Poland's top soldier can empathize with Canada over Afghanistan

Poland's top soldier can empathize with Canada over Afghanistan
Peter O'Neil, Europe Correspondent, CanWest News Service
WARSAW -- Gen. Franciszek Gagor, Poland's top soldier and perhaps NATO's after an upcoming vote to replace Canadian Ray Henault as chairman of the western alliance's military committee, can empathize with Canada's public relations challenge over Afghanistan.

"Well, it's a challenge for us also," Poland's chief of the general staff told CanWest News Service.


General Franciszek Gagor, Chief of Staff of Polish Army. August 15, 2007
Photograph by : REUTERS


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AAAAFont: Gagor, competing with generals from Spain and Italy to replace Henault in the Nov. 14 vote, would be the first officer from the old Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact alliance to become top soldier in the 26-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

He brings to the international table considerable peacekeeping experience in the Middle East and guarded optimism about the Afghanistan mission.

But Gagor cannot claim popular support in his own country for Poland's military role there. One poll this month by the Warsaw-based firm CBOS said 72 per cent of those surveyed were opposed to Poland's decision earlier this year to deploy 1,200 soldiers primarily in the dangerous southeast provinces of Ghazni and Patika. Poland also has elite forces working with Canadians in Kandahar.

Objections to the fighting are even stronger than in Canada, where public unease and election fever have caused the government to declare that Canada's current role in Kandahar, where there are more than 2,000 Canadian troops, won't continue past early 2009 without an endorsement from Parliament. Three of four Canadian parties, in a position to trigger an election after Tuesday's throne speech, currently oppose an extension.

Poland, despite its rich though often tragic military history facing brutal invasions by neighbours like Germany and Russia, is a "peaceful nation," according to TNS Global managing director Andrzej Olszewski, a Warsaw-based pollster.

"We have become good soldiers because we are usually defending ourselves. But people don't recognize war as something good and beneficial."

Poland's public mood is soured partly by Iraq, where the country has lost about 20 soldiers since 2003. One soldier has been killed so far in Afghanistan.

The public objections, however, don't appear likely to have an influence on Poland's role. Despite this country's own current election fever there is no organized peace movement, the issue doesn't get major media coverage and the conflict hasn't become a political football in Poland's Oct. 21 parliamentary elections.

One possible explanation is that Poland, with 38.5 million people in a country half the size of Alberta, has been anxious since breaking free of Moscow's dominance in 1989 to use Europe and the U.S. as buffers against Russia. There is therefore an elite consensus to go along with NATO and, like Canada, take on a challenging role in a high-risk region of Afghanistan.

"Everyone considers this issue so fundamental for our foreign policy that responsible political parties would not like to have it as part of the daily campaign," according to Andrej Szeptycki, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

A second argument is that Poles, sensitive to the country's dominance by larger neighbours through most of its history, are reluctant to criticize an institution that reflects Polish independence.

"The uniform in the Polish mentality (became) something sacred ... after the trauma of the 19th century, when Poland vanished from the map of Europe," said Gagor, still wearing military fatigues after meeting troops earlier in the day.

Gagor said the West's military effort in Afghanistan has been generally successful this year, particularly because NATO forces disrupted a threatened spring Taliban offensive by launching pre-emptive attacks.

But he said western countries must do more to win Afghan hearts and minds by bringing better health care, education, and basic infrastructure to the country.

"I would say if the international community was more generous in supporting the people there, I think that would enhance significantly the progress and success of the operation."

Gagor beams with pride when asked about Poland's military history, captured in various works of art in military headquarters here that typically celebrates Poland's famous charging calvary in colourful, bloody battle scenes.

Poland's major military victories have been few in number but spectacular in scope. In Vienna in 1683 the army of Poland's King Jan III Sobieski helped Austria's Habsburg empire successfully put down Ottoman Turk invasion. And in 1920 near Warsaw, in the so-called Miracle on the Vistula, the Polish army outmanoeuvred and routed the Soviet Union's much larger Red Army.

Both are victories that Poles, now Europe's most devoutly Roman Catholic country, say potentially saved Christian Europe from domination by Muslim and then Communist domination.

Even in defeat the Polish army is romanticized. In 1939 the out-manned and out-gunned Poles held off the German blitzkrieg for more than a month, inflicting 60,000 casualties on the Nazi invaders and 11,500 on the Soviets, who joined the siege as a result of a Hitler-Stalin pact to divide and conquer Poland.

A senior British officer at the time sniffed to a Warsaw-based colleague, "Your Poles haven't put up much of a show, have they?" But historian Norman Davies has argued that the Poles ended up performing better than British and French ground troops did while being subsequently steamrolled when the blitzkrieg rolled westwards in 1940.

There is one lingering myth of Polish calvary, with sabres drawn, charging futilely against the blazing guns of Nazi tanks during the 1939 invasion.

Historians have concluded that it is fiction, begun by Nazi propaganda and perpetuated by the Communist regime after the war to press the theme that the Polish military was foolishly brave and incapable of defending their country.

"Nobody's that crazy, to ride a horse against a tank," Gagor said.

"The truth is that Poles used horses as means of communication. When they got to the place of their destination they dismounted and kept fighting. That's it."




©CanWest News Service 2007