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| Afghanistan |
| While Canada talks, troops act |
| 2006-04-12 |
| from an embebbed reporter with the troops. ROSIE DIMANNO KANDAHAR—Meanwhile, back at the war ... Oh yes (cover your eyes), Canadian troops are still soldiering here, doing that thing they do — what so many of their compatriots back home don't really want to grasp; indeed, are ideologically primed to reject on behalf of "our men and women," so fervently attached has much of the public become to this dreamy version of a Boy Scout military that never shoots anybody and never takes casualties. As politicians in Ottawa prepare to lob rhetoric in the House of Commons today about Canada's mission to Afghanistan — and while alarmists promote the absurd, ill-informed canard that Afghanistan is Iraq in miniature, which provides the opportunity to use that favourite word, "quagmire" — this is what the troops have been up to in recent days: Alongside coalition and Afghan allies — no specifics available on the nationality of those who actually pulled the trigger — killing one senior and one mid-level Taliban leader during an engagement in Sangin district, where Charlie Company deployed on April 2, following a brazen assault upon Forward Operating Base Wolf. Helping to thwart, thanks much to A-10 aircraft tank-bombers, the planned sabotage by insurgents of the crucial Kajaki Dam in the Helmand Valley. Conducting several dismounted patrols and shuras in Sangin villages that have had no previous contact with coalition forces and which have been utilized — whether with their agreement or not — as bolt-holes by suspected Taliban fighters and narco-criminals in what is Afghanistan's richest opium-growing province. Afghans, endlessly hospitable, have served the Canadians gallons of chai, but this is no tea party. Launching investigations of two roadside explosions in Kandahar city yesterday morning that injured 11 Afghans — three police, three army and five civilians, including two children. Mostly, though, Canadian combat troops have been making their presence felt — seen and heard — in the area around FOB Wolf, known more latterly as FOB Robinson, in honour of an American serviceman killed there on March 25, four days before a U.S. medic and 22-year-old Canadian machine-gunner were also slain in a fierce, protracted firefight. "The Canadians have had a very marked effect there in just one week," said Col. Chris Vernon, the British officer who is chief of staff for Task Force Aegis, commanded by Brig.-Gen. David Fraser. Helmand will be a British responsibility and some 3,000 U.K. troops are scheduled to arrive within the next six weeks. In the interim, Charlie Company was sent 180 kilometres west of Kandahar city last week to reinforce the satellite base, which had been for the previous 40 days or so manned by Afghan National Army troops and a small unit of "mentoring" U.S. Special Forces. It's a pivotal area because, until very recently, insurgents and drug lieutenants have operated unimpeded in Sangin. The presence of the forward operating base was provocative enough that suspected Taliban threw themselves at it in successive waves, with between 50 and 70 of them killed in the fighting. Not one of them ever got inside the wire. Politicians will take notes today, in the debate to which Prime Minister Stephen Harper has grudgingly — and, it says here, wrongly — submitted. It's unlikely the troops, beyond senior commanders, will take any note of this episode at all. It is enough that they scrunch up their faces — as if smelling something even more foul than the odour around Kandahar Airfield's latrines — at the mere mention of an event they instinctively recognize as an exercise in political sophistry. What annoys them no end, as interview after interview has made clear, is the mistaken impression too many Canadians hold — and hold dearly — of their deployment here, where they are emphatically not Blue Beret peacekeepers but warriors, most assuredly in the battle group component. They will engage, through their commanders, in discussions with the citizenry because that's part of the strategy in Helmand, as it is in Kandahar province. And the payoff will come. But what Canadians must understand is that a dramatic shift in the very essence of Afghanistan is a long-haul project and no definitive timeline can possibly be drawn up. Zabul, to the north, was described yesterday by Vernon as "immaculate" — clean of Taliban and free from insurgent violence, but it's taken Americans more than four years to make it so. In neighbouring Uruzgan, Dutch forces — they're here already, contrary to a columnist's assertion in Sunday's Star — are working hard to do the same thing. Afghans, bewildered by the Western preoccupation with deadlines, put it this way: "The military has all the wristwatches. Afghans have all the time." Yet, in their short time here, just over two months, Canadian troops conducting forward operations have succeeded, with coalition and Afghan allies, in disrupting Taliban objectives. In lieu of a co-ordinated broad-based insurgency, they've reverted to small bands of fighters devising