KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The insurgency in Afghanistan may remain for years to come but it will wither away into irrelevancy if NATO's counterinsurgency operations this summer are successful, Canada's new top soldier in the war-torn country says.
Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance said Afghanistan could find itself co-existing with a small, ineffective insurgent element as other countries do while still being able to deliver public services and security to its people.
"It is absolutely not an effort that will have a cataclysmic effect on the insurgency," Vance said of NATO's operations.
"The insurgency will succumb to this over time. Insurgencies are rarely broken. They dissolve."
Vance spoke to several Canadian journalists Sunday at Kandahar Airfield in his first interviews since returning to resume command of Canada's 2,800 military personnel in Afghanistan.
He was deployed when his predecessor, Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard, was relieved of duties and recalled from the base two weeks ago over an alleged affair with a female subordinate.
"My reaction was, 'OK, let's get on with this,' and I got here as quickly as I could," Vance said. "I wasn't happy about the circumstances, but it's an honour to serve here."
Menard's conduct is currently under investigation by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service.
Vance's more nuanced view of the Taliban marks a shift from the past vision of "breaking the back" of the insurgency.
He said the influx of American soldiers into Kandahar city has freed the Canadian military to concentrate on maintaining stability in the urban centre's outlying rural regions -- a continuation of his so-called "model village" approach that he employed last year to much praise from NATO allies.
Over the next couple of months, the Canadian military will relinquish command of troops in Kandahar city, Zhari and Arghandab to the United States and focus its efforts in the rural districts of Panjwaii and Dand.
The planned operation in Kandahar province has taken longer than originally anticipated because of a lack of support among locals and
Afghan security forces that weren't fully prepared.
Afghans had expressed fears of an eruption of urban guerilla warfare in city streets -- a scenario that Vance said was not in play.
Hopes that the surge would result in the swift elimination of Taliban members and establishment of security were ambitious, Vance said.
"I think we probably all knew that that was aspirational, but then you got to get into the detail and that time table can slip," he said.
"It's not a disaster that it slides. It's better to do things right than to do things fast.
"It's very difficult I think sometimes for ... our own population to understand that, because we're not on a war schedule that says we're going to cross this line at this time."
Vance exuded confidence that the Afghanistan government would be able to restore trust with a public that has become jaded after three decades of war, namely because he said it promises an alternative that the insurgents don't.
"The insurgency isn't offering anything other than fear and intimidation," he said. "They don't have a public works program, they can't offer health care. They offer a ... forced judicial system that is all too often overstated in terms of its positive effects on the population."
Vance served previously as commander of Task Force Kandahar from February to November last year. He is scheduled to remain in Kandahar until September, when Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner takes over his duties.
Canada's military mission in Kandahar is scheduled to conclude in July 2011.
