Today is seven years since the 9/11 attacks that started it all.

By February, it will have been seven years since the first major deployment of Canadian soldiers -- 140 members of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry -- arrived in Afghanistan.

Seven years is starting to feel like a long time.

"It has certainly evolved," retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie says of Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

"We went there to dry up the swamp and remove the sanctuary for al-Qaeda ... That devolved into searching around in the hills for (Osama) bin Laden, and not a lot of military activity."

The 2001 al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. brought a swift response: Air strikes hammered Kabul and nearby training camps less than a month after the twin towers collapsed.

But for Canada, Afghanistan is now something entirely different.

Canadian casualties are nearing 100. The Taliban claims it is amping up attacks in an attempt to influence the Canadian federal election next month.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged Canadian troops will be coming home in 2011.

"You have to put an end date on these things," Harper said during a rare breakfast briefing with reporters. "We intend to end it."

Military families contacted by The Spectator yesterday were loath to condemn the mission shift over the years from Canada's traditional peacekeeping role to waging war, but agreed with Harper that by 2011, Canada will have done more than enough to try to stabilize the country.

"The Afghani forces are getting better all the time," said Ejaz Butt, the Hamilton father of a Canadian Forces medic.

"Will they be able to handle things -- for the most part by themselves -- by then?" he asked. "I guess we'll wait and see."

By pledging an end date, Harper essentially neutralized the Afghan war as an election issue on Oct. 14. But it came on the heels of some disturbing new Taliban claims.

"Yes, I know that the election is being held in Canada. That is why our attacks on Canadians are increased," Taliban spokesperson Qari Muhammad Yussef announced Tuesday through a translator, two days after the latest Canadian death in Afghanistan.

"My suggestion for the next prime minister is to withdraw Canadians from Afghanistan," he said, adding Canada needs to stop following U.S. foreign policy.

The threat came as Hamilton-area reserve units are sending their largest deployment since the Second World War to Afghanistan. Some are there, some fly out later this month. In all, 45 will go.

Canada has about 2,500 troops there already.

Captain Tim Fletcher, assistant public affairs officer for 31 Canadian Brigade Group that oversees the local reserve units, said civilians often misunderstand the work troops are doing in central Asia.

"One thing I gather, with input from reporters or my co-workers, is the constant confusion of calling this mission a peacekeeping mission. It is not a peacekeeping mission. It is a war-fighting mission."

Troops are not stepping in to separate two warring factions, he said, because the Taliban has no interest in a negotiated settlement. Troops are there to protect a government under assault, to fight and, as often gets overlooked, to rebuild institutions such as schools, the police force and local government.

Butt says the government and the media need to do a better job telling Canadians what is being accomplished. This country is focused on casualties, repatriation ceremonies and cost, he said.

"The focus should be on the accomplishments, not the cost."

When Canada first sent troops, back in 2001 and 2002, it didn't impress Akbar Haidary, vice-president of the Afghan Association of Hamilton.

"At the beginning, I thought it was the same war the Russians were involved in," he said. "I thought it was just the Americans doing something similar ... but then I saw (Canadians) helping."

Haidary said that during phone calls to friends and relatives in the Kandahar area, he is hearing reports of Canadians building schools, which has helped distinguish them from U.S. troops.

He's no fan of Americans abroad, due to civilian casualties. A NATO bomb accidentally hit a house about two kilometres off-target Tuesday, killing two civilians and wounding 10.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, said terrorism cannot be defeated if innocents are killed in coalition operations.

The bombing came amid a dispute over a U.S. and Afghan special forces operation in the western village of Azizabad on Aug. 22. Afghan and United Nations officials say some 90 civilians died during fighting in the village.

The total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has grown from 21,000 in 2006 to nearly 31,000 today.

Yesterday, U.S. President George Bush said the United States will bolster its military forces in Afghanistan with about 4,500 more troops by early next year as U.S. forces draw down in Iraq.

Success in Afghanistan is not assured, a top U.S. military officer has said.

"I am not convinced that we're winning it in Afghanistan," said Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I'm convinced we can."

Toronto-based military historian Jack Granatstein, author of Whose War Is It? How Canada Can Survive in the Post-9/11 World, said he's disappointed by the lack of political commitment to the war.

"No one ever thought this would be a quick mission," he said. "They talked of a generation or 10 years.

"So I'm somewhat disappointed in Mr. Harper. But on the other hand, the public were losing any desire to have more Canadians killed."

That's the same feeling held by at least one Hamilton soldier who's been to Afghanistan.

"Yeah, we're doing the job there and doing it well, and everybody would like to see everything fixed there, but we're losing a lot of guys," said the soldier, who did not want to be named.

MacKenzie, the retired general famous for his command in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, admits he "naively" thought Canadians were going to be back months after they were deployed. In 2001 and 2002, the opposition wasn't as stiff.

Now, he says, Afghanistan is becoming the "Superbowl of radical Islam," as foreign fighters pour in from other countries.

The other side, which he says is mischaracterized as one cohesive Taliban, is getting organized enough to mount attacks with 80 to 100 troops.

But with a recent poll suggesting public opposition to the war is at its highest since 2002, MacKenzie doesn't point fingers at the Canadian military or Harper's government.

"If you had asked me a year ago, I would have been upset about the prime minister's comments about a deadline," he said. "But the fact is, NATO has failed so miserably in getting the political will and the troops to win this thing ... I think he's on the right track."

rfaulkner@thespec.com

905-526-2468

With files from John Burman and Spectator wire services

Mission facts

* By 2007, the military costs for the mission in Afghanistan reached nearly $1.3 million per day.

* The number of Canadian soldiers killed so far is 97.

* In a poll conducted for The Canadian Press, nearly two-thirds of Canadians believe the mission is too expensive in lives and money. Fewer than one-third consider it a success.

* By 2008, the Conservative government had set aside $1.9 billion for aid and reconstruction in the war-torn country.