By Haroon Siddiqui

TORONTO, ONTARIO – Can’t win, can’t quite quit. Our quandary in Afghanistan has eerie parallels to the American quagmire in Iraq.

There is no easy way out, no matter what U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates or our own politicians – the dithering Liberals and the warmongering Tories – tell us.

The John Manley panel – stacked with people keen on keeping Americans happy, at all costs, to preserve our trade – will present its own spin in the next few days.

What we need most is to break the cocoon of dishonesty covering our combat mission in Kandahar.

We are not there to liberate Afghan women. They are the deserving beneficiaries of the Western presence, but not its raison d’être.

We are not there to spread democracy, either. That, too, is a by-product – if and when it takes hold.

We went there in 2001 as part of a post-9/11 United Nations-sanctioned military mission. We went into Kandahar in 2005 for a variety of reasons: to placate the Americans, having begged off the Iraq war and the missile defence program; to let Gen. Rick Hillier re-militarize the military; to oblige Hamid Karzai, desperate for a NATO cover for the unpopular American Rambo mission in southern Afghanistan.

Instead of levelling with Canadians, Paul Martin talked about rebuilding Afghanistan, Hillier about crushing Taliban “scumbags,” Stephen Harper about the holy war on terror and Gordon O’Connor about seeking “retribution” for 9/11.

Canadians, seeing through the confusion and duplicity, just want the troops out, though many still want to help rebuild Afghanistan.

The Iraqification of Afghanistan is clear enough – spreading insurgency, with roadside bombs and suicide bombers, now creeping into Kabul; public insecurity, civilian deaths, joblessness, homelessness, hunger; and a weak, corrupt and highly partisan central government confined to the capital.

Arguably, the situation is bleaker, given the mountainous topography and record opium production.

Paddy Ashdown, the blunt Briton who headed the United Nations Bosnia mission and has just been named the UN’s top Afghan envoy, has conceded the Afghan failure. Even the U.S. has quietly launched a full-scale probe into it.

Only Harper, Hillier and their minions are still chirping about winning this hill or that fort from the Taliban. And they continue to brand their critics unpatriotic or disloyal to the troops.

As we await Manley’s report, here’s what we should be asking:

What, exactly, is our mission in Afghanistan?

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