Claire Brownell (Ottawa Citizen) – Two Ottawa RCMP officers were reunited with their families recently after a year-long peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan — and both say they plan to stay home now.
Insp. Kevin Miller, who spent a year advising the European Union’s police mission in Kabul, rattled off his to-do list for his month off: “A lot of golf, spending time with family and friends, relax and have the realization that I’m not heading back.”
Assistant commissioner Graham Muir, who was Canada’s first police commander in Afghanistan, has told the RCMP he will retire upon completing 35 years of service.
Miller will take on a new position as an operations officer with the RCMP’s international peacekeeping branch.
This marks the end of a series of oversees peacekeeping missions for both men — jobs that officers don’t always come home from. RCMP Supt. Doug Coates, a Gatineau resident who was acting police commissioner for the United Nations mission in Haiti, was killed in the earthquake that devastated that country in January.
Muir worked in the same position as Coates in 2006 and worked as a civilian police monitor in the former Yugoslavia in 1993. Miller worked on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.
But the rewards of the job and the importance of the work are worth the risk, Muir said.
“We worried a lot. It’s a dangerous place. Those of us who were responsible for the guys in the field, me particularly, that was my preoccupation every day,” he said.
But the Afghan National Police showed noticeable improvements after a year of mentoring, Muir said.
The biggest challenge was shifting their focus from protecting government institutions to engaging with the community.
“Making small steps to get the police going and more accessible and available to the community, that’s a big deal,” he said.
The two officers’ wives, Corky Muir and Gisele Miller, said they were relieved the sleepless nights and days spent nervously checking news reports were over. The women greeted their husbands to the tune of bagpipes and drums from the RCMP’s marching band as they got off the plane at the Ottawa International Airport.
“We’re glad to have him home safe and sound,” Corky said.
“You’ve got to admire them and respect them and the ones that we’ve lost. Just thinking about it gives me shivers.”
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