Walking the beat with Canadian police in Afghanistan

A Canadian soldier from Camp Nathan Smith talks with Afghan children while patrolling with U.S. military police and Afghan local police in the Kandahar city centre on Tuesday.

When the paramount concern is death by Taliban suicide attack, the little things go unnoticed.

So small wonder that nobody – not the Canadian police, nor the American MPs, nor even the Afghan cops – was aware of the pungent little plant at their feet Tuesday afternoon as they stepped with considerable relief back inside the bomb-pocked walls of the Afghan Provincial Police Headquarters in downtown Kandahar.

Together, they had just completed an extended foot patrol through the heart of the city the Taliban vows will soon be theirs again. They rubbed shoulders with hundreds upon hundreds of Kandaharis – everyday people far more accustomed to soldiers barging through town in hermetically sealed armoured vehicles.

And from the Toronto Star’s vantage, a good three-quarters of Kandahar was happy to meet them face to face, eye to eye. Better this than being run off the road by a convoy of LAVs. There were many smiles, waves and friendly “Salaams.” Bakers handed out flatbread fresh from the oven to the passing patrol. One woman even reached beneath her burqa, wagging a hand of welcome.

It was a sitting-duck scenario and everyone knew it. But however nerve-ratting the job of dismounting and patrolling on foot – one of the Americans on Tuesday called it a “sphincter-tightener” – it also is crucial to the counter-insurgency strategy NATO is rolling out to bring the population to its side.

And crucially, there were newly minted Afghan police in the mix, all graduates of the Canadian-led training program at nearby Camp Nathan Smith, where RCMP, OPP, even Toronto cops still toil in relative obscurity.

Back safely at police HQ – and don’t kid yourself, this much-bombed compound is a routine target of insurgents, most recently a multiple-suicide bomb attack in March – one each of the Canadians, Americans and Afghans was selected to line up for a valedictory photo.

Which brings us to the little plant. There at their feet, right inside police headquarters, stood a thriving foot-high marijuana shrub.

Joint patrol, indeed.

Call it a reality check. For several days now, the small gaggle of reporters here at Camp Nathan Smith have been subjected to bit of a dog-and-pony show on the wonders of police training – well-intentioned Canadian police officers leading us from the classroom to the firing range, assessing with carefully scripted enthusiasm the six-week course that currently is transforming some 50 young and job-hungry Afghan men into fully fledged policemen.

And truth be told, things look better than they did some two years ago, when Kandaharis complained the then payless and endemically corrupt police were robbing them blind. For starters and most importantly, pay reform is starting to work for the cops of Kandahar City (if not the outlying districts) – the rank and file now receive regular monthly stipends of 12,000 to 15,000 Afghanis ($260 to $325), more than enough to live on without shaking down the citizenry for their daily bread.

What is especially striking is the extent to which the Canadian police mentors have extended their own footprint – volunteers from cop-shops across Canada now are venturing out regularly to all 12 Kandahar police substations to monitor the progress of their newly minted trainees. In so doing, they are taking chances far beyond what the rest of the NATO civilian police mentors do.

A case in point: Toronto Police Service Const. Amir Butt (one of 11 Toronto police in the program) two days ago ventured out to dangerous District 9, a transient-filled patch of the city, when word came that a batch of his graduates had uncovered an IED.

“I just needed to make sure they were following through. Their job is to create a ring of security so local Afghan civilians don’t stumble onto the bomb and get killed. But sometimes they just call and tell us its there and then they run away,” Butt told the Star.

“But they got it right this time. And the only way we can be sure is to go out there and see for ourselves.”

For the full article click here for the Canadian Star online

Canadians to be ‘tip of the spear' in Kandahar

The Globe and Mail, World News


By late spring or early summer, Canada will be at “the tip of the spear” of NATO's efforts in Afghanistan, leading a massive push in Kandahar province on the scale of this month's attacks in nearby Helmand, a top coalition soldier says.

