The Truth of Canada’s Failure in Afghanistan

Over fifteen years working in Afghanistan or tracking all aspects of the conflict from outside, I’ve only once dared hope that peace was in prospect. It was May 2, 2011. Just after 1 a.m., Pakistan time, U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a walled compound in Abbottabad, a kilometre from the Pakistan Military Academy. Surely all remaining illusions about Pakistan’s role in this war were now shattered, I thought: the whole world would confront Pakistan’s “miltablishment”—the military and intelligence agencies that had nurtured al Qaeda and the Taliban, fielded their fighting forces, and lied for them all along.

How wrong I was. The Barack Obama administration kept its head buried deep in Syria’s sand. The flash of brilliance at Abbottabad faded back into cowardly drift. Within a few years, and after a few rounds of bilateral recrimination, Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, then Pakistan’s president and prime minister respectively, had visited the U.S. to meet...