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Leading by example

By Kevin Steel ⋅ June 18, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Harper says he went on his second trip to Afghanistan because ‘it’s the right thing to do.’ Will Canadians notice?

A fine, white dust hangs in the air over the Kandahar airbase in southern Afghanistan, so fine it is barely visible. It obscures the view only at a distance, but you can feel it sticking to your sweat, or as a bit of grit on your teeth. That dust may well have been kicked up by the constant parade of military vehicles grinding their way along the base’s main roads at all hours, but in Afghanistan it’s hard to tell–the dust is simply everywhere.

It was 8:15 a.m. on May 23 and the temperature was already well on its way to 30°C when Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped out from beside a Tim Hortons trailer onto a boardwalk and into that dusty Kandahar base. Flanked by military brass and Gordon O’Connor, his minister of defence, Harper walked to a podium set up in the centre of an outdoor hockey rink just in front of the iconic coffee shop.

About 300 troops had waited patiently on that concrete rink for over an hour to hear Harper speak, the sun bearing down on their desert hats. Directly in front of the podium, 12 hatless soldiers wearing hockey jerseys–six abreast, facing each other–stood at military ease, their hands clasped behind their backs. The prime minister, Tim Hortons, hockey: a slice of Canada in a dusty land, a long way from home.

“I’m proud of you,” Harper told his appreciative audience. “Canadians are proud of you. And I’m here to tell you that we are behind you. Your government will continue steadfastly supporting the men and women of the Canadian Forces as the most professional, disciplined and effective soldiers in the entire world. We will let no one diminish all that you have achieved for Canada here. Because, friends, we know where we stand.”

If the brain trust in the PMO were looking to showcase Harper as a strong leader, a man of conviction and a man of principle, they would have been hard pressed to conjure up a more impressive setting. But how the message Harper had come to deliver to the troops would sound back home, through the dust and the distance, was hard to say. Nevertheless, it was a message that the soldiers, putting their lives on the line 13,000 kilometres from their kith and kin, certainly embraced. As events would soon suggest, that may have been good enough.

Harper’s surprise visit to Afghanistan had begun with an 8 a.m. landing in a Hercules aircraft at the Kabul airport the day before. There, surrounded by brown hills reminiscent of the region around Kamloops, B.C., staff and reporters were loaded into unmarked armoured vans, provided by the Americans and piloted by local, experienced motorcade drivers who whipped through the bumpy streets of the capital while traffic police held up long lines of cars. Signs of widespread devastation and haphazard reconstruction were everywhere. Reporters peering out through the inch-thick bulletproof glass could see old men on bicycles, children walking to school and a few locals driving donkey carts. But that was as close as anyone on the trip would get to everyday Afghan life.

The prime minister’s first stop was the most pleasant: the Aschiana School for Street Children, where grade school boys and girls sang and played instruments and demonstrated their painting skills. Canada had contributed $50,000 to the school last year. As the PM moved through the rundown buildings of the school in the centre of Kabul, armed paratroopers shadowed him at a discreet distance.

From there, Harper and the motorcade travelled to the Canadian Embassy for a briefing with Ambassador Arif Lalani and officials from the Canadian International Development Agency, and after that to the King’s palace where he met privately with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. It was at their joint press conference following those meetings that Harper faced the media for the only time on the trip. The first question was about the purpose of the trip; specifically, whether he was trying to bolster his party’s popularity. “Our allies, the entire international community, want us here,” Harper answered. “The people and the government of Afghanistan want us here. And the Canadian men and women in uniform or who work for various government agencies believe in their mission. So I’m not here because of the polls; I’m here because it’s the right thing to do.”

Harper’s delivery of a similar positive and principled message the next morning at the base clearly went over well on the ground. Warrant Officer Boyd Carter, a Newfoundlander in his 27th year of service with the Canadian Forces, spoke for many when he said, “It’s always good to hear a voice from back home. And this is particularly good for the young guys, especially those who haven’t seen it before because it lets them know how people in Canada feel about what they’re doing and how they are appreciated.”

But it’s not exactly clear what the “people in Canada” actually feel about the deployment. Canada’s military, some 2,500 strong in Kandahar and part of a larger NATO contingent, certainly knows where it stands on its mission to bring peace and security to a country troubled by 30 years of war and strife. And so does the Conservative government; it backs the mission even as public support for it has dropped, to the peril of the Tories’ own standing in the polls. An SES Research poll, made public before Harper’s trip, showed the Conservatives had dropped four percentage points in public popularity in April, to just 32 per cent–one point behind the Liberals.

Part of the decline is no doubt due to the Canadian public’s indecision about the mission. An April 24 Ipsos Reid poll found that 52 per cent of Canadians supported the role of the country’s troops in Afghanistan. But barely two weeks later, a May 6 SES/Sun Media poll found that 54.6 per cent of Canadians wanted the troops out of Afghanistan if casualties continue, which, since casualties are inevitable in the ongoing conflict, is tantamount to saying they want them out now.

