Canada’s Legacy in Afghanistan

Three years ago, on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan’s capital fell to the Taliban. It was the final act of the ‘War in Afghanistan’ that began in October 2001, a war launched in direct response to the September 11, 2001, or 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States (US) that killed almost 3,000 people, including some 24 Canadians.

On the same day the Taliban entered Kabul, the Canadian government announced its Embassy was closing, bringing to an end two decades of Canadian and international efforts to root out the Taliban, eliminate other terrorist organizations it was supporting and create the conditions leading to a functioning, inclusive, democratic Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban’s return, Afghanistan’s economy has largely collapsed. Unemployment and poverty have increased and the health system barely functions. Terrorist organizations have returned, and women and girls are excluded from public life. And there has been no move by the international community to formally recognize the Taliban, which is still listed as a terrorist entity under Canadian law.  On the other hand, many countries, including Canada, have not given up on Afghanistan and its people.

Kandahar

The first Canadian military personnel arrived in Afghanistan, as part of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom, in December 2001. And from 2001-2014, more than 40,000 would go on to serve there as part of the NATO International Security Assistance Force. It was to become the largest Canadian military deployment since the Second World War, during which 158 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel lost their lives and over 2,000 were physically injured. Others still carry the visible, and invisible, scars of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  

Our military personnel have understandably lamented the sacrifices made in Afghanistan. As the Taliban flag was hoisted on August 15, 2021, the broken promises made to the Afghan people, and those who worked with the CAF, hung like a dark cloud.

Diplomats from the Department of Foreign Affairs (now Global Affairs Canada) also deployed to Afghanistan and opened Canada’s Embassy in Kabul in 2003. Over the next few years, as our military mission expanded, and Canada took on responsibility for the security, development, and governance of Kandahar Province, the number of deployed civilians also grew.

Like the CAF, these civilians lived and worked in high security conditions under constant threat of attack. Glyn Berry, the first Political Director of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, died in a suicide car bombing in 2006 and three Canadian soldiers were seriously wounded. Other incidents claimed the lives of two Canadian national defence contractors, a journalist and four aid workers.

Over the course of Canada’s mission, hundreds of Canadian civilians served in Kabul and Kandahar, working in partnership with, and under the protection of, the CAF. Diplomats assisted the Afghan government in improving governance; officers from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) focused on education, health and agriculture projects; Royal Canadian Mounted Police and officers from several Canadian provincial and municipal police services helped strengthen the Afghan National Police; members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services focused on counter-terrorism efforts; Correctional Services Canada personnel strove to improve the correctional system and prison conditions; and Canadian Border Services Agency experts worked alongside the Afghan customs authorities to enhance border management.

Among the achievements were girls and boys going to elementary and secondary school, many for the first time. Furthermore, Canada promoted the rights of women and minorities. And, in time, a vibrant and free press emerged while men and women were also provided opportunities to participate in democratic political processes.

Canada also had three signature initiatives in Kandahar designed to focus aid efforts: a polio eradication plan, an education project involving the construction of schools, and a major project to refurbish the 1950s US-built Dahla Dam and canal network.

Perceptively perhaps, and with a nod to domestic politics, the Canadian government withdrew from the NATO combat mission in 2011 and wrapped-up training assistance to the Afghan National Army (ANA) in 2014.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban)

It is often said that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. However, Afghanistan is really the graveyard of Afghans, who over the centuries have found themselves ensnared in the intrigues of others. The Costs of War Project estimates the fighting between 2001-2021 alone killed 46,319 Afghan civilians, 69,095 Afghan government military and police personnel, and at least 52,893 Taliban. As Pallavi Pundir reported soon after Kabul fell, “since 1978, Afghanistan has seen recurring cycles of violence that not only left the people disabled, displaced, jobless or in abject poverty but also caused deep psychological scars that transcend generations.”

In power for three years now, it is the Taliban trying to pick up the pieces in a country in which over half the population is in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Naturally, the new leadership would like to have the $9 billion USD held in US and European banks, belonging to the former Afghan government, unfrozen and returned. 

