Beginning Monday, soldiers at CFB Valcartier can expect their mail to include letters from antiwar protesters asking them to refuse deployment to Afghanistan later this year.

About 3,000 letters sent by a coalition of Quebec-based antiwar groups are expected to start arriving on Monday at the base, home to the Royal 22nd Regiment, better known as the Van Doos.

The letters tell soldiers that if they go to Afghanistan they will be complicit in war crimes and torture, and will become "cannon fodder" in the war-torn region.

The letter urges soldiers not to participate in  the mission and offers support for  those who refuse to leave.

"We don't want to oppose the soldiers and their families," coalition spokesman Joseph Bergeron said in a French interview with CBC.ca. "But we're opposed to the military leadership and the message they're sending about the mission.

"This isn't a peace mission, in the way the Harper government has presented it."

Canadian troops are being targeted and attacked more frequently, not only by Taliban forces but by frustrated civilians, Bergeron said.

"Canada is following the United States' lead but we're not going there as liberators, and the proof is we're not being welcome," he added.

The letter includes a hotline number and website where soldiers and their families can get the "full picture" about Canada's mission to Afghanistan, including information from Canadian media reports and non-governmental organizations working on the ground, Bergeron said.

He says he's spoken with some soldiers in the Quebec City region who told him they were ambivalent about going to Afghanistan.

But the coalition realizes their message may be ill-received by some. 

"We don't have any guarantees that they'll take it well, and that they won't be offended," Bergeron said.

The letter campaign homed in on a small selection of postal codes in the Valcartier area where military families are concentrated.

The coalition includes groups Québec pour la paix, Block the Empire Montreal and Rassemblement Outaouais contre la guerre.

More than 2,000 soldiers from Valcartier are to be sent to Kandahar beginning in August.