Canadian troops first entered Afghanistan in 2001. But their role changed dramatically in 2006, when they engaged the Taliban on the battlefield. What followed was a violent stalemate

In September 2005, Bill Graham, who was then defence minister in Paul Martin's Liberal government, told me over tea in Moscow that what the Canadian Forces were about to start in Kandahar was different from what Canada had done so far. Kandahar, he said bluntly, would be "a combat mission, and we have made our decision knowing that."

Graham's candid remarks - in a country with its own complicated military history in Afghanistan - and similarly direct descriptions about the looming combat mission by Gen. Rick Hillier, who was then Canada's top soldier, drew almost no political or media attention at home.

So, as the military and the government prepared for war in southern Afghanistan, the Canadian public was largely unaware of what the country had gotten itself into.

Nearly six years, $1.6 billion in development and humanitarian aid, as much as $10 billion in direct and indirect military expenditures and more than 150 military deaths later, Canadians have heard more than they may ever have wanted to about a country most of them had never thought of before Sept. 11, 2001.

Along the way, many have become pessimistic and negative about the Afghan war. And although the battlefield reality has improved immensely since the war's bloodiest days, perceptions lag and opposition to Canada's presence there continues as the operation transitions this summer from the killing fields of Kandahar to a smaller, less dangerous training mission in northern Afghanistan.

Many Canadians think of Afghanistan as Prime Minister Stephen Harper's war.

But it didn't start out that way. Canada's involvement in the region began on former prime minister Jean Chrétien's watch. It was Chrétien who dispatched a half-dozen Canadian warships to look for al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists fleeing Afghanistan via Pakistan immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Not long after, he sent a battle group of about 1,000 soldiers to Kandahar. They were led by Lt.-Col. Pat Stogran's battalion from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. For six months, they hunted for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and Taliban in mountains near the Pakistan border.

Once the Patricias got home, Chrétien again volunteered Canada to head a multinational brigade. For this, about 2,000 Canadian troops were based on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, from 2003 to 2005.

After much debate, Chrétien's successor, Paul Martin, subsequently decided that Canada should open a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar City.

A modest initial deployment in November 2005 was followed a few months later by about 2,000 (later more than 3,000) infantry, artillery, engineers, armoured and support troops.

Canada's first long-term combat undertaking in more than half a century started in March 2006, with a string of bloody battlefield successes in Taliban strongholds west of Kandahar City by a battalion of Patricias and replacements from the Royal Canadian Regiment.

It was during firefights that spring, summer and fall that the Taliban learned at great cost not to confront the Canadians head-on with anything like conventional forces.

"It was a remarkable strategic victory at the tactical level in terms of telling the Afghan people and government that we are with you," said Michel Gauthier, a retired three-star general who was responsible for all Canadian Forces overseas at the time. "But that was by no stretch of the imagination the whole story."

After licking their wounds in Pakistan safe havens, the Taliban began "Round 2," returning to Kandahar as an insurgency. They adopted ruthless terrorist tactics, unleashing suicide bombers and planting thousands of homemade bombs that made travelling by road or on foot a terrifying experience. This campaign produced a stalemate. From 2007 through 2008, while responsible for an area the size of New Brunswick, the small Canadian force had to stop the Taliban from taking Kandahar City, the insurgency's most cherished prize.

"As early as the fall of 2006 we realized that there was a mismatch," said Gauthier. "There were not enough NATO troops to succeed if success was about establishing a secure environment while building Afghan capacity. That Kandahar City did not fall was a victory for Canada."

Responding to growing political pressure to avoid what looked like an impending debacle, Harper appointed a blue-ribbon panel to make recommendations. The group was chaired by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley, and included former broadcaster Pamela Wallin, former Conservative minister Jake Epp, former ambassador to Washington Derek Burney, and Paul Tellier, former clerk of the Privy Council.

In January 2008, after touring Afghanistan and meeting with military and civilian experts and ordinary Canadians at home, the panel reported to Parliament that the troops urgently needed helicopters, far more capable surveillance drones and additional NATO forces if there was to be any chance to finally turn the conflict in Kandahar in the coalition's favour.

As a result, Heron drones were purchased from Israel, Canadian Griffon helicopters were equipped with armour and Gatling guns, CH-47 Chinook helicopters were procured from the U.S. army and pilot training was started at Fort Rucker, Ala. Canada also got an undertaking from Washington that the Americans would send an army battalion to Zhari district.

When the definitive history of Canada's involvement in the Afghan conflict is finally written, Manley will be one of two people seen as having saved a failing venture by finally getting the resources needed to push the Taliban off vital ground to the west of Kandahar City. The other saviour is Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, who served two tours as Canada's top warrior here.

"The most important thing we did was to get airlift," Wallin said. "When we had to be on those roads and we had to ask the Americans to send their Black Hawks (helicopters), when they were not too busy, to move our VIPs and our troops ... If a country cannot provide for its own defence, one wonders why it would commit to such an objective."

Almost as important, the senator from Saskatchewan said, was that the Manley panel got Canadians involved in the decision-making process. "It actually engaged the public," she said.

"It's all about troop density," said Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, who was Task Force Kandahar's commander in 2008 when the first reinforcements began to trickle in. "When I arrived, the ratio of security forces to the population was 6.8 for every 1,000 of the population. By the time we left, that number was closer to 9.5."

But Thompson, who now oversees Canada's special forces, noted that a ratio of 20 or 25 security personnel for every 1,000 residents was needed.

