The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread - (December 2007)

[The Bread Guy]

Canadian and Afghan troops capture IED factory in Panjwai-area
Canadian Press, 9 Dec 07
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A coalition force led by Canadian soldiers captured a Taliban explosives factory and cleared insurgents operating around a highway in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province.  The Canadian military says a Canadian unit, a company of Afghan army troops and a Nepalese company backed by artillery and air support took on insurgent elements that had been operating around Highway One.  The military says the explosives factory that was captured Saturday produced improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.  Kandahar Police Chief Sayed Aka Fakid claims that coalition forces killed 30 insurgents and wounded nine more ....

Canadians open new front against Taliban
Push into insurgents' territory part of a flurry of NATO activity in southern Afghanistan as winter starts to impede enemy's movement
GRAEME SMITH, Globe & Mail, 10 Dec 07
Article link - permalink

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A Canadian-led offensive opened a new front against the Taliban in Kandahar this weekend, adding pressure on the insurgents as they also faced a major attack from NATO and Afghan forces in neighbouring Helmand.  Canadian soldiers and their allies advanced on foot into the fields around Zangabad, a village about 40 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, at daybreak on Saturday. An Afghan military statement later said 10 insurgents were killed in the attack, but a Canadian commander said the number was higher, without giving details.  Under the name Operation Sure Thing, the offensive marked the first time Canada's battle group has fought alongside the famed Gurkhas, soldiers of Nepalese origins who have fought under British command since the 1800s. Afghan soldiers also joined the fight.  The Canadians made their push into Taliban territory at the same time as British and U.S. forces continue to lead an effort to recapture Musa Qala, a town in northern Helmand province that the insurgents had used as a model for their alternative system of government ....



Afghan troops enter Taliban stronghold town
Hamid Shalizi, Reuters, 10 Dec 07 11:27:37 GMT
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Afghan army troops entered the town of Musa Qala on Monday, the fourth day of a large offensive to capture the only sizeable town controlled by Taliban insurgents, a spokesman for the NATO-led force said.  "The Afghan National Army has entered the district centre of Musa Qala," said International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Major Charles Anthony.  He said the Afghan army was not yet in control of the town, which has been surrounded by mainly British and U.S. troops in an operation to retake it that began on Friday.  A British army spokesman said forces were pushing into the town, but it had not been captured.  As the only sizeable town in Taliban hands, Musa Qala, in Helmand province, is symbolic for both sides in the conflict and its capture would be a major military boost for the Afghan government and its Western backers ....


Afghan troops enter Taleban town
BBC Online, 10 Dec 07, 11:57 GMT
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Afghan army troops have penetrated the heart of the Taleban-held town of Musa Qala, according to a spokesman for the Nato-led force in Afghanistan.  Isaf's Major Charles Anthony said Afghan National Army troops "are in the centre of the town", which is the only major Afghan centre in Taleban hands.  Afghan, US and UK troops have been fighting Taleban there since Friday.  The Taleban took over Musa Qala in February, despite a deal struck with tribal elders when UK troops withdrew.  It has since become the main centre of drugs trading in Afghanistan, the BBC's David Loyn in Kabul says ....


Afghan Forces Take Taliban Town
ASSOCIATED PRESS, 10 Dec 07
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan and international forces have retaken a southern town held by Taliban militants since February, the Defense Ministry spokesman said Monday.  Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said that Afghan, British and U.S. forces had ''completely captured'' Musa Qala, a town in the poppy growing belt of northern Helmand province. He said fighting was continuing around the town ....


Afghan troops enter Musa Qala: NATO-led force
Agence France Presse, 10 Dec 07, 06:53ET
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Afghan troops Monday entered the town of Musa Qala which had been captured by Taliban rebels 10 months ago and become a key insurgent base, the NATO-led force said.  "The ANA (Afghan National Army) have entered the district centre. They are in the centre of the town," a spokesman for the NATO-led force, Major Charles Anthony, told AFP.  The Afghan defence ministry issued a statement saying the Afghan and NATO troops had entered the Musa Qala district, of which the town is the centre, and had started cleaning up operations.  It could not immediately be reached to confirm the troops had entered the town of the same name.  But a British military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Eaton, said he could not confirm the town had been recaptured by security forces.  "The operation to liberate Musa Qala from the Taliban is continuing," he told AFP. "I can't confirm that it has been completely captured although it will be soon." ....



Helmand governor offers amnesty to Afghan Taliban
bakhtarnews.com.af, 9 Dec 07
Article link - permalink

With a final push underway in a militant-held southern district of the insurgency-plagued Helmand province, a senior government official Saturday announced a general amnesty for Afghan militants in Musa Qala.  Many fighters are believed to have been eliminated in the operation that began a day earlier. The Coalition claimed killing a Taliban commander along with a number of supporters in attacks on their hideouts in the beleaguered area.  Also blown up were dumps of weapons belonging to the rebels, said the US-led forces without giving an exact number of the casualties inflicted on Taliban. The arms were destroyed in explosions, whose cause could not be ascertained immediately.  In an exclusive interviw , Governor Asadullah Wafa asserted considerable progress made by Afghan and international forces during the five-day crackdown aimed at flushing the militants out of the restive town. Thousands of people are said to have fled hostilities in the area ....



Sergeant Lee Johnson of 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment killed in Afghanistan
UK Ministry of Defence statement, 9 Dec 07
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It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the death of Sergeant Lee Johnson of 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) yesterday, Saturday 8 December 2007, in southern Afghanistan.  Shortly before 1010 hours local time Sergeant Johnson was taking part in operations to recapture the town of Musa Qaleh in Helmand Province when an explosive device detonated - suspected to be a mine - resulting in the death of Sergeant Johnson and inflicting serious injuries to another soldier in the same vehicle ....  Lee Johnson was born on 7 June 1974 in Stockton-on-Tees and started his basic training on 30 July 1990.  Upon completion of this he joined the 1st Battalion The Green Howards.  He served in Canada, Germany, Belize and the United Kingdom, and deployed to the following theatres: Northern Ireland 5 times, the former Yugoslavia once and twice to Afghanistan.  Sergeant Johnson joined B Company as a new recruit and served virtually his whole career in that company.  It was fitting that when recently promoted to the rank of sergeant and appointed Platoon Sergeant, it was in B Company.  An accomplished sportsman, he represented the Battalion at boxing and the Army at Judo ....

 

[GAP]

Articles found November 10, 2007

Canadians open new front against Taliban
Push into insurgents' territory part of a flurry of NATO activity in southern Afghanistan as winter starts to impede enemy's movement
GRAEME SMITH December 10, 2007
Article Link

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A Canadian-led offensive opened a new front against the Taliban in Kandahar this weekend, adding pressure on the insurgents as they also faced a major attack from NATO and Afghan forces in neighbouring Helmand.

Canadian soldiers and their allies advanced on foot into the fields around Zangabad, a village about 40 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, at daybreak on Saturday. An Afghan military statement later said 10 insurgents were killed in the attack, but a Canadian commander said the number was higher, without giving details.

Under the name Operation Sure Thing, the offensive marked the first time Canada's battle group has fought alongside the famed Gurkhas, soldiers of Nepalese origins who have fought under British command since the 1800s. Afghan soldiers also joined the fight.

The Canadians made their push into Taliban territory at the same time as British and U.S. forces continue to lead an effort to recapture Musa Qala, a town in northern Helmand province that the insurgents had used as a model for their alternative system of government.
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Canadian and Afghan troops capture IED factory in Panjwai-area
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A coalition force led by Canadian soldiers captured a Taliban explosives factory and cleared insurgents operating around a highway in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province.

The Canadian military says a Canadian unit, a company of Afghan army troops and a Nepalese company backed by artillery and air support took on insurgent elements that had been operating around Highway One.

The military says the explosives factory that was captured Saturday produced improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

Kandahar Police Chief Sayed Aka Fakid claims that coalition forces killed 30 insurgents and wounded nine more.

There were no Canadian casualties and only one Afghan soldier was wounded.

Panjwai district has been the scene of bitter fighting off and on for the past couple of years.
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BROWN: Prime minister arrives in Afghanistan as battle rages
MICHAEL SETTLE, Chief UK Political Correspondent December 10 2007
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Gordon Brown today arrived in Afghanistan as a key battle continued to take a Taliban-controlled town.

The Prime minister flew in as troops fought in Musa Qala just 70 miles away.

The Prime Minister praised the courage of troops injured in the assault and paid tribute to the two killed.
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Guarding our troops
Dec 10, 2007 04:30 AM
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Members of the Canadian Forces already have enough on their plates without having to worry about things like health coverage and job security. So it is welcome news that all parties in the Ontario Legislature have set aside partisan differences to support a law that would ease the burden many military families face.

The law, which was introduced and passed on Monday, would provide immediate access to provincial health coverage for military families posted to Ontario from other provinces or overseas, waiving the 90-day waiting period new residents normally must meet to qualify. The Ontario government estimates the measure will help some 8,500 members of military families every year.

The legislation also will protect the jobs of military reservists who go on active duty within Canada or overseas. Part-time soldiers who have worked for their civilian employers for at least six months will be guaranteed their old positions, or comparable ones, when they return home from military missions.

This measure rightly gives 12,000 reservists from Ontario, including several hundred who are on active duty at any one time, the assurance that serving their country will not mean sacrificing their livelihoods.

Members of Canada's military are selflessly promoting our national interests at home, as well as abroad in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Removing these hurdles is the least we can do in return.
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U.S-led air strike kills insurgents in Afghanistan
Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:34am
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KABUL, Dec 10 (Reuters) - U.S-led coalition forces killed several Taliban militants in an air strike in the southern Afghan province of Helmand where troops are trying to recapture a big rebel stronghold, the coalition said.

Sunday's raid was aimed at a Taliban weapons supplier in Musa Qala district where Afghan and foreign forces have been engaged in fighting insurgents and foreign fighters since Friday.

"Coalition forces conducted a precision strike targeting a Taliban weapons smuggler known to equip extremist forces with various types of weapons and explosives including anti-aircraft weaponry", the statement said.

"Reports also indicate the individual is linked with attacks on Coalition forces aircraft", the statement added.
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[GAP]

Articles found December 11, 2007

Our people in Sierra Leone
Good on the Toronto Star for noticing CF members in one of their lesser-known foreign missions:
Monday, December 10, 2007
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FREETOWN, Sierra Leone–"Bo! Bo! Bo!" the soldiers shout. They sprint a few metres, drop into the tall grass and aim. Their enemy is an enormous baobab tree. Their bullets are their voices. "Bo! Bo! Bo!"

"They don't always have money for blanks," Warrant Officer Kevin Junor says, then turns to the Sierra Leonean soldiers who are scurrying for cover. "Don't bunch up! You're firing at the men right in front of you!"

Junor, who lives in Bolton, Ont., is one of 11 Canadians taking part in Operation Sculpture, Canada's contribution to the British-led international military training team in Sierra Leone. Their mission: to help the government rebuild its army following the country's brutal civil war in which government troops committed almost as many atrocities as the rebels.

"We've got lots of experience in a training role," says Lt.-Col. John Feller, commander of the Canadian Forces in Sierra Leone. "Maybe not so much in the jungles of Africa, but the tactics, the leadership skills required are the same around the world."

Not everyone would jump at the chance to live in a country deemed by the United Nations as the poorest on the planet. But for Junor, a reservist who grew up in Jamaica and Scarborough, it was a chance to connect with his family's history. In the 18th century, hundreds of runaway slaves known as Maroons were deported from Jamaica to Canada. Many of them later resettled in Sierra Leone.

"My wife is a descendant of the Maroons, so this is like home," says Junor, who is with the Toronto Scottish Regiment. But it didn't take long for Junor and the other Canadians – many of whom are in Africa for the first time – to realize that the nearest Timbit was thousands of kilometres away...

Most, including the Canadian commander, are reservists. Junor, for example, normally works as a change management consultant at Ontario's transportation ministry. Because of Canada's commitment of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, other missions like Operation Sculpture are forced to call on reservists. Some soldiers say Canada's military is more overstretched now than it was during the war in Bosnia.

"It kicked the living crap out of us then, and now they're doing it again in Afghanistan," says reservist Tom France. "We're here because the regulars, the guys in the battalions, are all in Afghanistan. ... It's hard. It burns guys out."
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Huge Pearl Harbor Day air assault on Afghanistan
Kicking out the Taliban
Posted: December 10, 2007 By Matt Sanchez - WND
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American soldiers from Task Force 1-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, using Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters, just participated in one of the largest air assaults in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

It was Dec. 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and these U.S. infantrymen were taking part in Operation Mar Karadad, their particular contribution to the fight being an air assault on the Taliban-dominated district of Musa Qala in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

Although the Musa Qala area of operations belongs to British forces stationed nearby in the Bastian Forward Operating Base, Task Force 1-508th – nicknamed the Red Devils, and who fight under the motto “Fury from the Sky” – launched its attack from the Canadian-controlled Kandahar Air Field, or KAF, in the neighboring province of Kandahar.