ambushes, planting roadside explosives and throwing out suicide bombers that rack up civilian casualties. "Small groups operating without centralized control are more difficult for us to break down," Vernon acknowledged. "But that is not how they generally want to operate. They operate with control coming out of Quetta (Pakistan) and from within another control within Afghanistan." This disruption to that system has been caused by removing — killing — middle-level Taliban leaders, "removing them from the circuit over the past month," as Vernon put it. "A very interesting aspect is, when they go asking for volunteers to come into Afghanistan to take over those mid-level positions, there is a distinct lack of volunteers coming forward, particularly out of Pakistan." Further, Vernon pointed out, Taliban funding from the opium crop in Helmand is being strangled — not because the poppy fields are being eradicated but because Taliban agents are having a bitch of a time hauling the raw product out and delivering the cash in. They are no longer moving about with impunity. "From our perspective, we (have to) continue to keep the pressure on mid-level command," said Vernon. "The foot soldiers will continue, I'm afraid, and you will still get the odd unco-ordinated IED (improvised explosive devise). With any insurgency, they're let loose without any central co-ordination. But it is the mid-level that's critical." A diminished mid-level command is a key difference between the insurgency here and that in Iraq. "The level of sophistication, of IED capability, is far below that seen by our coalition forces in Iraq," said Vernon. "But that does not mean it will not, at times, be successful." In talking to reporters, Vernon explained that — because of operations such as that being conducted by the battle group from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry — Taliban elements have been "marginalized into pockets." "And any organization that splinters is diminished." Pointing to developments at FOB Robinson, he noted: "Before the Canadians got there, the whole area had pretty much been given over to the Taliban." Now, that show of force has robbed the enemy of traction and unencumbered movement. Further, from those forward operating bases, cordon-and-search operations can be conducted, intelligence gathered and effective precision strikes launched, as clearly has been occurring over the past week. "The thing is, we have to get a lot closer to these guys," said Vernon, in reference to securing the trust of villagers and synchronizing operations with Afghan forces. "They don't have the technological capabilities but they know the ground, they know the people, the atmospherics and the history. "That's what (the Princess Patricia's infantry) brings. It brings 150 soldiers; it brings patrols. It begins to dominate an area to create an environment where the people have a choice between the Taliban and us. In many of these areas, they've never seen us before." Talk is, very much, an aspect of this military mission. In the battle of loyalties — between ousted Taliban, warlords and the nascent government in Kabul — the decided are in a minority, said Vernon. "Maybe 60 per cent are sitting on the fence. And that 60 per cent are swing voters we can influence. But you're not going to influence them totally by chasing around their villages and grabbing Taliban. "Any counter-insurgency is about the people, the will of the people in the middle." The will of the people — Canadians might want to remember that. And remember this, too: For all the hand-wringing that is apparently taking place at home about this mission, only one Canadian soldier has been killed in combat — fighting — in Afghanistan, and that may have been from friendly fire. Welcome to our backbone. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #4 It has been over 50 years since Canadians have been in battle. You're forgetting, like many Canadians do, those Canadians that fought in Vietnam. As far as westerners are concerned, I think the ones you have in mind are Albertans. Otherwise, the west is blue as blue can be. |
| Posted by: Phaique Unoting6677 2006-04-12 23:13 |
| #3 Frank, you're right. It's the Canadian red v. blue states scenario. The westerners have spine. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-04-12 22:41 |
| #2 I'm convinced western Canada is not populated with the same pussies inhabiting Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec, in general. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-04-12 20:39 |
| #1 It is good to see our Canadian neighbors are putting up a fight now, thanks to Mr. Harper. It has been over 50 years since Canadians have been in battle. This very unit, the Princess Pat's were stout soldiers facing Chinese 'human wave' assault tactics at Kapyong in 4/51 alone with some Aussies, winning a Presidential Unit Citation for their brave stand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Patricia's_Canadian_Light_Infantry#Kapyong). It is good to see our Canadian neighbors in the fight. We need them with us in this existential battle. |
| Posted by: Brett 2006-04-12 19:07 |