Articles found January 21, 2008
Courageous and Courteous
Soldiers' writings reflect traditional canadian virtues
PAUL GESSELL, Canwest News Service; Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, January 19
OUTSIDE THE WIRE: THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN IN THE WORDS OF ITS PARTICIPANTS
Edited by Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren
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Random House Canada, 296 pages, $32 - - - Capt. Nichola Goddard was the quintessential Canadian, and not because she has entered history books as this country's first female soldier killed in combat. Her death came, at age 26, May 17, 2006, during a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan's Panjwayi district.
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Canadians see signs of progress in Afghanistan
Monday, January 21, 2008 Washington Times:
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When Canadian tanks and troops roll along the dirt tracks that connect villages in rural southern Afghanistan, many farmers turn from their grapevines and poppy fields to stare.
Some smile. Occasionally they wave.
It is the waving that thrills the soldiers of Battalion Royal, 22nd Regiment, Battalion Group. They take it as evidence that the locals sense a difference between them and the Americans who used to patrol these desolate rural villages.
"The best are the children," said Trooper Michael Hayakaze. "When the kids come running up to the road and they smile, it's the best.
"When we first showed up, you know, they used to run and hide, or they would throw stones at our tanks. And you know they get that from their parents, so if they're not afraid of us, that means it's getting better."
The 2,500 Canadian soldiers and their officers will not publicly criticize their U.S. counterparts; there is too much respect between the allies to allow for that.
But like many of the NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan, they find themselves in a two-front public-relations war — struggling for the cooperation of the Afghans as well as the support of a skeptical public at home. And in such a war, perceptions are as important as territory and body counts.
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The next rotation to Afstan
Sunday, January 20, 2008
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First, two news stories:
1) Edmonton Sun:
Soldiers praised
Face a 'formidable enemy'
2) Winnipeg Sun:
'Best-prepared' troops get send-off
Now the details:
Task Force 1-08 (Joint Task Force Afghanistan, Roto 5) composed of approximately 2500 soldiers will comprise of the following units:
• A 1000 soldier Battle Group in Kandahar, primarily from the
2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (2 PPCLI), which includes:
• Battle Group Headquarters – 2 PPCLI (Shilo);
• Two Rifle Companies – B and C Companies 2 PPCLI (Shilo) and elements of A Company 3 PPCLI (Edmonton);
• One Artillery Battery with two Surveillance and Target Acquisition ( STA ) troops– B Battery 1 RCHA (Shilo);
• One Field Engineer Squadron – 12 Field Squadron 1 CER (Edmonton);
• One Reconnaissance Platoon – 2 PPCLI (Shilo);
• One Reconnaissance Squadron – D Squadron 12 RBC (Valcartier);
• One Tank Squadron – B Squadron LdSH(RC) (Edmonton);.
•One Armoured Engineer Troop – 1 CER (Edmonton );
The majority of about 400 Reserve Force soldiers, will come from:
• 39 CBG from British Columbia - approximately 136 soldiers;
• 41 CBG from Alberta - approximately 145 soldiers; and
• 38 CBG from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario- approximately 117soldiers
• A Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) unit comprised primarily of personnel from 444 Close Support Squadron and 4 Air Defence Regiment
(4 AD Regt) based in Moncton; and .......
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This Afghanistan column has seven days
January 19, 2008
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A great piece by a great journalist:
BLATCHFORD'S TAKE: A WOEFUL WEEK [print version only]
...painful displays of ignorance and arrogance
[...]
...before the Liberal leader met Canadian troops and posed in the cute camo outfit (I would knock the block off whoever lent the gear to him, by the way) he had his mind made up - the combat mission, as the party's submission said, should end as scheduled in February, 2009. His visit there was a disingenuous and fraudulent exercise in bullshit public relations.
On Mr. Gates: The defence secretary's remarks to the Los Angeles Times, to the effect that some of the NATO armies in Afghanistan "don't know how to do counterinsurgency operations," were profoundly inaccurate and disrespectful, particularly of the British and Canadians, who have been running the show respectively in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
His absolute arrogance - that only Americans know how to fight - and ignorance aside, Mr. Gates ignored the indisputable fact that what the Brits and Canucks have run into in the fiery south is a direct result of too few U.S. troops having been left in the country after the so-called fall of the Taliban [well, they did fall to the Northern Alliance, with some US and UK help, and took some time to really start coming back]...
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Keep troops in Kandahar until 2011, Manley to recommend
BRIAN LAGHI From Monday's Globe and Mail January 21, 2008 at 12:47 AM EST
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OTTAWA — John Manley's report on Canada's future role in Afghanistan will likely recommend that troops stay in Afghanistan until 2011 while also criticizing the federal government agency responsible for delivering aid to the war-torn nation, CTV News reported last night.
The widely anticipated report from the former Liberal foreign affairs minister is also expected to criticize NATO for not taking on its share of the burden and will say that Canada's role should be reconfigured from counterinsurgency to training the Afghan police. The Canadian International Development Agency and Foreign Affairs will also come under fire for their aid programs, CTV said.
Mr. Manley, who was asked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to chair a blue-chip panel to make recommendations on the mission, is expected to issue his report Tuesday.