Thanks to a modest U.S. surge of forces and the arrival of large numbers of newly recruited Afghan troops in 2009, Vance was the first Canadian general to finally have enough manpower to introduce classic counter-insurgency tactics.

The blunt, charismatic Vance set his troops the task of clearing, holding and developing the village of Dehe-Bagh. Within months of Canadian troops moving in alongside Afghan forces there and in surrounding villages, schools and clinics began to open and enemy attacks fell to almost zero.

Visitors such as NATO's former Afghan commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his boss Gen. David Petraeus and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen came calling. The VIPs were so impressed by what they saw that they declared Vance's accomplishment the template for alliance operations across the country.

Looking back at Deh-e-Bagh, where not one violent incident has been reported in weeks, Vance said: "It seems to be heading in the right direction. The only reason is that we stayed there. We started with Counter-Insurgency 101 and that included the beginning of exercising local government. It paid off."

U.S. President Barack Obama sent even more troops into southern Afghanistan in 2010 and once again Vance benefited, when he returned to Kandahar to replace Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard, who had resigned in the face of sexual misconduct charges.

The U.S. troop surge reduced Canada's area of operations in stages from the whole of Kandahar Province to just its capital city and five neighbouring districts, and finally to Panjwaii and two other districts. Canadian casualties dropped by about 90 per cent.

This trend continues in the waning days of Canada's combat mission under Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner, despite a very high tempo of "outside the wire" operations by the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment. In fact, security has improved so much in Canada's much smaller area of operations that, for the first time, the Van Doo battle group and its Afghan partners have been able to control the old Taliban hotbed in the Horn of Panjwaii.

As the result of changes triggered by John Manley and his panel, and actions by Jon Vance, his troops and follow-on forces in Dand, the situation in that district is now considered so benign that it is slated to become the first southern district to be totally handed over to Afghan security forces.

CANADA'S INVOLVEMENT IN AFGHANISTAN

Oct. 7, 2001 - Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's Liberal government announces that Canada will contribute troops to the international force being formed to conduct a campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan.

Oct. 8, 2001 - Defence Minister Art Eggleton announces the launch of Operation Apollo, Canada's contribution to the U.S.-led operation in Afghanistan. Canada announces it will send 2,000 troops, six warships and six planes.

December 2001 - Forty troops from Joint Task Force 2 - Canada's elite commando unit - arrive in Afghanistan. They are the first Canadian soldiers to arrive in the country.

February 2002 - First regular combat troops from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry arrive for a six-month mission.

April 18, 2002 - Four Canadian soldiers are killed in a friendly fire incident after an American F-16 fighter dropped a laserguided bomb on them during a training exercise.

July 17, 2003 - Canada takes command of the 3,600-strong international peacekeeping force in Kabul.

Feb. 9, 2004 - Canadian Forces Lt.-Gen. Rick Hillier takes six-month command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, leading 5,500 soldiers from more than 30 countries.

August 2005 - Approximately 250 Canadian soldiers take over the provincial reconstruction team based in Kandahar.

May 17, 2006 - Capt. Nichola Goddard becomes the first female Canadian combat soldier to be killed after she died during a firefight with Taliban insurgents. Later that day the House of Commons approves an extension of the Canadian deployment to Afghanistan until 2009.

Sept. 3, 2006 - Four Canadian soldiers are killed and nine wounded during fighting with Taliban insurgents outside Kandahar.

Sept 4., 2006 - Pte. Mark Anthony Graham is killed and over 30 Canadian soldiers are wounded in a friendly-fire incident after two U.S. warplanes accidentally strafe NATO forces.

April 8, 2007 - Six Canadian soldiers are killed when a roadside bomb detonates near their armoured vehicle. Two more are wounded. It is described as the deadliest day in combat for Canadian troops since the Korean War.

July 4, 2007 - Six Canadian soldiers and their translator are killed by a roadside bomb while riding in an armoured vehicle in Panjwaii district.

March 13, 2008 - House of Commons votes to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan until 2011.

Dec. 30, 2009 - Calgary journalist Michelle Lang is killed when the armoured vehicle she was riding in strikes a roadside bomb.

Four Canadian soldiers are also killed in the attack.

She is the first Canadian journalist killed in Afghanistan.

May 18, 2010 - Col. Geoff Parker is killed after a car full of explosives drove into a NATO convoy. Parker, 42, is the highest-ranking Canadian soldier to be killed in Afghanistan.

Oct. 5, 2010 - Capt. Robert Semrau is demoted and dismissed from the Canadian Forces after being convicted of disgraceful conduct for shooting a severely wounded Taliban fighter on an Afghan battlefield in October 2008.

November 2010 - Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces the Canadian military presence in Afghanistan will continue in a noncombat role until 2014.

THE SERIES

THE SERIES

Matthew Fisher

of Postmedia News was at the Pentagon within an hour of it being struck on Sept. 11, 2001, by an airliner that had been hijacked by terrorists. When airports in North America reopened, he was on the first flight to Europe and then Pakistan. Since then, Fisher has been to Afghanistan 23 times, following every phase of Canada's Afghan mission. Afghanistan is the 14th conflict that Fisher has covered overseas during 28 years reporting from 153 countries.

Next Monday: Launching into war from a cratered runway.

Tuesday: Kandahar's blistering heat and intense fighting give soldiers a baptism by fire.

Wednesday: How a $50-million investment brought a vital dam back to life.

Thursday: After years of fighting and rebuilding, Canada's pullout leaves many questions.