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5. Home Front (2006–2008) · The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan

• ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: [Music begins]. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan. For the first half of this series, we have been in Afghanistan, on the ground with soldiers, watching their mission evolve into more and more intense combat operations. This episode we’re coming home, because as the war was being fought in Kandahar, conflict over the war was playing out in Ottawa and at kitchen tables across the country. Questions were being raised over the mission’s purpose, its end game, and its costs. [Music ends]. Here, we pause in 2006 when the original wave of optimism begins to falter as the casualties mount. And public expressions of good will for soldiers starts to coexist alongside growing public frustration with the mission. For years, Canadians had been seeing the bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan return home. But that year, one in particular makes front page news across the country. It was May 17, 2006. Kate Goddard was 16, and in the middle of her grade 11 French class, when she was called to the office. There, she found her father, Tim Goddard, waiting — his expression grim. KATE GODDARD: They’d never pulled me out of class before. And so I remember that being a like, a weird, a weird thing you don’t expect. TREMONTI: He was there to deliver some devastating news. Captain Nichola Goddard, Kate’s older sister, had been killed in Afghanistan. GODDARD: It was one of those moments that changes how you view the world when something that you think is completely stable suddenly disappears. TREMONTI: On that day in May, Captain Goddard and her crew of three soldiers were southwest of Kandahar City nearing the small village of Bayanzi. They were locating and firing on Taliban positions. As the Forward Observation Officer, the F.O.O, Goddard’s job was to find optimal observation spots, calling in artillery fire and air strikes. As dusk fell, Goddard and another member of her team were standing half-exposed in the hatch of their LAV when the Taliban struck it with rocket-propelled grenades. One of her crew members frantically sent a message over the radio: “My Sunray’s down! My Sunray’s down!” Sunray was the callsign for the vehicle’s commanding officer — Captain Goddard. A piece of shrapnel had hit her on the back of the head, killing her instantly. She was 26 years old. GODDARD: It never occurred to me that she would get hurt. And I think it’s because I was, what, 16, 17 and invulnerable, and she was my big sister and also invulnerable. And so I don’t think it ever, I don’t think it ever occurred to me. TREMONTI: Within hours, the story was front page news across the country. CBC News Clip: Captain Nichola Goddard is the seventeenth Canadian to die in Afghanistan and the first female member of the Canadian Forces killed in action since World War Two. TREMONTI: Some outlets showed a photograph of Captain Goddard in full combat gear — smiling, wearing her uniform and a helmet, with a patterned scarf around her neck. The photo resonated with the public. The first female Canadian officer to lead soldiers into combat and the first female Canadian combat soldier to die by enemy fire. Not that this was how Goddard wanted to be remembered. GODDARD: Every so often we talk a lot about her being the first female soldier killed in action. And I sometimes wonder if she would have preferred to be the first person to call in air support instead. I think she very much just wanted to be a good soldier and a good leader and to take care of her troops. And I think that was kind of her driving, her driving impetus. TREMONTI: When Captain Goddard’s body was flown back to Canada, it landed late at night at the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton. The Goddards were at the repatriation ceremony along with a handful of local residents who stood outside the Base, offering their condolences. Unlike earlier repatriations that were broadcast and watched by the public, this one took place away from the cameras. That’s because, three weeks earlier, on April 25, 2006, the federal government had announced a new policy: The media would no longer have access to the tarmac to cover the return of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The stated reason was to protect the privacy of the families during their time of grief. Critics accused the recently elected Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, of trying to avoid bad press over the mission. He denied it. But around the same time, his government also decided to stop lowering the flag to half-staff on Parliament Hill when soldiers died in Afghanistan. It appeared the government was wary that too much attention to casualties could erode public support for the mission. ANDREW BURTCH: But some family members wanted their country to know their children, their loved ones. TREMONTI: Andrew Burtch, the Post-1945 Historian at the Canadian War Museum, is our guide this season. BURTCH: They wanted their stories told, they wanted their memories to be featured in national media. Not everyone. TREMONTI: Families