If you want an idea of just how much the Afghan experience has soured for Canada, look no further than a furore over allegations that officials may have committed war crimes by handing over prisoners to local authorities in 2006 and 2007.

The accusations flying through Parliament -- not to mention a cartoon portraying the Prime Minister as a torturer -- cannot have been what Ottawa expected when it committed 2,500 troops to Kandahar in 2005 on a mission that has turned out to be much bloodier, longer and expensive that anyone had calculated. At best, Canada's dreams for Afghanistan are on hold: the Taliban is still strong, corruption is rampant and there is little sign of the major development that Ottawa hoped for.

Canada also stationed troops in Kandahar to underline that the old-style vision of its soldiers as peacekeepers was out. "We're not the public service of Canada ... we are the Canadian forces, and our job is to be able to kill people," said Rick Hillier, then chief of the defense staff, describing the Taliban as "detestable murderers and scumbags" in 2005.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a similarly uncompromising line in 2006 when he went to Afghanistan and announced "there will be some who want to cut and run, but cutting and running is not my way".

Fast forward three years and the government has long since stopped trying to sell the merits of a mission that has lost 133 soldiers so far and, according to Parliament's budgetary officer, will have cost over C$18 billion by the time it ends. For all the talk of not cutting and running, Ottawa says the troops will be home by end-2011 and dismisses talk of an extension.

Indeed, you'd barely know Canada was involved in its biggest conflict since Korea. Virtually the only time the mission makes the headlines is when a soldier is killed and this, as foreign diplomats note, is a rather odd way to persuade people to support the war. A few years ago officials held regular briefings, but those have long since stopped. Ottawa is now content to issue regular progress reports which reveal precious little progress.

The government learned too late that there is no way to make killing people look pretty (especially in an era of instant communications), that counter-insurgencies are particularly vicious, and that it is hard to maintain enthusiasm for a far-off conflict when people at home don't feel threatened by the enemy you're fighting and see little signs of progress

"I can understand why it would be difficult to perceive any sense of success," said Brigadier Jon Vance, who until recently led Canada's Afghan contingent. "In the Second World War . . . the (battles) were often linear. You could measure progress by how far across the map you moved on a day, how much of the enemy army did you destroy. You could celebrate crossing the Rhine, landing on a beach, liberating a town. It's very difficult to do that (here)."

Canada became involved in Afghanistan almost by accident, committing soldiers in 2002 . In 2005 the then Liberal government committed to a mission in Kandahar, but only for a year. The Liberals were replaced in 2006 by the Conservatives -- strong backers of the military -- who twice pushed through Parliamentary votes extending the mission.

Failure, as they say, is an orphan. In 2007, former top Liberal defense official Eugene Lang co-authored a book saying it had been Hillier who pushed for the Kandahar assignment. Last month Hillier denied this, saying he would have been happy to stay in Kabul. He made the comments as he promoted his own autobiography, in which he savaged NATO as a faction-ridden rotten corpse that had botched the Afghan adventure.

The finger-pointing and backbiting increased dramatically last Wednesday, when diplomat Richard Colvin testified to a Parliamentary committee. Despite widespread reports of prisoner mistreatment in Afghan jails, Ottawa has always insisted it had no firm evidence that the detainees it transferred were being abused. After all, handing over prisoners in the knowledge they could be tortured is a war crime.

But Colvin, based in Afghanistan for much of 2006 and 2007, said he had sent 17 memos warning of the danger of torture. Even though Canada's Conservative government is notoriously attack-minded, many were startled by the ferocity of its attempts to demolish Colvin's reputation on the grounds that his evidence was weak and he had been duped by the Taliban. Media commentators rounded on the Conservatives while cartoonists accused Canada of turning a blind eye to abuse. One even portrayed Harper as a torturer preparing to give Colvin electric shocks.

Needless to say, the mission is becoming less and less of a good news story. No one talks much about the chances of it succeeding. Harper, who was in India when Colvin testified last week, had his first chance to appear in Parliament on Monday to answer questions about detainees. He chose instead to meet the Canadian lacrosse team.