As for formal international recognition, it has proven elusive. Nevertheless, the Taliban did welcome China’s new ambassador, Zhao Sheng, in September 2023 with full honours. Russia’s embassy never closed and Moscow has since delisted the Taliban as a “banned organization.” NATO member Türkiye is also very active delivering humanitarian aid while Turkish Airlines has four weekly round-trips between Istanbul and Kabul. Fourteen other countries also have embassies in Kabul:  Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

Elsewhere, diplomatic missions in 38 countries fly the former flag of Afghanistan and are mostly staffed with those representing the former government. However, the Taliban recently announced that ties with embassies in the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Canada and Australia would be cut since they refused to take direction from Kabul.

For the US, there will be no official recognition of the Taliban until its leadership reverses the ban on girls and women’s education and establishes a more inclusive government. For the Taliban, there is no apparent interest in building such a society and none involving the inclusion of corrupt representatives from the previous administration. 

In the February 2020 Doha Accord, signed with the US, the Taliban did agree that terrorist groups could not use Afghan territory to threaten the US and its allies. Nevertheless, Afghanistan hosts the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which stages frequent cross-border attacks into Pakistan. Al Qaeda operates freely. Its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was hunted down and killed in a drone strike in his Kabul villa in July 2022. Other Taliban-friendly groups have also set up shop while the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), an ISIS affiliate, frequently terrorizes the Taliban, an ironic twist with innocent Afghans yet again stuck in the middle.

For civil society in general the news has not been good. The 2024 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index ranked Afghanistan 178/180 countries in the world, just above Syria and Eritrea. Indeed, the arrival of the Taliban resulted in the death knell for press freedom. And while the Taliban report that corruption has been reigned in, Freedom House disagrees. 

Canada’s Legacy

Canada’s humanitarian and development assistance to Afghanistan began after several natural disasters in the 1960s, well before 2001. Formal diplomatic relations were established in 1968. As for Canada’s presence in Afghanistan immediately after 2001, it was largely with an eye to our national interests, standing alongside US and NATO in the aftermath of 9/11. Militarily speaking, the Taliban was defeated early on, only to re-emerge later to frustrate the nation-building underway.

What is left, legacy wise, presents a mixed picture. An improved security situation since the Taliban took over has allowed many schools to reopen, albeit under appalling gender apartheid, whereby Afghanistan is “the only country in the world where the state bans women and girls from receiving an education.” In March 2022, the Taliban officially closed secondary schools for girls and in December 2022 banned female students from higher education. 

Even before the ban millions of girls did not attend school. Now, for girls over the age of 12, it is out of the question. Amnesty International consistently highlights the “web of interrelated restrictions and prohibitions in which Afghan women and girls are trapped.” The Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, speaks volumes about the very weird preoccupations of the organization’s leadership.

For boys going to school, the Taliban has transformed the educational system, purging Western cultural influences, compelling teachers to attend ideological orientation classes and establishing centrally funded “jihadi madrassas” for religious instruction and propagation. As Human Rights Watch has noted, “Schools are Failing Boys Too” with many boys “struggling with mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.”

Speaking about NATO’s efforts to build up the Afghan military, historian Edward Luttwak recently noted that the concept of developing a homogenous ANA, had been “rooted in a fantasy.” Lacking US support, it surrendered in 2021 to a numerically inferior, less-equipped, Taliban.

If there is good news, it is polio eradication. In August 2022, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative reported that ‘wild’ poliovirus transmission in Afghanistan was at its lowest level in history. Poppy cultivation has also plunged by an estimated 95%, a significant turnaround given Afghanistan was the world’s number one illicit opiate supplier. 

On the other hand, and while the Taliban has banned poppy cultivation, the production of crystal methamphetamine, another illicit drug, continues. And it is worth remembering that the Taliban has always controlled Afghanistan’s drug distribution networks, providing income that is undoubtedly difficult to give up given present economic conditions.

Returning to some good news, when Canada’s portion of the Dahla Dam project was over, all 77.6 km of the main canal and 415 km of secondary canals had been cleared of some 800,000 cubic metres of silt. While an effort to raise the Dam’s capacity was not completed, recent videos confirm that it, and the canals, are still in operation, providing vital water for agriculture and the city of Kandahar. An expensive soil and water analytical laboratory in support of the Dahla Dam project, and a meteorological station, both established at Kandahar University by CIDA, also remain in use.

