As the United States and NATO prepare to ramp up their war effort in Afghanistan, military experts say Ottawa has already begun planning how to wind down its mission there.

Under the terms of a House of Commons motion from last year, Canadian troops are to begin withdrawing in June of 2011 and vacate the country by the end of that year. As recently as Dec. 8, General Walter Natynczyk, the chief of defense staff in Ottawa, affirmed that the Canadian forces would uphold that timeline.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to send in 30,000 additional troops by August of 2010, and NATO has said it hopes to find another 7,000 military personnel from member countries.

The additional soldiers will allow "more scope for aggressive action" by NATO forces, including the Canadians, according to Brian MacDonald, senior analyst with an industry group, the Conference of Defence Associations.

As the surge gets underway, Canada's area of responsibility in Kandahar province will shrink. In theory, that should allow Canadian troops to focus more on reconstruction, and help them keep the Taliban away from the general population.

But Canadian commanders are also busy planning their withdrawal strategy, MacDonald said.

"It starts now," he told CTV.ca.

In late September, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Ottawa is considering "a number of options" on how to assist Afghans after 2011, including keeping Canada's provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar open.

But transforming Canada's mission to focus on reconstruction will be difficult, according to Kamran Bokhari, a Middle East and South Asia analyst with global intelligence firm Stratfor.

"It's not going to work the way the Harper administration is trying to neatly relay and telegraph this to the Canadian public. I just don't see the preconditions," Bokhari said.

"There are objective ground realities that force the hand of any government," he added. "Canada will have to adjust as we go along this course."

Security gap

Canada's withdrawal timeline may depend partly on how quickly Western forces can train, organize and equip the Afghan National Army, which the U.S. hopes will reach 134,000 soldiers before the end of 2011.

MacDonald, who visited Kabul and Kandahar on a NATO-sponsored trip in early October, said the training for low-level infantry has been going relatively well. But developing other areas of the army could take years.

"The problem is, of course, that it takes a long time to train a battalion commander," he said. "This area of middle-grade officer, senior officers, is a weakness in the ANA and there's nothing that can really change that except experience and time."

MacDonald added that Afghanistan's other major security force, the police, remain "a real source of difficulty" due to corruption problems.

At the same time, NATO commanders are hoping that an additional 37,000 Western troops will help weaken the Taliban.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a blunt assessment of the war on Dec. 7, before a group of navy cadets in North Carolina. He said American troops have 18 to 24 months to reverse the war's momentum.

"We are not winning, which means we are losing. And as we are losing, the message traffic out there to (insurgency) recruits keeps getting better and better, and more keep coming," Mullen said.

Afghanistan's drug trade poses a significant problem to fighting the Taliban effectively, security experts say.

Since the war began, Afghanistan has come to produce about 90 per cent of the world's heroin. Narcotics are believed to be a prime source of income for Taliban insurgents, particularly money earned from protecting local drug lords.

The UN opened an anti-narcotics centre in Kazakhstan on Dec. 8 to try and stem Afghanistan's heroin exports. Within the country's borders, NATO forces have been using reconstruction programs and aid money to try to convince poppy farmers to grow other crops.

Development work

Building schools, roads, and government institutions will also help set the stage for Canada to withdraw and for the war to end, according to Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America.

"The real key to an exit strategy is systems and relationships in Afghanistan that might not be perfect, but are offering the Afghan people enough hope for the future that they're going to invest in it," he said.

O'Brien, who worked in Kabul for the ministry of finance from 2002 until 2007, said that more troops will be beneficial if they make Afghans safer. But they could also impede efforts to rebuild the country.

He argues that where possible, Afghans should lead development projects without direct assistance from foreigners because it's more effective. As evidence, O'Brien singles out the National Solidarity Programme, run by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.

It has disbursed more than US$1 billion in grant money to 22,000 Afghan villages, O'Brien said. The World Bank and other international agencies oversee the program to minimize corruption, he said, while village elders choose what to build.

The projects are inexpensive because they don't need military protection. And since the Taliban can't challenge thousands of village leaders, the infrastructure being built doesn't tend to come under attack.

"When we worked through local systems, I saw effective development happening all over the country," O'Brien said. "Whereas if we go in with soldiers and build schools, those schools are a political statement, a flag from the international community."

With the addition of more soldiers, "the risk is that you're going to see increased militarization of development," he added. "Our fear is that decisions are going to be made, not based on whether it's the best development outcome for Afghans, but whether it's the best short-term political outcome for the security effort."

Bokhari sees the war from a different angle. Ending it will ultimately depend on whether Afghanistan could pose a risk to neighbouring countries once Western troops leave.

The biggest fear, he said, is that "transnational jihadists, not the Afghan Taliban but the people they are allied with or could be allied with in future," would eventually use the country to launch attacks against Pakistan or Iran.

"The principle concern of all NATO allies is that this country should not become a source of instability in the region," Bokhari said. "Let's face it, we're not about to turn the place into Wisconsin."