The story looks set to continue for a few weeks as the Parliamentary committee hears from others involved in the case.  One thing is clear -- Canada has learned some painful lessons and it will be a long time before Ottawa again sends thousands of troops to fight abroad.

((Canadian soldiers conduct a patrol in southern Afghanistan; Reuters photo by Finbarr O'Reilly. Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin testifies in Parliament; Reuters photo by Chris Wattie))

- Carl Mollins is a Toronto-based journalist who has worked at the Toronto Daily Telegram, Reuters (in London), The Canadian Press news service (in Toronto, London, Ottawa, Washington, DC) and Maclean's magazine (in Toronto and Washington, DC). The opinions expressed are his own. -

It was long ago, in 1761, when Pennsylvanian portrait artist Benjamin West moved east—across the Atlantic. Nine years later in England, he looked back west to produce a controversial but renowned portrayal of the death of British General James Wolfe during England’s seizure of Quebec from France 250 years ago, on September 13, 1759.

Attention to the picture persists nowadays, so long since the British soldiers set up what rapidly became complete English control of the Canadian colony. Perennial prints and publication of West’s art and comparable materials are reminders of what launched Canada as a country divided linguistically, in culture and politically, the situation that remains today.

West devised that picture as the hired “history artist” of King George III, who was already ensnarled in England’s imminent loss of its other North American colonies as the independent United States of America.

That heightened the popularity of West’s picture, despite some criticism of its then-modernistic appearance. Painting Wolfe and the cluster of soldiers around him in battle dress strides away from the traditional portrayal of military heroes draped in capes and god-like postures. West did four paintings, differing in size, and they were repeated in hundreds of prints in the 1870s, more and more ever since.

West’s picture, titled "The Death of General Wolfe", portrays the situation by guesswork and by adding veterans who paid for their inclusion. In the foreground is a half-naked, barefoot, head-feathered person, an apparent tribal warrior of First-Nation Canadians, although the record indicates none were involved.

Even more factually fanciful is a similar picture showing the death in the same battle of the French commander, Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm de Saint-Veran. In fact, the record indicates that Montcalm dies the following morning. Not only does the Montcalm army include First-Nations soldiers, but a tropical palm tree rises above the distraught soldiers.

Reinforcing the West painting’s provision of Wolfe’s heroism are poetic and musical tributes composed over the centuries.

Barely six weeks after the Quebec clash, the early English publication "Busy Body" published in its issue of October 22, 1759, a poem of Oliver Goldsmith, including the lines:

“. . . . O Wolfe! to thee a streaming flood of woe,
Sighing we pay, and think e’en conquest dear;
Quebec in vain shall teach our breast to glow,
Whilst thy sad fate extorts the heart-wrung tear . . . .
Yet they shall know thou conquerest, though dead!”

More than a century later in Canada, the poetic and musical Toronto schoolmaster Alexander Muir (Principal of Leslie and later Gladstone schools), composed during the 1867 formation of the Canadian Confederation what became a virtual national anthem in many schools for most of the following 100 years.

The lyrics of his stirring song, "The Maple Leaf Forever", proclaim that, “from Britain’s shore Wolfe, the dauntless hero, came and planted firm Britannia’s flag on Canada’s fair domain.”

His nationalist chorus reaches beyond that divisive history. Muir altered a line in which original lyrics referring to Canada’s commitment to the British floral emblems—Scottish thistle, Irish shamrock, English rose—to add the French fleur de lis, or lily.

The song goes on in the chorus to applaud “the maple leaf our emblem dear, the maple leaf forever”—an outlook fulfilled a century after Confederation with Canada’s replacement of its red ensign of the Union Jack with adoption of the Maple Leaf flag in 1965.

Yet still, two and a half centuries after the English took over Canada from the French, the country’s national attitudes created 250 years ago divisibly, day-by-day persist.

- Donald Steinberg, Deputy President for Policy of International Crisis Group, is a board member of the Women’s Refugee Commission and served on the UNIFEM executive director’s advisory council. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Preparations are now starting for the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. This groundbreaking resolution was passed unanimously in October 2000 to address abuses against women during armed conflict, including sexual violence and displacement, and to bring women more fully into conflict prevention and peacemaking.

