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On the eve of Parliament's re-opening, former prime minister Jean Chrétien has driven a new wedge into the federal Liberal Party with his indictment of Paul Martin as having blood on his hands over the deployment of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
Mr. Chrétien makes the charge in the just-published second volume of his memoirs, stating that because his successor "took too long to make up his mind" about what should be done with Canadian troops stationed in and around the Afghan capital of Kabul, "our soldiers were ... sent south again to battle the Taliban in the killing fields around Kandahar."
It is a scenario rejected by a number of officials who took part in the discussions leading up to the 2005 deployment but who refused to be identified by name for fear of being seen as taking sides in the years-long political fight between two former Liberal prime ministers.
A Martin spokesman, Jim Pimblett, said, "Mr. Martin was not provided with an advance copy of Mr. Chrétien's book. He is therefore not in a position to react in any detail, nor is he inclined to do so today or in the foreseeable future." But he added: "Undoubtedly, there are clear differences in recollection between the two men."
One senior defence official who took part in the discussions leading to the Kandahar deployment said the delay in the issue reaching Mr. Martin had nothing to do with the then prime minister but resulted from a year-long bickering over deployment between the departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs, from bureaucrats in the two departments who didn't tell their ministers what was going on and from conflicting pressures from Canada's allies.
The official said the reality is that Mr. Martin made the decision on Kandahar - the first commitment of Canadian troops to combat since the Korean War more than half a century ago - within weeks of the issue being put before him.
Like others interviewed, the official spoke on condition of anonymity.
That assessment is supported by a new book on the Kandahar conflict, The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, written by Janice Gross Stein, director of University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies, and Eugene Lang, chief of staff to former Liberal defence ministers John McCallum and Bill Graham in the Chrétien and Martin cabinets.
The book traces in detail how the decision was made - the first full public account of what transpired - and quotes Mr. Martin at several points in the narrative.
The Stein-Lang book says Mr. Martin merely affirmed the recommendation of Defence Minister Bill Graham and newly appointed Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier.
It says Mr. Martin, not keen on Canada's military engagement in Afghanistan, agreed to troops being sent to Kandahar after he was assured by Gen. Hillier that Canada would also retain the capability of sustaining peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Darfur, which were more to his liking.
Gen. Hillier is quoted in the Stein-Lang book as saying he gave the assurance that Mr. Martin wanted but underestimated the strength of the Taliban insurgency in Kandahar that Canadian troops would face.
According to the book, the decision was complex and multi-faceted. It was taken by politicians, generals and civil servants fumbling in the darkness of ignorance, trying to craft rules on the run for a new kind of international military engagement they did not fully understand in a country they did not understand at all.
Mr. Chrétien, in his memoirs, says that when he was prime minister he placed Canadian troops in and around Kabul as part of the European-lead International Security Assistance Force which he says was a very good deal for Canada.
He then writes: "Later, unfortunately, when my successor took too long to make up his mind about whether Canada should extend our term with ISAF, our soldiers were moved out of Kabul and sent south again to battle the Taliban in the killing fields around Kandahar."
The Stein-Lang book implies that the decision to withdraw Canadian troops from ISAF was made in mid-2003, when Mr. Chrétien was still prime minister and long before the Kandahar deployment. In any event, the ISAF mandate, at the urging of Canadian policy makers, was being expanded beyond Kabul in order to more fully support the new Afghan government.
As the next step after ISAF, Mr. McCallum in December, 2003 committed Canada to deploying what was known as a provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan but no decision was made on where it would be located.
It was this decision that officials in the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence squabbled over for more than a year without ministers being informed of what was going on, the Stein-Lang book says. At the same time, several NATO allies were giving Canada conflicting signals on where its PRT was located.
Finally, in early 2005, Mr. Graham wrote to Mr. Martin recommending that it should be located in Kandahar, a recommendation reinforced by Gen. Hillier when he met Mr. Martin several weeks later in March.
Gen. Hillier said the PRT should be reinforced by a strong combat deployment in Kandahar as well as strategic advisory teams attached to most Afghan ministries - the so-called "three-block war" approach.
Mr. Martin gave his approval in.
© Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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