For anyone who thinks the crisis in Ukraine has nothing to do with Canada, or that there’s no way we could be drawn into the conflict there, I have one word for you — Afghanistan.
There was a time when most Canadians couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map, a time before the 9/11 attack, before we joined the NATO-led mission to fight the Taliban. Back then, Canadian military planners were asked to think of the worst place for us to be involved in a combat operation in terms of distance from Canada, difficulty of logistical resupply, weather, terrain and politics. The answer: Afghanistan.
And yet, we found ourselves in a difficult, complicated war there for 12 years that took the lives of 158 soldiers and cost the country more than $10 billion. And it is a war that continues, just not with Canadian troops.
It would be simplistic and dangerous to try to draw too many parallels between what happened in Afghanistan and what’s going on in Ukraine, but I found myself thinking of them Friday afternoon during a military ceremony at CFB Edmonton where Brig.-Gen. Wayne Eyre took command of the 3rd Canadian Division, which includes all military units in Western Canada from Thunder Bay to Victoria.
I first met Eyre in 2007 when he was a lieutenant-colonel. He had taken me under his wing during my first “tour” as a journalist embedded with Canadian soldiers in Kandahar province.
Tall and lanky with a shaved head, Eyre is every inch a professional soldier whose military career has also taken him to Cyprus, Croatia and Bosnia. A history buff, Eyre read every relevant book he could get his hands on before deploying to Afghanistan, where he commanded a 64-person team of Canadian troops training the Afghan army.
This year, when Canada’s last soldiers were pulling out of Afghanistan, Eyre was back in Kabul, but this time working under the U.S. military as commander of the NATO training mission. He returned to Canada just a few days ago and remains optimistic that by the time Western troops have finally pulled out of the country, the Afghan security forces that he helped train will be able to hold their own against the Taliban.
Eyre is ever the optimist, but he’s also a bit of a pessimist, or perhaps just a realist. He says it’s just a matter of time before we’re drawn into another conflict or another calamity.
“Many see us entering a postwar period where, after two really hard decades of tough slogging in very complex operations, the utility of military force is again under question and many cite intervention-fatigue as a reason for ‘never again,’ ” said Eyre, addressing the change-of-command audience.
“But history is the only guide that we have … and history tells us that we are not in a postwar period, we are in fact in an inter-war period. And as such our job is to be ready. So, while we stand always ready to protect the people of Canada here at home against a range of threats — whether they be natural or manmade — the time will come again to answer our nation’s call to arms.”
Journalists covering the ceremony wondered if Eyre was alluding to the events in Ukraine, where the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger jet has escalated the crisis. In an interview afterward, Eyre said he was not hinting at anything specific.
“I think it was Plato who said only the dead have seen the end of war,” he explained. “Something else is going to come.”
It’s Eyre’s job to make sure the 5,400 regular soldiers and 4,800 reservists in Western Canada are ready for whatever that might be.
But it’s not as if the Ukrainian crisis is going unnoticed by Canada, which has deep cultural ties to the eastern European country that is the ancestral home to many Canadians.
This week, 120 soldiers left Trenton, Ont., for an undisclosed location in eastern Europe as part of a mission to show support for Ukraine, replacing soldiers who had been sent to Poland earlier this year.
Canada also sent six CF-18 fighter jets to Romania and is moving them to Latvia on Russia’s Baltic doorstep. This follows a decision to send a Royal Canadian Navy frigate to European waters.
Just months after our soldiers left the Afghan mission behind, Canada’s military is already preparing for that “something else.”
