It is time for Canada to take a very hard look at what we are doing in Afghanistan - now - and why we are there after eight years - a much longer conflict than either the Second World War or First World War.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview Jan. 6: "We will not be undertaking any kind of activity that requires a significant military force protection, so it will become a strictly civilian mission. We will continue to maintain humanitarian and development missions, as well as important diplomatic activity in Afghanistan. But we will not be undertaking any activities that require any kind of military presence, other than the odd guard guarding an embassy."
So, it appears our 2,500 troops will be coming home by the end of 2011 - almost two full years from now,
Harper also said Canada and its NATO allies have lowered their objectives for the mission in Afghanistan. "I think the reality is that all actors over the past few years have been downgrading their expectations of what can be achieved in Afghanistan.
"But it is still important that we have a viable, functioning state in Afghanistan that has some acceptable democratic and rule of law norms. If we don't, we run the serious risk of returning in Afghanistan to what we had before. No matter what differences people have on the mission, everybody agrees that the mission has the purpose to ensure that Afghanistan does not return to being a failed state that is an incubator of terrorism."
When we last wrote about Afghanistan in this space on Feb. 11, 2009, 108 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat had died during the Afghanistan mission since April 17, 2002 when Pte. Nathan Smith, 27, Sgt. Marc Leger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer and Pte. Richard Green, were killed in the "friendly fire" incident at Tarnak Farm when an American F-16 fighter jet U.S. accidentally bombed the Canadians, killing four soldiers and wounding eight others.
As 2009 ended, 138 Canadian soldiers, a Canadian diplomat, two Canadian aid workers, and a Canadian journalist had lost their lives in the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Canada's involvement in the current war against the Taliban in Afghanistan dates to October 2001 when in the previous Liberal government announced Operation APOLLO and the deployment of about 750 Canadian Forces members in a naval task group of four ships.
Almost eight years ago, in February 2002, Canada deployed the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (3 PPCLI) Battle Group.
The International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan (ISAF) task force was authorized by United Nations (UN) security council Resolution 1386 on Dec. 20, 2001, with a mandate to assist the Afghan Transitional Authority (ATA).
The United Kingdom was the first to serve as lead from December 2001 to June 2002, followed by Germany and the Netherlands sharing the lead. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took over the mission in August 2003.
Canadian troops, for the most part, spent the early years of the war in the north in and around the nation's capital, based at Camp Julien from 2003 to 2005, on the outskirts of Kabul.
But in the summer of 2005, former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, largely to appease the United States, still angry that his predecessor Jean Chrétien did not send combat troops to Iraq in 2003, ordered the bulk of the Canadian contingent to move south to Kandahar for the leading combat role in the heart of the Taliban insurgency.
Two key votes in the House of Commons, the first passing narrowly 149-145 on May 17, 2006, extending the mission by two years, followed by a further three-year extension by a vote of 198-77 on March 13, 2008, are to leave us in Kandahar until the end of 2011.
And for what exactly, we ask as 2010 begins? Despite the prime minister's earnest talk about the importance of having "a viable, functioning state in Afghanistan that has some acceptable democratic and rule of law norms," nation-building with President Hamid Karzai is largely an act of wilful blindness in working with him and his unsavoury narco-warlord compatriots. Grafting on a patina of our exported democracy to Afghanistan's political governance structure is about as likely to succeed as our military mission has over the last eight years.
These are not merely abstract concerns for us so geographically far away in Thompson. Two of our own, a soldier and a civilian, are currently serving bravely in the Afghanistan theatre of war.
Pte. Mervin McKay is a light armoured vehicle driver, deployed to Afghanistan as part of Task Force 3-09 Battle Group, while civilian Tammy Watson, who previously worked as innovation and special initiatives program co-ordinator at the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Thompson Inc. branch, is now serving with the Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team based at the compound in Kandahar, renamed Camp Nathan Smith in memory of Pte. Smith.
We owe it to them and to all Canadians both in Afghanistan and here at home to ask very hard questions about our role in the country.
Afghanistan sits at a geopolitical crossroads between East and West. During the "Great Game," the strategic contest between the British Empire and its Russian rival for supremacy in Central Asia between 1813 and 1907, Afghanistan was a buffer state.
The Afghans defeated the British at the Battle of Maiwand in July 1880, one of the principal battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. As they defeated the British in the 19th century, the Afghans also defeated the Soviet Union in the 20th century, with the Russians spending a decade mired down there from their invasion in December 1979 to their withdrawal in ignominy in February 1989.
Are we to stand mute then for the next two years, capable of nothing more than patiently marking time and solemnly watching the all-too-familiar repatriation ceremonies at CFB Trenton before the last journey for these soldiers west down a 172-kilometre stretch of Highway 401 known now as the "Highway of Heroes," from Trenton to Toronto?
We think not. We are called to ask more, to do more.
