Canada’s top commander in Afghanistan escapes suicide bomber

[3rd Herd]

The Usual Disclaimer:
Suicide bomber attacks Canadian military convoy in Kandahar; no injuries
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - A suicide car bomber detonated near a Canadian military convoy Thursday southeast of Kandahar City, but there were no reports of injuries.

The explosion happened at 5:30 p.m. local time, when a convoy of three Canadian military vehicles - two RG-31 Nyala vehicles and one LAV-3 light armoured vehicle - was returning to Kandahar City from the town of Shur Andan, about 18 kilometres southeast of the Canadian base, said Maj. Chip Madic.

Military sources said that Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, the commander of Canada's current mission in Afghanistan, was riding in one of the three vehicles in the convoy at the time of explosion.

When the suicide car bomb blew up, the force of the blast caused one of the Nayala vehicles to roll into a ditch, Madic said.

There were at least four troops inside the vehicle, but no one was injured, said Madic.

Military officials said Grant was not in the vehicle that flipped over.

The RG-31 Nayala vehicle is considered the safest in the Canadian army's fleet when it comes to protecting troops from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

Canada has 2,500 troops in the war-torn country, most of them based in the southern province of Kandahar.

Sixty-six Canadian soldiers have been killed since 2002, when Canada first sent its troops to Afghanistan, following the fall of the Taliban regime
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/07/26/4370356-cp.html


Edit to add:

Top commander escapes death in Afghan attack
Updated Thu. Jul. 26 2007 1:42 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The commander of Canada's current Afghanistan mission narrowly escaped death on Thursday when a convoy he was riding in took a hit from a suicide bomber.

No Canadian soldier was injured in the attack, which left the suicide bomber dead.

Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, the commander of Canada's current mission in Afghanistan was in one of three vehicles in the convoy when the explosion occurred around 5:30 p.m. local time. The car that Grant was traveling in was not hit, CTV reporter Denelle Balfour told CTV Newsnet..................

Meanwhile, in an unrelated attack in southern Afghanistan, a British soldier has been confirmed dead.

He was killed near the Upper Gereshk Valley of Helmand province during an operation against the Taliban code-named "Hammer." The soldier was shot at around 6 a.m. local time after coming under fire from Taliban fighters. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The British soldier was from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. His name is not being released for the moment at the request of his family. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070726/nato_soldier_killed_070726/20070726?hub=TopStories

 

[GAP]

Canada’s top commander in Afghanistan escapes suicide bomber
CanWest News Service Thursday, July 26, 2007
Article Link

Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, Canada's top commander in Afghanistan, had a close call on Thursday when a convoy he was travelling in was attacked by a suicide bomber, Global National reports.

Grant, who escaped injury, was in one of three vehicles in a convoy when a minivan full of explosives approached at around 5:30 p.m. local time.

The blast was powerful enough to send one of the Canadian vehicles, an RG-31, onto its side. The soldiers inside did not sustain any injuries, according to the news reports. The incident reportedly occurred about 18 kilometres southeast of the Canadian base in Kandahar City.

Earlier in the day, U.S.-led troops, backed by air power, killed more than 50 insurgents in a battle in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said on Thursday.


There were no casualties among coalition troops in the 12-hour battle with Taliban militants, which finished early on Thursday, it said in a statement. No civilian injuries were reported, it added.

More than 160 insurgents have been killed in Helmand's Musa Qala district since Sunday, the military said.

The Taliban, who are leading an insurgency against the government and foreign troops, could not be reached for comment and because of the remoteness of the region there was no independent verification of the report.

Two residents phoned a Reuters reporter in the south to say that 17 people, 16 of them civilians, were killed in the bombing.

They said up to 30 people were wounded, most of them non-combatants.

Separately, one NATO soldier was killed on Thursday in a clash in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said.

