O'Connor says military 'scrambling' to find soldiers for Afghanistan

Last Updated: Sunday, November 5, 2006 | 6:45 PM ET

CBC News

Canada's military is "scrambling" to find soldiers to send to Afghanistan as it seeks to keep front-line troops from being overworked, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said Sunday.

"What we're trying to do in principle is try to avoid having people who are in daily operations to go back [to Afghanistan] a second time before the end of February, '09," O'Connor said, referring to the date to which Parliament extended the Afghan mission.

Gordon O'Connor in Ottawa, Nov. 5, 2006, said the military is trying to avoid sending soldiers back for a second tour in Afghanistan.
CBC

"So that's had them scrambling to figure out where all the troops are coming from."

O'Connor said he believes it will be "no great challenge" to avoid sending soldiers back to Afghanistan for a second deployment because recruiting is up.

The military is lowering its fitness standards for new recruits and moving training and administrative personnel into combat units.

In the Canadian Forces, which includes land, air, sea and special operations personnel, there are 62,000 regular members, 25,000 reservists and 4,000 Canadian Rangers. More than 2,000 Canadians are serving in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff, confirmed a CBC report earlier this week that the military will send members of the air force and navy to Afghanistan, with some of them serving in dangerous situations.

"Minister O'Connor and I have a unity of thought and a unity of effort on this one," he said. "Our aim is to simply use all the Canadian Forces to do this very complex mission, to use every man and woman in uniform rather than have a small number carry the burden, as we have traditionally done over the last decade."

"Our efforts are to look after our men and women, to execute this mission successfully, and to reduce the risk to them as they do that work for us."

He also acknowledged the military was planning to send scores of Vietnam-era M113 armoured personnel carriers to move soldiers around the battlefield.

In private briefings, senior army officials told CBC News that even with the changes, there are simply not enough troops in the army to sustain the government's foreign policy, which made O'Connor's one-tour pledge unrealistic.

Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said the plans prove the Afghan mission is too much for the military to handle.

"I don't fault the military; I fault this government," Dosanjh told CBC News Sunday. "They have not done adequate preparation for the extension. They didn't take stock of what we had in terms [of] troops. They simply, blindly, as a cynical political ploy, extended the mission for two additional years."

10 years before Afghan forces ready: military trainer

The deployment plans come as a top military trainer in Afghanistan said it will be at least 10 years before Afghan troops can handle national security without help from Canadians and other foreign soldiers.

British Col. Paul Farrar, deputy commander of the international assistance wing of the Kabul Military Training Centre, said Sunday that the four-year-old Afghan National Army is making real progress, but it is painfully slow.

The assessment isn't exactly good news for countries, including Canada, who pin their exit strategies from Afghanistan on the ultimate hand-over of security duties.

Forty-two Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died in the country since 2002.