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8. Reckoning · 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. We began in Episode One amidst the chaos at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, and the sounds of the desperate crowds trying to make their way out of the country as it fell to the Taliban. And for the final episode of The Long War, we return there. This time to ask some questions: Why did it only take the Taliban a little over a week to retake a country Canada helped defend for 13 years? What happened to the Afghans Canada left behind? What does the war mean to the veterans who fought and who often came home to struggles with depression and PTSD? [Music ends]. On August 15, 2021, when the Taliban entered Kabul, the Afghan National Army seemed to simply dissolve. When President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the government of Afghanistan ceased to exist. Canada had withdrawn from Afghanistan seven years earlier in 2014. But for the veterans of Canada’s longest war, the images of Afghans crowding the airport, some clinging to planes taking off, were almost impossible to process. [Crowd, voices, airplane flying overhead]. ELEANOR TAYLOR: That was horrifying. Grief. It was grief. TREMONTI: In 2010, Eleanor Taylor served as a Major with Charles Company, 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment. Eleven years later, she was living in Halifax, watching the images of the fall of Kabul. TAYLOR: Yep, I think that’s the only, the best way to describe it, that this is what it had come to. TREMONTI: Kate Goddard was also watching that day. In May 2006, her sister, Captain Nichola Goddard, became the first Canadian female soldier killed in combat. KATE GODDARD: It was absolutely heartbreaking. I . . . watching the takeover, the re-takeover by the Taliban and the kind of aggression in Afghanistan, was really difficult. We made a pretty big sacrifice. And I don’t just mean the soldiers who were killed or wounded, although they’re certainly a huge part of it, but you know the journalists, the aid workers, the development workers, everyone who put so much time and energy and care and sacrifice into trying to rebuild Afghanistan and trying to rebuild the country. Watching that roll back was really hard. BENJAMIN HERTWIG: Watching on the news the hopelessness of people clinging to airplanes and the futility, I think, of people trying to escape. TREMONTI: Corporal Benjamin Hertwig deployed in 2006, one of the deadliest years of the war. HERTWIG: There it was just a sense of deep heartache and sadness for the people still living with the realities of war. ANDREW BURTCH: I think anyone who saw it and could realize and recognize that they were watching the end of a chapter or the closing of a very long book. TREMONTI: Andrew Burtch, the Post-1945 Historian at the Canadian War Museum, is our guide this season. BURTCH: Where you had this place where so much blood and treasure had been expended, collapsing. And what does that say? And then the immediate questions of “Was it worth it?” And I think there’s no easy answer to those questions, but it does then provoke the question, “Well, why did it happen that way?” TREMONTI: To answer that question, we have to go back to the Doha Agreement, signed in February 2020 between the Trump administration and the Taliban. The Afghan government in Kabul was not even invited to the table. The terms were simple: The United States and NATO would withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan. In return, the Taliban promised to no longer give safe harbour to terrorist groups that threatened the U.S. and its allies. It did not include any kind of ceasefire agreement with the Afghan government. That was meant to be discussed in future talks, but they never happened. And there were no guarantees for women or minorities. BURTCH: The conclusion of an agreement with the Taliban that set a timetable for the American withdrawal created the conditions where the Taliban’s victory was essentially going to be foretold at that point. It’s what then also prompted a great deal of flurry of activity within the Afghan state to say, “Oh, okay, well these are changed circumstances, but surely the Americans aren’t going to leave us high and dry.” TREMONTI: General Wayne Eyre was appointed Canada’s Acting Chief of the Defence Staff in 2021. WAYNE EYRE: In essence, they ceded a lot to the Taliban without getting much in return. And the fact that the Afghan government was not at the table for that . . . You talked about trust. Well, this was another significant breaking of that trust. Fast forward a year, middle of April, President Biden decides he’s going to continue with the withdrawal that the Doha Agreement called for. And April 14, he made a public announcement. [CLIP –JOE BIDEN]: After consulting closely with our allies and partners, with our military leaders and intelligence personnel, with our diplomats and our development experts, with the Congress and the Vice President, as well as with Mr. Ghani and many others around the world, I have concluded that it‘s time to end America‘s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home. EYRE: That day, the Office of the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, reached out to me, because he wanted to personally discuss with those countries that had given so much to Afghanistan just what the rationale was and why the U.S. was going this way. TREMONTI: Back in 2021, General Milley claimed