The district of Musa Qala is a small commercial center peppered with traditional Afghan calats – living quarters of entire Afghan communities surrounded by an outer wall and forming a compound. Helmand Province is known for being the world leader for the cultivation of poppies, an opiate flower seasonally harvested by local farmers to produce heroin. Sales from heroin have bankrolled Taliban violence, as members of this Islamic terrorist movement have sought to usurp the federal government of President Hamid Karzai.
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Soldiers’ care packages blocked
Rene Bruemmer, Montreal Gazette
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MONTREAL -- More than 1,700 care packages collected by Montreal-area residents and community groups destined for Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been grounded after the military said they could not be sent overseas.

Citing security concerns and a lack of space on transport aircraft, the Canadian Forces informed the members of the Roxboro legion, who spearheaded the drive, that they cannot accept the packages. Parcels must be addressed to a specific soldier, the military said, and not “Any CF member.”
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Brandon student raises cash to support soldiers' families
Last Updated: Monday, December 10, 2007 | 1:51 PM CT  CBC News
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A high-school student in Brandon, Man., is showing her support for Canada's troops in Afghanistan by selling merchandise in the foyer of the school this week.

Celsey Chartier is selling clothing, pins, magnets and coffee mugs with a "support the troops" message as part of a project for her student leadership class at Vincent Massey High School.

It's a message with a personal connection for Chartier, whose brother is headed to Afghanistan in February with about 800 soldiers from nearby Canadian Forces Base Shilo.

"We're talking about death here sometimes, when it come to Afghanistan, so it is very important for us," she said.

"We do have military families in this school, as well, so I just want to make it, you know, as comfortable as possible for them during that time."
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Drug Profits help Taliban
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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Call for more troops to bring Taliban to heel

Mark Dodd, Kandahar Air Base, Afghanistan December 10, 2007

A SENIOR Australian army staff officer serving in Afghanistan has warned that efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged country are being impeded by narcotic-driven profits propping up the Taliban resistance.

Colonel Don Roach says despite this and the ongoing effects of corruption, the rebuilding of the 80,000-strong Afghan National Army is now more than 70per cent complete.

But he has also warned that the NATO-backed International Security Assistance Force and its Afghan army allies are stretched too thinly in Oruzgan province, home to the 370-strong Australian Reconstruction Task Force, which is facing a growing threat from resurgent Taliban militants.

"In the south a huge part of the border with Pakistan remains uncontrolled allowing for the unimpeded flow of illicit narcotics and armed insurgents," Colonel Roach said.
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Capabilities and Money
Monday, December 10. 2007
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In several recent articles,1 especially A Look to the Future The Ruxted Group has discussed the sorts of capabilities that, in our view, Canada needs to protect and promote its vital interests around the world.

This is rather dull stuff and, sadly but understandably, the defence debate in Canada is usually confined to:

•   Are we George W Bush’s latest lapdog; and

•   Why was the latest big defence contract awarded to a US firm?

We understand some of the confusion about our role in the world. Why believe former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s own words when we can believe Maude Barlow’s ravings about her uniformed fear that “Canada has abandoned its traditional role as a peacekeeper, in favour of supporting U.S.-led military intervention.” That she, and her followers and fellow travellers, are demonstrably wrong means nothing. She is media savvy and, like others, committed to disarming Canada so that $20 Billion per years can be spent on her priorities.

We also understand that major defence procurement projects are expensive and Canadians should know that their hard earned money is being well spent. Once again anti-military ‘activists’ trot out easily discredited disinformation about defence spending and fantastic lies about the  militarization of Canada.

The defence spending issue is complex. Not everything related to Afghanistan, for example, was or should be funded from the defence budget, despite recent PCO direction.3 There are legitimate claims to be made on other government departments’ budgets for areas like diplomacy and development.
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Poll highlights unease over U.S. foreign policy
Respondents felt Canada's decision not to join the Iraq war was a greater achievement than participating in the Afghan mission
MARCUS GEE December 11, 2007
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A new poll suggests when it comes to their country's role in the world, Canadians really are from Venus, not Mars.

A typical Canadian feels that the country's proudest moment was a decision not to go to war in Iraq, that its foreign policy is too heavily influenced by the United States, that we are fighting in Afghanistan mainly at the behest of Washington and that climate change and the rich-poor gap are a bigger threat to world security than terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

The results put Canadian public opinion sharply at odds with the views of the United States, Canada's closest ally and economic partner. They may also be a blow to the more muscular foreign policy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The poll was carried out Dec. 6-9 by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV, based on surveys of 1,000 Canadians from across the country. Conducted to mark the 50th anniversary of former prime minister Lester Pearson's Nobel Peace Prize, it suggests that Canadians are as attached as ever to the Pearsonian ideal of solving international problems through peaceful diplomacy, not force or war.
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Tories accused of trying to muzzle military
TheStar.com - December 10, 2007 Murray Brewster THE CANADIAN PRESS
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OTTAWA – Important information and interview requests directed to the Canadian military must now be cleared by senior bureaucrats who are under the direction of the prime minister's office, say defence sources.

The Privy Council Office directive applies to all matters of ``national importance," but is primarily focused on shaping information related to the war in Afghanistan.

The order was issued within the last two weeks and caps a determined effort by the Conservatives to assert more civilian control over the military, which has been seen in government circles to have too much influence in the conduct of the war.

Clamping down on public comment follows restrictions imposed earlier this year by the military itself on the release of documents under access-to-information legislation.

Smothering the political fire of the Afghanistan debate has been a principal aim this fall for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who effectively shut down opposition criticism in the House of Commons by appointing a eminent persons panel to review Canada's role beyond 2009.

"They want to turn the noise down," said one defence source.

A second official added that the military side was in the ``information business" while the political side was "in the marketing business."
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DynCorp awarded construction job in Afghanistan
Monday, December 10, 2007 - 12:21 PM EST
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DynCorp International Inc. has won a $49 million contract to build an army garrison in Afghanistan.

The Falls Church-based government contractor will construct 50 buildings including dormitories, dining facilities, training rooms, offices and maintenance and security structures on 160 acres in Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border.

The facilities, called the Afghan National Army Garrison, will accommodate up to 4,000 Afghan troops, according to DynCorp. The garrison will also have water, sewer, power and a telecommunication systems.

Not including the garrison contract, DynCorp has about 2,500 employees in Afghanistan training police, attempting to eradicate opium poppy and carrying out other projects.

DynCorp spokesman Gregory Lagana could not say how many employees would be working on the 300-day garrison contract.
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Brown: Afghanistan troops to stay
MICHAEL SETTLE, Chief UK Political Correspondent December 11 2007
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Gordon Brown has pledged Britain to a long-term commitment in Afghanistan, promising more aid to rebuild the country's shattered economy and making it clear that British troop levels would remain at around 7800 "for the foreseeable future".

The Prime Minister's whistlestop visit to Kabul yesterday came as a four-day battle led by Afghan and British forces to take back the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala, in the north of Helmand province, entered a decisive phase.

The Afghan defence ministry announced that the town had been "completely captured" but Isaf, the international security body, was more cautious, saying that its forces were "consolidating their positions". The Taliban simply said they had made a tactical withdrawal.

advertisementTomorrow, in a Commons statement, Mr Brown will update MPs and lay out precisely what extra help the UK will give the government of President Hamid Karzai. The Ministry of Defence has asked for almost £2bn this year to fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 2001, the Treasury has set aside almost £9bn.

Mr Brown, on his first visit to Afghanistan as PM, promised to follow up the victory at Musa Qala with new reconstruction projects in the area to secure the loyalties of local people and ensure it did not fall back into the hands of the extremists
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[armyvern]

GAP, I digress, but November 11th!!?? WTH?? Your Christmas is sooooooo going to suck!!

 

[GAP]

GAP, I digress, but November 11th!!?? WTH?? Your Christmas is sooooooo going to suck!!

If I stay in November long enough, I can skip right into January without all the hooplala..... changed

 

[GAP]

Suicide bomber attacks envoy in Afghanistan, no Canadians injured
Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 10:04 AM By: 680News staff and The Associated Press
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Kandahar, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber has attacked a Canadian convoy in the Panjwaii district of Afghanistan, Tuesday.

No Canadians were known to have been injured, although Afghan officials said an Afghan man and a child were killed.

A police chief said the bomber also died in the attack on what he described only as a NATO convoy.

However, CTV reported that a bomber in a grey-coloured vehicle parked on the side of the road detonated his explosives as a Canadian Nyla armoured vehicle pulled up along side. CTV said the Nyla appears not to have been damaged.
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[GAP]

Articles found December 12, 2007

Harper's Darfur Dilemma
Posted: December 11, 2007, 1:36 PM by Kelly McParland
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The problem with sticking to your principles is that sometimes it has painful consequences.

That’s the dilemma facing the Conservatives as they are confronted by the intractable situation in Darfur.

As John Ivison pointed out in recent articles from Uganda, and the Senate outlined in a tough-minded examination this year, Canada has spent 40 years and more than $12 billion on aid to sub-Saharan Africa, with little if anything to show for it. Every problem that existed on the continent then, is still there today. War, famine, disease; tin-pot potentates like Robert Mugabe siphoning off wealth at the expense of their own people. It’s all there, only worse: while Africa has wallowed in its misery, other countries that were once equally as hard up have made huge advances. India, China, large parts of Asia and Latin America have increased mightily in terms of wealth, education, health and standards of living. They’re hardly perfect, but they’re far better off than they were.

So the Harper government, pragmatic to a fault, has been planning to downgrade Africa as a target of Canada’s overseas activities, and upgrade those countries where there’s a chance our limited capacity could do some good. The idea is to concentrate assistance on those countries that illustrate they’re putting it to good use, by developing their capacity to help themselves, and their willingness to adopt good governance and democratic values. That means helping countries that spend the money on progress, rather than stealing most of it to help build the president-for-life’s latest beach house.
So OK, pretty much everyone can agree with that. The problem is in the picture that presents.

When Paul Martin was prime minister, he made a real effort to effect some change in Darfur. The problem there is pretty well-known -- a brutal regime aiding and abetting the annihilation of tribal groups in a battle over resources and power, helping to slaughter the better part of an entire province while the world watches and frets.
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Military unhappy with order to clam up around reporters
David ******** , Ottawa Citizen Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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A crackdown by the Harper government on what members of the Canadian Forces can say in public will only hurt the military in the long-run, warn Defence Department officials.

The Conservatives have put in place a new policy that requires all media requests of "regional and national" importance to be cleared in advance by the "centre," according to Defence Department officials. The centre is a term generally used to describe the defence minister's office, the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office.

Defence officials say the crackdown involves most of the day-to-day interviews military officials give to the news media. The "centre" has already cancelled a media day at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Some officers have pulled out of previously scheduled media interviews at the last minute, citing the new policy.
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Pentagon Critical Of NATO Allies
Gates Faults Efforts In Afghanistan
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 12, 2007; Page A01
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Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sharply criticized NATO countries yesterday for not supplying urgently needed trainers, helicopters and infantry for Afghanistan as violence escalates there, vowing not to let the alliance "off the hook."

Gates called for overhauling the alliance's Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO's focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging "a classic counterinsurgency" against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaeda fighters.

I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," Gates told the House Armed Services Committee. Ticking off a list of vital requirements -- about 3,500 more military trainers, 20 helicopters and three infantry battalions -- Gates voiced "frustration" at "our allies not being able to step up to the plate."

The defense secretary's public scolding of NATO, together with equally forceful testimony yesterday by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put on display the growing transatlantic rift over the future of the mission in Afghanistan. The Bush administration over the last year has increasingly bristled at what it sees as NATO's overly passive response to the Taliban, but European leaders have repeatedly rebuffed entreaties by Gates and President Bush to do more.
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Give Afghan bigger say in rebuilding projects: Rights and Democracy
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MONTREAL - Aid workers in Afghanistan need to learn to take a hands-off approach in their efforts to rebuild the wartorn country, says Rights and Democracy's Afghan director.

Palwasha Hasan, who heads the government-funded NGO's efforts to improve women's rights in Afghanistan, claims that many aid groups do not allow local Afghans to take ownership of legal reforms seen as key to the country's stability.

She criticized international organizations that try to impose western solutions to Afghanistan's human rights problems.

"Their processes are not always informed by Afghan realities," she told The Canadian Press while in Canada for meetings with government officials.

"They bring in experts who stay for a short time and then leave," she added. "I don't think this is very productive to the project's long-term goals."

Montreal-based Rights and Democracy received $5 million last summer as part of the federal government's plan to help boost rule of law in Afghanistan.

The country's legal system is a mishmash of local customs, various strands of Islamic law, international conventions and basic statutory law.

But despite the country's new constitution, the government of Hamid Karzai has had only mixed success in streamlining the legal code.
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Coalition forces notch two victories in Afghanistan
Allison Lampert , CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - A battle by coalition forces to rid the Zangabad region of insurgents this past weekend will improve security in the western part of the Panjwaii district of Kandahar province, the Canadian Forces said in a news release Tuesday.

The day-long operation involving the Canadian Battle Group, the Afghan National Army and Great Britain's renowned Royal Gurkha Regiment used artillery and aerial support to force Taliban insurgents out of the Zangabad region. During the operation, coalition forces uncovered a factory used to make improvised explosive devices.

