"Afghanistan Facts"

Letter of mine in the Barrie Examiner:

Dear Editor,

Brennan Cruse has a very thin grip on recent history ("Life as a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan", Feb. 27). He claims that after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that "the president of the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan". But there was no "invasion" of Afghanistan.

Before the fall of Kabul to the insurgent Afghan Northern Alliance in November 2001, and the consequent collapse of the Taliban regime, no significant numbers of foreign troops entered Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance did receive air support and assistance from special forces (both U.S. and British); that however is not an invasion. Substantial foreign ground combat forces only arrived after the Taliban had already deposed by indigenous Afghan forces.

Mr Cruse also writes that "...in January of 2002, Canadian troops were sent to Afghanistan to perform a peacekeeping mission...They thought it would all be over in two months."

Hardly. Canadian troops were deployed to Kandahar province for six months in early 2002 on a mission that clearly involved combat. Canadian soldiers then left. They returned to Afghanistan in large numbers in the summer of 2003 in an essentially peacekeeping role at Kabul. That mission ended in the fall of 2005.

Meanwhile, in August 2005, a fairly small Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team was installed at Kandahar. Then, in early 2006, the Canadian Forces took on a new, major, mission at Kandahar that had a serious combat role, that continues to this day.

In sum: the United States did not invade Afghanistan; the Canadian Forces did not first go into the country on a peacekeeping mission; and there never was any indication that any of the various Canadian missions would be over in two months.

I suspect Mr Cruse's uncle Casey, now serving in Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces, knows these basic facts. I'm rather amazed that his nephew does not know, and has not bothered to learn, them.

Mark Collins

Ottawa

References:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/13/afghanistan.terrorism15

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/news-nouvelles/view-news-afficher-nouvelles-eng.asp?id=1661

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050804/cda_afghanistan_050804?s_name=Autos&no_ads=

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb0719-e.htm

Topic thread at Milnet.ca here--Brennan Cruse seems to be rather young.