Canadian Brigadier-General Craig King, the coalition's director of future plans in Afghanistan's volatile south, said allied forces and government agencies are preparing for an attack that will take place in the coming months, and draw largely from the playbook of this month's assault on Marjah and Nad Ali in Helmand in a bid to push the Taliban from restive pockets in Kandahar province.

“I think we need to be prepared that there's going to be an increase in activity in and around Kandahar. The Canadians are going to be very actively engaged in that, just as the marines and the British are right now in central Helmand,” said Gen. King, himself a Canadian.

“We are going to be, come the summer, the tip of the spear for Afghanistan here. [Fighting] is going to shift to Kandahar, and the Canadians are going to be, along with our American allies, right at the forefront of that spear.”

Gen. King's comments come as Kandahar's governor, Tooryalai Wesa, met Tuesday in Kabul with government and military leaders about the Helmand push, dubbed Operation Moshtarak. Mr. Wesa is seeking assurances that the coalition will correct its Helmand “mistakes [and] misinterpretations,” referring to the 15 civilians that have been reportedly killed since Moshtarak launched Saturday.

“Hopefully, this will not happen [in Kandahar] like it happened in Helmand,” he said. “Hopefully, the casualties will be minimized. The lessons we're learning from Helmand will be very useful for us.”

The International Security Assistance Force took a civilian-first approach to Operation Moshtarak, dropping leaflets warning of a coming fight and scheduling shuras , or tribal gatherings, to build trust in the community – all before a shot was fired. When soldiers did arrive, half were from the Afghan National Army.

That strategy isn't without its flaws. Coalition forces are being slowed in Marjah by a vast network of makeshift bombs, planted during the weeks of warning. Nevertheless, Gen. King said a Kandahar offensive will likely follow the same publicity strategy, to build trust and urge civilians and Taliban alike to leave.

ISAF will again face the ugly task of fighting Taliban amid a civilian population. In Marjah, coalition soldiers have complained that Taliban fighters are taking shelter among civilians, preventing coalition soldiers from firing at them.

Helmand offensive could involve Canadian 'mentors'

By Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service, Ontario Gazette


KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — An Afghan army brigade commander said Friday that one of his battalions, which has Canadian military mentors working with it, had recently moved from Kandahar to Helmand to be part of what NATO has been loudly billing as the biggest offensive ever against the Taliban.

Brig.-Gen. Abdul Basir Salehzai of 1st Brigade, 205 Corps, confirmed that a battalion, known as Kandak 1, was about to take part in Operation Moshtarak or Together, which is a joint operation involving thousands of British army and U.S. marine assault troops as well as several Afghan battalions.

While not confirming that Canadians from the Operational Mentor and Liaison Team had gone to Helmand for Op Moshtarak, Maj. Daryl Morrell of Task Force Kandahar said Friday that about 30 Canadians from the team were in the province as mentors with Kandak 1 "in support of ongoing operations . . . The Canadians and those they mentor had been moved from Zhari District to Helmand in early January."

Citing operational security reasons, "the duration of the operation cannot be released," Morrell said. "But once it is completed the Canadian troops will return to Zhari to continue their mission in Kandahar alongside other Canadian OMLT soldiers."

It was also revealed Friday that Canadian Chinook and Griffon helicopters have flown missions recently in the Helmand River Valley "to help shape" the battle space for the upcoming operation, which, rather unusually, has been much discussed by senior NATO commanders with journalists.

As part of those shaping operations, Canadian aircraft had inserted Danish and British forces into some locales, said Lt.-Col. Jeff Smyth, the commander of Canada's helicopters in southern Afghanistan.

Canada's helicopters in Afghanistan are a NATO Regional Command South, rather than a Canadian, asset. The helicopters usually support operations in Kandahar province but are sometimes tasked for missions in neighbouring provinces such as Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan.

Op Moshtarak, which has the Helmand city of Marja and the district of Nad Ali District as its focus, has been the subject of a growing media blitz by NATO officers and the Afghan government since it was first mooted several months ago.

