Articles found April 25, 2010
Forged in the fire of Afghanistan
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Allan Woods Ottawa Bureau
The maiden mission of the Afghan war for Canada’s elite JTF2 commandos almost killed them.
Over Pakistan, returning from a daring raid on an enemy compound, six of the members of the secretive team narrowly avoided a crash when their helicopter nearly ran out of fuel as it spirited them to safety.
They escaped with their lives – and with their hands on their prize.
Also on that flight in late 2001 were six United States Green Berets and a computer hard drive that would help greatly in the hunt for Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders.
That hard drive was the ultimate quarry of the Canadian mission, part of Task Force K-Bar, the name given the unit of special forces soldiers which arrived in Afghanistan from seven countries. It included Canada’s JTF2.
The inside story of that mission can now be told for the first time following a Toronto Star investigation into the top-secret operations that would cement Canada's reputation as one of the top special forces teams in the world.
The international task force has been credited with killing more than 100 top level Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and the JTF2 stalks the enemy in Afghanistan to this day. But the distance of time has now shed light on that initial six-month deployment of Canada’s most secretive soldiers.
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Injured captain returns to duty: 'If I can do it, why wouldn't I?'
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Officer inspires others to overcome staggering odds and keep working
Edmonton JournalApril 25, 2010 3:04 AM
Capt. Simon Mailloux had to be told six times that he'd lost half his left leg.
The first five times, he completely forgot.
Every time he fell asleep, he'd forget what he'd learned while awake. Again and again, he woke in an unfamiliar bed, surrounded by doctors he didn't recognize and was told a roadside bomb in Afghanistan had left him an amputee.
"That was the worst time of all of it," the Quebec-based soldier remembers, "being helpless in that bed."
Days earlier, on Sept. 16, 2007, Mailloux was a platoon commander in a mission to open a police sub-station in southern Afghanistan. Basically, to try some law and order in a region that had little.
On a Zhari district road, his light armoured vehicle was struck by a massive IED blast that killed two Canadian soldiers, including a medic, and an Afghan interpreter.
"There was a big shock wave of heat in my face," the 26-year-old remembers. "It was like an oven that was punching me in the face. My leg couldn't move, my jaw was fractured on the right side and I had other facial injuries. I was out of it, I was trying to look around. I tried to reach my weapon to defend myself, because that's the training. Really, though, I was helpless."
Mailloux was rescued by his uninjured driver. As he was carried on a stretcher onto a helicopter for the ride to the Kandahar Airfield hospital, Mailloux grabbed the arm of his major.
"I remember telling him, 'Just wait for me. I'll be back in a couple weeks, I'll be back.' I didn't know how bad my injury was and it actually meant I was really out of there. I wanted to come back at that point, and it's been inside me since then."
Even wounded, he felt guilty for leaving as the chopper lifted into the air.
The next time he woke, he was in Germany with a spotty memory and a leg amputated through the knee.
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RCMP ready for beefed-up Afghan role: chief
Last Updated: Saturday, April 24, 2010
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Canadian combat troops are slated to leave Afghanistan next summer, but RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said Saturday he expects his personnel will have to stay behind to undertake the "huge challenge" of training police officers.
About 50 RCMP and other civilian Canadian police are posted to Afghanistan as part of a mission to train the Afghan National Police. The ANP, as it's known, has had a reputation for roadside shakedowns and graft that Canadian officials hope mentoring, training and supervision will eradicate.
Elliott, who visited Kandahar this weekend to review the Mounties' operations there, said he's seen "indications from the government" that it wants the training to plow on once combat soldiers ship out starting in July 2011.
"I expect that that will continue," he said of the police mission.
"I don't know what the future will bring," the commissioner added. "We're at the beginning of looking at options, but there are a lot more questions than answers at the moment."
One question is whether the Tories will seek to send more police to Afghanistan to fill the void left by the withdrawal of the Canadian Forces. The federal government has been pressured by the United States to maintain a large presence in the central Asian country past 2011.
Elliott assured that if Ottawa wants to beef up its constabulary presence as it draws down the military one, "we'll be able carry out whatever task the government of Canada gives us here."
Recruits substandard, RCMP chief says
Those tasks aren't easy. As foreign mentors try to cleanse the Afghan National Police of its venal tendencies — officers have been known to routinely hit up the subjects of their investigations for a payoff and are widely distrusted by the populace — they've had to adapt their teaching methods for the different calibre of the force's cadets.
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Political failure in Afghanistan
Posted By GRANT LAFLECHE
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I cannot help but wonder if all the effort, the spilled blood and lost soldiers in Afghanistan have been worth it.
Our troops have put a consistent beating on Taliban forces. You really have to look at Mike Tyson vs. Michael Spinks in 1988 to find another beating this complete -- that was when pre-crazy-tattooed Tyson put poor Spinks through the ropes in 91 seconds of the first round. The Taliban is the Michael Spinks of military combat.
But how much has Afghanistan changed? We've lost more than 140 soldiers since the mission began. Yet the country is still run by Hamid Karzai, a corrupt ex-Taliban who, after finally getting some political pressure from the West to clean up his act, is threatening to join his old buddies.
Yes, there have been some elections, but they were marred by fraud. Schools have been built, but girls still face the real risk of having battery acid thrown in their faces for having the gall to want an education. Women are still murdered if they dare decline the privilege of being covered from head to toe in heavy cloth. Karazi's government has a ministry to enforce Sharia law. The tradition of bacha bazi, a pedophilia black market where little boys are bought and sold as sex slaves for men, continues unabated and even involves Afghan military and police! (Check out the recent PBS Frontline expose on the issue called The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.)
This is what Canadian troops are dying to protect? It's hard to look at the Afghanistan mission in 2010 without adding the word "failure."
To be clear, this is not a military failure. For the most part Taliban troops are a disorganized gaggle of lunatics who need a stiff belt of homegrown opium to work up the courage to face a modern military like ours. So the best these idiots can do is harass allied forces with roadside bombs. The explosions can be tragic, but they won't ever win a war.
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Afghan spy chief: 'I told MI5 that prisoners were being tortured'
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UK forces are accused of handing over Taliban detainees to Kandahar interrogators despite claims of ill-treatment
Fresh claims have emerged that MI5 was aware of allegations that Afghan detainees were being mistreated by the country's security service during the period UK forces were handing prisoners over to the Afghan authorities.
Last week the high court heard details of torture allegedly suffered by prisoners handed over to the Afghan domestic security service. A memo, seen by the Observer, reveals that the head of Afghanistan's intelligence agency indicated to UK officials in March 2007 that he was aware of ill-treatment claims involving prisoners.
In the document, marked confidential, Amrullah Saleh, chief of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), admits he is "aware of allegations of mistreatment" relating to detainees in Kandahar province.
Human rights lawyers allege that no action appears to have been taken by UK forces as a result and that British troops handed over detainees to the NDS Kandahar facility in 2007.
The memo coincides with a judicial review in the high court, being brought by anti-war activist Maya Evans against Britain's policy of transferring suspected insurgents.
The court heard how six Afghan detainees – Taliban suspects – handed over by British troops to NDS prisons were allegedly deprived of sleep, whipped with rubber cables and subjected to electric shocks. Backed by law firm Public Interest Lawyers, Evans argues Britain has breached the Human Rights Act by handing over prisoners to a country known to participate in torture. The lawyers claim the NDS had a notorious reputation for mistreating prisoners and British officers should have known of the risks.
Saleh's admission is contained in a memo written a month before allegations surfaced in the Canadian press that the country's soldiers deliberately transferred prisoners to be tortured. The allegations provoked uproar in Canada with pressure still building on the government to launch a public inquiry into the claims.