that the Taliban met only one of the Doha Agreement conditions: they didn’t attack U.S. forces directly, but they violated all the others. He agreed with an assessment that the withdrawal was, quote, “a logistical success, but a strategic failure.” End quote. And at the time, the deal sent a message to the Afghan government: the Afghan National Army and police would be left on their own. Now the clock was ticking. The Taliban began a campaign of threats and intimidation in anticipation of the U.S. withdrawal. BURTCH: So, when that call came, either facilitated by a local elder or through force of arms, to lay down your arms and we’ll let you go, there was a realization that the time had ticked down and had run out for the defence of Afghanistan, and people were starting to make their own decisions about their livelihood and well-being. And that’s when you start to see collapses of whole districts, sometimes without a shot. TREMONTI: The Taliban swept across Afghanistan that summer, retaking territory. Then Major-General Dean Milner was the last Canadian Combat Commander in Kandahar Province. He had spent years helping to build and train the Afghan National Security Forces. DEAN MILNER: I was surprised at how easily the Taliban took over. And that stems a lot in my mind from, if the leadership‘s not strong. And General Habibi will tell you that the political side was putting the wrong leaders into command positions. They were not well trained. They were not capable of leading from the front, which was needed. TREMONTI: Then Brigadier-General Ahmad Habibi commanded Afghan forces in Kandahar alongside Milner. AHMAD HABIBI: [Speaking in Pashto] AMAL DIN: The Afghan National Security Forces were trained very well by NATO. They continued to do their task without any issues, without any problems. The leadership of the Afghan National Army remained committed till the last day. But it was the government, the government side that caused the fall. HABIBI: [Continues speaking in Pashto] TREMONTI: That was the voice of Amal Din, General Habibi’s interpreter throughout this interview. Both General Habibi and Milner say the Afghan government failed its soldiers. But there were structural weaknesses in the coalition’s overall approach from the beginning. For 20 years, the U.S. and coalition forces had approached Afghanistan as though it were a country that could be remade in the West’s image. They had tried to impose a strong central government in a country where historically, power was held locally. BURTCH: The people that you‘re mentoring, of course, they want to do things their own way. They’re not just lumps of clay that you can shape however you like. They have their own cultural and military and security context that they have to consider. TREMONTI: That same thinking defined how the Afghan forces were trained: as a version of a western military with a reliance on technology and contractors that only western nations could provide. BURTCH: A lot of the focus was on frontline fighting and less on the support and logistical elements of the Afghan National Security Forces. That was provided in large part by the United States and contractors that were paid for by the United States and other allies who may have contributed towards that. And so you had this dynamic of creating and fielding this force that could be made up of very competent and trained soldiers, but who had, were dependent on a set of conditions to operate. TREMONTI: The result was an army that couldn’t survive on its own. On top of that, corruption was rampant throughout the whole mission. The billions of dollars flooding into Afghanistan overwhelmed the country, enabling massive fraud and bribery, and rendering Afghan institutions dependent on foreign funding. BURTCH: There were opportunities within that system where it fell out of those contractors, or even when it was in the contractor’s hands, to just plain sell the stuff they were meant to be supplying through the troops to enrich and line one’s pockets. And this kind of like, systemic corruption, in addition to lower-level stuff like, paying soldiers who had deserted, then money being pocketed by various people in the unit. TREMONTI: The U.S. departure meant the loss of American ground forces and air power, but also financial support that had propped up the Afghan military. Many Afghan troops were going without pay, food or supplies. Their capacity to fight was badly depleted by these shortfalls. BURTCH: And so, you had this domino effect that came into play when all of a sudden, perfectly capable units either voted with their feet believing that they had been sold out, and then you just kind of start to get isolated units who become more isolated, less able to fight. TREMONTI: Canada had long ended its combat mission by the time these districts started to fall to the Taliban. As of the summer of 2021, we had been out of Afghanistan for seven years. But there was a Canadian embassy still operating in Kabul, staffed by diplomats. And of course, Afghan workers, including interpreters, fixers, drivers, and support staff who had worked alongside Canadian forces for years. They had put their lives at risk. If they stayed, many believed they would be killed. On July 30, 2021, then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved a military evacuation called Operation AEGIS. Canada had three weeks to get as many people out as possible. As Acting Chief of Defence Staff, General Eyre oversaw that operation. Almost