The battle's outcome will bolster the influence of the fledgling Afghan National Police following weeks of insurgent activity in the region. Taliban were planting IEDs on the main supply route in the region in addition to co-ordinating daily attacks on a local police-substation, two high-ranking coalition officers told CanWest News Service.
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10th Mountain Division asks for civilian volunteers to Iraq
3:26 PM EST, December 11, 2007
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FORT DRUM, N.Y. (AP) _ Fort Drum commanders are looking for volunteers to serve in Iraq and are asking the post's 1,000 civilians workers if any are interested.

The civilians would assist soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division's 1,000-member Headquarters brigade, which will deploy to Iraq next spring to provide overhead and support for other combat troops already there, Lt. Col. Paul Swiergosz said Tuesday.

In a memo issued last month, Maj. Gen. Michael Oates directed the post chief of staff and garrison commander to "query all" civilians for their interest. Forms were also distributed asking volunteers to list their specialized experience, such as force protection, information management and logistics, as well as what type of security clearance they had, Swiergosz said.

"This is not a manpower crunch. We have enough soldiers to do the job," Swiergosz said. "Commander Oates simply wants to take advantage of the civilian expertise that we have developed here."

Volunteers will be allowed to select the length of deployment, ranging from four months to 15 months, he said. Accepted volunteers will be paid their salaries plus an additional 70 percent _ half of that amount is mandatory danger pay given to all military personnel deployed to a combat zone, he said.

Although civilians would receive danger pay, they would be mostly assigned to duties in safe zones, with a few exceptions, Swiergosz said.

An application to go does not mean automatic approval, he said. The skills of applicants will be considered.
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[MarkOttawa]

Brown unveils new Afghanistan strategy
Daily Telegraph, Dec. 12
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/12/wafghan612.xml

Gordon Brown has unveiled a new long-term strategy to "isolate and eradicate" the Taliban that will see British troops fighting in Afghanistan for years to come.

The Prime Minister told MPs that Britain will support efforts by the Afghan government to negotiate with tribal fighters now supporting the Taliban - but only if they renounce violence and accept democracy...

British officials believe that there are around 5,000 fighters allied to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the vast majority of them tribal gunmen who are paid to fight [emphasis added].

Only a handful of senior leaders, mostly based around the Pakistani city of Quetta, are "core Taliban", survivors of the regime that ran Afghanistan until 2001.
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"Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leadership," Mr Brown told MPs.

"I make it clear that we will not enter into any negotiations with these people. Our objective is to root out those preaching and practising violence and murder in support of men and women of peace."

As part of Afghan efforts to peel away support from the Taliban, the democratic government in Kabul will create a new agency dedicated to drawing their fighters away from the militant leadership.

Britain may help fund that agency through a new aid package that will be worth £450 million in the three years after 2009.

A range of economic development projects will be launched in the hope of weaning the Afghan economy off the opium trade.

In some cases, poppy farmers will be directly paid to cultivate other crops like maize.

The Prime Minister said the British military force in Afghanistan will remain at 7,800 as part of a "long-term commitment" [emphasis added].

He gave no hint of a timetable for reducing those numbers, and military sources say British troops could be in the country for a decade.

The long-term British aim is to increase the Afghan army from 50,000 to 70,000 troops [emphasis added] with the assistance of 340 British military trainers and mentors, part of an overall Nato training force of 6,000 [emphasis added].

In the meantime, British forces will continue to bear a heavy military burden, and Mr Brown said they will soon be receiving 150 additional protected patrol vehicles as well as extra Sea King helicopters [emphasis added].

Mr Brown's statement comes after nearly 3,000 British forces helped drive the Taliban from the town of Musa Qala in Helmand province in the biggest UK operation in Afghanistan since the invasion of 2001.

That victory was proof of international success in Afghanistan, Mr Brown said.

"Let me make it clear at the outset that as part of a coalition we are winning the battle against the insurgency," he said.

Mr Brown said the "long-term comprehensive framework" for the country entailed Afghan ownership, localisation and reconciliation and reconstruction.

He added: "The foundation now and in the future for our comprehensive framework of support for Afghanistan is military support for the Afghan Government against the Taliban-led insurgency and denying al-Qa'eda a base from which to launch attacks on the world."

Pentagon Critical Of NATO Allies
Gates Faults Efforts In Afghanistan
Washington Post, Dec. 12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/11/AR2007121102428.html?hpid=topnews

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sharply criticized NATO countries yesterday for not supplying urgently needed trainers, helicopters and infantry for Afghanistan as violence escalates there, vowing not to let the alliance "off the hook."

Gates called for overhauling the alliance's Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO's focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging "a classic counterinsurgency" against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaeda fighters.

"I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," Gates told the House Armed Services Committee. Ticking off a list of vital requirements -- about 3,500 more military trainers, 20 helicopters and three infantry battalions -- Gates voiced "frustration" at "our allies not being able to step up to the plate [emphasis added]."..

The United States provides about 26,000 troops in Afghanistan and has the lead combat role in the eastern part of the country, and U.S. Special Operations forces operate throughout the country. NATO provides most of the remaining 28,000 foreign troops, and British, Canadian, Australian and Dutch forces play key combat roles in southern Afghanistan, where violence has surged over the past year.

Bush extended the deployment of one brigade and sent another additional brigade to Afghanistan earlier this year to get a handle on the situation. But senior U.S. military officials have privately voiced concern that Afghanistan is regressing under a NATO command they describe as dysfunctional. If the United States wants success there, they have said, it may have to increase its military commitment again...

Violence is up significantly in Afghanistan this year, (JCS Chairman Admiral] Mullen said, citing previously undisclosed figures that attacks are up 27 percent overall -- including a 60 percent spike in the southern province of Helmand, where the Taliban resurgence is strongest. Suicide bombings, roadside bombs, and other tactics common in Iraq have increased, Gates said.

Meanwhile, cross-border attacks continue from Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan. Some weapons and financing are flowing in from Iran as well, although Gates said Iran's role is not as yet "decisive."..

Pressed by lawmakers on whether the United States should not shift more of its military resources to Afghanistan, Gates and Mullen held firm, saying Iraq remains the overarching priority for stretched U.S. forces.

"In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must," [emphasis added] Mullen said. "There is a limit to what we can apply to Afghanistan."

Gates said that after extending the tour of a brigade of 3,500 troops from the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan this year, and also keeping a helicopter contingent in Kandahar for six extra months, he is not inclined to do more now.

"I have refused to extend our helicopter cut . . . to ISAF beyond the end of January," [emphasis added] Gates said.

Gates later qualified his criticism by praising British, Canadian and Australian forces [emphasis added--Dutch, Poles, Romanians, Danes, Estonians?], which he said have "more than stepped up" in combat roles. "We should not use a brush that paints too broadly in terms of speaking of our allies and friends," he said.

One of the most pressing needs in Afghanistan is for about 3,500 additional trainers for the Afghan police, a force that Gates said suffers from "corruption and illiteracy." Because the European Union did not come through, he said, the United States has had to divert some U.S. trainers from the Afghan army to the police. Mullen confirmed that the United States has approved an increase in the manpower goal of the Afghan army from 70,000 to 80,000 [emphasis added--cf. PM Brown], creating a need for the additional U.S. trainers.

"The European effort on the police training has been, to be diplomatic . . . disappointing [emphasis added]," Gates said...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Afghan reconstruction base plans stretch to 2015
CP, Dec. 12
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/12/12/4721226-cp.html

The Foreign Affairs Department has developed plans to keep a Canadian provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar until at least 2015, say federal officials...

Contingency plans for a long-term Canadian diplomatic and development presence in the war-torn city were initially drawn up in the spring of 2006, not long after the Conservatives came to power and at the same time an extension to the military mission was proposed, said diplomatic sources.

The proposal apparently has so-called "off-ramps" that would allow Ottawa to withdraw, or hand over the Kandahar base to another country. But the first opt-out date is not until 2011, the same year an international agreement to rebuild Afghanistan expires, the sources indicated.

Coincidentally, 2011 is the same year the Conservative government chose in their throne speech as an extension for Canada's military commitment.

The Foreign Affairs Department did not respond to requests for comment.

This fall, Prime Minister Stephen Harper assembled a panel of eminent Canadians, headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, to study Canada's future role beyond the expiry of the current mission.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, appearing before the Commons foreign affairs committee Tuesday, made a distinction between the military and development efforts.

"The mandate of development and reconstruction is a commitment until 2011 under the (Afghanistan) compact with other countries," Bernier said, responding to a question from Bloc Quebecois defence critic Claude Bachand.

"Mr. Manley's mandate just has to do with the military mission."

Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who was at the committee meeting, said his ears perked up after hearing that statement and wondered whether the Conservatives would use an extended development commitment as a pretext to keeping troops in the country.

"We all know development can't proceed without security, at least that's what they keep telling us," McTeague said Wednesday.

"This is troubling and the government needs to explain to Canadians precisely what its intentions are for the PRT (provincial reconstruction team) in Kandahar. I, like many Canadians, was under the impression Mr. Manley was looking at the whole mission.

"We've all been focused on the combat mission. Since we can't have development without security, I think the government needs to explain clearly to Canadians how long it sees our development commitment running until. Is it 2011, 2015, or some time longer? [emphasis added]"...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found December 13, 2007

Hundreds of Afghan women raise voices against violence through prayer
Article Link

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The women of Afghanistan are seldom seen, let alone heard. But for a brief moment Wednesday, hundreds across the country made history by joining in a unique display of female solidarity.

In six cities across the war-torn country, including ones in volatile Kandahar and Helmand province, the women came to pray for an end to the war and destruction that has claimed the lives of so many of their husbands, sons and brothers over the last 30 years.

About 250 women showed up at an outdoor shrine in Kandahar's Arghandab district where Canadian and coalition forces clashed with insurgents just months ago, leaving about 50 Taliban dead and as many wounded.

As with most organized events in Afghanistan, there was no advertising for security reasons, other than word of mouth.

Copies of the Qur'an were distributed to the women who knelt on prayer rugs below a hazy morning sun. By the end, they had between them recited the 30 chapters of the holy book four times.
More on link

Death of the Three-Ds in Afghan Mission
Article Link

The term "three-D approach" is being replaced with "whole-of-government" to describe the mission in Afghanistan, but opposition MPs say the change hides a lack of diplomacy and development on the ground.
By Lee Berthiaume
The government has abandoned the term "three-D" to describe its strategy for missions like Afghanistan in favour of the all-encompassing "whole-of-government" label, senior officials have acknowledged in recent weeks.

But while they say the change is meant to signify the strategy's evolution, in that successful international interventions will require participation by all departments and agencies, opposition critics say the apparent "rebranding" has done little to address shortcomings in Afghanistan.

The idea of using development, diplomacy and defence together in foreign interventions was introduced to the public when former prime minister Paul Martin unveiled the Liberals' International Policy Statement in April 2005.

The idea, which originated with U.S. Marine Gen. Charles Krulak in the 1990s, was one that centred around an urban battle scene in which humanitarian assistance would be delivered on one city block, peacekeeping and diplomacy would be conducted on the second and full military operations would be delivered on the third.

At a luncheon roundtable sponsored by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre on Monday in Ottawa, the term "3D" was used several times to describe Canada's approach to Afghanistan, especially the activities of its Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar.

But in testimony to the House foreign affairs committee on Nov. 27, Foreign Affairs deputy minister Len Edwards acknowledged that the term "three-D" has fallen out of usage.

"Are three Ds dead? We don't use the terminology all that much, I have to say, because to us that sounds like three different pillars," Mr. Edwards told committee members. "What we believe in is that we all have to work together.

"The government has a strategy in Afghanistan, and we have a task force that co-ordinates that strategy," he added. "Each of us plays our role and we work together. We don't have a three-D strategy; we have a one-D strategy–we're all working together."

Chief Superintendent David Beer, director-general of the RCMP's international policing sector, acknowledged after Monday's lunch discussion that three-D is no longer a term used within government, and that whole-of-government has been the new terminology since the Conservatives took power last year.
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Ottawa Planning Long-Term Canadian Presence in Afghanistan
December 12, 2007
Article Link

Murray Brewster, 'Plans for Canada's Afghan reconstruction base stretch to 2015: insiders', Macleans, 12 December 2007.

"The Foreign Affairs Department has developed plans to keep a Canadian provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar until at least 2015, say federal officials. The department has also started recruiting diplomatic staff to fill posts at the base for one-year assignments that stretch beyond Parliament's self-imposed February 2009 deadline for an end to the military mission.

"The provincial reconstruction base, nestled in an old fruit canning factory in a Kandahar suburb, was set up in 2005. It functions as the headquarters for Canada's reconstruction efforts, giving development officials, the RCMP and correctional officers a secure location from which to help Afghans rebuild their shattered country. The base, while protected by the Canadian military, is entirely separate from the combat units, located at Kandahar Airfield, NATO's principal base in southern Afghanistan."
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15 Guantanamo prisoners transferred to Afghanistan, Sudan
Article Link

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Fifteen detainees at the US "war on terror" camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, have been transferred to Afghanistan and Sudan, the Pentagon said in a statement Thursday.

