitoring group Integrity Watch Afghanistan said that in the past five years – after the Taliban lost power –'corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations,' and about 60 per cent of responders believed it was the most corrupt government in two decades.

"The poll of 1,258 Afghans said that under President Hamid Karzai, money 'can buy government appointments, bypass justice or evade police' with impunity. Weak law enforcement was mainly to blame, said the group's executive director, Lorenzo Delesgues.

"'Corruption has undermined the legitimacy of the state,' he said yesterday in Kabul.

Canada sent forces to Afghanistan treating it as a predominantly military issue. Our top general swaggered and boasted that his combat brigade was going to Kandahar to kill a "few dozen ...scumbags." It's becoming apparent that Hillier didn't bother learning the history of the place which would have shown him that these "scumbags" have, for centuries, proven themselves to be determined, skilled, resilient and courageous fighters who have repeatedly defeated larger, better organized and more powerful foreign armies. He didn't bother to learn the rudimentary lessons of counter-insurgency warfare, particularly the two fundamentals: you have to flood the place with large numbers of troops and you try to avoid using heavy firepower. Instead Hillier fashioned a force that was paltry in numbers and, in the result, unavoidably dependent on airstrikes and artillery to offset their weakness in numbers.

We committed our soldiers to Kandahar without regard to the shakey political dimension of this struggle. It was as though we assumed that Karzai's government was legitimate or perhaps we considered that to be America's problem. Either way, we're defending an illegitimate regime that most of the Afghan people in our area of operations utterly fear and loathe.

Deciding that the Karzai government deserved our support only because it wasn't the Taliban was naive, even stupid. Sending our soldiers over there equipped, staffed and trained to fight our notion of warfare, not the locals' was just as stupid, even irresponsible. Let's remember that support for the Taliban in Kandahar province has increased NINEFOLD since we assumed control of the place. If we keep going like this, where is that number going to stand by 2009?

We owe it to the men and women we send over there to fight and sometimes die to do what we neglected to do during Harpo's sham debate; to ask the tough questions and demand some straight answers from the government and General Rick Hillier, answers that are long overdue.