Dr. Lee Windsor: Busting myths on Canada's mission

By Jonathan Spassov

---

Dr. Lee Windsor is Deputy Director of the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at the University of New Brunswick. A former soldier himself, Dr. Windsor is currently working on a study of the Canadian Army in Afghanistan.

He describes the study, which began in 2006, as "a kind of idiot's guide to Afghanistan", an effort to bust some big myths that exist about Canada's mission. "[Canadians need to] see how all the moving parts of Canada's mission in Afghanistan work," says Windsor. "It includes a battle group to provide security, it includes the Provincial Reconstruction Team to help stand up basic government services in Kandahar province, it includes the operational mentoring teams that work with the Afghan army and now the Afghan police, it includes Foreign Affairs and CIDA officials that are delivering aid and also helping to train the Afghan government and with diplomacy with Afghanistan's neighbors, it includes the Mounties, and it includes Corrections Canada officials - there's a whole host of components to the Canadian effort."

In this series of video clips Dr. Windsor explains the role of our Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar, situates Canada's role within the UN/NATO context, and discusses the Afghanistan mission from the point of view of a military historian who has spent many weeks in Kandahar as an "embedded academic" with New Brunswick's own 2nd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment.