A group of Canadian soldiers completed their last operation in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar early Friday, hours after Canada began pulling its combat troops out of Afghanistan.

Bravo Company set out before dawn to a village that Canadian troops have been fighting to control for years. They were searching for caches of weapons that could be used by insurgents against NATO troops.

They eventually came across chargers for rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, slings for AK-47 rifles, "a few old (artillery) rounds and some rubber, probably to make IEDs," said Capt. Remy Beauchamp.

It's not the first time Canadian troops have found weapons in the village. But they also uncovered about 1,000 pounds of marijuana, which could have been used to help finance the insurgents.

The soldiers confiscated the weapons, doused the marijuana in gasoline and set it alight. The operation ended without incident, and the soldiers returned down a dangerous road to the relative safety of Kandahar Airfield.

At the military base, efforts are well underway to wind down Canada's involvement in a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade.

CTV's South Asia Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer reported Thursday that the final rotation of combat troops is being sent home from Kandahar, with the expectation that most will be back on Canadian soil within a few days.

The military is also in the midst of gathering up its equipment and supplies, which will be sent back to Canada through a combination of air and sea transport routes.

"This will all play out over the next couple of weeks and then by the middle of July, all Canadian troops will be gone and it will be left to the transition team to try and pick up whatever Canada has left behind in terms of equipment and have everything back on home soil by the end of the year," Mackey Frayer said from Kandahar.

The Canadian Forces will formally hand over their security responsibilities in Kandahar province to U.S. forces when the final combat troops exit the country, she said.

The Canadians leave Panjwaii district more stable than when Canada began arriving in the area late in 2005. For several years afterward, Canadian troops were the only ones on the ground in Panjwaii, doing much of the fighting in a part of the country considered a Taliban stronghold -- and suffering high casualties at times.

While many Canadian troops will be coming home, hundreds of other military personnel will remain in Afghanistan after the end of the combat mission.

They will be helping to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, which will together take responsibility for the security of Afghanistan once NATO forces exit the country in the years ahead.

The goal is to have NATO countries hand over responsibility to the Afghan security forces by the end of 2014.

CTV.ca will be taking a closer look at the toll that the conflict in Afghanistan has taken on Canada's soldiers next week on http://www.ctv.ca/afghanistan/.

With a report from CTV's South Asia Bureau Chief Janis Mackey Frayer