October 10, 2013
A communiqué by Lieutenant-General Stuart A. Beare
It has been almost four months since the first members of Op ATTENTION Rotation (Roto) 3 arrived in Kabul to deliver the Canadian Armed Forces’ final contribution to our mission, to our partners and to the people of Afghanistan. After months of working with our 32 international partners as advisors and mentors to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), it is now time for us to begin to undertake the activities that will ultimately enable full transition and drawdown of the Canadian Contribution to the Training Mission in Afghanistan (CCTM-A) effort.
As you know we are now seeing the return of some of our people to Canada and the pack up and recovery of our equipment while we continue to invest in our Afghan partner’s capacities through those who will remain engaged in that mission until its termination.
Over 260 members of Roto 3 of CCTM-A will return to Canada this month. Additional personnel will follow and will return to Canada in December and January, so that by the end of March 2014, all Canadian Armed Forces personnel deployed to Afghanistan will have returned to Canada.
The CJOC family is grateful to each of you for your commitment and dedication to your mission, to your partners, and to the legacy that precedes you. The professionalism that you have shown while supporting, coaching and mentoring the ANSF is truly remarkable. Our collective efforts over the past decade have helped them develop to a point where they are able to provide security for their own people.
They have shown that they are ready. They are respected by their own people and they are a credible and capable force. Today, some 350,000 ANSF members are the uniformed defenders of Afghans. The Afghan National Army is the most respected national institution in the country, followed closely by the Afghan National Police. Today, 90% of training is being delivered by Afghans and the ANSF has had lead responsibility for security nationwide since June 2013.
I could not be more proud of the work that you all have done and are doing. Whether it included mentoring advanced combat skills to Afghan units, to medical teams helping develop a more proficient health care system, to serving as advisors at very high levels within the Afghan Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence, we have all worked hard to help create a better future for the people of Afghanistan by training and advising Afghan security forces.
As your mission now includes transition and drawdown, we must not forget our comrades who gave their lives in this country nor the sacrifices that our international partners and Afghans themselves continue to endure. Their collective sacrifice is one of the many things that push us forward to persist in what we are doing today, while we invest in conditions that allow our partners to endure tomorrow.
As I said in June, for many of you this deployment will be shorter than those you have experienced before, but I want to again reiterate that it is no less important. We have reached a critical juncture as we arrive at the first significant reduction in the number of Canadian military personnel in the training mission.
As our contribution to the ISAF mission draws to a close, do take time to reflect on your contribution to this incredible campaign. You have worked hard to create a better future and to allow that future to be sustained ultimately by Afghans themselves. For those of you returning to Canada, I wish you a safe journey and a warm welcome home. For those remaining in Afghanistan, keep up the great work. We are all proud of you. We will see you soon.
Stuart Beare
Lieutenant General
Commander Canadian Joint Operations Command