like the Goddards — they were critical of the media ban and decided to make their daughter’s funeral public. GODDARD: I think my parents, my father especially, very much had a perspective that the truth is always better and getting things out, like having more information is generally better than having less, and being able to make informed decisions is important. So I think that’s probably where that was coming from. I think it was needed to create a bit of a sense of closure for everyone who’d been impacted, and that wasn’t just us. TREMONTI: In his eulogy, Nichola’s father, Tim Goddard, spoke about the media ban saying, quote, “I find it troubling that the privacy decision means keeping the press outside the wire where the bad guys are. I would like to think that Nich died to protect our freedoms, not to restrict them.” End quote. Hours later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper reversed the policy. GODDARD: I think they wanted to share the grief and also share the pride. And acknowledging that it had broader repercussions and had broader societal impact. And I think for my parents, sharing that was important. [Music begins]. TREMONTI: Captain Nichola Goddard was the sixteenth soldier killed in Afghanistan. By the end of 2006, that number would climb to 44. As casualties kept mounting, Canadians were beginning to ask questions. “What exactly was the mission? Do we still want Canada involved? And at what cost?” Questions of mission, sacrifice and mourning came into focus on a 172-kilometre stretch of highway in Ontario that runs between Trenton and Toronto. Starting way back at the beginning of the war, people began gathering there whenever the bodies of soldiers were brought home. BURTCH: And in 2002, as a spontaneous display of patriotism and also grieving, people would line the overpasses over the 401 between Trenton and Toronto to show their respects for those who would be passing underneath the overpasses as a way to mark and to remark on it. Canadians of course knew that the remains would be returning. And they had to proceed along Highway 401 because when there’s a military fatality that has to go through a process that involves a forensic examination and that takes place at the coroner’s office in Toronto. And so, they would be landing in Trenton and then making the trip by car, the remains escorted from Trenton to Toronto. TREMONTI: Sometimes there were a few people. Other times there were dozens standing shoulder to shoulder, leaning against the railings, waiting for the convoy to pass. BURTCH: It became a grassroots, community-led, every community that that bordered the 401 would have people who would go out, they’d have the fire engines would go out, and they’d have their ladders extended and flags extended. People standing at the overpass to mark that passage of people returning. TREMONTI: Among those holding vigil, veterans in their old service jackets. Firefighters atop their trucks standing at attention with raised salutes. Families and young children waving flags and holding signs that said, “You will always be remembered.” BURTCH: So you’d have people who would go out for every one of them, and you’d have some who would go out for some of them or what have you, but it would be a constant that there would be some presence. It was a collective expression of the desire to mark the passing of a Canadian soldier under very difficult circumstances. I think there’s a sense of responsibility, a sense of community, and a sense of patriotism that underlay a lot of that, a lot of that rather spontaneous expression of grief. TREMONTI: What started as a spontaneous act of grief became a national ritual. In 2007, the Ontario government officially named this stretch of Highway 401 the “Highway of Heroes.” [Music begins.] AMT: There’s even a song written about it called “Highway of Heroes” by Canadian rock band, The Trews. The band members were from Nova Scotia and one of them had gone to high school with Nichola Goddard. [Music ends.] But the tributes for soldiers didn’t just end with the Highway of Heroes. By 2006, yellow ribbons were everywhere. They were lined along streets. Canadians placed metre-tall ribbon signs on their lawns, and car bumpers displayed yellow ribbon stickers and magnets. BURTCH: And so, you know, “support the troops” became a bit of a cultural moment in and of itself. So you started to get, you know, yellow ribbons that were issued or purchased commercially that would be showing up on service vehicles. And debates about whether that was appropriate or not. So that would be taking place across the country. TREMONTI: For some Canadians, the yellow ribbon was a statement of support for the mission and the government’s decision to be in Afghanistan. But not everyone saw it that way. There were those who supported the troops but opposed the war. To them, displaying a yellow ribbon felt like endorsing a war with which they did not agree. Over time, the yellow ribbons came to represent the country’s mixed feelings. And polls showed that Canadians were becoming increasingly divided about this war. BURTCH: So shortly after the September 11 attacks, and leading into the war in Afghanistan, Canadian opinion polls were fairly consistently