Letting the Taliban know what is about to happen in their last major redoubt in the Helmand River Valley may seem a counter-intuitive way to conduct combat operations, as operational security usually takes precedence over everything else in a war zone. But announcing upcoming operations is a counter-insurgency strategy that was first used in Afghanistan by Canada's Brig-Gen. Jon Vance last year.

The former commander of Task Force Afghanistan went out of his way to tell any Afghan who would listen when his ground troops intended to launch an offensive. The hope was that the enemy would vanish before the assault. This is exactly what happened just prior to Canada's last three offensives in Kandahar.

Vance reasoned that since NATO's ambition was not to kill insurgents but to provide security for civilians by establishing a permanent presence in areas where the Taliban had been, advertising missions in advance made sense.

It has been exactly this strategy that U.S. marine and British army commanders have followed in Helmand for many weeks now, culminating in a blitz of information this week about OP Moshtarak.

The operation is meant to displace Taliban who are said to have gathered in their hundreds in the Helmand Valley.

Canadians killed in Afghanistan attack - BBC

Reporter Michelle Lang had recently arrived in Afghanistan

Four Canadian soldiers and a journalist have been killed in an attack in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

The journalist has been identified as Michelle Lang, 34, from the Calgary Herald, who had just arrived on her first assignment in the country.

The armoured vehicle in which the group was travelling was touring local reconstruction projects.

This has been the deadliest year for foreign troops since the 2001 invasion. Canada's toll stands at 32 for 2009.

It has lost 138 troops in total in the course of the war.

'Very saddened'

Ms Lang was the third journalist to die in Afghanistan this year, Reuters reports.

An award-winning health reporter, her colleagues at the newspaper were said to have been devastated by the news of her death.

She was recently engaged to be married and described as bright, quick-witted and kind.

"We are all very saddened to hear this tragic news," Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert said in a statement.

"Michelle covered health issues with professionalism, accuracy and thoroughness."

The BBC's Lee Carter, in Toronto, says the deaths will add to the conviction felt by many Canadians that the country has carried a disproportionate number of casualties, especially in comparison to some European Nato allies.

Canada has a 2,800-strong force in Afghanistan, but the deployment has become increasingly unpopular at home and the troops are scheduled to be withdrawn at the end of 2011.

Canadians begin new push to clear Taliban from towns

Canadian soldiers have opened a new phase in their operation aimed at chasing insurgents from Panjwaii district, southwest of Kandahar city.

A company has moved into the northern limits of Nakhonay, a town of around 2,000 people thought to be an insurgent stronghold.

Earlier this week Canadian Forces joined an Afghan National Army unit in seizing the village of Haji Baba, which is located a short distance to the northeast of Nakhonay.

Canadian soldiers entered Nakhonay on Thursday and have met with little resistance as they begin to secure the area.

The military says by taking control of Nakhonay they will be able to limit Taliban access to the roads into Kandahar city.

Known as Operation Hydra, the action involves 1,000 Canadian soldiers working alongside some 200 Afghan National Army fighters.

British troops also paying heavy price in Afghanistan war - Canada.com

Like most of his countrymen, Pte. Colin Walstow admitted that he "did not have a clue" that Canada was fighting only 60 kilometres to the east of where he was serving as a combat medic for the British army in Helmand Province.

Most Canadians suffer from a similar myopia.

They have been so focused on Canada's war in Kandahar that most don't know the British have been fighting and dying in almost similar numbers in neighbouring Helmand.

Since 9/11, 152 Britons and 117 Canadians have died in Afghanistan.

Britain has dispatched 8,300 troops and five infantry battalions to Helmand. Canada has about 3,000 soldiers and one infantry battalion in Kandahar.

The British have mostly fought from light-armoured Land Rovers. That is a path that Canada abandoned shortly after moving their forces from Kabul to Kandahar in 2006 because its jeep-like vehicles were considered vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.