The US Defense Department says there are about 290 detainees still at the facility on its naval base on Cuba's southeastern tip.

Thirteen detainees were sent to Afghanistan, and two others were sent to Sudan, the statement said.

"The transfer is a demonstration of the United States' desire not to hold detainees any longer than necessary," the department said adding that 70 others were eligible for transfer and release.

Since 2002, 485 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred to about 30 countries according to the Pentagon including Albania, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Egypt, France, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda and Yemen.

The base has been host since January 2002 to US terror suspects arrested in several countries on the heels of the September 11 terror strikes.
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6 Afghans Killed in Mine Blast
By NOOR KHAN
Article Link

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A civilian car hit a freshly planted land mine in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing six people and wounding six others, and Taliban militants beheaded a woman they accused of spying and her grandson, officials said.

The blast ripped through the car as it traveled on a road outside the town of Tirin Kot, in Uruzgan province, a ministry statement said.

"This mine was possibly planted by the enemy," it said. Afghan officials refer to the Taliban and other militants as "the enemy."

Militants usually plant mines and other roadside bombs to target foreign and Afghan troops, but most of the victims in such attacks have been civilians.

In Uruzgan's Dihrawud district, Taliban militants beheaded a 60-year-old woman and her grandson on Wednesday, said provincial police chief, Juma Gul Himat. The militants accused the woman of spying for government and NATO forces.

The incidents follow a roadside blast Wednesday on a NATO convoy in eastern Afghanistan that killed two soldiers and wounded three others, the alliance said in a statement.

NATO did not disclose the nationalities of the dead and wounded or the location of the attack. However, most of the NATO troops in the east are American.
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[MarkOttawa]

Dutch pound Taliban positions
The Australian, Dec. 11
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22903147-2703,00.html

DUTCH heavy artillery has been used to pound suspected Taliban positions as round-the-clock military operations continue without to root out insurgents operating in mountains close to this strategic base in Oruzgan province jointly manned by an Australian task force.

A brief siren wail was the only warning Sunday afternoon that a huge 155 millimetre self-propelled gun was about to fire.

Over the course of an hour the German-built Panzerhaubitze 155mm self-propelled howitzer, short-listed for procurement by the Australian Defence Force [emphasis added], fired six rounds of highly specialised extended range ammunition capable of hitting targets with pinpoint precision 40km away.

The thunderclap detonations sent shock waves through Camp Holland the name given to this predominately Dutch base that is shared by 400 Australian Army engineers and a 300-strong special forces task group.

Details of the fire support mission were not given but followed a day of intense air activity over Tarin Kowt involving Dutch Apache helicopter gun ships and Blackhawk transport helicopters [emphasis added--copters must be US as Dutch have CH-47s].

Australian troops are also heavily involved clearing Taliban extremists from the strategic Baluchi Pass in the Chora valley north east of Tarin Kowt.

It was in this area that army trooper David Pearce and Special Forces commando Private Luke Worsley were killed in action.

Concerns have been raised that the NATO-backed International Assistance Security Force-ISAF of which Australia is a major member is spread too thinly especially in violence-racked Oruzgan the birthplace of Taliban spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.

The Dutch military who have administrative control of Tarin Kowt work closely with the Australian soldiers.

Their six F16 fighter bombers based at Kandahar [emphasis added], south of here, are ready to provide close air support and have already been used to assist New Zealand special forces during highly secretive missions.

Earlier this year coalition air support was so close to an Australian military convoy the exploding precision guided munitions temporarily knocked out radio communications in the Bushmaster and light armoured fighting vehicles (ASLAVs).

Using only his first name for security purposes a senior Dutch air force commander Major Richard said his biggest worry during high-risk close support missions was causing harm to innocent Afghan civilians...

Policing a whirlwind [long article]
The Economist, Dec. 13
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10286219

...
This shura, or tribal council, was the culmination of Operation Attal, designed to clear the Taliban from three districts in Paktika, a troubled province bordering Pakistan. Three months earlier Charbaran's district centre—a government office-cum-police station—had been torched by the Taliban and the area was said to be a training ground for the insurgents. Now it has been rebuilt with stout sandbagged fortifications and artillery for protection.

In a bloody year that has seen more Western soldiers killed than at any time since they toppled the Taliban in 2001, Operation Attal, which lasted three weeks, was uneventful. Hardly a shot was fired as the Taliban melted away before thousands of Afghan and American soldiers. But for the Americans success these days is measured less by the number of Taliban killed, and more by the number of Afghans who overcome their loyalty to the Taliban, or fear of them, to attend such a meeting. The Americans had been hoping for 200 guests; about 1,500 people came. It was billed as an Afghan reconciliation between local tribes and the central government. The choreography, however, was all American: American soldiers rebuilt the district centre, erected the tents, bulldozed new roads, brought the dignitaries by helicopter and even supplied a portrait of President Hamid Karzai...

Operation Attal was remarkable for another reason. It was the first big operation planned and executed by the Afghan National Army, with more than 5,000 Afghan soldiers supported by about 400 Americans [emphasis added] from the 1-503rd airborne infantry regiment. In the operations centre near Gardez, American officers sat in the second row, behind Afghan staff officers.

It was Afghan forces who searched homes while the Americans covered their backs. And behind the front-line troops followed lorry-loads of humanitarian supplies. The Americans delivered carpets and sound systems for the mosques; Korans, food, clothes and blankets against the onset of winter; hand-cranked radios to hear government broadcasts; doctors and veterinary surgeons. None of this is guaranteed to win support, but it helps...

The Taliban can bomb, ambush and intimidate, but cannot conquer territory held by Western forces. The question is whether they can drain NATO's will to stay on. As one senior Western diplomat admits: “Failure is an option.”

Non-kinetic energy

The mistakes of the past six years of fighting in Afghanistan—principally the Americans' decision to have only a “light footprint” and the costly diversion into Iraq—have changed the mindset of American military commanders. They now regard “kinetic” actions (ie, fighting) as a distraction, a preliminary “shaping” operation at best. “The decisive operation is non-kinetic,” says Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of Task Force Fury, responsible for six south-eastern provinces. His focus is training Afghan forces, building roads, schools and clinics and, above all, getting the government to “start addressing the needs of the people”...

Senior British officers, who until recently regarded themselves as experts in counter-insurgency, marvel at the speed with which the American army is learning imperial policing. “It is a case of the son surpassing the father,” says one British officer. Similar changes are taking place in the British-controlled province of Helmand. Afghan troops have been at the fore of a joint operation with British and American forces that retook Musa Qala, the only sizeable town controlled by the Taliban, on December 11th.

The operation, which involved the defection of one Taliban commander, will cheer the British after a year of intense but inconclusive fighting. Yet the army now finds itself pretty much back to where it was in 2006: parcelled out across Helmand's districts, with exposed supply lines. The British may have more soldiers, and their outpost may be better protected. But the question is whether Afghan forces are able to hold the ground on their own. One important objective in Helmand has been to reopen the road leading to the Kajaki hydroelectric plant to bring up a new turbine and increase the electricity supply, but that is still a distant prospect.

In the neighbouring province of Kandahar, Canadian forces have also struggled time and again to recapture the same ground. Fighting the Taliban, they quip, is the military equivalent of “mowing the lawn”. In contrast with the American sector farther east, where troops are fighting right up to the border with Pakistan, the British and Canadians do not have enough forces to secure their section of the frontier, and have abandoned a large swathe of the south to the Taliban [emphasis added].

This year has seen a mini-surge of Western forces, notably from America, Britain, Poland and Denmark [emphasis added]. Germany and the Netherlands have decided to stay in Afghanistan, averting a NATO split. There have been successes too, notably the killing of scores of insurgent commanders. According to the UN, this has forced the Taliban to appoint Pakistanis to replace some of them. But the Taliban have an inexhaustible supply of recruits, and a haven in Pakistan in which to organise. They are reinforced by foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda, including Chechens, Uzbeks and Turks, who are highly motivated and surprisingly well equipped. As the Taliban have been pressed in one area, they have moved to cause mayhem elsewhere.

The Western effort is fragmented [emphasis added]. Even close military allies such as Britain and America have had rows about tactics. There are two separate but overlapping commands, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and America's Combined Joint Task Force 82. Most training is conducted by another American command. However, co-ordination has improved with the appointment of an American, General Dan McNeill, to head ISAF. The old distinction between “stabilisation”, done by NATO, and “counter-terrorism”, done by America, is blurring.

On the ground, though, each contingent is fighting its own separate war and promoting its separate vision of reconstruction. The fact that most countries rotate their units every six months or so makes continuity difficult. Americans currently serve 15-month tours, a consequence of the acute overstretch of the American army, but it means that commanders have time to learn and adapt.

The state of state-building

The problem in Afghanistan is not so much the resurgence of the Taliban, but the weakness of the Afghan government. The economy has grown briskly in recent years, but this has only moved Afghanistan from being crushingly poor to extremely poor. Six million children are now in school, but 2m still get no education...

Like the Greeks, the British and the Soviets before them, America and its allies are discovering the old adage that Afghanistan is easy to invade, but difficult to control. Can they defy history? Perhaps, but only if they accept that a military victory is not possible and that they will have to stay for a long time.

Western countries still enjoy an important asset: the support of ordinary Afghans who have no desire to return to the harshness of Taliban rule or to the civil wars of the past. Recent polls (see chart) show that Afghans are much more strongly in favour of foreign forces than Iraqis. However, growing insecurity and civilian casualties in air raids are eroding the West's position, especially in the south.

Western opinion is just as important. Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister, was right to announce on December 12th his plan for “Afghanisation” of the military campaign, gradually focusing more on mentoring and training Afghan forces and economic development. He said an effort would be made both locally to recruit armed village guards and encourage Taliban to give up their weapons, and regionally to improve co-operation.

Given the shortage of Western troops, Afghanistan's best hope lies in expanding and improving its own forces. Afghan soldiers are respected both as symbols of the nation and as tough fighters; but the Afghan army, which will grow to 70,000 next year, needs to be greatly increased [emphasis added]. For years it will need to be partnered with Western units able to provide close air support, transport and medical evacuations. It makes sense to give ISAF more of an Afghan complexion, with plans to appoint an Afghan general to help co-ordinate operations. The Afghan police will need even more money and training. Once again it is America that has taken on the main burden of training the police, while Europe's effort has been half-hearted.

Above all the Afghan government—particularly in the provinces and districts—needs to be made more effective. Mr Karzai complains that he gets too much contradictory advice from the 40-odd allies in ISAF. The appointment of a strong international civil co-ordinator to energise the reconstruction effort, and even to give political direction for the military campaign, is long overdue [emphasis added].

Paddy Ashdown, the British politician and former soldier who served as the international overseer of Bosnia, is the leading candidate to become the new UN chief. He should also be “double-hatted” as the NATO civilian representative (and perhaps also as the European envoy). Some worry that such a “super-envoy” would either undermine the authority of Mr Karzai, or be ineffective because of American predominance. There are risks in a foreigner meddling in Afghanistan's intricate tribal power game. But the bigger risk is to leave Afghanistan violently adrift.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND DEC. 14

 

[MarkOttawa]

Exclusive: Eyewitness Account of Huge Taliban Defeat
ABC News Blog, December 13
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/12/exclusive-eyewi.html

Afghanistan's government flag was raised Wednesday on what had been one of the biggest strongholds of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and a leading world center of heroin production.

The town of about 45,000 people was secured at about 9:30 a.m. as Afghan troops, steered by British soldiers and U.S. Green Berets, drove out remnants of the Taliban resistance from Musa Qala in the opium poppy region of northern Helmand.

As the only journalist to join NATO forces entering the town, I found it a ghost town abandoned by both the Taliban and its residents at the end of an eight-day coalition operation. The offensive was one of NATO's biggest in the country since Operation Anaconda in 2002.

Embedded with a team of British troops and a detachment/"A–team" of U.S. special forces, I watched the Taliban being pounded these last few days with overwhelming force -- vapor trails circled in the clear blue sky over the Helmand desert as B1 and B52 bombers backed by A10 tank busters, F16s, Apache helicopters and Specter gunships were used to kill hundreds of Taliban fighters.

The operation was launched last Tuesday with an attack across the Helmand River by British Royal Marine commandos, a thrust from the west by light armor of the U.K. Household Cavalry Regiment; all this, however, was a feint for the main airborne landing from the north of a battalion of soldiers of Task Force Fury from the 82nd Airborne.

Faced with a full brigade of NATO forces, a brigade of Afghan government fighters and the defection of a key Taliban commander, the Taliban chose not to flee at first but to fight a desperate battle.

I joined one feint attack of Afghan soldiers last Friday that came under fierce Taliban fire in a village on the outskirts of Musa Qala -- AK47s and heavy machine gun fire opened up on us as we advanced across open ground. The British and Afghans counterattacked backed by U.S. special forces who opened up with 50-caliber fire and by calling three F16 strikes and a B1 bomber strike.

On Sunday, as the 82nd Airborne advanced to take positions north, east and south of the town,  I watched the sky being lit with large explosions from heavy ordnance dropped from the air to support the U.S. advance.