immediately they ran into bureaucratic issues. EYRE: There was a tremendous amount of friction due to the fact that you still had a functioning host nation government that controlled the airport, that controlled the processing of who gets onto flights. But at the same time, their government functions were failing. So, passport services were failing. And so tremendously frustrating trying to get these Canadian entitled people through the Afghan process onto flights. TREMONTI: But veterans weren’t just watching the horrific images. Many had already been trying to help Afghan allies escape. Lieutenant-Colonel Eleanor Taylor had joined an informal coalition of veterans, journalists, and engaged citizens working around the clock to get Afghans out. The group called itself the Afghan Strategic Evacuation Team. Senior officers including Generals Dean Milner, David Fraser, and Denis Thompson were part of it. Journalists for Human Rights and the Veterans Transition Network were also involved. TAYLOR: At first, we were meeting twice a day. Like, so we would meet at nine in the morning, and we would meet at 6 p.m. in the evening. That went on for weeks, where we would, as a group of, you know, 12 or 15 people, would, you know, be trying different things to open up the doors from IRCC to get more of the people who we knew had worked directly for the Canadian Armed Forces through to work with the network of Afghans who were still in Afghanistan, who were putting people in safe houses and moving them from Kandahar to Kabul. That was a horrible time, and I think I managed those emotions by doing something. And it was clear to me that most of the people who were in that effort were trying to wring something positive out of a horrific outcome. TREMONTI: For General Habibi, the fall of Kabul was effectively a death sentence. He had spent 20 years fighting along NATO and Canadian forces. That made him a target. HABIBI: [Speaking in Pashto] DIN: It’s obvious that I was not feeling safe in Afghanistan. Even on the first day after the fall, I received a call, which was a very suspicious call. I automatically destroyed my phone’s SIM card and moved from my location to another location as I was not feeling safe. HABIBI: [Continues speaking in Pashto] TREMONTI: He made contact with Milner back in Canada. MILNER: So, I knew right off the bat that I wanted to do everything in my power to be able to help get them out. And so, we put together a team, you know we had guys in Afghanistan and we were able to pull out a number of our translators, a number of our fellow soldiers. This country’s immigration system is horrible and bureaucratic. And I’d say we got maybe 20 per cent out of who we wanted to get out. We did manage to get General Habibi and his family, which was, that was touch and go. TREMONTI: General Habibi began the agonizing drive through Kabul, as the city was falling, his face covered so no one would recognize him. HABIBI: [Speaking in Pashto] DIN: We were going through so much tough time. The situation was so bad that even before going to the, or entering the Afghan National Airport, one of my daughters whose name is Maryam, she became unconscious because of what was happening. So, it was a great danger. But once we got inside the airport, that’s when we felt that we were in good hands and now I was safe with my family. HABIBI: [Continues speaking in Pashto] TREMONTI: From Kabul, Habibi and his family flew to Kuwait, where they spent the night before making their way to Canada. Meanwhile, journalist Michael Petrou was in Ottawa also frantically trying to help his Afghan driver and guide who was stuck in Kabul. Shuja Mamozai had worked with Petrou during his reporting in the Panjshir Valley in 2011. MICHAEL PETROU: Shuja was in Kabul and there was a network of us that had been involved, that were, had been involved in Afghanistan one way or the other. And we were all exchanging texts and emails and information about the evacuation effort and what we could learn about it from people that were involved and were sending us information, which changed all the time. TREMONTI: But Mamozai still couldn’t believe it was possible for Kabul to fall. SHUJA MAMOZAI: Even two days before the Taliban got to Kabul, my passport was expired and my family, all of us, we didn’t have the passports. So, passports were expired. And my mom, she was in Australia and she was telling me, “Please go take, update your passports because the country will be destroyed.” And I said, “It’s impossible because there are 350,000 Afghan soldiers only, they’re fighting. And there is a NATO forces there, American forces is there.” How can they get the whole country, you know? TREMONTI: His mother was right. And because Mamozai had worked with Western journalists, his life was also in danger. Michael Petrou, back in Canada, was relaying information to him trying to furtively guide him through a city descending into chaos. PETROU: I recall, you know, instructions to go to this street corner and, and wear something red. So, I’d be relaying all this to Shuja, and you know, there’s dozens if not hundreds of people doing the same. You know, do you stay in your house and wait for a car that may or may not come to pick you up? Do you try to get into the airport? Can you? It was very, we all remember the scenes. It was very chaotic. And there was that horrific bombing outside the airport. TREMONTI: That happened on August 26. As some of the last evacuation flights were