Comment: Afghan effort gets much-needed help
Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service Published: Monday, March 03, 2008
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AT KANDAHAR AIRFIELD -- Whether Canada, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands are getting the combat help they require from their NATO cousins to confront the Taliban in southern Afghanistan is a delicate matter that will preoccupy the alliance when its foreign ministers meet in Romania early next month.
Viewed from the Kandahar Airfield, NATO's manpower situation does not look nearly as gloomy as it does in Western capitals.
A building boom that started in the fall of 2005 in anticipation of the arrival of the Canadian task force, has never really stopped. In recent months it has clearly been gaining pace.
Over the past few months the U.S. Army has added armed surveillance helicopters to its Afghan arsenal. The Canadians are building new offices and have plans to move some of their troops from tents to much comfier trailers. The French are laying the foundations for what looks like a permanent camp for their airmen, who arrived last fall with Mirage attack aircraft and have since upgraded to new generation Rafale jets. According to the Belgian media, they are sending F-16 jets to Kandahar this summer.
As well as the Belgians, there have been Danish and Polish add-ons, too. They are joining Romanians, a smaller number of Bulgarians and Slovaks and a burgeoning community of Australians in their clown-like yellow and brown camouflage.
Space will get tighter with the pending arrival in southern Afghanistan of 3,200 Marines from bases in North Carolina and California. Not all of them will end up based at Kandahar, but enough men sporting the Corps' distinctive "high and tight" hair cuts are already here to have made a noticeable impact on the airfield's increasingly crowded and dusty roads, in the PX and the growing number of chow halls as well as at the Tim Hortons, which has already proven so popular with other U.S. troops as well as with the British and the Dutch that Canadians must sometimes wait half an hour for their "double" fix.
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Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service Published: Monday, March 03, 2008
Article Link
AT KANDAHAR AIRFIELD -- Whether Canada, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands are getting the combat help they require from their NATO cousins to confront the Taliban in southern Afghanistan is a delicate matter that will preoccupy the alliance when its foreign ministers meet in Romania early next month.
Viewed from the Kandahar Airfield, NATO's manpower situation does not look nearly as gloomy as it does in Western capitals.
A building boom that started in the fall of 2005 in anticipation of the arrival of the Canadian task force, has never really stopped. In recent months it has clearly been gaining pace.
Over the past few months the U.S. Army has added armed surveillance helicopters to its Afghan arsenal. The Canadians are building new offices and have plans to move some of their troops from tents to much comfier trailers. The French are laying the foundations for what looks like a permanent camp for their airmen, who arrived last fall with Mirage attack aircraft and have since upgraded to new generation Rafale jets. According to the Belgian media, they are sending F-16 jets to Kandahar this summer.
As well as the Belgians, there have been Danish and Polish add-ons, too. They are joining Romanians, a smaller number of Bulgarians and Slovaks and a burgeoning community of Australians in their clown-like yellow and brown camouflage.
Space will get tighter with the pending arrival in southern Afghanistan of 3,200 Marines from bases in North Carolina and California. Not all of them will end up based at Kandahar, but enough men sporting the Corps' distinctive "high and tight" hair cuts are already here to have made a noticeable impact on the airfield's increasingly crowded and dusty roads, in the PX and the growing number of chow halls as well as at the Tim Hortons, which has already proven so popular with other U.S. troops as well as with the British and the Dutch that Canadians must sometimes wait half an hour for their "double" fix.
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