Soldiers from Bravo Company, Royal Canadian Regiment, enter a suspected Taliban stronghold in Pashmul, a small village a few kilometres north of Panjwai District. Photo by Graeme Smith/QOR Museum/Flickr.

“My innocent children have been killed by foreigners—for no reason!”

This was the traumatized cry of an Afghan mother whose children, aged two and four, were shot dead by Canadian soldiers before her eyes in 2008. Commenting on this tragedy, Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay used the passive voice to describe the killing of the children, stating that “two Afghan children… were killed in this incident” and expressing sadness at the “horrible decision that had to be taken” by the toddlers’ killers. MacKay placed no blame on Canadian soldiers, instead blaming the children’s deaths on “the despicable tactics used by the Taliban, hiding among the civilian population.”

Nobody in government or the mainstream media seemed to care that, if Canadian soldiers hadn’t been deployed to Afghanistan, those small children might not have died.

Three days ago, on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien sent a message to “our American friends,” who have been threatening to annex Canada for the past year and a half. “Never mistake our generosity for weakness,” he told the Trump administration. “We bow to no one.” Meanwhile, a pair of articles published in the Globe and Mail sought to refute Trump’s claim that Canadian and other NATO countries’ troops “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines” during the war in Afghanistan. The pieces quoted Canadian soldiers who were personally involved in offensive missions against anti-occupation forces.

The first article, by reporter Kyle Duggan, describes challenges faced by Canadian soldiers deployed to aid the invasion, such as equipment shortfalls, lack of helicopters, and insufficient personnel. The second piece, by reporter Tu Thanh Ha, explains the Canadian military’s role in Operation Medusa, a NATO offensive in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province. Although NATO’s casualty numbers paled in comparison to those on the other side (hundreds of Taliban soldiers were killed in the fighting), Canada lost 12 troops in the operation.

These Globe and Mail reports ignore the impact that Canada’s role in the US-led war on Afghanistan had on Afghans themselves. As I describe in my 2023 book Canada in Afghanistan, this impact was decidedly negative.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Canada deployed 40,000 military personnel to support the US attack on Afghanistan. Canada was eager to aid the assault. According to US Ambassador Paul Cellucci, Canada’s then Defence Minister Art Eggleton was “begging” to join the US operation. Cellucci recalled: “I got a call on my cell phone from Art Eggleton during the buildup in Afghanistan. The message was ‘We want to be part of this.’” Over the course of the 12-year mission, 159 Canadian troops would lose their lives.

During the occupation of Afghanistan, Canadian special forces claimed that their commanders “encouraged” them to commit war crimes. Canadian soldiers rounded up Afghans and handed them over to the police to be tortured (in December 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament to put an end to the investigation of Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees).

Canadian forces functioned as an occupying army and behaved as such, operating checkpoints and participating in no-knock raids and arrests. Canada supported rigged elections aimed at keeping US ally Hamid Karzai in power. The military imposed strict censorship on embedded journalists. On top of this, the Canadian government established the so-called “Tiger Team” to black out access-to-information requests and thus prevent the Canadian public from learning more about the military’s conduct in Afghanistan.

Between 2006 and 2009, Canadian troops killed at least eleven innocent people driving civilian vehicles at checkpoints. All these actions contributed to anti-Canadian protests in Kandahar Province, during which Afghans angry at the aggressive and unaccountable behaviour of........

© Canadian Dimension