Day 2 of Operation Baaz Tsuka

[schart28]

cnews: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/CanadaAtWar/2006/12/18/2858780-sun.html

Day 2 of Operation Baaz Tsuka, NATO's latest drive to purge southern Afghanistan of the Taliban, began with a bombardment -- a paper one.

At a briefing at Kandahar Airfield yesterday, officials with the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said the alliance had dropped leaflets over the mountainous Panjwaii district west of Kandahar City -- warning hardcore Taliban fighters to flee the area, and urging the less committed to surrender and swear loyalty to the government in Kabul.

"We're going to do as much as possible to avoid getting (civilians) involved in any fighting," said Col. Mike Kampman, NATO chief of staff in southern Afghanistan.

So far, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. Over the weekend NATO forcessent feelers throughout the Panjwaii district -- once the heartland of Taliban power -- but only made fleeting contact with the enemy.

ANA and NATO forces reported seizing multiple weapons caches throughout the region and delivering aid to civilians "displaced" by the Taliban yesterday.

Lt. Col. Ron Smits, chief of operations for ISAF south, said American forces moving in Panjwaii hadn't engaged the Taliban in large numbers.   

"So they may well have responded to our leaflet drops," he said. "The whole operation is going according to plan."

Despite the apparent calm, the Canadian forward operating base at Ma'sum Ghar -- the point of NATO's spear in the region -- was the scene of furious activity the past two days.

Canadian Leopard tanks from the Edmonton's Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) were digging into the hills overlooking the Arghandab River valley. Troops from 2PPCLI out of Manitoba were checking weapons and equipment.

New concrete bunkers were erected around the base. Soldiers stood in groups, happy at the promise of movement.

"Man, I love this stuff," Cpl. Chad Chevrefils said. "We've been waiting here for so long for something to happen. We just want to get out and do our jobs, do what we were trained to do."

 

[Brad Sallows]

>warning hardcore Taliban fighters to flee the area

Hm.  Usually I prefer my enemies to "fuck off AND die".

 

[MarkOttawa]

Why do Canadian media reports make little or no effort to identify the other NATO countries involved in Operation Baaz Tsuka?  And these troops are NATO, not "coalition" (that referred to US Operation Enduring Freedom).
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/54076/post-498092.html#msg498092

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Kirkhill]

And this one Mark -

Britain leads major Afghan operation
Peter Graff, Reuters (UK), 15 Dec 06
Article Link

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/54076/post-498092.html#msg498092

That puts the Canadians on the ground along with the Dutch, Danes, Estonians, Brits and of course the Americans, all under the command of a Dutch Commander (Lt-Gen Ton van Loon).

Edit: And of course - like most other folks - I forgot the Afghan National Army.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Kirkhill: Actually, I think the appropriate link:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-12-15T120755Z_01_SP303649_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-OPERATION.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

And Canadians complain about the Americans being self-centred.  What rot.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Kirkhill]

Day 4 in the Star:

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/162865

It's a battle for minds, Canadian officer says
TheStar.com - News - It's a battle for minds, Canadian officer says

Oakland Ross
Toronto Star


PATROL BASE WILSON, Afghanistan–Waves of aerial bombardment shattered the silence in this lofty region of southern Afghanistan yesterday, as NATO forces entered the fourth day of a major offensive against Taliban insurgents.

Aimed at separating hardcore Taliban fighters from their less committed followers, the operation is being described as the most ambitious assault upon the rebels since a large-scale offensive, code-named Medusa, was unleashed in this restive region in September.

Troops from four NATO countries – Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States – are taking part in the operation, along with forces of the Afghan National Army.

Some 2,400 Canadian military personnel, including a 1,200-member battle group, have been based in the area since July as part of a NATO-led coalition. The Canadians are responsible for suppressing the Taliban here in the fiercely contested Kandahar region, and also promoting social and economic development.

Early yesterday, the cobalt skies and cool highland air over the Arghandab River valley resounded with the desultory thud of coalition bombing raids on mostly uninhabited areas of the Panjwaii district located south of the river.

Those attacks were not intended to inflict human casualties – the area is largely abandoned – but to serve as a demonstration of the immense firepower that NATO forces mean to train upon Taliban holdouts if the unfolding military operation fails to achieve its goals peacefully.

