NATO AND CANADA IN AFGHANISTAN
For almost two decades, from 2003 to 2021, NATO led an extensive effort to secure and rebuild Afghanistan. A significant change from the alliance’s activities during the Cold War, NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan gave the allies a common cause during a period when the purpose of the alliance was in question. Yet it was a dangerous and deadly undertaking. More than 40,000 Canadian soldiers served, thousands were injured, and 158 were killed — along with one Canadian diplomat and one Canadian journalist — in a mission that ultimately ended in frustration. NATO’s attention was drawn to Afghanistan by the terror attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. The next day, after a suggestion by Canada’s permanent representative to NATO, Ambassador David Wright, the allies invoked Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty for the first time in history, signalling that they considered the attack on the United States an attack against them all. Weeks later, invoking its right to self-defence under the United Nations Charter, the United States took military action against Afghanistan, where terrorist leader Osama bin Laden sheltered under the protection of the Taliban government. Canada participated in these initial military operations as part of an ad hoc coalition; this was not a NATO mission. When the Taliban government fell in late 2001, the United Nations established an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to maintain security in Kabul, the Afghan capital. In August 2003, NATO formally assumed leadership of ISAF. “This new mission,” stated NATO’s Deputy Secretary-General Alessandro Minuto Rizzo, “is a reflection of NATO’s ongoing transformation, and resolve, to meet the security challenges of the twenty-first century.” Canada sent an infantry battle group and a headquarters team to Kabul to lead a multinational brigade. In its early years, NATO’s ISAF role was often called a “peacekeeping operation” in news reports, but the phrase is misleading. The mission quickly expanded to include a counter-insurgency against the Taliban, which had regrouped and shifted to guerrilla tactics. ISAF expanded its operations beyond Kabul and placed NATO forces throughout the country to establish security and to support the new Afghan government. Canada led a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Kandahar province beginning in 2005, which brought together soldiers and civilians — diplomats, development specialists, police officers, and others — to help build dams and schools and to combat disease. To protect the PRT’s efforts, Canada also sent military units — at times amounting to nearly three thousand troops — to Kandahar. In 2006, the Canadian Forces led an offensive against the Taliban named Operation Medusa, which Sten Rynning, a scholar of NATO, has called “ISAF’s first real battle.” The fierce fight marked the beginning of years of counter-insurgency warfare. In 2011, Canada ended its combat mission and shifted to training Afghan security forces. In 2014,
ISAF handed responsibility for security to the Afghan National Security Forces; the ISAF mission ended, and Canadian troops returned home. NATO began a new non-combat mission called Operation Resolute Support to continue training and assisting Afghans. But the Taliban gained strength and threatened the Afghan government. In August 2021, following the withdrawal of American forces, the Taliban seized Kabul. The Afghan government disintegrated, and NATO terminated Operation Resolute Support. Twenty years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Taliban had taken back control of the country.
the alliance was outdated and unnecessary.
The large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been the most important event in NATO’s history since the end of the Cold War. Although NATO has not invoked Article 5 and is not a belligerent in the conflict, NATO member states have provided training, weapons, and support to
Ukraine. As Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland explained in a speech in October 2022, “The immediate and necessary reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been to deepen and expand our core military alliance — NATO.”
Since 2022 NATO has increased its forces in allied countries facing Russia. The battle groups have grown in size, and allies have sent ships and air forces to the region. Like the commitment of Canadian and American forces to Western Europe in the 1950s, the troops now in Eastern Europe give substance to the idea of unity and collective defence. They also serve to deter the Russians from expanding the war. NATO’s strong defensive posture has provided a corridor that allows Ukraine’s supporters, which include NATO allies but also states from elsewhere in the world, to supply Ukraine with weapons, ammunition, and other aid.
In the 1940s, the diplomats who created NATO were thinking about the immediate problem of the Cold War and were not planning on building an alliance that would last decades. And yet, the principles that guided their thinking in 1949 remain relevant today. In the aftermath of the Second World War, leaders were convinced that the maintenance of military power — giving allies the ability to defend themselves and to deter a potential aggressor — was the best way to prevent a third world war. In the words of the ancient Roman adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum: If you want peace, prepare for war.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST To hear more about the history of NATO, including archival recordings of U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower and other leaders, scan the QR code or visit: CanadasHistory.ca/ NATO v Russia.