Four policemen, including a commander, were wounded in a Taliban ambush in the north of the country near the town of Baghlan on Thursday, the commander said from his hospital bed.
More on link

 

[vonGarvin]

More than 160 insurgents have been killed in Helmand's Musa Qala district since Sunday, the military said.
...
The Taliban, who are leading an insurgency against the government and foreign troops, could not be reached for comment

I wonder if there is a causal link between fact (a) and fact (b), eg, is "more than 160 insurgents have been killed" the antecedent, and "the Talilban could not be reached for comment" be the consequent?

>

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

I wonder if the general was targeted or wrong place wrong time.  If targeted I wonder how they knew he was in that convoy.

 

[George Wallace]

How about being a little bit more realistic and chalk it up as pure luck/coincidence.

 

[3rd Herd]

I wonder if the general was targeted or wrong place wrong time.  If targeted I wonder how they knew he was in that convoy.

"Everyone has heard of the "Lucky bullet" or "Golden BB" and in this case the firer was German. Had not this bullet been fired than chances the Falsie Gap would have never occurred. The bullet found the right CO at the right time and an advance/break out was stalled. This required a plan instead of a Patton like dash. Thus the author takes the reader on a guide through the formation of the Canadian Army after World war One to preinvasion of Normandy."http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/58761.0.html

 

[George Wallace]

I am only now hearing about this, being tied up with instructing on a Crse, so this catches me by surprise.  I am sure I will find out more detailed information later.

Security concerns will always be something that we have to watch carefully.  It is made even harder when we allow locals inside our wire to do the menial jobs that we are above doing.  We will always have spys/informers/confidants inside our wire as long as we carry on the way we have for the last.......how many years.....wars?  I would hate to find out that we have had a serious security breach in this case.

With the amount of convoys we have moving about and the ratio of IEDs and Suicide Bombers to them, it is only likely that one will get lucky some day.  I am hoping for now that this is the case; until proven otherwise.

 

[armyvern]

Or, maybe they just tried to get lucky by hitting any Canadian troops.

It seems to be a habit of theirs that they like to attempt quite often. Every now and then, when they attempt it, there's going to be someone important along for the ride. That's pure blind luck on their part.

Please, let us not put out the impression that there may have been a pattern noticed, or intel gained by the enemy as an explanation or even as a possible explanation for this particular occurance. That is pure and total speculation at best.  

 

[daftandbarmy]

Welcome to COIN ops, where everyone is a rifleman and everyone is a target and the front line is everywhere. I'd hesitate to ascribe super-spy powers to the enemy. They get lucky too sometimes, just like us. And in this case I'm glad they didn't get too lucky.

 

[reccecrewman]

It's bound to happen that if you set off 50 IED's targeting Canadian vehicles, you are bound to tag a vehicle that is being occupied by a Coy Cdr., Sergeant Major or a Major or Colonel.  All the just mentioned do venture outside the wire often enough that it becomes a lottery of the damned in which anybody can be hit.  It's plain, simple, numerical odds working at it's grim best..............

My .02 anyhow

 

[Armymedic]

Gents,
Ignorance of the abiltiy of our enemy to target our high value persons may be our downfall. Do you think that recurrent attacks on the BG 9er tac over the winter were just lucky?

They know who ours are, and they hunt them as actively as we hunt thiers.

 

[tomahawk6]

Picture of the RG-31 that was struck by the suicide bomber. Says something for the survivability of the vehicle.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

They Do know these things so lets make it harder to identify who is who.

 

[armyvern]

They Do know these things so lets make it harder to identify who is who.

Let's talk OPSEC/PERSEC.

You assume that they know, and perhaps they do. But if they didn't before, they found it out here no??

It's like CM, just because the MSM puts it out there ... does not condone a member of the CF putting it out there.

Assumptions sometimes get people killed.

 

[McG]

They Do know these things so lets make it harder to identify who is who.

