Soldiers to be limited to one combat tour in Afghanistan: Knowledge Driven Revolution

To avoid wearing out his troops, Canada's defence minister is proposing to limit combat troops to one deployment in war-torn Afghanistan, if possible.

Gordon O'Connor told the Commons defence committee Wednesday that with a little luck and good planning, the army won't have to ask soldiers to return again and again to battle Taliban insurgents.

"There are exceptions in some support trades, but we should have enough people, if we do our recruiting right, to get us through to the end of February '09 without committing large numbers of troops back there again," he said.

"I don't anticipate anybody being there five or six times."

Most soldiers on coming deployments will hopefully be going to Afghanistan for the first time, said Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff .

"We aim as much towards that as we can," he said.

Both O'Connor and Hillier were responding to questions and concerns from the all-party committee about how the army will deal with the extended, often dangerous mission and the rising casualty rate.

Since 2002, 42 Canadian soldiers have died and more than 168 have been wounded in the bloody struggle to wrestle Afghanistan from Taliban control.

Typically, Canadian battle groups - roughly 2,300 front-line soldiers and support elements - are deployed for six-month rotations.

In order to keep fresh troops headed toward the battlefield, defence planners are working on a series of options, including a process called re-rolling.

When someone signs up for one particular branch of the military, the enrolment can be made conditional on them serving time in the infantry.

It's not new concept. In the 1990s, armoured soldiers were retrained to fight as infantry in Bosnia.

The Conservative government is hoping its plan to recruit 13,000 new members of the regular forces will also help swell the ranks.

There will be some exceptions to the one-deployment rule, most notably for command assignments, Hillier said.

"You can't have a rapidly changing face if you're going to develop a relationship with the governor of Kandahar, the governor of Helmand," he said.

Several times during the session, O'Connor was called upon to defend the mission in Afghanistan from opposition attacks.

Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MPs accused him of keeping Canadians in the dark about the progress of the mission by denying the committee's request for regular briefings.

O'Connor said he wasn't about to endanger troops by discussing plans for operations in southern Afghanistan.

But committee members insisted they were not interested in asking questions coming missions, but rather what has already taken place.

O'Connor said he'd reconsider whether to sanction the briefings.

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Soldiers to be limited to one combat tour in Afghanistan: minister