leaving, an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated at Abbey Gate, one of the airport’s entry points. About 170 Afghans and 13 American service members were killed. MAMOZAI: When the Americans left, left everybody under the Taliban hand. That’s why people rushed to the airports. People rushed to the planes. People jumped to the planes. Even people dropped from the planes and people got killed. TREMONTI: As Kabul fell, Mamozai fled to a remote mountain village high in the hills outside of Kabul, and hid there for three months. He said the Taliban came to his home in the city many times looking for him. When they couldn’t find him, he said they slapped his 11-year-old son and demanded to know where his father was. He stayed away but remained in touch with Petrou. Meanwhile, General Eyre was receiving intelligence updates from the Canadian evacuation effort on the ground. EYRE: So, our last flight out of Kabul was on the 14th. And early morning on the 15th, our diplomatic staff evacuated. And from my perspective, seeing the intelligence, it was exactly the right call as there was explosions and gunfire happening around the Kandahar airfield. We pulled out with our last flight, our diplomats and a number of partner diplomats as well. That was shortly before 15,000 Afghans surged the airport perimeter and ended up on the tarmac. TREMONTI: Over the course of three weeks, Canada’s Operation AEGIS evacuated roughly 3,700 people from Kabul. Of the Afghan nationals on those flights, about 1,700 had been formally referred by the Canadian government. That was out of roughly 8,000 applications. BURTCH: I think that under the conditions that were facing the Canadian force that was set up to manage the evacuations, they did exemplary work under very trying conditions, under a very tight time scale. Could there have been more evacuated? Certainly. I think we should be grateful that as many were evacuated as possible. And then I think it is a testament to the sentiment and nature and depth of feeling and connection that some Canadians had to Afghanistan and the people that they worked with that they continued on through unofficial channels to try to get as many people out as possible through whatever means necessary. TREMONTI: Shuja Mamozai and his family eventually came to Canada with the help of Michael Petrou and Journalists for Human Rights. But the ones left behind are always on his mind. MAMOZAI: Especially, especially the girls, the girls, they cannot go to school, which is very, very important. [Music begins]. We are now in 21st century, right? Women should go to school. They should learn. So, this is the problem, the big problem is education and people suffering. And we are very, very fortunate we are here and my children go to school. [Music ends]. TREMONTI: General Habibi finally arrived in Canada with next to nothing and had to start his life over again. HABIBI: [Speaking Pashto] DIN: I was welcomed in Canada. Whatever I had in Afghanistan — my home, money or clothes, my bank accounts are still frozen. I had nothing that I came in. But I was very happy that at least I’m safe in Canada. So, we continue our lives here. My kids are now studying and they’re working. I’m also studying and I’m also working. HABIBI: [Continues speaking in Pashto] MICHAEL WRIGHT: I think that, you know, if I broke it down into the people I was thinking about, the first group of people I was thinking about, were the people of Afghanistan, particularly those who were not able to make it out in 2021. TREMONTI: In 2026, Lieutenant-General Michael Wright is speaking as the Commander of the Canadian Army. But two decades earlier, in 2006, he was Major Wright, commanding Alpha Company of 2 PPCLI. WRIGHT: The second group is frankly the families of our fallen. You know, because I can only imagine seeing that chaotic withdrawal in 2021 and trying to understand what that meant for our legacy. You know, I thought about the soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan, who lost friends in Afghanistan, many of whom still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from Afghanistan, what it meant for them. TREMONTI: When Canada’s veterans came home in the years before Kabul fell, they had returned to a country that had largely moved on. For most Canadians, the war in Afghanistan had not affected them directly. It wasn’t part of their daily awareness. So for the men and women who had fought, or who were wounded or lost comrades, coming home meant stepping back into a world that, outside of the tight-knit military community, had no idea what they’d been through. ALEXANDRA HEBER: Especially once we pulled out of Afghanistan. Like it was like, okay, that’s over. Nobody cares about that anymore. TREMONTI: Dr. Alexandra Heber is the Chief of Psychiatry at Veterans Affairs Canada. In 2009, Major Heber deployed to Afghanistan as the psychiatrist in charge of mental health services for the Canadian task force. HEBER: No matter whether they had been in traumatic situations or not, this made an indelible impression on people. I think the other sort of individual thing was folks coming home, coming back to family life and to civilian life, having been in this situation that was this life and death, a very austere environment, where the most important people for them, again, were their buddies, their comrades. And that every day you were on alert and watching out for each other and suddenly that was all gone. It was really, for many people, a kind of a shocking adjustment. TREMONTI: Captain Andrew McCuish was deployed in 2010 with the Royal Canadian Dragoons. ANDREW MCCUISH: It is a challenge. But hey, you know, day at a time, try to figure it out. For me, like I had a moment where my psychologist, he basically said, he was like, "You’re the poster boy of living with PTSD." HEBER: So post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a condition that, it’s a diagnosis and it’s basically a number of symptoms that people experience after particular types of events which are defined as traumatic events. If they were out in the public and a car would backfire or there was some other loud noise, to them it was like they would be back in the war zone where the explosion had occurred. And they would get all the reactions like hyperventilating and getting very nervous and trying to escape the situation. TREMONTI: Often, many returning veterans didn’t have the language to describe what they’d been through, or what might trigger them. JOHN BARNES: Sometimes they would come out of the blue and other times I would know beforehand that a certain thing would affect me. TREMONTI: Chief Warrant Officer John Barnes was wounded during Operation Medusa in 2006. BARNES: You know, something as simple as bringing garbage out to the sidewalk at my house. So, I pick up a black garbage bag, I bring it out, and almost every time, even today, I pause, and I stop, because I put one of my soldiers in a body bag, a black body bag, and we were in the middle of fighting still. TREMONTI: The flashbacks and sleeplessness were only part of it. Dr. Heber says PTSD reshapes how veterans move through the world. HILLIARD KAHPEAYSEWAT: The PTSD — I couldn’t sleep on a bed. I had to go sleep outside on a deck. TREMONTI: Corporal Hilliard Kahpeaysewat is a Cree veteran from Saskatchewan who served in Afghanistan. When he came home, it was like he brought the war home too. KAHPEAYSEWAT: I used to get these hot flashes. I’d be driving down the road. I see a hole in the side of the road. I kind of swerve off, almost caused an accident. I’d see people on phones, I’d feel so uneasy. If they’re staring, you know, you’d have that feeling that they’re talking about you. You always had that feeling. It was uneasiness and you kind of secluded yourself and started going back to drinking, you know. To me, I always thought I had a survivor’s guilt. Like, why wasn’t it me — that my friends, some of them got killed over there — but why wasn’t it not me? TREMONTI: He eventually got sober and often speaks about his experience at veteran events. Corporal Benjamin Hertwig’s post-war experience has taken him to some dark places. HERTWIG: I think there were definitely times in my post-war life, when I very much did not wish to be alive. When I was not actively contemplating taking my own life, but where everything felt, like, too much, too intense, too difficult. TREMONTI: In 2016, The Globe and Mail documented at least 70 Canadian soldiers and veterans who died by suicide after leaving the mission. The risk of suicide was not unique to Afghanistan or to combat deployment. Veterans across the board face a higher risk of suicide than other Canadians, and that gap has remained steady for four decades. And according to Dr. Heber, the risk isn’t evenly distributed, because frontline experience in war is rarely the only factor at play. HEBER: You know one thing is, well, yes suicide certainly happens and again it tends to be multifactorial. We also know it’s more common among people who are divorced, separated, widowed. So again, people who are alone, I think, you know, don’t have supports in their life. And maybe for some of the veterans, people who’ve never had that kind of closeness and that level of support like they did when they served in the military. TREMONTI: Barnes says that attitudes around mental health in the military are slowly changing. BARNES: I believe that the military, DND, the government, has come a long way in the last, you know, since Afghanistan, for sure, with providing resources to soldiers who are affected by their service. And I think our soldiers, in the last decade or so, have finally come to realize, for the most part, that those resources are there to help them. There’s still stigma, there will always be stigma, especially in the combat arms where I was in the military: the infantry, armoured artillery, engineers. There’s still that stigma of coming forward to say you have PTSD. So soldiers are still a little hesitant, but the help is now there, and I think that is a huge positive. And, you know, I hope soldiers are taking advantage of that. TREMONTI: Over time, Andrew McCuish began to reframe his PTSD diagnosis. MCCUISH: To me, I’m like, that’s my Stanley Cup. You know what I mean? Like, that’s my Stanley Cup. That’s, okay, I’ve got this chronic condition, but I’m learning how to navigate it. And it’s still learning, right? Like I’m learning every day. But it’s also changed my perspective on a lot of things. You have a sense of how lucky we are, how fortunate we are here. And even when we have certain challenges in this country, like, we’re still doing very, very well. TREMONTI: And for Benjamin Hertwig, healing meant trying to find a way back to himself. HERTWIG: I think there was a time where I felt shame about Afghanistan or didn’t want to tell people. And now I no longer feel that kind of shame because I think I’m doing things in the world that I’m proud of, and that I’m doing things that make me feel grounded again and