Brigadier General Denis Thompson was at Stayner Collegiate Institute to tell students about the mission in Afghanistan on Monday.
He was the commander of the Canadian joint task force in Afghanistan from May 2008 to February 2009.
Thompson says it’s part of his public outreach tour, and it’s great to talk to students in his home town.
He went to high school in Stayner.
Thompson says the 2011 date to end the Canadian Afghanistan mission, but adds the international mission will still be continuing there once Canada leaves.
He says we’ll need to be present in the years after that.
Thompson says that the citizens of Kandahar City are firmly on the team.
He says they know the acceptance rate for the government in the city is around 80 percent, which is quite high. There is also very low acceptance of the Taliban in the city as well.
He says they need to professionalize more police in the country to raise the people’s confidence, and he has to convince them there is something better than the Taliban.
Thompson spent about 40 minutes explaining the conflict in Afghanistan to students, and just what Canadian soldiers are facing when they get deployed into the warzone.
He says the temperatures over there can get up to 50 degrees, which only gets worse when a soldier puts on his uniform, and carries around the 70 pounds of equipment he needs to survive.
And Thompson says that although Canada is withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2011, there is still going to be a large international prescence there, and they will need to be there for years to come.
He adds it’s clear that Canada is pulling out of the war torn country for political reasons.