Resolution 1325 was properly hailed as a road map to promote, among other steps, women’s full engagement in peace negotiations, gender balance in post-conflict governments, properly trained peacekeepers and local security forces, protection for displaced women and accountability for sexual violence. It urged the Secretary-General to bring a gender perspective to all peacekeeping operations and other UN programs, and called for greater funding for measures to protect women during armed conflict and rebuild institutions that matter to women.

The key problem with the celebration plans is that there really is not that much to celebrate. The promise of Resolution 1325 is so far largely a dream deferred. Women continue to be raped and trafficked in conflict situations with impunity, both by rebel forces and by government militaries charged with protecting them. Women peace builders still face severe legal and cultural discrimination; coupled with sexual violence and threats against them, this imposes a victimization and danger that makes even the most courageous women think twice before stepping forward.

In recent peace negotiations in Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Philippines and Central African Republic, not a single woman served as a negotiator, mediator, signatory or witness. Men leading peace conferences still exclude women or shunt them off to ante-rooms while “real” negotiations take place, thus producing agreements that are disconnected from ground-truth and less likely to be successful and enjoy popular support.

The absence of women’s participation still silences their voices on issues of internal displacement, trafficking in women and girls, sexual violence, abuses by security forces, maternal health care and girls’ education. Such concerns are typically given short shrift in peace processes and reconstruction efforts, and provided inadequate funding. The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that less than 6 percent of funds committed in donors conferences after peace accords are targeted in any way towards women.

The UN has failed to lead by example. The UN’s gender architecture on armed conflict is a hodgepodge, with no lead agency and no clear division of responsibilities between UNIFEM, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR) and others.

All are filled with dedicated people doing their best – the recent BCPR decision to deploy 10 new senior gender advisers is a welcome example – but they are under-funded, under-supported by senior officials and poorly coordinated. Their work is further complicated by the absence of time-bound goals backed by monitoring, accountability and enforcement mechanisms.

Some believe that these issues will be addressed in the on-going debate over restructuring how the UN deals with gender issues in general. But the ideal solution – a single agency with at least $1 billion in dedicated funding, a so-called “UNICEF for Women” – seems beyond reach. Even piece-meal reforms, including the oddly named “Composite Entity”, are locked up in the same issues that killed the helpful proposals made by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006. For women now being raped in eastern Congo, the single-minded focus on an institutional and architectural solution risks becoming more of a distraction than an ally. The answer lies more in specific actions than in big-bang structural changes.

It is not too late to ensure a 10th anniversary of Resolution 1325 that is worth celebrating. As a first step, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro should appoint an advisory panel on 1325 of prominent international figures from developing and developed countries with past engagement on gender and armed conflict and knowledge of the UN system. More than a shop-talk or report-writing exercise, the advisory panel would propose and be empowered to help implement specific reforms and practical steps in the UN system, member states and the broader international community to better protect women in conflict situations and ensure their participation in building peace.

The panel should develop and help implement accountability mechanisms by identifying time-bound goals, proposing measurement criteria, determining responsibility for implementation, and defining rewards and sanctions to ensure compliance by individuals and agencies within the UN system. It would seek to reverse the shameful situation in which women fill only two of the Secretary-General’s 40 posts for country-specific special representatives. Among additional steps could be:

• Charging a single entity with overseeing the 1325 agenda, working in tandem with a permanent Security Council working group;
• Establishing a watchlist of countries and non-state actors of concern to be named and shamed into improving their records;
• Ensuring periodic reports by the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the status of 1325 implementation; and
• Enshrining the principle that sanctions will be adopted on governments and non-state actors that fail to meet international standards of protection.

If these items seem a stretch, it is important to remember that each of these measures now applies to the protection of children in armed conflict under UNSC Resolution 1612.

The panel’s success would not be measured by the reports it issues or the publicity it generates. It would come in changing the lives of women on the ground, securing seats for women in peace negotiations and post-conflict governance, preventing armed thugs from abusing women, holding government security forces and warlords alike accountable for sexual violence against women, preventing traffickers from turning women and girls into commodities, building strong civil society networks for women and ending the stigma of victimization that bedevils women leaders.

Now that would be an accomplishment worth celebrating.

– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

They have no fear, they never tire, they are not upset when the soldier next to them gets blown to pieces. Their morale doesn’t suffer by having to do, again and again, the jobs known in the military as the Three Ds - dull, dirty and dangerous.

They are military robots and their rapidly increasing numbers and growing sophistication may herald the end of thousands of years of human monopoly on fighting war. “Science fiction is moving to the battlefield. The future is upon us,” as Brookings scholar Peter Singer put it to a conference of experts at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania this month.

Singer just published Wired For War - the Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, a book that traces the rise of the machines and predicts that in future wars they will not only play greater roles in executing missions but also in planning them.

Numbers reflect the explosive growth of robotic systems. The U.S. forces that stormed into Iraq in 2003 had no robots on the ground. There were none in Afghanistan either. Now those two wars are fought with the help of an estimated 12,000 ground-based robots and 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the technical term for drone, or robotic aircraft.

Ground-based robots in Iraq have saved hundreds of lives in Iraq, defusing improvised explosive devices, which account for more than 40 percent of U.S. casualties. The first armed robot was deployed in Iraq in 2007 and it is as lethal as its acronym is long: Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS). Its mounted M249 machinegun can hit a target more than 3,000 feet away with pin-point precision.

From the air, the best-known UAV, the Predator, has killed dozens of insurgent leaders - as well as scores of civilians whose death has prompted protests both from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Predators are flown by operators sitting in front of television monitors in cubicles at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, 8,000 miles from Afghanistan and Taliban sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The cubicle pilots in Nevada run no physical risks whatever, a novelty for men engaged in war.

TECHNOLOGY RUNS AHEAD OF ETHICS

Reducing risk, and casualties, is at the heart of the drive for more and better robots. Ultimately, that means “fully autonomous engagement without human intervention,” according to an Army communication to robot designers. In other words, computer programs, not a remote human operator, would decide when to open fire. What worries some experts is that technology is running ahead of deliberations of ethical and legal questions.

Robotics research and development in the U.S. received a big push from Congress in 2001, when it set two ambitious goals: by 2010, a third of the country’s long-range attack aircraft should be unmanned; and by 2015 one third of America’s ground combat vehicles. Neither goal is likely to be met but the deadline pushed non-technological considerations to the sidelines.

A recent study prepared for the Office of Naval Research by a team from the California Polytechnic State University said that robot ethics had not received the attention it deserved because of a “rush to market” mentality and the “common misconception” that robots will do only what they have been programmed to do.

“Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to the time when computers were simpler and their programs could be written and understood by a single person,” the study says. “Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways.”

That’s what might have happened during an exercise in South Africa in 2007, when a robot anti-aircraft gun sprayed hundreds of rounds of cannon shell around its position, killing nine soldiers and injuring 14.

Beyond isolated accidents, there are deeper problems that have yet to be solved. How do you get a robot to tell an insurgent from an innocent? Can you program the Laws of War and the Rules of Engagement into a robot? Can you imbue a robot with his country’s culture? If something goes wrong, resulting in the death of civilians, who will be held responsible?

The robot’s manufacturer? The designers? Software programmers? The commanding officer in whose unit the robot operates? Or the U.S. president who in some cases authorizes attacks? (Barack Obama has given the green light to a string of Predator strikes into Pakistan).

While the United States has deployed more military robots - on land, in the air and at sea - than any other country, it is not alone in building them. More than 40 countries, including potential adversaries such as China, are working on robotics technology. Which leaves one to wonder how the ability to send large numbers of robots, and fewer soldiers, to war will affect political decisions on force versus diplomacy.

You need to be an optimist to think that political leaders will opt for negotiation over war once combat casualties come home not in flag-decked coffins but in packing crates destined for the robot repair shop.