In addition, and although it may have seemed like it from scenes at the Kabul airport in August 2021, the international community did not abandon Afghanistan. Humanitarian and development assistance continued even with the Taliban in power. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan is, for example, still at work there as is the European Union. The US, which absolutely left behind a huge mess, is paradoxically the largest donor, providing some $3 billion USD in assistance for Afghanistan since Kabul fell. Canada has also continued sending financial support to a country that was once the largest recipient of Canadian aid. And through various programs, almost 54,000 Afghan refugees and vulnerable persons have arrived in Canada since the Taliban took over.

Nevertheless, that dark cloud of broken promises still haunts many Canadians who served in Afghanistan, especially when Afghans who worked alongside them are still in Afghanistan and Pakistan unable to leave.

The Future

While waiting for formal international diplomatic recognition, the Taliban leadership stresses their effective transition from insurgency to governance. Publicly, they wish for good relations with everyone. When pressed, they remain on message regarding the ‘temporary nature’ of the restriction’s girls and women face. They are in no mood to be lectured, especially by Westerners. As for the Afghan opposition, little is seen or heard.  

Having little experience in governing, the Taliban largely adopted the government institutions the West set up over the past two decades, using “the same websites…albeit under a different name, logo and letterhead.” Ministries are also full of people from the previous administration doing their best to balance past and present. The Ministry of Defence integrated some 170,000 Taliban fighters into a new army, the best trained and equipped often indistinguishable from the Western armies they fought.  

As for now, the Taliban face a long list of humanitarian disasters while governing a country, population-wise, larger than Canada. Remaining on message, the Taliban leadership would like us to cut them some slack. It may be tempting to do so, but the draconian policies in place today are the same as when the Taliban first came to power. Back then, Afghanistan had one of the worst human rights records in the world. Indeed, the US State Department said in November 2001: “The regime systematically repressed all sectors of the population and denied even the most basic individual rights. Yet the Taliban’s war against women was particularly appalling.” 

Nothing has changed. In June, Zabihullah Mujahid, Head of the Delegation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, noted in the Inauguration Ceremony of the United Nations sponsored Doha Meeting that while the Taliban remains keen on engaging with Western countries, this would require everyone to respect their religious and cultural values. More than 1,000 days have passed since girls were banned from attending secondary school, which is indicative of what the Taliban’s religious and cultural values entail.

In the standoff between the West and the Taliban, over which way relations will develop, it could be a case of who blinks first, especially over the issue of education. If Afghanistan is to move forward it will certainly need the generation of women and men who received their schooling while the Taliban, ironically, did everything possible to prevent it. But this pool of people to draw on is finite, more so with the exclusion of women and the many highly educated Afghans who have already fled the country. Will the Taliban blink first, in the simple realization that it is in its national interests to do so? Or will it be the West, in the hope that less moralising will give the Taliban the political space to eventually reverse course on its genderized policies? Most likely, no one will blink at all.

For now, though, Canada’s Qatar-based Special Representative carries the flag for Canada in our dealings with the Taliban. And through the United Nations and other organizations, Canada’s financial support is helping to keep some of what Canada achieved in Afghanistan on life support. Indeed, just over $2 million was sent to the United Nation’s Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund earlier this month. Specific help for Afghan girls and women is another area where Canadians have also come to the forefront.  A good deal of this effort is conducted in the digital realm, a means unavailable when the Taliban first took over in 1996 and banned the internet anyway.

Lauryn Oates, the Executive Director of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, referring to the organization’s online educational projects in Afghanistan said it best: “we know what it takes. We have built a school. Its desks are digital, but its students and teachers are real. And we will continue adding more rooms until there is a seat for everyone.”

[Editor’s acknowledgment: The author of this article is the volunteer editor of Open Canada, and I would like to thank the many CIC members who helped me as it came together including Canadians who served in Afghanistan in various roles and Afghans who now call Canada home. The inspiration for the article came from a CIC Victoria event earlier this year. During the Q & A period, an audience member asked about Canada’s legacy in Afghanistan and whether our efforts and sacrifices had made any difference at all? The views and opinions in the article are solely mine].