The training will be significantly enhanced because of the lessons we've learned over the last while. Afghanistan sets a benchmark for what global conflict could look like in the future. We are using lessons learned from the Malayan campaign in the 1950s. That is the counter-insurgency that the British dealt with in Malaya in the 1950s. I would refer you to a wonderful book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. It captures the doctrinal lessons of that event. We're using some of that, along with some of the lessons from Bosnia and Kosovo, to enable us to conduct counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan.
All of what we're learning now has raised our standards and training capabilities to a point that we are now prepared for any eventuality. Afghanistan has taught us that we have to be ready for classical peacekeeping and stability operations, which is on the low end of the conflict continuum, as well as a high-intensity environment like Operation Medusa. We have to cover the entire spectrum. The Government of Canada can commit the Canadian Forces to any environment, and we can't choose how that environment evolves. The most fundamental lesson learned in Afghanistan is that the enemy has a vote.
When we moved from Kabul down to Kandahar, I didn't envisage the growing insurgency in Kandahar. Nor did our allies. This hit a high point on Labour Day weekend in 2006. Insurgents were conducting themselves like conventional soldiers—they dug in to a position and we had to use conventional tactics to dislodge them. Now you have a generation of soldiers, sailors, and airmen who have been trained in this broad spectrum of conflict from stability and peacekeeping, which is what is happening now in the village approach, to the conventional tactics necessary to dislodge the Taliban from fixed positions. In the future, you will see the Canadian Forces training for the whole spectrum of conflict. This is not confined to the army. We tend to focus on the “troops”, but we also have men and women, on the sea and in the air, who are there along with the soldiers, who are learning these lessons and bringing them back home to their units, so that the navy and the air force will also have enhanced training by virtue of their experience in Afghanistan.