"A big part of the operation here is to convince the Taliban to stop fighting," Lt.-Col. Omer Lavoie, commander of the Canadian Battle Group in Afghanistan, told the Toronto Star while surveying preparations for the campaign at a forward operating base near the banks of the Arghandab River. "The phrase we'll coin here is, `We'll go in as soft as possible, but as hard as necessary.'"

Initially considered a major blow against the Taliban, last September's Operation Medusa proved to be a short-lived victory, as the radical Islamic rebels soon filtered back into this mountain-walled, grape-growing region, the main hotbed of their political support, a short distance west of Kandahar city.

Now the Canadians and their allies from the United States and Europe are hoping to uproot the Taliban from the area for good.

Code-named Operation Baaz Tsuka – or Falcon Summit in the Pashto language spoken here – the current offensive was launched Friday and is aimed at forging a rift between leading Taliban insurgents and their local supporters, who may well be tiring of the conflict.

NATO planners hope the strategy will help to pacify this beautiful but troubled region, bristling with warriors and flanked by craggy mountain ranges that patrol the horizons to the north and south, like twin trains of granite elephants.

"Those who are local, they cease being an enemy the instant they throw down their rifles," said Maj. Alex Watson, a Canadian liaison officer who serves as a conduit between Afghan officials and the Canadian military command here. "The battle is not for this piece of terrain or that city. The battle is between people's ears."

Rather than descend upon local villages in full fighting mode with cannon ablaze, coalition forces aim to coax their adversaries into submission rather than kill them.

They are hoping to entice wavering Taliban adherents to put down their weapons and instead accept peace offerings in the form of cargo containers stuffed with Yuletide treasures – farming implements, cooking oil, seeds for planting and other necessities of life, all scarce commodities in this war-ravaged territory.

Wherever the offer is spurned, however, coalition forces are prepared to respond in more bellicose fashion, training their weaponry upon Taliban fighters while trying to avoid civilian casualties.

"If only the average Canadian knew the massive firepower we have here that we're not using," said Watson. "But, if we suddenly lose our cool and use that firepower in an indiscriminate way, we might as well go back home."

By yesterday afternoon, British forces had moved eastward into Kandahar province from neighbouring Helmand province, in order to block hardened Taliban rebels from trying to flee the brewing conflict by that route, but Lavoie said it was still too soon to tell whether the coalition's current peaceful approach to waging war was turning out as its planners are hoping.

A spokesman for the coalition's regional command at Kandahar Airfield said last night that large caches of Taliban landmines and other munitions have been uncovered in the operation so far. He said there were sporadic outbreaks of gunfire yesterday but would not specify where.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber attacked a coalition convoy east of Kandahar city yesterday, injuring two soldiers, neither of them severely.

The NATO offensive unfolding outside Kandahar is taking place in a region that straddles a strategic road under construction with Canadian and German funding, the so-called Route Summit that traverses a floodplain north of the Arghandab River, west of Kandahar city.

On one side of the road, "things are reasonable – not perfect but reasonable," said Capt. Howard Chafe, second-in-command of the Canadian provincial reconstruction team responsible for social and economic assistance to the war-battered residents of Kandahar province. On the other side, "it gets more Taliban," Chafe said.

Journalists embedded with Canadian Forces in Afghanistan are not permitted to report on how or when Canadian troops will participate in the operation until the offensive is further advanced.

Much of the farmland in the fertile area is devoted to the cultivation of grapes and wheat, but the dusty soil is being increasingly turned to the raising of illicit crops such as marijuana or poppies – used for opium production – under the direction of local drug lords, many of whom use their profits to finance the Taliban.

"If we can secure this valley and get the Taliban out, we will cut a lot of their funding," said Chafe.

A coterie of ruthlessly conservative religious leaders who banned the playing of music and barred women from attending school, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for five years until overthrown by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

This line stuck out though -

Rather than descend upon local villages in full fighting mode with cannon ablaze, coalition forces aim to coax their adversaries into submission rather than kill them.

(Edited by Moderator to remove possible lead to an OPSEC tangent.)