Inside Politics

MacKay and I, on Afghanistan

by James Cudmore Posted: November 17, 2009 5:34 PM Last Updated: November 18, 2009 10:47 AM

mackay.jpg

(Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Peter MacKay and I get along pretty well, I think.
 
He's the defence minister, and I'm the CBC's defence reporter. So we often have cause to chat.
 
He smiles at me when I say hello. And I smile back, if he says hello.
 
We're not pals, or anything.  But MacKay often does stop when I hurl questions at him in the halls of Parliament, which oughtta count for something.
 
That happened today for instance.
 
MacKay was on his way out of Question Period, when he stopped to speak to TVA's Raymond Filion for a minute.  I stood by and watched.

Over the past few months I've been trying to get to the bottom of what the government's plans are for the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan after 2011.  In fact, I've been confused about it.  And I still am.
 
The Conservative government says it will respect Parliament's motion and end the "military mission" at the end of 2011. (Of course, that's not quite what the motion says. It says, in part, that "Canada will end its presence in Kandahar as of July 2011."  Not, "end the combat mission," or "end the military mission," as everyone in government --  all the way up to the Prime Minister himself -- maintains.)
 
Over the past little while, the defence minister has been making noise about some kind of role for Canadian troops in Kandahar beyond that 2011 end date.  MacKay was asked on September 29 whether the government would leave troops behind to protect the Canadian reconstruction team in Kandahar. 

"We're considering all options," he said.
 
The next day I asked MacKay whether the government would leave military training teams behind to train Afghan security forces.
 
"Well, there's been no decision taken on that," he said.
 
Eight days later, MacKay told the House of Commons Defence Committee that Canada's presence in Kandahar might not end so much as change:
 
"We will, in the spirit of the Parliamentary motion, shift to more development, more reconstruction within that country.  That involves things, as you know, such as training, such as helping the Afghans enhance their own security which Canadians are very good at."
 
Just a few minutes later, outside the committee room, MacKay stopped to chat with me and tried to offer some clarity:
 
"So, there's a lot of speculation about what the mission will look like, what I can tell you is that it won't include combat and it will look much different than it does today."
 
So what, precisely, was MacKay talking about?  Will there be Canadian soldiers in Kandahar after Parliament's 2011 deadline passes? 
 
The next day, MacKay's boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, had this to offer:
 
"I think it is time to transform that mission towards development and humanitarian efforts. That's what we're already doing. That's what minister MacKay was referring to. So we will not be extending the military mission, period."
 
Although the PM started off those remarks with a hearty "let me be clear..." he wasn't. Clear, I mean.
 
So, I turned to the PM's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, for clarification. The conversation went a little like this:
 
Me: Will there be Canadian soldiers in Kandahar after Parliament's 2011 deadline passes?
Soudas:  There will be exponentially fewer Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
Me: So, how many, hundreds?
Soudas: I would caution you against saying dozens of hundreds or a thousand. There will be exponentially fewer. Whether there's 20 or 60 or 80 or 100, they will not be conducting combat operations... The focus will be on training and reconstruction and development.
Me: But our trainers are in combat all the time... [which is totally true]
Soudas: You can do training in training facilities. And when I say training, I mean Canadian soldiers will not be doing combat training of Afghan soldiers, in harm's away.
At this point in my nearly three week search for clarity, I thought I'd found some facts:
 
There will be Canadian troops in Afghanistan after 2011, just not in combat.
 
It didn't take much time for retired General Rick Hillier to pan this idea.  He told the CBC's Evan Solomon that wasn't possible. If we're in Kandahar, Hillier said, we're going to be in combat.
 
I let the story die down for a little while, but kept on wondering whether the government might not, at some point, decide to actually say what it means about the future of the mission by answering this one question with a yes or a no: 
 
Will there be Canadian soldiers in Kandahar after Parliament's 2011 deadline passes?
 
And then I caught word of a rumour that the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walt Natynczyk, had ordered his subordinates to start planning Canada's withdrawal from Afghanistan.
 
We sent some questions on that out to MacKay, who was in Nova Scotia that day, and he said that was all part of the government's plan.  But the General's plans seemed to me to be at odds with what MacKay was telling me:
 
"We're considering all options... There's been no decision taken on that...That involves things, as you know, such as training, such as helping the Afghans enhance their own security which Canadians are very good at... What I can tell you is that it won't include combat and it will look much different than it does today."
 
So, on the day before Remembrance Day, I interviewed General Walt Natynczyk. I asked him about the pullout plans and the apparent discrepancy between his plans, and what the defence minister had been saying.
 
Frankly, I was expecting the run around.  But Gen Natynczyk surprised me:
 
"The Parliamentary motion directs that it will be the end of the military mission in July 2011," he told me.  "I mean, those are the words that are there, and for me it's pretty clear, what we do for the Canadian Forces, are military missions."
 
For greater clarity, I asked Natynczyk whether he saw ANY possible role for Canadian troops on ANY possible mission in Afghanistan beyond 2011.
 
He said no:
 
"Right now, my assumption, given the words of that Parliamentary mission, is we will have representatives in Kabul as part of that embassy staff. But right now, everything else we do is a security mission, is providing protection and security."
 
And Parliament's motion forbids that.
 
And so, when Raymond Filion (remember him?) wrapped up his questions Tuesday afternoon, and MacKay started to turn and walk away, I called out to the defence minister with a smile and a question.