U.S. forces believe the Taliban were backed by a large strength of foreign fighters, including those linked to al Qaeda. Soldiers who I accompanied found one dead fighter whose notebook revealed he was from Pakistan.

While hundreds of Taliban are believed to have been killed, two British soldiers and one American soldier lost their lives. All the deaths, however, resulted from vehicles striking mines left not, it is believed, by the Taliban but by Soviet forces in the 1980s.

On Monday, after days of fierce fighting -- more ferocious than NATO commanders had expected -- the Taliban called it quits and fled the town. Afghan troops entered the town on Tuesday and completed their occupation on Wednesday after only token further resistance.

NATO forces now hope to launch a program of reconstruction that will persuade the local population to turn their backs on the Taliban...

Gates shifts tactics with NATO allies
AP, Dec. 14
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071214/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/gates_afghanistan_21

EDINBURGH, Scotland - The Bush administration has decided to tone down its appeals to NATO allies for more troops and other aid in the fight against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.
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After two days of talks here with his counterparts from Britain, Canada and five other NATO countries whose troops are doing the bulk of the fighting in Afghanistan's violent south, Gates said he would continue making the case for greater allied military assistance.

But he said he would be doing it differently, keeping in mind the "political realities" faced by some European governments whose people may see less reason to intervene in Afghanistan.

"We're going to try to look at this more creatively than perhaps we have done in the past when we basically have just been hammering on (allied governments) to provide more," Gates said in a post-meeting interview with a small group of reporters traveling with him from Washington.

He said there would be "brainstorming" for ideas on how to enable some NATO allies to contribute more. He cited, as an example, the possibility that an ally that has helicopters but insufficient resources to outfit them for the harsh environment of Afghanistan might get the money from another NATO country to upgrade the aircraft.

Gates has been pressing for months — without success so far — to get 16 more helicopters into southern Afghanistan to relieve a U.S. helicopter unit that will be leaving soon [emphasis added].

Gates also has pressed to fill other needs, including 3,500 NATO trainers for the Afghan police as well as a minimum of three battalions of ground troops [emphasis added]. He said those gaps were discussed in Edinburgh but the countries represented here were not asked to contribute more, since they already are bearing the brunt of the military load, along with the United States...

Asked whether the Bush administration was considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, in the event that the shortfalls are not bridged by NATO allies, Gates replied, "Not in the short term."

Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, who joined Gates at the conference, told reporters afterward that he and his counterparts agreed that the non-military part of the effort to stabilize Afghanistan also needs to be re-energized and improved.

"There was a strong sense that the civilian side, run by all of our governments and by the U.N., needs now to be elevated and expanded and be made as strategically purposeful as what we see on the military side [emphasis added]," Burns said.

Gates said the Edinburgh talks produced a consensus on the need to fashion an "integrated plan," or strategic vision, for what needs to be achieved in Afghanistan within the next three to five years as well as specifics on how those things can be accomplished.

He said the United States would take the lead in developing this plan, which he hoped would be ready for endorsement by President Bush and the leaders of the other NATO governments at a summit meeting scheduled to be held in Bucharest, Romania, in early April...

Asked what he foresaw as the state of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan five years from now, Gates said he expected it would extend beyond that, but in smaller numbers than today [emphasis added].

Gates also offered unusually detailed comments about an effort being pursued by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to split some Taliban leaders off from the radical organization and reconcile them with the central government. He said this was not a U.S. military effort, but he spoke of the program in terms that suggested at least an American advisory role.

"There has been an interest in seeing if we can strengthen our interactions at the provincial and local levels," while still working mainly with the central government, he said.

"The worry that we have and the care that we would have to take that we have not faced in Iraq is, we don't want to re-empower warlords and we don't want to create independent militias," he added. He then emphasized that this was a Karzai effort and that the Afghan president is setting limits such as barring al-Qaida members from the reconciliation move.

"What we are interested in is: Can we detach local areas and perhaps even some Taliban leaders from the insurgency and get them to reconcile with the government?" [emphasis added] he said.

NATO-led countries to boost Afghan reconstruction
Reuters, Dec. 14
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAL1490834320071214?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Countries with troops deployed in southern Afghanistan agreed on Friday on the need to build on military gains by boosting reconstruction and improving the lives of Afghans.

Following an eight-nation meeting, hosted by Britain's Defence Secretary Des Browne, top U.S. officials were upbeat about recent successes, including the recapture of Musa Qala from the Taliban, but said progress had to be broadened...

He [Gates] hoped that within five years the Afghan army, which took the lead in the Musa Qala operation but still required heavy backing from British and American troops and helicopters, would be able to do the lion's share of the work [emphasis added].

"I think it's not an unrealistic hope," he said, adding that the Taliban couldn't win militarily, as Musa Qala had shown.

"The key is ... how do we come in behind that with the kind of civilian support, police support that, once we've driven them out, keeps them out [emphasis added]," he said...

Friday's meeting, which drew together the Netherlands, Canada, Estonia, Romania, Denmark and Australia as well as Britain and the United States, was designed to look at ways of sharing the burden in Afghanistan, where around 40,000 troops operate under the leadership of NATO...

Browne, who recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan, appeared less buoyed by the talks, but was still pleased the discussion had drawn agreement on the need to share burdens.

"Could other countries be doing more? Could we do with more? Of course we could," Browne told reporters.

"But...I'm a politician and I'm a realist and I understand the dynamics of alliances that are made up of countries with different political make-ups and governments of different types.

"Some of the governments are there as minority governments [emphasis added] -- they have political will but not the political process."

Canada said that while some within the alliance might not be able to provide troops, they could help out in other ways.

"There are certain things that could be done that may be of a less military nature but would free up (others)... enabling them to continue in their efforts without some of the stress and strain," Defence Minister Peter MacKay told reporters [emphasis added]...

NATO chief says group will stay in Afghanistan
AP, Dec. 14
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/12/14/pf-4723781.html

TOKYO - There are signs of improvement in Afghanistan but NATO will not pull its troops out of the country anytime soon, the organization's leader said Friday.

However, he denied NATO is looking to become an international police group. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said while the situation remains complex in Afghanistan, improvements are being made. "I assure you that reconstruction and development is going on," de Hoop Scheffer said at a news conference.

"Let's not see the picture totally blur by the Taliban making roadside bombs."

He added, however, a withdrawal from Afghanistan in the near future is out of the question.

"Afghanistan is not a commitment that you enter into for two or three years," he said.

"Developing that nation will take a generation, or generations. [emphasis added]"..

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found December 15, 2007

Kandahar: Inside and out
TheStar.com December 15, 2007 Mitch Potter TORONTO STAR
Article Link

One year after his last tour in this embattled land shared by wary Canadians and war-weary Afghans, the Star's Mitch Potter returns to find that things have become better . . . and worse

KANDAHAR – A Canadian soldier throws a dubious, better-you-than-me glance as he opens the fortified gate allowing passage into the tumultuous beyond that is Kandahar city.

Out there, the prize of the entire Afghan mission still waits to be claimed. And if you are wondering whether it is better or worse than this time last year, the answer, most vexingly, is yes. Kandahar is better – and worse – than it was.

Westerners don't often exit the Canadian provincial reconstruction team headquarters, but when they do, the journey usually involves armoured convoys rather than simply walking out the door, as the Toronto Star is doing today.

On the other side, two hours late, our Afghan interpreter is waiting in a beat-up civilian vehicle, smiling sheepishly. He lost track of the time during midday prayers. It must have been God's will, he suggests with a wink.

In the no man's land between these two solitudes, we encounter a brazen young Afghan boy, cute as a button, who sings a mantra of his only English words: "Hi! Shocolate. Gum. Candy ... Canada!" And a much older Afghan man, a greybeard with a diseased eye, who is treading dangerous close to the armed Canadian gatekeepers in the desperate hope that someone – anyone – with financial means will assist his medical predicament.

On this day, there is no chocolate for the youngster, no doctor for the elder. Instead, the Canadian soldiers at the gate have been busy working hand-held metal detectors on the steady parade of Afghan contractors who comprise the majority of the traffic into the compound. They are here for money.

"We try to stay friendly with the locals – but within limits. Some days, we give the kids candy; some days, they bombard us with stones," says one of the soldiers, who asked that his name not be published.

"The worst is when they decide to pick on the local dogs. This place is a living hell for dogs. If you are an animal in Afghanistan and you don't have enough meat on your bones to be food, you are screwed. We've had a lot of dogs crawl through our gates just to die after they've been attacked with stones. It's twisted."

This is our second week wandering the city unembedded and our anxiety level has fallen accordingly. Kandahar today is not Saigon before the fall; it is not even Baghdad before the surge. The general mood of the city has lifted somewhat in recent months, if only because the scourge of suicide attacks lately has shifted to the capital Kabul, a day's drive away, giving Kandahar something of a respite.
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CIDA talks up Afghan progress; dismisses dire predictions and warnings.
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OTTAWA - Almost two years of virtual silence from the Canadian International Development Agency on what it has seen and done in Afghanistan ended Friday as three returning officials painted an optimistic picture of Kandahar's future.

Helene Kadi, Kevin Rex and Diana Youdell all served at either the provincial reconstruction base, Kandahar Airfield or the Canadian embassy in Kabul, helping direct millions of dollars in aid toward reconstruction projects and programs in the war-torn country.

The slow pace of Canada's aid effort has been fodder for critics both at home and abroad, including the European-based Senlis Council, which has called for the federal development agency to be replaced by a special envoy in Kandahar to get things moving.

The council's regular, often grim assessment is a source of irritation for Ottawa-based bureaucrats and the governing Conservatives, who insist that progress is being made toward improving the lives of Afghans.

"We fundamentally disagree with what's in the Senlis reports," said Rex, who spent time as a development officer to Canadian military commanders at Kandahar Airfield.
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Rocket attack kills five in Afghanistan
Updated Sat. Dec. 15 2007 7:06 AM ET The Associated Press
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KABUL, Afghanistan -- A rocket landed in a crowd near Kabul's police headquarters Saturday, and a truck full of rockets exploded nearby moments later, killing at least five people. Officials say at least five others were wounded.

Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the truck contained five 107 mm rockets that had been rigged explode, but only two detonated.

Moments earlier, a rocket that was fired - apparently by remote control - toward the police station, landed in a crowd of civilians.

Najib Nekzad, a press officer for the Ministry of Interior said five civilians were killed and five wounded, including two police.

He also said the attacker smuggled the rocket launcher and rockets into the city by hiding them under a pile of hay.
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Amputee spreading his can-do attitude
By KEVIN CRUSH, SUN MEDIA
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Ever since Master Cpl. Paul Franklin lost both his legs in Afghanistan, he's been looking for a physical activity he can do.

He's got a bike. He's tried wheelchair rugby. And now, he'll try snowboarding.

READY TO HIT THE SLOPES

"I looked online and no one really snowboards like that. I don't know if that's because it's a bad idea or because no one's thought of it. I'm going to find out whether it was a bad idea or not," Franklin laughed following a press conference yesterday.

In the hopes of helping other amputees get involved in physical activity or sports, Franklin has launched Freedom Through Sport, a partnership between his own Franklin Foundation, the Canadian Forces, the Glenrose Rehabilitation Centre amputee clinic and the University of Alberta's Steadward Centre.

The partnership will help bring health care professionals together to help amputees. That type of integration is sorely lacking in Canada, says Donna Goodwin, executive director of the Steadward Centre.

She explained that the integration means there can now be a smoother transition for people going straight from rehabilitation into the community.
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Afghanistan mission won't end soon: NATO
Updated Fri. Dec. 14 2007 8:10 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
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NATO members with troops fighting in southern Afghanistan concluded a conference Friday with the announcement that more needs to be done if that country is ever to be made secure.

Representatives from eight countries with troops fighting in Afghanistan wrapped up two-day talks in Scotland where they sought to strengthen NATO's role in stabilizing Afghanistan.

Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay said that NATO troops are protecting the Canadian values of democracy, the rule of law and protection of human rights.

MacKay was joined at the conference by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and met with representatives from Britain, the United States, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, Romania and Estonia.

NATO's presence in Afghanistan is now into its sixth year and has proved more difficult than most countries expected.
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[geo]

No troops? Help any way: MacKay
Afghanistan can use critically needed equipment, defence minister says

PETER O’NEIL CANWEST NEWS SERVICE

AGENCE FRANCE- PRESSE CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT

Countries too timid to send troops to Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas are being pressured to come up with alternative ways to help, such as providing critically needed equipment, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said yesterday.

But MacKay said Canada and other NATO allies active in the dangerous south, such as the Americans, the British and the Dutch, won’t give up efforts to convince countries like France and Germany to share more of the burden.

There’s a “realization that while we’re willing to accept that it may be prohibitive for some in the alliance to contribute troops, it doesn’t prohibit, in our view, other contributions,” MacKay said during a conference call with media after yesterday’s meeting in Scotland with ministers representing countries active in the dangerous south.

MacKay said countries could help with equipment maintenance, road construction or such hardware contributions as helicopters, transport aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles used for tracking Taliban activities.

