Legacies of war: Canada after Afghanistan

Veterans, journalists, and others who had devoted care and effort to Afghanistan watched the fall of Kabul in horror. Afghans crowded to the airport, seeking escape. Desperate people rushed onto runways and clung to planes as they were taking off, almost certain to fall to their deaths.

Eleanor Taylor had served as an infantry officer with The Royal Canadian Regiment in Afghanistan in 2010. Eleven years later she was in Halifax watching the fall of Kabul from afar. “That was horrifying. Grief. It was grief,” she says. “Yep, I think that’s the only – the best way – to describe it, that this is what it had come to.”

When Canada withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014, the United States and several other NATO countries remained in the coalition. The American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 followed the terms of an agreement signed in Doha between the administration of President Donald Trump and the Taliban in February 2020. The Afghan government was not a party to the months-long negotiations.

The Doha Agreement committed the U.S. and NATO to withdraw their troops by August 31, 2021. In return, the Taliban promised not to harbour al-Qaeda or to attack U.S. forces and its allies in the future.

General Wayne Eyre was appointed Canada’s Acting Chief of the Defence Staff in 2021. He says, “In essence, they [the Americans] ceded a lot to the Taliban without getting much in return. And the fact that the Afghan government was not at the table for that. You talked about trust, well, this was another significant breaking of that trust.”

In effect, the timetable for withdrawal created the conditions for the Taliban victory. The Taliban were arguably at their strongest since 2001. And post-Doha negotiations between the Taliban and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan resulted in the release of thousands of Taliban prisoners, swelling their ranks.

Canada and the NATO coalition had put a lot of effort into training and preparing the Afghan National Army’s (ANA) front-line troops. Unfortunately, the Afghan National Security Forces were not as well prepared for the administration and logistics essential to a modern military.

The U.S. had provided much of this specialized support in the form of technology and contractors, all of which evaporated when the Americans left. Years of rampant corruption and poor preparation left Afghanistan with an army that couldn’t function effectively in their absence.

Brigadier-General Ahmad Habibi commanded Afghan forces in Kandahar. He says, “The Afghan National Security Forces were trained very well by NATO. The leadership of the Afghan National Army remained committed till the last day. But it was the government, the government side that caused the fall.”

The Taliban swept across Afghanistan during the summer of 2021 in anticipation of the NATO and U.S. withdrawal. The ANA seemed to simply dissolve. Many units, weakened and isolated by a lack of support, simply laid down their arms and disbanded. Few put up a fight.

And when President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on August 15, the government of Afghanistan ceased to exist.

Many Afghans had worked alongside Canadians for years as interpreters, fixers, drivers, and support staff. Their past efforts now put their lives at risk as the Taliban took over. Many expected to be persecuted or killed.

On July 30, 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved a military evacuation to get as many people out as possible in the window when the Taliban would permit flights in and out of Kabul. This was Operation AEGIS.

The war was ultimately catastrophic for Afghans. Millions were displaced. More than 60,000 Afghan security forces died fighting alongside coalition troops. By some estimates, nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians were killed in the fighting. And hundreds of thousands died due to hunger, disease and injury.

Mamozai says, “Right now, there is no hope. People is starving for food. There is no jobs, no nothing. Twenty years we fought. People got lost, people got killed after 20 years.”

Reflecting on the fall of Kabul in 2021, Lieutenant-General Michael Wright, appointed to lead the Canadian Army in 2025, recalls, “I thought about the soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan, who lost friends in Afghanistan, many of whom still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from Afghanistan, what it meant for them.”

Veterans had long been forced to reckon with the nature of the mission. They had returned home to a country that didn’t much know or care about Afghanistan. And many carried the invisible wounds of post-traumatic stress.

Corporal Benjamin Hertwig says, “I think there was a time where I felt shame about Afghanistan or didn’t want to tell people. And now I no longer feel that kind of shame because I think I’m doing things in the world that I’m proud of.” He recalls seeing Kabul fall with “just a sense of deep heartache and sadness for the people still living with the realities of war.”