that I have a place. I feel grateful to be in that place now, whereas once, I just wanted to push everything aside. Now it’s a part of my life and I’m in a good place now. TREMONTI: As for the people of Afghanistan, the war had been nothing short of catastrophic. Millions were displaced from their homes and tens of thousands were killed. More than 60,000 Afghan security forces died fighting alongside coalition troops. The civilian toll was even greater. By some estimates, nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians were killed from the fighting. Hundreds of thousands more died due to hunger, disease and injury caused by the war. And in the end, Afghanistan is again governed by the Taliban. Here’s Shuja Mamozai again. MAMOZAI: Right now, there is no hope. People is starving for food. There is no jobs, no nothing. I don’t know. And also, everything is gone. Twenty years we fought, people got lost, people got killed after 20 years. TREMONTI: And yet when you ask why Canada went in the first place, the answer is also complicated. BURTCH: I think that fundamentally in a realpolitik sort of way, the rationale for Canada getting into Afghanistan was in large part to sustain and maintain our relationship with our largest and most important ally, the United States. And to show that we were a dependable part of the rules-based international order and to carry out the role that we had carried out through our various international engagements, be it through the United Nations, through NATO, through other means. You need to understand that context in order to understand why we got into Afghanistan. TOM MYKYTUIK: Maybe for a generation we gave them hope, and maybe opportunities. TREMONTI: Major Tom Mykytiuk commanded November Company, 3rd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment, during its deployment to Kabul in 2003–2004. MYKYTUIK: You know, for that brief period of time, and maybe, maybe we set the conditions or we planted the seeds for, you know, a society that might emerge at some point or that the Taliban may have to compromise with to build, you know, a better future for Afghanistan. So I guess, you know, I retain that hope. TAYLOR: I think we have a lot to be proud of in spite of the fact that the outcome in Afghanistan was, you know, was tragic. TREMONTI: Eleanor Taylor, again. Lieutenant-General Omer Lavoie commanded the Royal Canadian Regiment battle group during Operation Medusa. Even after all these years, he allows himself to hope for a better future for that country. OMER LAVOIE: At least for those 20 years, it demonstrated an optional way of life for a whole bunch of Afghans and a glimpse of, you know, what it might be like to have the very basic, most basic, of human rights. Those were fleeting, but I’d still like to think that there’s a generation of Afghans that they’ve seen that, they’ve seen the difference. So, you just gotta hope that that experience — which may be in hibernation for a long time — but at some point in time, hopefully in the future, will germinate again and bring that back to them. TREMONTI: Today, as the world grows less stable and the calls grow louder for Canada to shoulder more of the burden of international security, historian Andrew Burtch says the lessons of Afghanistan are critical. And so are the stories of those who fought, worked, lived and died there. BURTCH: And after all, what have we been doing this whole time in this podcast, is we have been trying to provide for some explanation of how we got to where we are now and to at the same time appreciate what it is that Canadian military personnel went through over the course of their various deployments and commitments to Afghanistan. I think that’s an important exercise. I think that phrasing the question, “Was, was Afghanistan worth it?” will provoke, I think, a binary response, right? So some people are going to say “no.” Some people will say “yes.” Some people may not want to answer the question. I think a better question will be, “What did your involvement in the Afghanistan war mean for you?” Every veteran is going to have their own answer to this. And I think that we have to respect those answers and take them at their face value. But I think a better question is, “How did this change you?” Because war shapes Canada. War shapes Canada is the kind of humble thesis of the War Museum as a whole, is that military history matters in large part because it has shaped us in our geography, in our culture, in our politics, but also our lived experiences throughout. [Music begins]. So, on the personal, on the national and international level, Afghanistan, much like other wars, has shaped us indelibly. That, you know, we are responding now, as a country, to a variety of threats, in part through the prism of having participated in Afghanistan. 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. Special thanks to Amal Din, who interpreted our conversations with Major-General Ahmad Habibi. He was a language and cultural advisor to General Milner from 2010 to 2014, and he later worked with the US Marine Corps. Our thanks to the men and women who agreed to speak about their experiences, and we thank them for their service. Some of the veterans you heard in this series were first interviewed as part of the Canadian War Museum’s oral history project, In Their Own Voices. To learn more, please visit warmuseum.ca, or follow the links in the show notes. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening. [Music ends].