OTTAWA - The conflict in Afghanistan is about more than simply rehabilitating a small, war-battered country in southwest Asia, says Canada's top general.
Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff, says Afghanistan is a beachhead in a larger fight against the kind of international terrorism personified by al Qaeda.
The Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan fighting NATO soldiers, including Canadians, are supported by outside groups who provide money, manpower and expertise, he said.
Hillier said the Taliban, when it ruled Afghanistan, supported international terror by offering a haven for militants far from international scrutiny.
"The Taliban provided that sort of fertile garden in which al Qaeda could do a whole bunch of things that it would not have otherwise been able to do or would have had more difficulty doing,'' he said in a recent interview.
Without that help, the group might not have been able to pull off the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.
"The Taliban gave al Qaeda the training camps and the ability to plan and recruit and finance and get people ready,'' he said.
"You want to remove that petri dish so you can't grow that kind of violence and the capabilities to project that violence around the world.''
He said NATO is in Afghanistan "helping remove that protected base where terrorist groups like al Qaeda and others could hide and reside and prepare and project violence.''
He also said a calm and peaceful Afghanistan could have a stabilizing effect on the entire region.
With three mutually suspicious and nuclear-armed powers in the neighbourhood -- Indian, Pakistan and China -- that stability would be welcome.
"It's got effects far outside of Afghanistan.''
Canadian troops have been in Afghanistan since 2002 and 74 have been killed fighting the Taliban and its allies, including a soldier killed Sunday by a roadside bomb.
Hillier said the Afghan insurgents are getting help from other radical groups, including those fighting in Iraq. Roadside booby traps in Afghanistan, also known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs, are becoming more sophisticated and deadly, in part because of outside help.
"We do see some of the tactics, perhaps, that do come out of Iraq,'' he said. "It's hard to say exactly . . . but we are pretty confident that some of the tactics in use of IEDs . . . has come out of Iraq, without question.''
Support goes beyond expertise in explosives.
"Do we see foreign fighters in Afghanistan? We do.
"We see Chechens . . . and we see Arabs and Egyptians, Arabs from a variety of nations. We see Algerians and Moroccans, not in big numbers, but we do see those folks there.''
There are outside paymasters, too.
"We do see that the Taliban are being sustained by a variety of things and one of them is money and that money network probably extends pretty far and wide.''
Hillier said stablizing the country is a long job, but it's an important one.
Canada has agreed to stay there until 2009. The government has suggested it would like to stay longer, but has pledged to put the matter to a Commons vote.
The opposition parties want to see Canada out, although they vary on when. The Liberals are content with the 2009 deadline, while the NDP want an immediate pullout.
Some argue that Canada's departure would hurt NATO. Others suggest it will simply force other members of the alliance to take a bigger role in the fighting.