MacKay said these contributions could help limit the most dangerous threat to Canadian soldiers – roadside improvised explosive devices.

Still, Canada and its partners will continue lobbying efforts to get troop commitments from countries fearful of a political backlash if they send their troops to areas where there is an increased likelihood of casualties, MacKay said.

“We haven’t ruled out future contributions from France, Germany or any countries for that matter,” he said.

MacKay and Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier attended the gathering, along with counterparts from the U.S., Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, Romania and Estonia.

Bernier said ministers at the meeting didn’t have a problem with the Canadian government’s decision to appoint an independent panel, headed by former Liberal foreign minister John Manley, and hold a parliamentary debate on the future of Canada’s mission after the current commitment lapses in February 2009. In Kabul today, a car bomb outside the headquarters of the Kabul police killed five civilians and wounded several more people, Afghanistan’s interior ministry said.

“Five civilians have been killed and two police have been wounded. Some civilians have been wounded too, but we don’t have a figure,” an interior ministry spokesperson said.

A witness told AFP that one of the dead was a man who had been pushing a cart in the area.

The extremist Taliban movement said it carried out the attack in a busy part of the centre of the Afghan capital.

http://digital.montrealgazette.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

 

[GAP]

Articles found December 16, 2007

Kicking out the Taliban
Huge Pearl Harbor Day air assault on Afghanistan
Posted: December 10, 2007 11:29 a.m. Eastern Matt Sanchez
Article Link

Editor's note: Reporter Matt Sanchez, currently embedding with military units throughout both Iraq and Afghanistan, has been providing WND readers with a glimpse into the war on terror most Americans have never seen.

KANDAHAR AIRBASE, Afghanistan –American soldiers from Task Force 1-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, using Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters, just participated in one of the largest air assaults in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

It was Dec. 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and these U.S. infantrymen were taking part in Operation Mar Karadad, their particular contribution to the fight being an air assault on the Taliban-dominated district of Musa Qala in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

Although the Musa Qala area of operations belongs to British forces stationed nearby in the Bastian Forward Operating Base, Task Force 1-508th – nicknamed the Red Devils, and who fight under the motto "Fury from the Sky" – launched its attack from the Canadian-controlled Kandahar Air Field, or KAF, in the neighboring province of Kandahar.
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Bomb Kills 2 Afghan Civilians
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A roadside bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan killed two Afghan civilians and wounded five others Sunday, while a clash in the south left four Taliban dead, officials said.

The explosion happened in Yaqoubi district in eastern Khost province, said Wazir Pacha, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.

Pacha accused the Taliban of carrying out the attack.

Militants often use roadside and suicide bomb attacks against Afghan and foreign troops in the country. Most victims of such attacks have been civilians
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More soldiers choosing civilian life
By KEVIN CRUSH, SUN MEDIA
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Canada's mission in Afghanistan could be driving some soldiers out of the military, says a military analyst.

The University of Calgary's Ron Huebert suspects one of the reasons for the increase is that combat tours in Afghanistan are making some troops rethink their military careers.

"There's this ongoing issue in terms of the fact that the rotation rate of the land forces to meet the requirements in Afghanistan have been quite substantial," says the associate director of the university's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.

In October, Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie told reporters that in 2003, 8% of soldiers left the military, the attrition rate is now around 12%. That figure includes all discharges, including retirements and medical dispensations. More detailed information wasn't made available by the Canadian Forces.

Constant tours of duty could be stressful for families, said Huebert, causing many soldiers to choose the civilian life.

Some older soldiers may also not be willing to head into combat, he suggested.
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Canadians battle Afghan police corruption, shortages
  Allison Lampert CanWest News Service Saturday, December 15, 2007
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HOWZ-E-MADAD, Afghanistan -- Standing in full body armour outside his rural police outpost, Warrant Officer Guevens Guimont barked at his group of Afghan recruits.

"Quiet now," Guimont, 40, said through an interpreter, eager to get the morning patrol underway.

"We're going to move in a V-formation," he said, pointing toward the dusty road the group must check for hidden improvised explosive devices.

Guimont's explanations were suddenly interrupted by cries of his nickname, "Gimmy!"  Grinning broadly, the station's youngest Afghan police officer, Hayat Ullah, ran over to the group, dust flying all over his black, open-heeled dress shoes.

Hayat, 16, whom the Canadians at this police substation fondly call "T-boy,"  was barechested under his baggy green jacket. Without his usual dark-green police cap, Hayat's unkempt, henna-tinted black hair gleamed in the strong Kandahar sun.
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Canadian troops dish out goodwill to disabled Kandaharis in spirit of Eid
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Widowed 10 years ago after her civilian husband became an unsuspecting victim in the war between the Russians and mujahedeen, Sayed Bibi was left alone to raise her family of seven.

It's a fate not uncommon for many women in Afghanistan, given its 30-year history of war, but Bibi was dealt an added blow in the form of two sick sons - one crippled and left unable to speak from polio and another stricken with mental illness.

Most of her time is spent taking care of her children, which has made it difficult for her to work and she typically resorts to begging to find money for groceries.

The doting mother, who is constantly stroking and consoling her wheelchair-bound 25-year-old son Rohola, is grateful for whatever she can get.

On Saturday, that was a 50-kilogram bag of flour, two-kilogram bag of sugar and a three-litre container of oil.

For hundreds of poverty-stricken and disabled Kandahar residents like Bibi, Eid cam early this year.
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S Korean troops end mission in Afghanistan 
www.chinaview.cn  2007-12-14 22:50:06   
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    SEOUL, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- South Korea completed the withdrawal of its military troops from Afghanistan on Friday, wrapping up the 70-month-long mission in the Asian country, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

    The Defense Ministry held a ceremony to welcome the Dasan and Dongui units returning from Afghanistan at Seoul Airbase in Seongnam, south of Seoul. About 800 family members and military officials, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Park Heung-ryul, attended the ceremony.

    The JCS announced later that the two units were formally disbanded later in the day.

    South Korea has dispatched military troops to Afghanistan since 2002 at the request of the United States. The Dongui Medical Unit with about 60 medic provided humanitarian and medical aid to local residents, while 150 engineers from the Dasan Engineering Unit supported construction work in Afghanistan.

    In August, the South Korean government promised to withdraw all its military troops by the end of this year in exchange for the release of 22 South Korean hostages held by the Taliban militants.     
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[GAP]

Articles found December 17, 2007

Pakistani insurgents join forces on Afghan border
Unity deal bodes ill for Canadian troops
SAEED SHAH Special to The Globe and Mail December 17, 2007
Article Link

ISLAMABAD -- Militant groups in Pakistan's wild northwest region have come together in a single organization for the first time, threatening to step up operations against the Pakistan army and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The insurgents have named Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal chief from the Waziristan area, which borders Afghanistan, as their chief, or Emir.

Mr. Mehsud, a charismatic figure in his early 30s with a fearsome reputation, took more than 200 Pakistani soldiers prisoner this year. They were only let go after authorities agreed to release some Taliban prisoners. He is also blamed for organizing a series of suicide-bomb attacks.

The Tehrik Taliban-i-Pakistan was launched after a meeting of 40 Taliban leaders in Waziristan. They came not only from the semi-autonomous tribal belt, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area, which runs along the Afghan border, but from several "settled" areas of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, including Swat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan.
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Family, food carry soldier's heart home
TheStar.com - December 17, 2007 Mitch Potter Toronto Star
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KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – Christmas for Marie-Christine Alamy used to mean a massive family gathering in Laval, Que., a party so crowded the cousins sat shoulder to shoulder all the way to the top of the stairs.

This year it will probably mean another patrol through Panjwaii Bazaar, where Afghan women in burqas point and stare, amazed that behind all that body armour and fatigues is a female Canadian platoon leader shouting orders to the 40 men at her command.

Lieut. Alamy, 25, has been in the thick of such surreal cultural contact since she arrived in July with the Valcartier-based Royal 22nd Regiment.

So far, the deployment has involved spending "97 per cent of my time at the Forward Operating Base and maybe 3 per cent at KAF (Kandahar Airfield).

"We just come back for a quick rest and a shower. A very, very long shower. And then we go back out there," she says.

There was one memorable vacation last month, when she and her fellow soldier-fiancé Francis Belanger, both 25, flew not home but to the Seychelles, to tie the knot.

Now the newlyweds will pass Christmas in Kandahar as husband and wife – but not together. They are deployed at separate locations, with Taliban in between.

Her contact with Afghans has gone both ways, from warm dialogue to hot combat. There have been no deaths in her unit, but three of the combat injuries resulted in evacuation to Canada. Alamy is expecting reinforcements to finish the tour.

"I was the little girl who preferred martial arts to dancing. My father was in the militia, and they used to find me in the garage playing with his equipment," she says.
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Canadian troops face bigger bombs and more sophisticated Taliban foe in 2008
The Canadian Press Published Monday December 17th, 2007 Appeared on page A6
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OTTAWA - The Taliban have become more sophisticated in the way they plant roadside bombs in Afghanistan, importing lethal tactics already tested and proven on bloodied U.S. forces in Iraq, says Canada's chief of defence staff.

But Gen. Rick Hillier insists that, although insurgents have become more cagey and adept, Canadian troops are staying a step ahead of the improvised explosives and booby traps that litter the countryside.

"The Taliban are not 10-foot-tall warriors, but at the same time they are not to be dismissed lightly," Hillier said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

The bombs have grown steadily bigger since Canadian troops first deployed to the Kandahar area for their latest Afghan assignment nearly two years ago.

The army's hardy, troop-transporting light armoured vehicles were initially a source of frustration for lightly armed insurgents, whose machine-gun bullets and rocket-propelled grenades pinged off the reinforced steel skins of the LAV IIIs.
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Dozens of insurgents killed in Afghan operation, officials say
Last Updated: Sunday, December 16, 2007 | 7:24 PM ET CBC News
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Forty-one insurgents were killed in what Canadian forces are hailing as a successful military operation in the volatile Zhari district of southern Afghanistan.

Backed by NATO air power, Canadian, British and Afghan troops took part in Operation Tereh Toora, which means Operation Sharp Sword, military officials said.

The soldiers also uncovered a large weapons cache.

Few details were being provided but NATO officials said they did not believe any coalition forces suffered casualties.
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Soldier to be charged over accidental Afghanistan shooting
Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 3:51PM Monday December 17, 2007 By Sophie Hazelhurst, of NZPA.
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A New Zealand soldier, who shot himself and a colleague when his rifle accidentally discharged in Afghanistan in October, will face charges over the incident, the Defence Force has confirmed.

The soldier was shot in the leg, while a second soldier was hit in the arm and side when the gun went off inside the Humvee vehicle they were travelling in.

Both soldiers are in New Zealand, one back doing light duties and the other still recovering.

Major-General Rhys Jones, commander joint forces New Zealand, today confirmed the discharge had not been a mechanical failure and said the man would be charged over failing to meet safety procedures.

It was not yet decided exactly what charge or charges he would face, and the inquiry into the incident was continuing, he said.

If the soldier was found to be at fault, he would face a fine and disciplinary measures.

Major Gen Jones was speaking at a briefing on troops posted overseas today, outlining activities and operations they were involved in.
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[GAP]

Articles found December 18, 2007

Christmas packages flood Kandahar; boost morale among Canadian troops
Article Link

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - With Christmas just a week away, Canadian Forces postal workers at Kandahar Airfield have their hands full.

In the last two weeks alone, they've received some 43,000 kilograms worth of letters and packages for the troops. That's nearly a third of the total volume of mail received since August when the current batch of soldiers first arrived in Afghanistan.

Shipments of mail usually come in every two days only because there's not enough flights to get it here sooner.

Master Cpl. Carlo Gagnon says quickly delivering the mail to the troops is important - and many of them are stationed at remote forward operating bases and police substations quite a ways away.
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Canadian Forces Video Montage
Monday, December 17, 2007
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During 2006 Scott Kesterton emebed with Canadian troops in Afhganistan. Kesterton ended up spending a whole year embedded with mostly American troops and is soon to release a documentary called AtWar. Some of this footage of the Canadian Soldiers fighting the Taliban is included in the documentary.

During an interview in August 2006 Kesteron, a former American Soldier from Oregon, had this to say about his experience embedded with Canadian Soldiers:

"What has resulted is a bonding of U.S. and Canadian forces never before seen. They are not just our neighbour to the north; they have proven themselves to be fighters and soldiers worthy of the highest honours that the U.S. Army offers its own...

"On our first morning of being attacked, I found myself holding back tears as I filmed Canadians fighting a fight that began on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001. In interviews that followed, I discovered the depth of commitment that these soldiers held in their hearts, as they expressed their belief in purpose and shared their emotions, at times with tears. Two countries, each proud of their roots and history, unified across the border that distinguishes each of us ...

"From patrols to attacks, and an operational tempo that pushed us all to the point of exhaustion, and even the loss of one of my cameras following a fire fight, the Canadian soldiers and I became close friends, bridging into that place that only soldiers know... a band of brothers."
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A victory, but little to cheer
Dec 17th 2007 | KABUL From Economist.com
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Afghanistan's bleak north-south divide

AP
THE confrontation probably marked the end the current fighting season. As some 5,000 NATO and Afghan soldiers last week massed around Musa Qala, a town in southern Afghanistan’s troubled Helmand province, its Taliban defenders held on for four days before their resistance melted. The local fighters then slipped away into nearby hills, making the unconvincing claim that their retreat was out of concern for the safety of the civilian population.