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B.C. centre will help veterans return to normal life
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The Canadian Press
Date: Saturday Apr. 24, 2010 6:32 PM PT
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — When Tony Spiess came back from Canada's peacekeeping mission in Croatia in 1993, he came back with a lot of baggage.
He'd borne witness to genocide and hatred, and ultimately ended up in a fire fight with heavily armed Croatian troops in the battle of Medak Pocket. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress and didn't find much in the way of help.
"Coming home from Croatia, there was absolutely nothing. I was fighting, and then a week later I was walking the streets of Vancouver," said Spiess, who was a member of the Seaforth Highlanders.
"We're talking experiencing and witnessing and fighting genocide, ethnic cleansing and all this stuff, and a week later, here I am walking the streets. And not just me -- I'm talking about a battalion of men."
Then, when he left the forces in 1997, there were not a lot of job postings for machine gunners. He didn't know what to do next.
Spiess came across the Veterans Transition Program, funded by the Royal Canadian Legion with help from the University of British Columbia. Through the intensive program aimed at reintegrating soldiers into civilian life, he began to deal with his psychological scars and set off on a new life outside the military.
Now 40 and a professional firefighter, Spiess was there on Saturday when ground was broken for Honour House, a unique transition house that will offer respite and help for soldiers and first-responders such as police, firefighters and paramedics.
"It was just fantastic to actually walk through the house and see it and know a lot of soldiers and first-responders are going to be using this and a lot of families are going to benefit," he said afterwards.
The 10-bedroom, 10-bath home in New Westminster will undergo a major renovation in the next few months to become a first-of-its-kind retreat.
Honour House has been described as a Ronald McDonald House for soldiers and first-responders. They and their families will be able to stay free in the home while they or a member of their families are seeking medical or psychological treatment.
And the Veterans Transition Program, the intensive 14-day program that helped Spiess get back on his feet, will be run out of Honour House.
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More questions than answers in post-2011 Afghan cop training: RCMP boss
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Murray Brewster, THE CANADIAN PRESS
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The RCMP has started looking at how to continue the police training mission in Afghanistan after the Canadian military pulls out next year, the Mounties' top man said Saturday.
But Commissioner William Elliot noted there are a number of details and variables to be worked out, among them, who would protect and transport the police trainers as they go about their business in the volatile country.
"We're at the beginning of looking at options, but there are a lot more questions than answers at the moment," Elliot told reporters after wrapping up a brief visit to Kandahar.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay dropped a broad hint a few weeks ago that Canada's continued involvement here would likely revolve around police training, but he gave few specifics.
Elliot said the RCMP is prepared to carry on, but will need the participation of municipal forces across the country, in much the same way it has for other international missions.
"Working with all of the police community in Canada, we'll be able to carry out whatever task the government of Canada gives us in Afghanistan," he said.
There are 48 Canadian police trainers at the joint Canadian and American provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar. But they rely heavily on the Canadian army for protection and movement throughout the city, and the rural areas.
There is the possibility that members from the U.S. army's 97th Military Police Battalion which is already located at the reconstruction base, could step in to the role vacated by the army, said Elliot.
"I think there are a lot of specifics to be worked out," he added.
The RCMP commissioner's comments are only the latest question mark to be raised about what happens in Kandahar, starting next year.
Recently the civilian in charge of Canadian reconstruction, Ben Rowswell, said that diplomats and development staff have not been given any marching orders on what happens after the army goes.
"We're awaiting direction from our ministers in Ottawa," Rowswell told reporters April 11.
"We know that we're committed to delivering development projects beyond 2011, but there are many ways you can deliver development projects, depending on how you do it. You either have civilians on the ground - or you don't."
Ottawa has been under mounting international pressure to stay beyond the 2011 deadline, but the Conservative government has been steadfast in its determination to end the military mission. Federal cabinet ministers have mused about continued diplomacy and development, but have been largely silent on how that will happen without soldiers.
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