high in support of intervention. Somewhere in the realm of around 70 per cent. Mid 70 per cent in some cases. And that was very interesting and indicative of the fear at the time that terrorists could be around every corner. Because they were saying, “Okay, we should do this even if there’s a risk of civilian casualties at home as a result of it,” which was quite astonishing. But it really was the high watermark of support for operations abroad and operations in Afghanistan. And the numbers declined from there. TREMONTI: Seventy percent was the high watermark. According to one poll, by the time Canadian troops arrived in Kandahar in early 2006, support for the mission had already slipped to around 55 per cent. It kept sliding through the summer as the fighting intensified — then spiked after Operation Medusa, a brief rally around the flag. But it didn’t hold. By the end of 2006, support had fallen to around 35 per cent, while opposition climbed past 60 per cent. BURTCH: So it would vary depending on how bad things were. But the general trend line was that over time, people who were perhaps skeptical but understanding of the need to go to Afghanistan, their soft support for it eroded. And those who were concerned about Canadian casualties and the costs of the Afghanistan war grew. TREMONTI: Some of those opposed even took to the streets. [Sound clip begins, crowd, voices]. On October 28, 2006, thousands of Canadians rallied in cities across the country to demonstrate against Canada’s military role in Afghanistan. [PROTEST CLIP] One, two, three, four, we don’t want your bloody war. Bush out of Baghdad, Harper out of Kandahar . . . TREMONTI: Their signs read: “Money for Healthcare, Not for War,” “Drop Tuition Not Bombs,” “Is This Really Peacekeeping?” [PROTEST CLIP] Healthcare, childcare, anything but warfare, healthcare, childcare, everything but warfare . . . TREMONTI: A few months later in February 2007, they were back. Hundreds filled the streets in cities like Vancouver, Montréal, Toronto, Halifax, and St. John’s. Though these rallies often had small turnouts, they were indicative of the growing anti-war sentiment. Then in April 2007, a bombshell article in The Globe and Mail by journalist Graeme Smith reported that Afghan detainees captured by Canadian forces were handed over to Afghan authorities, where many say they were tortured. If true, this was a violation of international law by Canada. It was unclear if any of the detainees were even Taliban fighters. Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor pushed back on the allegations. [CLIP – GORDON O’CONNOR] Mr. Speaker, everyone knows that our forces in Afghanistan treat the detainees with proper care. They follow all the rules. We have made a recent agreement with the Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan and they have guaranteed that they will report to us any abuses of any detainees we transfer. And I have the personal assurance of the Leader of the Human Rights Commission in Kandahar and the national level. BURTCH: Well, we later found out that was not the case, because there were people who were not whistleblowers, but had through their channels reported evidence of mistreatment and that this is a blow to the credibility and a threat to the Canadian military presence. TREMONTI: Two days after the first story, The Globe reported on more troubling evidence. A report by Canadian diplomats in Kabul had documented that torture in Afghan prisons was common. The government knew prisoners held by Afghan authorities faced the possibility of torture. When that report was released under an Access to Information Request, every single reference to torture and abuse was redacted. In the House of Commons, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion demanded answers. [CLIP – STÉPHANE DION] Mr. Speaker, this government was told by their own officials that detainees face a high risk of torture and extrajudicial executions. But yesterday, the Prime Minister told this House that he had no evidence at all to support these allegations. Why did the Prime Minister hide from Canadians the fact that he had received this damning report? TREMONTI: The issue gripped Parliament. The government insisted proper safeguards were now in place. But the damage was already done. Canada’s own diplomats had reported about the abuse and the government had largely ignored the issue. BURTCH: So there was concern that Canadians, through not caring for detainees directly, were complicit in what happened to them after they were transferred into Afghan custody. It went to the root of the question of, you know, “Canada the good,” this idea that Canada was benevolent, was operating in concert with our values. That was where I think people were most concerned about this issue. So it did have an impact and the damage was done in that it undermined some of the support for Canadian involvement in the mission and helped to call into question some of the values that we were purported to be defending. TREMONTI: By summer 2007, the pressure on the government was mounting. The Afghan mission was set to end in February 2009. In the House of Commons, Prime Minister Harper and others argued that Canada needed to stay longer. The