# Canadian fatality rate in Afghanistan drops



## Dog Walker (30 Sep 2010)

Canadian fatality rate in Afghanistan drops
By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News September 30, 2010 
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Canadian+fatality+rate+Afghanistan+drops/3603622/story.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — While NATO has already suffered its worst year for deaths in Afghanistan, Canada's fatality rate has dropped more than 40 per cent, according to calculations by Postmedia News.
An analysis derived from statistics kept by iCasualties.org and other sources shows 14 Canadians have died so far this year, compared to 25 during the first nine months of last year, with the rate of decline accelerating throughout the so-called summer fighting season.
Over the past four months, for example, six Canadians have died. There were 13 Canadian deaths during the same four months in 2009, when fighting usually peaks.
"We've been very aggressive with some specific operations during the summer," said Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner in explaining the dramatic drop in Canadian deaths. "There has been a huge increase in Afghan troops and police, and that has kept insurgents off balance.
"For example, there have been operations to interdict the freedom of movement of IEDs."
Other factors have included an influx of tens of thousands of U.S. combat troops in the south, allowing the Canadians to concentrate almost their entire combat force in Panjwaii, a district to the west of Kandahar that is known as a Taliban redoubt. Some Afghans say an additional factor has been that many Pakistani fighters have stayed home this summer because of the floods in that country, reducing the number of fighters facing Afghan forces and their NATO allies.
It was still too early to draw firm conclusions from the drop in the number of Canadians who have died in Afghanistan this year, said Milner, who took command of Canada's task force three weeks ago.
"Fighting season is not over yet. There is still a lot of work to do," he said. "These guys (insurgents) are good. They're survivors. We cannot let down our guard."
The downside of concentrating so much of the Canadian effort on fighting the Taliban was that "we have not been able to be with the people as much as we would like," Milner said. "Now that the insurgents are off balance, we will try to be with the people more. We can turn more to things like governance and development."
Canada is not the only NATO army to have significantly lower Afghan casualty figures recently. Twenty-nine British soldiers have died during the past three months, including six in September. During the same three months last year, 50 Britons died fighting here, representing a decline of about 40 per cent.
The U.S. has lost 359 soldiers so far this year, compared with 317 for all of last year, a sharp increase that Gen. David Petraeus has attributed to a more than doubling of U.S. combat forces in the south and east of the country this year.
But, the U.S. casualties figures have dropped recently. During September, 37 Americans died, including nine in what was thought to have been a helicopter accident. This was much lower than in August when 55 Americans died. There were 65 U.S. deaths in July and 60 in June.
NATO casualties peaked in June and have dropping since then. They were lower overall in September than during the same month last year.
Until this year the number of Canadian deaths had fluctuated between 30 and 36 since the then-Liberal government committed troops to the war in the south in 2006. Canada's overall death tally now stands at 152.
One of the consequences of the much lower casualty rate has been that for the first time in nearly two years, Canada has gone without a ramp ceremony at Kandahar Airfield for several months. The most recent was held for Sapper Brian Collier of Bradford, Ont., who died on July 26.
There was no ramp ceremony in Kandahar for the most recent Canadian fatality, Cpl. Brian Pinksen of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. The Corner Brook native died at a U.S. air force Hospital in Germany on Aug. 30 of wounds suffered a few days earlier in Kandahar.
Of the 14 Canadian deaths this year, 12 have been as the result of homemade bombs that the military refers to as improvised explosive devices or IEDs.
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