Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent announcement that our armed forces will likely leave Afghanistan after February 2009 is as profound as it sounds simple. This could pose a dilemma for most military commanders. It could give our troops deployed under stressful, hostile conditions and in an inhospitable environment a message that their hard work at reconstruction and the sacrifices they have endured may have been futile.

Regardless of the politics, there are some cogent arguments for our troops' continued deployment in Afghanistan. More than five years in, men, money and materiel investment cannot be negated by sheer pressure from interest groups. The Conservative administration has an obligation to educate the Canadian public on why our presence is required halfway around the world.

Primarily, it was the previous Liberal administration's NATO commitment to enter into the Afghan quagmire. Irrespective of the tenuous rationale employed by the Americans to goad ("If you are not with us, you are against us"), we should have our own national agenda in this far-off Muslim country, quite alien to our ways.

To be effective in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, the Canadian Forces need more Muslims in their ranks, writes Idris Ben-Tahir.

Pat McGrath, The Ottawa Citizen

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Afghanistan is not a linear solution. Much of the country was destroyed by the Cold War superpowers' overkill capabilities. We Canadians have spent billions of dollars stabilizing that country by building infrastructure from the bottom up, as well as helping establish a top-down secretariat, to govern it as a modern state.

Everything from faucets and fields to flora and fauna were destroyed during the Soviet occupation of 1979-89 and U.S carpet-bombing and cruise missiles in 2001. Farms are still littered with bomblets and mines that maim or kill the tillers who toil there.

We have been the harbingers of stability and civility without any ulterior motive. Regardless of retiring British prime minister Tony Blair's sanctimonious incantations last month that the Afghan invasion was a happenstance, both Americans and British had a great game plan for that country (long before their misadventure) as a conduit for Kazakh oil.

Afghanistan, with its unique culture, is equal in area to Alberta; its 30 million inhabitants eke out an existence from only 10 per cent of the arable land in this rugged, mountainous country. Irrigation in this parched terrain is mainly through a network of underground aqueducts fed from melting snow peaks. Transportation is its biggest problem. This is where we have expertise to ease Afghans' angst. But how can we assuage their unease?

All is not lost, Mr. Prime Minister, as help is on its way in a form to minimize our losses and maximize our effort in Afghanistan.

Canada is lucky to a have a visionary chief of the defence staff in Gen. Rick Hillier, a tactician and a strategist. This loquacious soldier in April last year addressed hundreds of Ottawa Muslims at their annual dinner, asking them to join our armed forces to serve their country. He received a resounding round of applause.

He ventured into the Ottawa Central Mosque on a hot, humid June afternoon that year to learn the Islamic religious etiquette: to hear the Khutba (sermon) from the imam, followed by the Friday congregational prayer. Afterwards, parishioners from all walks lined up to greet their honoured guests, Gen. Hillier and his staff, with genuine warmth.

At Gen. Hillier's behest an initiative to recruit Canadians of all persuasions into our armed forces was ordered by Rear Admiral Tyrone Pile, chief of military personnel. Hence Operation Maple Crescent, of which I am a volunteer member, was launched to attract Muslims into our forces, as the Muslim world is beset with turmoil and we do not have enough personnel to address the vexing questions we face in Afghanistan. (Afghans did not intentionally target Muslim Soviet servicemen in their decade-long war.) Thus we could minimize our losses.

A natural analogy is how we use firebreaks to diminish raging forest fires.

In August 2006, the military proposed a policy lowering the bar for non-citizens to enter the forces with a five-year residency limit instead of the present 10. I, a British subject, was the first Muslim to have joined the Royal Canadian Air Force reserve as an officer in 1963.

Increased enrolment by Muslims would maximize our effort as the Afghans would be more inclined to let Canadian Muslims work without hindrance.

Retired Maj.-Gen. Brian Vernon, a friend since 1961, wrote to me in 2005 that it would take two years to train such a basic unit, and we have less time than that between now and the February 2009 end date.

There are a million Muslims in Canada and if five per cent are eligible we could easily raise a 1,000-person, compact Maple Crescent Regiment. Its battalions could rotate until the insurgency is abated. If we don't "cut and run," such a unit might one day make a difference.

Idris Ben-Tahir, an information scientist, has served as an officer with the RCAF (reserve); as a staff officer and command editor with Air Transport Command Headquarters in Trenton, Ont.; and on the staff of the chief of Air Doctrine and Operations at National Defence Headquarters, Ottawa.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007