That inevitability became apparent only three days after Harper’s visit. On May 25, Cpl. Matthew McCully became the 55th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan since the 2002 deployment. The 25-year-old native of Orangeville, Ont., known as Matty to his friends, was killed by an improvised explosive device while on foot patrol 35 kilometres west of Kandahar.

McCully died on the first day of Operation Hoover, a joint operation that involved Afghan, British, Portuguese and Canadian troops trying to drive approximately 300 Taliban fighters out of an area known as Nalgham in the Zhari district. Only in retrospect would it become clear that Harper’s visit, derided in some quarters as a mere photo op, had actually come on the eve of this major offensive.

The launch of Operation Hoover also puts into clearer perspective a remarkable journey that Harper made in the hours following his speech. In the late morning of that day, Harper flew in a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter (Canada has no helicopters of its own at Kandahar) to Ma’Sum Ghar, a settlement on the boundary of Panjwaii and Zhari districts where the Canadian Forces have a forward base. This was the base from which Operation Hoover was launched just days later.

In the press briefing held at the base while Harper was in the air, Col. Mike Cessford, deputy commander of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, told reporters, “I think I can make a flat statement that no serving prime minister has ever been closer to combat operations than the prime minister today. That’s a statement of fact. Last week we lost an Afghan interpreter in an attack on this camp.” Later in the briefing, Cessford sought to add credibility to his statement by pointing out that he had a doctorate in history from Carleton University.

The full import of Harper’s actions was not readily apparent, but most reporters recognized what Harper had done, even though they had no idea that Operation Hoover was to follow: the prime minister had demonstrated physical courage and leadership by putting himself in harm’s way, where Canada’s sons and daughters were being asked to go at their peril. Nevertheless, some reporters–those who don’t look favourably on the Conservatives–tried to minimize the historic foray. Some contended that prime minister W.L. Mackenzie King’s crossing of the Atlantic Ocean during the Second World War had been more perilous, while others sniped that Harper looked “dumpy” in his flak jacket. Journalists back in Canada were not immune to the negativity: one column in the St. John’s Telegram, headlined “What the Heck was He Thinking?” compared Harper to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk.

In many ways, Harper’s trip to Afghanistan, which followed his first visit 14 months ago, highlighted the chilly relationship between the Prime Minister’s Office and the news media. Not once on the journey there or back did Harper step to the back of the plane to speak with reporters to give his impressions of the trip or provide context. It’s doubtful that he’s losing any sleep over it; on the other hand, he’s very likely gaining support from soldiers who all too often find themselves misrepresented in the mainstream media. (In this light, it was not surprising that, in his address to the soldiers, Harper managed to get a spontaneous round of applause when he said, “We kicked a few reporters off the plane and brought over some new hockey sticks, which I’m sure you will appreciate.”)

It’s also clear that the value of Harper’s visit to Ma’Sum Ghar wasn’t lost on the military. On May 24, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier told the Canadian Press’s annual dinner attendees that Harper’s visit had been a major boost to the troops. “He is the actual, visible representation that this country is appreciative of what these young men and women are doing, and that they are remembered,” Hillier said. “And maybe, just maybe,” he continued, “that convinces them that the next day they can get up and do their business and accept that risk because we ask them to do it.”

Considering Hillier’s words came just as Operation Hoover was being launched (though it was still unknown to Canadians because of operational secrecy), his words, “the next day,” seem particularly profound, even heart-wrenching, when thinking of Cpl. Matthew McCully.

PRIDE IN A JOB WELL DONE

As he sits outside his tent in the waning light of a Kandahar evening, a young Canadian soldier confides that morale at the base is pretty high. He has just come back from brushing his teeth some 200 metres away. In the distance, cheering and whistling sweeps across the base from a stadium where entertainers from Canada’s East Coast are treating the troops to Cape Breton Celtic music.

Yes, the troops are in fine spirits. Then again, morale in his unit is already really high. “That’s because we’re going home in a week and a half,” he explains brightly.

But there’s another reason for their good mood: the satisfaction earned in a job well done. “I think everyone here understands it takes some time to build a country,” the 21-year-old corporal says. “We’re pretty proud of what we did out of Camp Julien up in Kabul. That place was a mess when we first got there in 2003–in complete darkness, no power. In two years it started looking like a city again.”

SIX MONTHS IS LONG ENOUGH

“WE really envy those guys,” says the American soldier patrolling the boardwalk at Kandahar airbase, overlooking the Canadian troops gathered in a hockey rink waiting to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper speak. “They’re on a six-month rotation. We’re here on 15.”

By “we” he means himself and his wife–both of whom are stationed at the base, and both of whom would rather head home after only half a year abroad, like the Canadians do, rather than spend more than a year at a time away.

One of the problems with a 15-month rotation, he explains, is the couple had to find someone to look after their new house in Florida. “Not only does someone have to look after the yard,” he says, “they have to go into the house at least once a month to open all the appliances, fridge, dryer, dishwasher. The rubber on these things will harden and seal shut if you don’t.”

But most of all, he and his wife are worried about their five children, aged 7 to 19. They were distributed among relatives and friends. “The older ones act like they don’t need you around, but they do,” he says. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for six months.”

[This article appeared in the June 18, 2007 issue of the Western Standard.]