Canadian soldiers mostly use armoured personnel carriers and heavily armoured RG-32 trucks to get around. They also have Leopard tanks.

"If you've got the enemy within, laying bombs and attacking with small pockets of men, there are not many scenarios in this small zone for armour," said Col. Greville Bibby, the British contingent's deputy commander, adding that the populated terrain in this province was not practical for heavy vehicles.

"Our experience in Northern Ireland is that you can't influence the people from behind 10 inches of armour. You can't do it whizzing past with armour, pushing them off the road."

Still, the similarities between how the Commonwealth allies are prosecuting this violent, opium-fuelled war in the Taliban heartland are more striking than the differences. After the Brits and Canadians won some very one-sided early battles against insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar, the enemy now mostly causes mayhem by planting IEDs.

Contact has been particularly light in recent weeks because so many of the insurgents have been out harvesting opium.

However, the fighting season is expected to begin again in earnest in a few weeks.

The British contingent in Afghanistan is the 19th Light Brigade — the last of the light brigades immortalized in Lord Alfred Tennyson's poem about the heroism of the troops carrying out a senseless cavalry charge against the Russians during the Crimean War.

And just as the Canadians are about to hand over the largely unpopulated northeastern and southeastern half of Kandahar to a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, the British are transferring the largely unpopulated southern half of Helmand to a U.S. Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

The Brits and the Canadians have embraced the growing American presence and have adopted nearly identical strategies to try to win Afghans over. They are using provincial reconstruction teams comprised of civilians and soldiers that are "as joined at the hip as an organization can be," Bibby said.

The British and the Afghan government already have established five protected communities within a security bubble since they began the program early last year.

Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, Canada's commander in Kandahar, revealed a similar strategy last week, with work to begin soon to secure the town of Deh-E-Bagh.

"We're not trying to turn Helmand into Hampshire," said Bibby, who is No. 2 at the Helmand PRT to a British foreign affairs official. But the security bubble strategy "works. It is absolutely fantastic to see. It is all about them doing it. I can tell you that if we pulled out, the locals would be very angry. They are really hungry for this."

Bibby and other soldiers at Lashkar Gah, which is the British headquarters, expressed frustration with their own journalists for seldom wanting to report on the non-military war.

"The British media focus on the kinetic stuff," said Sgt. Paul Crawford, a Royal Engineer who had served previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They want to film firefights. But the majority of what we do is stability and construction."

One of the ways the British army has tried to do that is to send six-member teams of experts to the most far-flung places.

"We are trying to map the human terrain to understand as much we can about the human environment," said Maj. James Bunyard of the The 1st Battalion the Royal Welsh. "It all boils down to developing capacity. We want to hand over to civilians, to other foreigners, or better yet, to Afghans. This is a very complex environment. Everything we do is about getting an Afghan to do something for himself."

As in Canada, there is also a war to be won at home. While hugely supportive of their troops, many Britons remain skeptical about the mission.

"My impression is that there is a lack of understanding as to why we are here," Bibby said. "Like so many things political, the media use this to discuss political implications, rather than what is actually happening on the ground."

There were hard facts to support the contention that "there are absolute signs of progress," said Lt.-Col. Nick Richardson, a Royal Engineer who runs media operations in Helmand.

"During the Taliban time, there were one million kids in school. There are six million now. Back then, eight per cent of the population had access to health care. It is now 80 per cent. And 35,000 kids are alive because of immunization programs."

Unlike Ottawa, which has announced its combat mission in Kandahar will end late in 2011, Britain has an open-ended combat commitment in Helmand.

"It has been challenging. We are almost working at capacity," Bibby said. "But we can do it and I am confident that we can keep going at this level as long as we keep doing it."

Walstow, the combat medic, said there was an "atmospheric change" every time he "crossed the bridge" and left the relative peace of Lashkar Gah.

The 20-year-old private said he had already been told that it was likely he will be back in Helmand again sometime in the winter of 2010/2011.