NDP had been calling for immediate withdrawal for over a year, and the Liberals and Bloc Québécois were demanding a firm commitment to the end date. The minority Conservative government needed their support to extend the mission, and at that moment, it seemed impossible. In October 2007, the Prime Minister announced the creation of the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan. It was nicknamed the “Manley Panel” after the man in charge of it. JOHN MANLEY: My name is John Manley. At the time of 9/11, I was Canada’s Foreign Minister, and shortly thereafter became Deputy Prime Minister, and held that role until the end of the Chrétien government at the end of 2003. TREMONTI: John Manley had been there at the beginning when Canada decided to send troops to Afghanistan. Now, he was being asked to find a way forward. [Tremonti addressing John Manley]. What was your reaction to that request? MANLEY: Could you just shoot me instead? It was not a pleasant assignment, but it was important. I had no misgivings that he wasn’t inviting me for my looks or my intellect. He wanted me because I’d been a Liberal and he was leading a minority government. BURTCH: So John Manley, he was outside of the government. So appointing him was a smart move because you had someone who was not from the same party as the Prime Minister and the government but was viewed as a credible arbiter for this. TREMONTI: The panel also included Derek Burney, a former ambassador to the U.S.; Pamela Wallin, a former journalist and diplomat who would soon become a senator; Jake Epp, a former Conservative health minister; and Paul Tellier, former Bombardier CEO and Clerk of the Privy Council. Before he took the job, Manley had a few conditions. MANLEY: I wanted a say in who was on the Panel. I wanted complete control over the writing and release of the Report. I wanted the Report to be made public at the same moment that it was given to the government. Those were my conditions and they were all accepted. TREMONTI: They had less than four months to write a report due at the end of January 2008. ELISSA GOLBERG: That’s an extraordinary timeframe to deal with a subject as complex, as, well, should Canada continue its engagement in this country or not, and all the political implications that fell from that. TREMONTI: Elissa Golberg was the Executive Director of the secretariat that supported the panel. She later became the first Representative of Canada in Kandahar. GOLBERG: They wanted to hear from all views on the spectrum of Afghanistan. They didn’t want to just have the usual suspects. And so, we worked extremely hard to make sure that they were exposed to as wide a variety of voices as possible, and also that we covered the breadth of the kinds of issues that Afghans were grappling with. Economic issues, social issues, cultural issues, obviously military issues and security issues, humanitarian concerns — so really trying to capture the entire spectrum. TREMONTI: The Panel conducted more than 200 interviews with academics, activists, military officers, Afghan officials, diplomats, aid workers, and others. And they spanned the globe trying to understand the conditions that could bring some measure of success to the mission. Travelling from Ottawa to NATO headquarters in Brussels to Washington. And to Afghanistan. GOLBERG: Where they spent time in Kabul, in Bamyan, in Herat, and in Kandahar. So that they could get a perspective from different Afghans, but also different countries that were implicated in this international effort. Frankly the Panel did a mini-Ph.D., for all intents and purposes. TREMONTI: On January 22, 2008, the Report was released. One of the Panel’s main concerns was the failure of many NATO allies to contribute troops to dangerous areas such as Kandahar. Some countries only stayed in the safer areas or placed restrictions on what their troops were allowed to do, leaving Canada to shoulder a disproportionate share of the fighting. BURTCH: The idea, though, that there were parts of this NATO alliance, because of national caveats about the use of their troops, were perhaps not contributing to the fight as much as Canadians were. The risks to Canadians being seemingly higher than in other parts of the country. What could be done to address that? TREMONTI: The Report also found that the three key departments working in Afghanistan — National Defence, Foreign Affairs, and the then-Canadian International Development Agency — barely coordinated. MANLEY: We found that it was completely dysfunctional. The three branches didn’t talk to each other, they didn’t have common objectives, they didn’t work together in the field, and they didn’t work together in Ottawa. TREMONTI: And for all the money being spent on reconstruction and development, progress was too slow and inadequate. MANLEY: We felt there should be some signature projects that we could point to as, you know, that they would see. Amount of money was incredible, but you would look around, there’d be nothing to show for it. And we felt that there was, at that stage, there was a battle going on for hearts and minds and that there was no visibility of what we were doing other than fighting. The soldiers were very visible. You know, the LAVs