The recapture of a town that was previously controlled by Western troops is welcome, but it represents a limited triumph for the outsiders as winter freezes much of the country quiet. The year has seen neither the Taliban nor outside troops gain telling advantage. NATO has won all the battles and has managed to preserve the support of most Afghans: if opinion polls can be believed Afghans still support an international military presence in their country (one published by the BBC this month suggested that 71% of Afghans want American forces to stay). Yet overall levels of Taliban violence continue to rise across southern and eastern Afghanistan. Worse, they have spread significantly into the border areas of Pakistan.
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Afstan: How the Aussies talk about certain NATO members
Monday, December 17, 2007
Article Link
The Ottawa Citizen's David ********, in his new blog, is bluntly critical of how the government has been dealing with NATO allies:

HARPER GOVERNMENT’S ‘SHAME GAME’ ON NATO ALLIES BACKFIRES...

Mr. MacKay has told reporters the Canadian government accepts that it may be “prohibitive for some in the alliance to contribute troops” so Canada is going to ask for other types of contributions instead.

His comments signal an abrupt change of course. For more than a year Mr. MacKay and other government officials have been pushing NATO allies to cough up more combat troops to help ease the load in Kandahar province.

The real question, however, is why has Canada now changed that position?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that the ‘Shame Game’ Mr. MacKay and others in government have been playing with Canada’s NATO allies has backfired?

Here are the behind-the-scenes details as they were explained to me by NATO officers. This year and last year the Harper government went into overtime crapping on its NATO allies for not providing additional soldiers to the Afghan mission. Gordon O’Connor, Mr. MacKay and Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier were high profile in the media dumping on various countries for not pulling their weight.

It is true that some in the alliance were shunning combat, but publicly slamming your allies is not how diplomacy works.

You don’t label contributing nations to the Afghanistan mission as ‘cowards’ and then expect they’ll help you by sending their soldiers into your sector. Canada’s allies were, and are, still mighty pissed off. (It’s interesting to note that retired navy officer and Dalhousie University defence analyst Eric Lerhe warned about this very thing in December 2006 and faced a few barbs from other military analysts for raising the issue).
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Elinor Sloan . A better Afghanistan policy
Elinor Sloan, Citizen Special Published: Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Article Link

In an article that appeared last week in this newspaper, political scientist Michael Byers argued that the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan is a sham. The panel, he alleged, is made up of people who are likely to recommend an extension of Canada's military mission there, and the outcome is predetermined because all of the panel's options have some sort of a military role. Mr. Byers seems to suggest that Canada is in Afghanistan mainly to follow America's bidding.

Mr. Byers' effort to delegitimize the Manley panel does not stand up to scrutiny. For example, part of his case against John Manley, the panel's chair, is that last fall Mr. Manley wrote an article in the journal Policy Options stating that we should not abandon Afghanistan. In fact, Mr. Manley wrote the article in his capacity as a director of CARE Canada. It is based on a May 2007 trip to Afghanistan, and it focuses almost entirely on Canada's humanitarian involvement there. It concludes with observations like the need to build roads and bridges, and to restore electricity.

To any fair-minded reader, the article shows only that Mr. Manley understands the complexities of creating a sustainable society in Afghanistan and, perhaps more importantly, that he cares about what happens there. (Full disclosure: In 2005 Mr. Manley wrote a statement praising my book Security and Defence in the Terrorist Era.)
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Time short for Afghan answers
Dec 18, 2007 04:30 AM James Travers
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OTTAWA-A sobering truth is surfacing along with the usual seasonal good cheer: After foolishly letting its focus drift to Iraq, the U.S. is again worrying about Afghanistan. More than a reflection of troubling events or fears George W. Bush's legacy will suffer even more foreign policy damage, that rediscovered concern helps measure the danger ahead for Canadian combat troops and for a federal government struggling to solidify public support for a polarizing mission.

Weeks before John Manley's panel reports on Canada's post-February 2009 role, word of three sweeping Afghanistan reviews is leaking from Washington. After creating a Middle East power vacuum and metastasizing Al Qaeda by toppling Saddam Hussein, Bush is turning attention back to Afghanistan's entrenched insurgency and poverty.

There's no mystery in those failures. As speaker after expert detailed at a University of Ottawa conference here – and as the U.S. reviews will surely rehash – Afghanistan is both victim and perpetrator. Buffeted by foreign interests, it suffers from bad-neighbourhood geography as well as from a shamefully weak international reconstruction effort with no overarching strategy. Nor can a Kabul government that's corrupt to the core and unwilling to end its economic opium addiction escape its considerable responsibility for the country's misery.

Yes, some good things are happening. But grim provincial realities are masked by national statistics donor governments use to justify a blood and money investment with disappointing returns. At least as problematic for those who see Afghanistan more as a terrorism threat than a reconstruction project, a chameleon Taliban is doing well enough militarily to push into the future the stalemate necessary for a political solution.

However cynical, the Canadian caveat attached to all this is that Afghanistan has never been primarily about Afghanistan. In a fit of candour soon replaced by a wandering narrative, Stephen Harper's government described the mission as retribution for 9/11. That didn't sit well with Canadians who prefer to see it as a robust evolution of traditional peacekeeping and nation building. But it's closer to the underlying facts that Canada is largely there to demonstrate U.S. and NATO solidarity while the military is using the mission to rebuild and shed its do-gooder image.
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In Afghanistan, It's About Air Power, Too
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As The Post reports today, President Bush is facing pressure to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. The military is undertaking a strategic review similar to the review that resulted in the "surge" in Iraq, and commanders in Afghanistan are calling for more resources to fight increased violence and Taliban resurgence.

While the public debate is fixated on boots on the ground -- how many, how active, rotations and tour lengths -- jets in the sky are just as important. Yet as I wrote last week, there is a lack of understanding and appreciation of air power's role in Afghanistan, even by its top (Army) commander.

The U.S. currently has some 28,000 troops in Afghanistan and NATO also has 28,000. This number is insufficient, and as violence has increased and the Kabul-based government has been challenged along the edges of the country, the pace of activity for those troops has increased. Missing in this ground-war-centric analysis is the role of air power.

According to a new study by Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, close-air support sorties by aircraft from Bagram air base have doubled to 12,775 in 2007 from 6,495 in 2004. The number of sorties where weapons have been dropped has increased 30 times, to 2,926 so far in 2007 from 86 in 2004. August 2007 was the busiest month since 2003 for air strikes where munitions were dropped, and the monthly activity through 2007 exceeded the totals for any month in 2004 or 2005.
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Herat police: German man abducted in western Afghanistan
The Associated Press Monday, December 17, 2007
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BERLIN: Police in western Afghanistan said Monday that a German citizen had been kidnapped.

Gen. Ali Khan Husseinzada, the chief of criminal investigations for western Afghanistan, said the man had been on his way to his home in Herat.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, Julia Gross, said the ministry was aware of the reported abduction and was checking it.

The head of Green Helmets, a German-based aid organization, received a report that one of its former workers, Harald Kleber, had been abducted.

Rupert Neudeck said Kleber helped build 26 schools in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. He then decided to settle in Herat, converting to Islam and marrying an Afghan woman, with whom he had a child.

"We are very concerned and hope that the Foreign Ministry can do something to help him and bring him to Germany as swiftly as possible," Neudeck said.

Germany's Bild daily reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the kidnapping and promised to clear up the case quickly. "We do not put up with criminal activities such as this," he was quoted as saying.
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German kidnapped in Afghanistan wanted for fraud: prosecutor
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BERLIN (AFP) — A German former aid worker who was abducted in Afghanistan on Sunday is wanted in Germany for fraud, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

An arrest warrant has been issued for the man, identified by the German press as 42-year-old carpenter Harald Kleber, in connection with computer fraud, said Juergen Konrad, a prosecutor in the southern state of Bavaria.

Konrad said an international arrest warrant has not been issued for Kleber but he would be detained if he set foot in Germany.

According to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, the Gruenhelme (Green Helmets) humanitarian organisation for whom Kleber worked in Afghanistan has also accused him of embezzling funds.

Gruenhelme could not be reached for comment.

The organisation had earlier confirmed that Kleber worked for them between 2003 and 2004 in Herat in western Afghanistan and said he remained in the country afterwards to "pursue his private life."

According to Afghan police, he was kidnapped in Herat by four armed men on Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether the Taliban was behind the abduction, as is the case with many kidnappings of foreigners in Afghanistan.
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House Passes Omnibus Spending Measure
by Debbie Elliott
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Morning Edition, December 18, 2007 · Congress and the president were poised to resolve their months-long dispute over funding for the war in Iraq after the House passed a $516 billion omnibus spending measure to fund 14 Cabinet agencies and troops in Afghanistan. If the Senate can add $40 billion to the bill to fund troops in Iraq, the White House is likely to approve it.

Senate leaders would like to wrap up debate Tuesday, though GOP conservatives may balk, unhappy with spending above Bush's budget and a secretive process that produced a 1,482-page bill that includes plenty of legislative pork.

Nobody seemed thrilled with the catchall spending plan that House leaders rushed to a vote late Monday.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sounded resigned that Democrats did not get all they had hoped for from the appropriations process.

But he said the compromise was inescapable given the president's repeated veto threats of the Democrat's plan to spend $22 billion more than the White House domestic budget request.
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New Zealand considers boosting troops in Afghanistan
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WELLINGTON, N.Z. - New Zealand is considering whether to increase its troops in Afghanistan and assume a combat role because of a rising threat from Taliban fighters, a military commander said Tuesday.

Joint forces chief Maj.-Gen. Rhys Jones said the 107-strong New Zealand team working on construction in Bamiyan province has had reports recently that Taliban fighters are moving into the region, northeast of the capital Kabul.

Direct threats had been made against the provincial governor and "that gives us concern there may be attacks in our area," Jones told New Zealand's National Radio network.

New Zealand military commanders are considering all options, including more troops and carrying out combat patrols in the province.

"When we have done our assessment, we will put those options to government should it require them to decide on extra numbers, extra equipment or extra tasks," he said.

Jones said Bamiyan, where New Zealand has placed military reconstruction teams since 2003, was relatively peaceful but is gradually becoming more dangerous. The government recently extended the team's stint through September 2009.

Defence Minister Phil Goff said there is no plan for "a major change in tactics."
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[MarkOttawa]

ARTICLES FOUND DEC. 19

British 'friendly fire' kills two Danish troops
Daily Telegraph, Dec. 19
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=SQD53M0SDF3T1QFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/12/19/wfriendly119.xml

Two Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan while fighting Taliban insurgents were victims of "friendly fire" from British troops, Danish Army commanders have said.

The men were killed by shrapnel from missiles fired by British troops on Sept 26 in "a tragic mistake" during a battle near Gareshk, in Helmand Province, the Danes said.

The Danish report said that the soldiers, Privates Mikkel Keil Sorensen and Thorbjorn Ole Reese, were in a compound to the north-west of the Helmand River, while British units were to the south-east.

Accounts given by Danish troops said that an battle between the Taliban and British positions broke out and at 9.28pm the Danish compound was hit, killing Private Ole Reese and wounding a non-commissioned officer.

The Danish troops presumed they had been hit by the Taliban and launched their own counter-attack. An hour later, another strike hit their compound, killing Private Keil Sorenson.

The remains of at least three missiles were found in the compound, and were identified "with 100 per cent certainty" to be a type used by British forces and not the Taliban.

Investigators concluded that there was a "high degree of probability" that missile fragments found during post-mortem examination of the soldiers matched the same type of missile. Times given by British troops for when they fired missiles also matched the times of the strikes at the Danish compound.

The report concluded: "On the basis of the information available today, it is the opinion of the Judge Advocate General's Corps that private Thorbjorn Ole Reese and private Mikkel Keil Sorensen were killed as a result of strikes by British soldiers which, by a tragic mistake, were directed towards the compound where the Danish soldiers were in position."..

Le «pré-Noël» de Sarkozy en Afghanistan
Le Figaro, Dec. 18
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2007/12/18/01003-20071218ARTFIG00434-le-pre-noel-de-sarkozy-en-afghanistan.php

...
Sur ce dossier afghan où l’Alliance atlantique affirme jouer son avenir, il reste à savoir les gestes auxquels est disposé le président français. En déclarant à Washington début novembre qu’il réfléchissait «à la meilleure manière d’agir» pour aider un pays malmené par la guerre sans fin des talibans, Nicolas Sarkozy a créé des attentes outre-atlantique. «Nous avons fait déjà des gestes, mais il est clair que l’on va nous en demander encore plus» confie un proche du dossier. A la grande satisfaction des alliés, Paris déploie désormais des équipes d’instructeurs (OMLT) au sein d’unités afghanes opérationnelles, y compris dans les zones de combat. A l’été, l’Élysée a décidé l’envoi de trois équipes d’OMLT supplémentaires, et, il y a un mois, d’une autre encore dans la région du Sud dévolue aux forces néerlandaises.

