Military parks G-wagons as Afghan danger grows
Light jeeps no longer going on patrols
Ottawa favours new armoured vehicles
May 31, 2006. 01:00 AM
BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA—In a nod to Afghanistan's growing dangers, Canadian troops are pulling their light G-wagon jeeps off patrol and will now only venture outside their Kandahar base riding in heavily armoured vehicles, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says.
And he says the federal government is buying 25 more South African-made Nyala RG-31 jeeps, specially designed to resist bomb attacks, on top of the 50 it has already purchased for the Afghan mission.
"As our soldiers leave the base, they will be in armoured vehicles," O'Connor said yesterday.
While a step up from the maligned Iltis jeeps they replaced, the G-wagons have proven vulnerable to attack in Afghanistan. Four soldiers and one diplomat riding in G-wagons have been killed by bombs this year.
Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said it was never thought the violence would get this bad when his party first sent the military to Afghanistan.
"When this mission was dispatched, one didn't believe ... that the resistance or the violence would be escalating to the level that it has. I think that's a concern," Dosanjh said. "We are in the middle of a tense patch."
O'Connor told the Commons defence committee that military commanders in Kandahar have decided to restrict "most" of the G-wagons to camp.
Instead, patrols will be conducted using LAV IIIs, large eight-wheel armoured vehicles, and the Nyalas, which resemble a beefed-up jeep, both of which have proven resistant to the kind of bomb attacks favoured by insurgents.
The defence department website boasts that the Nyala, able to carry six, is "specifically designed to resist under-wheel and under-belly mine strikes to enhance crew survivability."
The vehicle, fitted with bullet-resistant windows, also protects against small arms, hand grenades and anti-tank mines. Indeed, a Nyala jeep was credited with saving the lives of two soldiers earlier this month when it was hit by a roadside blast.
O'Connor later denied the decision was an indictment of the safety of the G-wagons in the dangerous territory.
"We adjust to whatever is going on on the ground. If we have incidents, we try to learn from these incidents and what we try to do is improve," O'Connor told reporters.
"We found out now from actual experience that these Nyalas work. I'll spend more to give protection. If I have to buy more Nyalas or more LAVs, I will."
One of the selling points of the G-wagon was that it was able to get into neighbourhoods not accessible to the bigger armoured vehicles and provided a better opportunity for troops to interact with Afghan residents.
But O'Connor said Canada's "hearts and minds" mission would not be deterred by the swap in vehicles. "When you get to the town, you get out of your vehicle and you talk to the people. But between the villages, they're in their vehicles."
O'Connor appeared before the committee for an hour yesterday afternoon to discuss Canada's mission in Afghanistan.
In a surprising comment, O'Connor said he welcomes the big firefights of the kind that Canadian troops have faced in recent weeks, including one that killed Capt. Nichola Goddard.
"I don't mind those tactics because they're playing into our hands. If (insurgents) concentrate, you can defeat them," said O'Connor, a retired army veteran. "Lately they've been concentrating against our militaries in our area, they've been taking very large casualties and I don't know how long they can keep up this intensity."
Meanwhile, it was revealed yesterday that Governor General Michaëlle Jean, the commander-in-chief of Canada's armed forces, has twice been rebuffed in her attempts to visit troops in Afghanistan. Security concerns were cited as a reason for Jean not to make the trip, even as O'Connor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay have all visited the country.
with files from Canadian Press