rolling into Kandahar were quite a spectacular sight. But what were we doing there to make their lives better? Not evident. So we felt that was a failure. TREMONTI: In other words, Canada was bearing more than its share of the burden. Reconstruction and development projects were falling short, and the government was struggling to communicate with both Afghans and Canadians about what the Canadian effort was actually accomplishing. But withdrawing troops was still not on the table. BURTCH: The main recommendation was that Canada should continue to be in Afghanistan beyond the end date that had been specified in the previous vote of February 2009. TREMONTI: The Panel offered specific conditions for remaining in Afghanistan. First, NATO or other allies had to deploy an additional 1,000 troops to Kandahar to help share the burden. Canada couldn’t keep doing this alone. Second, Canada needed medium-lift helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as drones, because the lack of appropriate equipment was getting soldiers killed. MANLEY: They were going out in these light armored vehicles hitting explosive devices because they had no idea where enemy forces were operating. TREMONTI: And the mission also needed to shift focus away from fighting, and more towards helping Afghans defend their own country. BURTCH: And so there was a recommendation specifically to build more capacity for diplomacy and reconstruction, and that the Canadians should move less towards bearing the brunt of responsibility for fighting in Afghanistan, but rather, to start to build the capacity in greater numbers of the Afghan National Security Forces. TREMONTI: A month after the Report was released, the minority Conservative government introduced a motion to extend Canada’s mission in Afghanistan to 2011. It was contingent on the conditions the Panel had outlined. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois wanted the troops home. No extension, period. But the Liberals were coming around to the idea of extending if there was a new focus on reconstruction and training. On March 13, 2008, the motion passed, 198 to 77. Most of the Liberal MPs voted “yes.” MANLEY: We believed that it could succeed and would succeed. We felt that we had seen real progress, including in the living conditions for Afghan people, in the schools, the relief from child labour, the gradual building of governance structures that gave hope that in the future there could be a longer-term stable government in Afghanistan. There was a lot to be optimistic about at that time and a lot to be personally moved by. TREMONTI: Manley saw progress worth fighting for and so did the soldiers on the ground, including Captain Nichola Goddard. She kept a diary during the war and she wrote lots of letters home. Here are excerpts of her writing about why being in Afghanistan mattered to her. She wrote, quote: “I have been thinking a lot about fate lately. It was such an accident of birth that we ended up where we did when we did, that we are where we are now, with the choices that we have available to us. It seems to me that we have such a burden of responsibility to make the world a better place for those who were born into far worse circumstances. It is very humbling to be here, part of something so much bigger than myself. I don’t want you to feel that I am depressed or defeated. Far from it. [Music begins]. The longer that we are in theatre and the more that we actually interact with the Afghan people, the more I feel that we are serving a purpose here. There is nowhere else I’d rather be right now.” TREMONTI: After the Manley Panel laid out its recommendations, the Americans sent additional troops to Kandahar and Canada acquired helicopters and UAVs, meeting the two conditions Parliament had attached to the mission. On the next episode of The Long War: the grinding attrition of improvised explosive devices, ambushes, and Taliban night letters, and what it cost the soldiers who stayed in the fight during the most grueling and traumatic years. ELEANOR TAYLOR: It was just a brush with death. We should have been dead. And we weren’t. But that was what a lot of the experience of Afghanistan was. TREMONTI: The Long War: Canada in Afghanistan was produced by Lisa Gabriele and Neil Morrison. Our associate producer is Hailey Choi. The series was mixed by Cameron McIver. Executive producers from the Canadian War Museum are Jenny Ellison and Steve McCullough. Andrew Burtch is our historian throughout this series. Thank you to CBC Archive Sales for access to their news clips, BMG Rights Management Canada, Nettwerk Music Group, and the Trews for use of the song, Highway of Heroes, Paula Kirman for sounds of the rally, and the Goddard family for Nichola Goddard's letter. In 2017, one of the bridges along the Highway of Heroes was officially dedicated to Captain Nichola Goddard. Her name also lives on in communities across the country, including the Canadian Coast Guard ship Captain Goddard M.S.M. in Victoria; Goddard Lake in Saskatchewan; the Nichola Goddard Park in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario; and the Captain Nichola Goddard School in Calgary. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening. [Music ends].