Que faire de plus ? Quel geste envisager lors du sommet de l’Otan, prévu en avril à Bucarest ? A l’Élysée et la Défense, on planche sur deux options. La première consisterait en l’envoi du bataillon français dans une région du Sud, peut-être en appui des Néerlandais [emphasis added]. D’autant que le mandat français dans la région «Centre» expire à l’été 2008. La deuxième option, pas forcément exclusive, serait de renvoyer 200 hommes des Forces spéciales dans le Sud. Ils en avaient été retirés début 2007...

(Via Norman's Spectator)
http://www.members.shaw.ca/nspector4/MIND.htm

Mark
Ottawa

 

[GAP]

Articles found December 20, 2007

Top soldier speaks out on detainee transfers
Battle against Taliban would 'collapse' under ban, Brigadier-General André Deschamps says
PAUL KORING From Wednesday's Globe and Mail December 19, 2007 at 4:39 AM EST
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A top military commander says in a sworn affidavit Canadian troops would have to quit fighting the Taliban if they could not hand prisoners over to Afghan authorities.

Listing a long series of possible embarrassments and defeats, Brigadier-General André Deschamps outlined what he says would be the dire consequences, including losing the war, should a Federal Court judge rule in favour of a request by human-rights groups to issue an injunction banning the transfer of detainees to Afghan prisons because of the risk of torture or abuse.

"It strikes me as being unduly alarmist," said Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, which along with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, is seeking a halt to detainee transfers. Mr. Neve said the government seems to have taken an "all or nothing" position by asserting that a ban on transfers "would be so onerous that it would lead to the collapse of the entire mission."

Gen. Deschamps sketches a variety scenarios. Taliban fighters might surrender in droves, he warns, if they knew Canada would release them because it could not either hold them or transfer them. "The insurgents could attack us with impunity knowing that if they fail to win an engagement they would simply have to surrender and wait for release to resume operations," he said in a sworn affidavit.
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Detainees list torture, abuse by Afghan officials, filing says
PAUL KORING From Thursday's Globe and Mail December 20, 2007 at 4:31 AM EST
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Roughly a quarter of the prisoners interviewed in Afghan jails as part of Canada's follow-up inspections of transferred detainees said they were tortured or abused, according to documents filed in Federal Court and the statements of senior Harper government officials.

The documents confirm "eight allegations of physical abuse at Afghan prison facilities were made by detainees transferred to Afghan authorities by the Canadian Forces." The government refuses to say how many detainees were transferred during that period.

The documents also reveal that one Afghan prison official has been "suspended from his position at the Kandahar NDS [National Directorate of Security] facility and is currently under detention," accused of abuse by a transferred prisoner.

That arrest, and the uncovering of the abuse allegations, shows the value of the follow-up inspections, according to Kerry Buck, director-general of the Afghanistan Task Force in the Foreign Affairs Department.
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Remand staff helps vets
UPDATED: 2007-12-19 01:50:09 MST By SHAWN LOGAN
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Workers at the Calgary remand centre have stepped up to support Canadian troops, as one of their own will see a son leave for Afghanistan in the new year.

In a ceremony yesterday, city correctional workers and probation officers gave about $1,500 to the Military Family Resource Centre and provided 15 boxes of donated food to the veterans' food bank, hoping to brighten Christmas for families of troops serving abroad.

Barb Blanchette, a case worker at the northwest facility, said employees decided to help after learning one of their own, Ruth Rowlandson, would be watching her son, Cpl. Bryan Rowlandson, ship out next month.

"For a lot of people here, it became real because one of our people's sons is going over there," she said.

The remand centre's 150 staff pick a charity every Christmas and chose this year to rally behind the troops in a year that has seen high-profile battles at city hall over how to show support for the Canadian Forces.
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Added Armour Proves its Value
Scott Taylor, 'Afghans damage Leopard tank 'behond repair'', Chronicle-Herald, 17 December 2007
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EXCERPT: "Recent news reports have claimed that Afghan insurgents damaged one of Canada’s Leopard 2A6M main battle tanks 'beyond repair.' In the original incident report, the tank was described as "disabled," and senior officials deny that the vehicle was destroyed. Also not confirmed is whether a conventional landmine or an improvised explosive device generated the blast.

"The tank was one of 20 Leopard 2A6Ms on loan to Canadian troops from the German army. Weighing in at close to 70 tonnes, these armoured behemoths are considered to be the best main battle tank in service today. Prior to the Canadians taking possession, these tanks were put through a thorough upgrade at the Krauss Maffei Wegmann plant in the outskirts of Munich. Originally destined for service with the German Panzer brigades, the upgrade included additional armour protection on the belly of the vehicle to improve the crew’s survivability in the case of an anti-tank mine.

"Whatever the extent of the damage to the Canadian tank in Kandahar, the additional protection proved to be adequate in this instance. While the driver suffered a broken hip, the remaining crew members survived unscathed. One of the survivors was so grateful that he penned a letter to German defence officials, praising the protection offered by the Leopard 2A6M, noting that 'the tank worked as it should.'"
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Hockey mom roughs it in war zone
TheStar.com - December 19, 2007 Mitch Potter TORONTO STAR
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KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – One moment you are a stay-at-home mom, most days and nights eaten up by endlessly schlepping your three boys to and from the hockey rink in small-town Ontario.

One moment later, you find yourself living in a tent in Afghanistan, pondering life's sometimes extreme twists as fighter jets scream into the sky from the runway next to your pillow.

Even Lori Hare herself is rather surprised by her spirit of adventure. But then, the 34-year-old Petawawa, Ont., homemaker didn't really have time to think twice when the opportunity to post to Kandahar Airfield – not as a soldier in the field, but as a civilian worker – came out of the blue last June.

She was looking for work, a scarce commodity these days in Petawawa, when a friend showed her a notice for a clerical job with CANCAP, the private-contract consortium that supplies a wide range of support services to the Canadian troops in Kandahar.

Hare called the friend's bluff and applied – and much to her surprise received a call back from CANCAP the very next day, offering her rapid deployment on a six-month contract. Barely three weeks later – July 4 – she touched down in Kandahar, the result of a swift decision and an equally speedy training session in Ottawa.

"It just happened so fast. I made the decision with my husband, then we sat down with the boys and said, `This is what's happening.' Their first question was, `Do you get a gun?' There was barely time to explain it to them. And then I was gone," says Hare.

The boys weren't completely shocked, as theirs is a family with military roots. Their father Sean, a Newfoundlander, only got back from his own Afghanistan rotation last March – a tour that saw its share of hazards by dint of his job as a regular-army convoy driver.

And Hare herself, whose job involves pushing paper strictly in the exponentially more secure zone inside the wire at Kandahar Airfield, grew up in a military family. A self-declared army brat, she was born in Lahr, Germany, and grew up bouncing from base to base, including multiple postings to Gagetown, N.B., interspersed with stints in Petawawa and London, Ont.

"I grew up with everyone around me going off on long assignments. And when this opportunity came along I realized this was my chance. Short of joining the military, I would never be able to do this," she says.
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Local soldiers will spend the holidays on the front lines in wartorn Afghanistan; Holidays are tough for soldiers and family
Posted By Kathleen Hay Updated 22 hours ago
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There'll be a tree, presents and even a turkey dinner, but it won't be the same this Christmas for these two fellows.

Cpls. Justin Wheeler and Rob Latreille, both Canadian Forces military police officers, will be enjoying all the trimmings on Dec. 25 except for the most important one of all - their families.

Alexandria native, Latreille, 36, has been in Kandahar since August, and Wheeler, 26, of Cornwall, arrived there in October. While both have missed Christmases away from home before, it never gets any easier, they agree.

"Two years ago, in December 2005, I was in Kabul," said Wheeler, a St. Joseph's Secondary School graduate. "It doesn't get any easier, but it's much harder on the families than us.

"Your loved ones at home, they miss you."

Wheeler's parents, Janet and James, live in Cornwall, and he has two brothers, Jamie and Jordon. Married to his wife, Nancy Paquette, for four years, the couple are based at 3 Wing Bagotville, Que.

"We have a large supper, and it's actually not bad," Wheeler admitted. "Usually the officers end up serving it to us, which is kind of nice, but it sure doesn't compare to dinner back home.

"In the military, we're all in the same boat. We miss birthdays, we miss Christmas, but we've got each other. It's the ones back home who hurt."

Latreille, who attended Glengarry District High School, then completed St. Lawrence College's law and security course, has missed a few Christmas' too. In fact, his military career, including deployment training for Afghanistan, has seen him spend only a couple of weeks at home since last May.
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The Logical Conclusion To The Surrender Of Kandahar
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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I knew it would come to this. While we're fighting possibly one of the most important battles of the past fifty years, all we hear about is the treatment of detainees who, if given the chance, would likely run swords into the backs of our soldiers and drag them down the street for their amusement. I wrote an impassioned plea for common sense right here. But all I received in reply was rhetoric about "principle" and "morality". If Canada is complicit in torture, goes the argument, we shouldn't be there. Well, it seems a large percentage of people are going to be very happy if they get their way, according to statements made in the media by Canadian Brigadier-General André Deschamps, who said that if we undertake a ban of transferring detainees to Afghan custody, we are doomed to lose the war.

It's interesting, in a sick sort of way, isn't it? Imagine losing a war to a people because you refused to do what it took to win. Wow. If Team Canada had been coached by the Liberal Party in 1972 we probably would have lost the series 8-0. After all, it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. Right? I mean, breaking Valeri Kharlamov's leg would have been completely unnecessary, and besides, it was totally an immoral thing to do. Canadians should be ashamed of Bobby Clarke.

Interesting how we're not ashamed of Bobby Clarke. Or Team Canada. Because we won the war against the Soviet Union in 1972 by winning by necessary means. You may ask, is this a kind of pathetic metaphor for the approval of torture? No. I've repeated that enough to make myself hoarse. But what it means is that if a few Taliban prisoners are accidentally tortured by Afghan authorities in circumstances completely out of our control, I am 100% willing to accept that risk in order to stay and win the war in Afghanistan. Only a fool would be willing to lose because of some kind of ridiculous standard of morality to which, quite frankly, nobody else is holding themselves to.
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Fear of torture unfounded
'Humanitarian' concern could derail Afghan mission
By PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN
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What gives with these so-called "humanitarian" groups that seek to prevent our military from doing their job in Afghanistan?

Never mind that Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting a war against the Taliban (the Vandoos, at the moment, to be replaced this winter by the Princess Pats -- again), and at the same time are rebuilding schools, giving aid and medical treatment, and trying to restore order and security.

For our home-grown "humanitarians," this apparently isn't enough.

Right now, a federal court is being asked to rule on an injunction forbidding the transfer of "detainees" (i.e. Taliban prisoners) to Afghan prisons for fear they may be tortured.

Not that prisoners are being tortured or abused, or will be tortured, but that they "may" be so abused.

What a bunch of horsefeathers!

In a sworn affidavit on behalf of the Harper government, Brig.-Gen. Andre Deschamps (chief of staff in Afghanistan, responsible for combat operations) says being forbidden to hand over prisoners could curtail the whole Canadian mission in Afghanistan.

Canada is not (one hopes) going to establish a Canadian-run prison camp in Afghanistan -- and thereby violate Afghan sovereignty.
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France Convicts 5 Former Guantánamo Inmates
Published: December 20, 2007
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PARIS (AP) — A court convicted five former inmates of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay on Wednesday on terrorism-related charges, but did not send any of them back to prison in France. A sixth man was acquitted.

The ruling capped proceedings that seemed at times like a trial of the American prison camp itself, with the prosecutor lashing out at the “Guantánamo system” and saying the prison violated international law.

Seven French citizens were captured by American forces in or near Afghanistan in late 2001. All were held for at least two years at Guantánamo and then handed over to the French authorities in 2004 and 2005. One was found to have no ties to terrorism and was freed immediately after his return to France.

The others spent up to 17 months in prison in France. But by the time the verdict was announced Wednesday, all of them were out of prison pending rulings in their cases.

Five men were convicted of “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise,” a charge frequently used in France.

All the men insisted during the trial that they were innocent.
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Military sets sights on at least 15,000 MRAPs
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon remains committed to buying at least 15,000 new armored vehicles to withstand roadside bombs and may seek more based on requests from commanders in Afghanistan, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday.
The Pentagon currently plans to procure at least 15,374 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, Morrell said. It has ordered almost 12,000 MRAPs to date, including orders announced Tuesday for 3,100 with a total value of about $2.7 billion.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, said recently that, because of improving security conditions, forces there might need fewer MRAPs than earlier anticipated. Commanders have said since the inception of the MRAP program that they would revise needs based on battlefield conditions.

Last month, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway said the Marines would cut their projected needs from 3,700 MRAPs to 2,300.

Demand for more MRAPs could come from elsewhere, Morrell told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

"I can tell you just this week, for example, that the commanders in Afghanistan are of the mind that perhaps they would like more in Afghanistan than they have originally requested," he said.

Morrell estimated that the need in Afghanistan could increase from about 500 to 600 MRAPs.
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