The author is a researcher at the Center of international studies and research at the University of Montreal (CERIUM). He was political advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016-2017. On August 24, he will publish a work entitled Canada in search of an international identity.
The commemorations of the 20e anniversary of the attacks of September 11 last Saturday corresponded almost to the day with the reconquest of Afghanistan by one of the actors of this fateful day, the Taliban. The two events have been widely commented on for several weeks, with particular emphasis on the situation in Afghanistan. A summary review of news articles and opinion pieces published in the Western media reveals a double consensus: the political, economic, social and military weaknesses of Western intervention in this country for two decades and the incapacity of the government. Afghan government to respond to the Taliban offensive explain this debacle.
In Canada, Afghanistan came to haunt the population and political leaders in the midst of the election campaign. Unfortunately, the discussion focused on one of the twists and turns of this tragedy, the evacuation of Canadians and their Afghan allies. The leaders’ debates focused two or three minutes on this incidental aspect of what remains, however, the most important Canadian military intervention since the Korean War in the 1950s. The programs of the two major governing parties are silent on the lessons to be learned. from Afghanistan.
Admittedly, an electoral campaign does not lend itself well to an in-depth debate on such an intervention. There are many angles of analysis, and it is easy to get lost. However, the fall of Kabul opened a window of opportunity to discuss the method used by the West to intervene in this country, the “war” against terrorism. It is too often forgotten, but the primary objective of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had everything to do with the elimination of al-Qaeda and its allies rather than with any undertaking of ” nation-building ».
To respond to the terrorist attacks of al-Qaeda, the West waged an all-out war where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan in order to find their perpetrators and to bring down the regime that hosted them. This war also went well beyond the framework of this country since it was transported to Iraq, where its consequences were disastrous on the human and material levels, for the country and the region. Finally, it gave birth to a whole terrorist nebula whose tentacles touch all the continents. In short, a power hammer was used to crush a fly that has often proven to be as elusive as it is effective in adapting to the surrounding environment.
Questioning the past
This result is sobering. Quebec political scientist Jean-François Caron is engaged in the exercise. In a newly published book, The West in the face of terrorism, he wonders about the strategy adopted for 20 years by the West to fight against contemporary terrorism, a terrorism of a violence that was until then unknown to us. Could it be, he writes, “that we made the mistake of believing that it was possible to defeat this threat, when it can, at best, be contained? »This inevitably results in a questioning of the methods employed. Is it possible that they “did not prove to be appropriate and that we should have considered other more effective and morally superior solutions? “
For it is becoming evident that the “war” against terrorism has had and still has dramatic consequences on the ground, in dozens of countries, while raising distressing ethical and moral questions. In this regard, Caron is passing judgment on the entire company. The use of all-out war to combat current terrorism, he writes, “was a largely ineffective and immoral strategy, but also terrorist in itself because of its lack of discrimination between those who deserve to die and those who, on the contrary, must not be the target ”of Western violence.
We must therefore review the software used in the fight against contemporary terrorism in order to design a new one more suited to the threat. Because Caron affirms it, current terrorism is a real threat whose lethality must be correctly assessed before defining a combat strategy. It excludes peaceful, ineffective means against a non-state actor. Between diplomacy and total war, there is a path, that of violent methods other than war, that is to say the use of military means within the framework of a restricted and targeted use of armed force. .
We are not remaking history. We can only learn from it to give it another course. This is what Jean-François Caron invites. After the elections of September 20, the next government and the opposition parties owe it to us to launch the discussion on how to lead the fight against contemporary terrorism, because, it is certain, there will be other attacks, other foci of infection that must be prevented or reduced with the right tools.
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