As mission ends, Canadians support soldiers but still question Afghanistan war

It began with a handful of people standing on an overpass spanning Highway 401, offering quiet expressions of gratitude as slain Canadian soldiers made their final journey home from the battlefields of Afghanistan.

The president of the local Royal Canadian Legion. A housewife. A local police officer.

Every time a Canadian casualty came home, a few dozen people, and then a few dozen more, would form a grassroots honour guard over the southern Ontario highway — a stirring and stark reminder for a nation that had long forgotten what it means to be at war.

“We thought it was the right thing to do,” said Jim Keeler, 81, a veteran of the Korean War and member of the legion in Cobourg, Ont.

“It just blossomed, until there’s hardly room for everybody on the bridge now.”

Today, every time a Canadian soldier is killed in Afghanistan, thousands gather along what has been officially renamed the Highway of Heroes to await the high-speed procession that follows repatriation ceremonies at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, east of Toronto.

“We weren’t supporting the war, but we were supporting the young fellas, and the young women, that were getting killed,” said Jack Whalen, president of the legion in nearby Port Hope.

Whalen was among the very few who gathered along the route as winter gave way to spring and spring to summer in that first full year of the mission, 2002.

“We just went there to support the family … to show the families support, because there’s nothing worse in the world that grieving a loved one.”

He recalled the silence that fell over his small group as the hearse bearing the coffin appeared in the distance.

“There’s a dead silence, and there’s tears, for a total stranger,” he said. “It’s quite a thing.”

When the provincial government officially designated the route the “Highway of Heroes” in 2007, they were responding to an outpouring of public sentiment toward the soldiers despite the controversy that continues to dog the mission itself.

As Canadian combat draws to a close next month, polls done for the Department of National Defence last year suggest that after nine years, billions of dollars and 156 soldiers killed as part of the mission, Canadians support their troops — but still wonder why they were in Afghanistan in the first place.

The surveys — conducted by Ipsos Reid and quietly released online, though not widely reported — found that 92 per cent of respondents had a positive impression of the people who serve in the Canadian Forces, and 85 per cent cited the military as a source of pride.

In some ways, those numbers reflect a mission accomplished.

The decade prior to 2002 saw some of the darkest days of Canadian military history, largely the result of the 1993 murder of Somali teen Shidane Arone at the hands of Canadian soldiers involved in the UN peacekeeping mission in the African nation.

Photos of the bleeding 16-year-old’s final moments, his smiling torturers posing him like a trophy, shocked the public and the world. The scandal ended the military’s Airborne regiment and saw the Canadian Forces reduced to a public pariah — and a political liability.

“It has been an extraordinary experience in Canada for some of us who lived the Vietnam era — even though we were really on the side — to see how Canadians in the airports go up and shake hands with the soldiers coming back and so on, the Highway of Heroes and all kinds of things of this nature,” said Sen. Romeo Dallaire, a retired career soldier and general.

He remembers the complete lack of support for the military through the Kosovo era and the first Gulf War — and the budget cuts. He doesn’t expect veterans returning from Afghanistan to face anything like the same sort of government neglect.

“This time, if they do it, not only will the veterans be far more expressive than the veterans of the past, their families, but also the Canadian people will support them,” Dallaire said.

“And that is political dynamite.”

After five years locked in combat with insurgents in Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, four in five of those surveyed said Canada has done its share. Three out of four expressed pride in the role Canadian Forces have played in Afghanistan.

But 25 per cent of respondents said they felt the mission had no clear objective.

“There continues to be confusion about the mission in Afghanistan,” concluded the polls, which carried a margin of error no greater than plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

“The focus group findings point to a near-complete lack of clarity about the mission and its objectives. The survey findings too indicate that while there is certain recognition for the peacekeeping/peacemaking role, other objectives are not well-known.”

Respondents expressed “a sense of hopelessness, a fear — or even a certainty — that, despite the Forces’ best efforts, this was a lost and costly cause that was not resulting in any positive outcome for the people of Afghanistan.”

“The underlying tone of wasted time, money, resources, and senseless loss of life was pervasive throughout all focus groups.”

And while respondents were strongly supportive of Canada’s withdrawal from a combat role in Afghanistan, they were also concerned about the situation that Canada will leave behind when soldiers leave in earnest next month.

“Most participants expressed strong doubt about whether the people of Afghanistan were ready to take over responsibility for their own security and governance,” said the report.

“For some of these, leaving before the mission is accomplished would be irresponsible and calls into question the meaning of the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers’ lives.”

Regardless of the end of Canada’s combat role in Afghanistan, Whalen said he expects, sadly, to be standing along the Highway of Heroes again.

Canadian soldiers will remain in Afghanistan after July as part of an ongoing effort to train the country’s security forces, including the Afghan National Army. Though they won’t be engaged in combat, they won’t be out of harm’s way either, Whalen predicted.

“They’ll have people over there and there will still be the odd one getting killed,” he said.

“Nothing’s really going to change.”