Kandhar, May 31: Travelling under a cloak of secrecy and security, Mr. Harper marked the moment on Monday by travelling well outside the heavily fortified expanse of Kandahar Airfield to a dusty forward base. Later, in 44-degree heat, the Prime Minister thanked troops on behalf of Canadians – and argued that despite “successes and failures” in a complex mission at the heart of the insurgency in Kandahar, it has achieved its goal.
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Calling the mission in general “a great success,” Mr. Harper also recalled that “we have been charged with the single most difficult province in this country,” in remarks to reporters at the end of his 12-hour visit.
“Afghanistan is still a violent place, a dangerous place for its citizens, and we’re working to improve things for them. But this country does not represent a geo-strategic risk to the world. It is no longer a source of global terrorism. This is a tremendous accomplishment, one that obviously serves Canadian interests.”
For Mr. Harper, who first came to Kandahar five weeks after he was first elected prime minister in 2006 and made three subsequent visits, pledging not to “cut and run,” it was a rite of passage.
Wearing beige pants, flak jacket and helmet, Mr. Harper flew by Chinook helicopter 40 kilometres outside Kandahar Airfield to Sperwan Ghar, where he served lunch to the Royal 22nd Regiment.
There he mounted an armoured vehicle to climb the hill at the centre of the base and look out across the surrounding villages, and to hear a briefing on the last days of the combat mission from the Canadian commander, Brigadier-General Dean Milner.
Mr. Harper then flew to Tarnak Farms, a former al-Qaeda training base where fields of wheat now grow, and chatted with an Afghan farmer named Daoud about his crop. At Kandahar Airfield, Mr. Harper marked the move out of combat in Kandahar in a speech to 500 soldiers who listened quietly, and clapped as he closed.
The last major combat operation of the Canadian mission here is under way, and combat troops will stop all fighting before the end of July. The next rotation will pack up equipment by the end of the year. And the dwindling Canadian civilian operations, with their mandate to spread schools, rebuild dams, and re-establish the presence of government, will leave Kandahar, too.
More than 300 military trainers are already in Kabul, and as many as 950 will go there, and to two other centres in the safer north and west. Mr. Harper, more than any prime minister in recent memory, bound his political identity to a gritty combat role for Canada’s military in a bloody conflict. But with a new majority mandate, bearing heavy responsibility for a bloody conflict and future Afghan progress is no longer at the centre of his role.
Mr. Harper’s visit to Tarnak Farms – which was transformed into a wheat and barley field using Canadian irrigation equipment – was intended as a symbol of what Canadian troops worked to accomplish.
Paul Martin deployed Canadians to Kandahar in 2005, and Canadian troops arrived in 2006 not expecting the battles with massed insurgents they would face later that year, or the long grind to establish control, clearing insurgents from villages only to see them return when they moved on.
Standing in a square at Kandahar Airfield’s new Canada House, Mr. Harper told soldiers that Canadians have built schools and vaccinated children, and made more progress possible.
“My friends, you have done exceptionally well. You came into the toughest part of this country and you held it – and now it is being developed.”
That development is still not certain, however. A surge of U.S. troops last year has allowed Canadian troops to concentrate forces, mostly in the Panjwai district, where the Taliban was born. But though more schools are open, most are still closed; the development projects are fledging and Afghan government representatives, though more numerous, are still scarce.
–Agencies