As a start, there were several posts in this thread mentioning details (even small details) of travelling habits/characteristics of certain levels of command.  This was not good OPSEC practice and several posts have now been destroyed to rectify the mess.

This incident could have been deliberate, it could have been chance, or it could have been some combination of the both.  In any case, we should not be analysing with discussions of who was in which vehicle when & for how long.  This sort of speculation will only serve to publish the information our enemy needs to more effectively target key personnel more often.

Failure to respect this attention to OPSEC will see this thread locked and the possibility of warnings or C&P for those responsible.

Cheers,
The Staff

 

[Kiwi99]

COIN operations.  OPSEC is not a concern in this thread is all  open source and can be found anywhere.  Pictures of top commanders are all over the TV and magazines and papers, and with the amount of coverage they get, people will recognize their faces.  Not to mention the amount of locals that work for the coaltion.  If none of them are the enemy, well, I will be surprised.  Every jundie has a cell phone and every jundie uses it to report who is going where and when.  Guess it sucks that little bit more if you are a commander then, eh.  thats why you get paid the big bucks!

 

[armyvern]

COIN operations.  OPSEC is not a concern in this thread is all  open source and can be found anywhere.  Pictures of top commanders are all over the TV and magazines and papers, and with the amount of coverage they get, people will recognize their faces.  Not to mention the amount of locals that work for the coaltion.  If none of them are the enemy, well, I will be surprised.  Every jundie has a cell phone and every jundie uses it to report who is going where and when.  Guess it sucks that little bit more if you are a commander then, eh.  thats why you get paid the big bucks!

Easy to comment like that when you didn't see the crap that had to be purged from this thread.

Little facts about travel details and differnces in org when those "big buck" guys are out and about which have been deleted from the thread were only open source here until their deletion.

And sorry, but I'd like to think that even the "little bucks" guys over in-theatre now wouldn't appreciate the publication of "big buck convoy" identification details; it kind of puts them at greater risk for increased targetting too no??

 

[Kiwi99]

Fair enough.  Good call to purge it. 

 

[3rd Herd]

Actually we Canadians may be to blame for this. For prior to the 1750's the commanding officer or General in charge was immune to fire. Reasoning,  if the General was killed then there was no one to lead the army therefore the battle could not be fought. Imagine a unled mob milling about with no leadership. "Bold Wolfe did bravely arrive all danger defying, When shot off horse that brave hero fell that brave hero, May we lament his loss that day in sorrow."(1) The general was shot by Canadiens firing from the forest. Moving onto the American Revolution, the Americans lost General Montgomery and had General Arnold badly wounded in the siege of Quebec.This again courtesy of the Canadiens. Having set the precedent the later famous or infamous Bernard Montgomery had no qualms upon the urging of Canadian commanders using Ultra information to drop several plane loads of high explosives on their German counterparts headquarters. The Americans always willing to borrow a good idea were more surgical in their approach in using an air ambush by P-38s to see Japanese Admiral Yamoto's career end. Thus the top brass became legitimate targets of war.

Some foregin thoughts on the modern Canadian military

From A Soviet Document: "One of the serious problems in planning against Canadian doctrine is that the Canadians do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."(2)

A German General Officer: "The reason that the Canadian Army does well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the Canadian Army practises chaos on a daily basis."(2)

(1)Brave Wolfe - sung by Alan Mills
(2)http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/weblinks/4GW.html

 

[tomahawk6]

Unfortunately we are creatures of habit and any taliban agent sitting outside the main gate over time can detect subtle differences in the type of patrols/convoys that leave base.They dont need an agent inside the wire if they had one, their mortar/rocket attacks would be alot more accurate.This was not an uncommon event in Vietnam where a Vietnamese worker would be caught pacing off distances to various bunkers ect. It is essential to vary routes and to make all patrols/convoys look as similar as possible. Sort of like a shell game. Bottom line though is that if the taliban have an IED surprise all they care about is a target - any target.

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.

                Montrose's Toast