Madam Chair, I thank the member for two extremely important questions which follow very much along the lines of his earlier comments about an understanding of what is the nature of the commitment.
As I said in my speech, the commitment for the 350 leadership group brigade headquarters is for nine months. The commitment for our troops, the 1,000 that are being deployed, is for a year. Members will know that our commitment in Kabul was for a period of time. Others then replaced us. We will go in, work with our NATO allies, discuss with them who is going to replace us, and how we will not obviously extend ourselves to the point where we are over-extended and create an operational tempo for our troops. We are now working our way through from a very serious operational tempo, so that we will be able to maintain that deadline.
What I would not be able to say to the House is that we would not know if in another year or some other time, depending if we were not to continue in Afghanistan, whether or not we would go back to Afghanistan to aid in the multinational efforts to bring Afghanistan to full peace and security. We know there is one important timeline we are facing. President Karzai's term will be up in three years. We will have a very good idea at that point just how successful the international community has been in Afghanistan and of course we are not going to irresponsibly place our troops. It is very clear that the present commitment is nine months and a year.
I think that addresses the hon. member's concern in that respect, recognizing the multinational nature of these troop rotations, which brings me to his second point and again a very good one. At the last NATO meeting I attended France particularly expressed a distinct concern about the difference between the nature of the operation in the southern part of Afghanistan and ISAF's mission. Our present determination is to work with the other NATO members, so we will end up being double-hatted, as I said earlier, during the course of our mission and that ISAF will eventually, when the British move in, take over complete control of this mission.
This is a matter that is still being discussed at the NATO council. I would not suggest that there is 100% agreement on it, but I can certainly assure hon. members that there is a movement in that direction. The Spanish minister was here recently and we had this discussion. There is certainly a movement in that direction.
Is there concern about the nature of the mission in the southern part of Afghanistan? The answer is yes, but, as I said in my speech, that is in many ways why the Canadian troops have been asked to ensure that we bolster what is a very important dimension of what we have to achieve in Afghanistan.