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Singing songs of Piccadilly, Strand and Leicester Square ...
Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, January 21, 2008
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I'm with you and you're with me, so we are all together;
And we are marching to Islamabad, Islamabad, Islamabad;
Oh, we are marching to Islamabad, Islamabad, Hurrah!
Come on, Canada. Let's get our creative juices flowing. Now that Liberal party leader Stephane Dion has declared war on Pakistan, we're gonna need some great tunes our boys and girls in uniform can sing as they slog their way from the rolling sand dunes of the Thar Desert, through the mangrove swamps of the southern coast to the frigid peaks of the Himalayas and Hindu Kush.
There'll be pheasants over, the wide Hunza Valley; Tomorrow, just you wait and see ...
The goatsman will tend his kids. The opium will bloom again. And Rashid will go to sleep, in his own little room again.
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General calls Afghan-bound soldiers best prepared in Canada's history
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CFB SHILO, Man. - Family was the dominant theme as hundreds of Afghan-bound soldiers from Manitoba were recognized Saturday at a ceremonial farewell.
Hundreds of soldiers dressed in arid-pattern combat uniforms, many accompanied by loved ones, stood shoulder-to-shoulder as Brig.-Gen. Mark Skidmore talked to the departing troops at the Shilo base.
For Master Cpl. Michael Bursey, the farewell ceremony was important to his family, especially when Skidmore approached his sons - Noah, 9, and Damien, 6 - after the speech.
"That was certainly the highlight for me. He took the time when he was leaving to come over," the medic said, an arm around each teary-eyed son.
The closer it gets to the day he leaves, it gets a little scarier and a little more daunting, says Bursey's wife Sheila.
"I've been trying to put up a brave front right from the get-go, and saying it's no big deal," she said, adding quickly, "and I do. It's his job."
Because he joined the Canadian Forces after Sept. 11, 2001, she says the couple knew what they were getting into.
"We knew going in that he was joining a military that was going to war."
And that military, Skidmore told the soldiers, is the best-prepared force Canada has produced.
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Canada's role in depleted uranium weapons
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The Government of Canada is in non-compliance with the statutes and regulations of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), prohibiting the use of Canadian uranium in depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Moreover, Canada has a bilateral nuclear co-operation agreement with the US, under which uranium exports to the US may only be used for peaceful purposes, and not in weapons. This includes 'control over the high enrichment of Canadian uranium and subsequent storage and use of the highly enriched uranium,' a Foreign Affairs document states. The same rules that apply to uranium apply to depleted uranium, according to the CNSC.
DU weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction under international law. Thus Canada may be complicit in the US use of weapons of mass destruction in the 1991 Iraq war I, the 1998 Balkans war, the 2001 war in Afghanistan, and the 2003 Iraq war II, where the British medical journal Lancet estimates that one million civilians have died. In each of these wars, it is likely that depleted uranium in the DU weapons used by the U.S. and the UK comes from Canadian uranium exported to the US and processed in US enrichment plants into depleted uranium and subsequently manufactured into DU weapons.
The Americans and British have denied using depleted uranium weapons in Afghanistan. Canada says it eliminated depleted uranium munitions from its stockpile in 1998, in part because of the logistical challenges of storing the material, since it required special precautions.
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Bickering among politicians does nothing for real battle
STEPHEN MAHER Sat. Jan 19 - 4:47 AM
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WHEN YOU COVER federal politics for a living, you end up getting to know and like politicians in all the parties.
Many of them are admirable — for their intelligence, their hard work, their integrity, and their personality. They are, after all, are in the business of being likable, and an awful lot of them are here because they have game.
To be sure, some of them are stunned porch climbers whose biggest talent is for keeping their mouths shut, but for every dim-witted former small town mayor who was lucky enough to win a nomination, there is a sharp customer who wants to do good work.
But the nature of the business means that MPs — smart or not — spend a lot of their time spouting nonsense that they don’t believe and that they don’t expect their opponents to believe. Any complicated idea must be abandoned in the struggle to hammer home a simple point to disengaged television viewers.
It is difficult for a politician to express an intelligent opinion. Not only must he have one, it must be inoffensive both to voters and to party bosses.
And she must be always attacking her opponents — the very similar people in the other parties.
As Liberal backroom wizard Keith Davey once put it: "If the other guy says, ‘You’re fat,’ don’t say, ‘I’m not.’ Say, ‘You’re ugly.’ "
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True tales of courage
Our troops fight as well as anyone else -- if not better
By PABLO FERNANDEZ
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In the wake of a firestorm unleashed by NATO members against the U.S. defence secretary following his criticism of the alliance's performance in Afghanistan, one only hopes Canadian soldiers fighting there will do better than to pay attention.
As Calgary soldiers prepare to return home from Afghanistan in the next couple of months, and more than a hundred city troops prepare to replace them, they come home, and deploy, with the knowledge their job is among the toughest currently undertaken by any modern army.
Canadian soldiers have the unenviable task of going toe-to-toe with Taliban fighters desperate to re-establish dominance along the Pakistani border, while mentoring the fledgling Afghan army and helping to rebuild Afghanistan's decrepit infrastructure and political fibre.
The job's tough and it's exacted a high price, with 77 Canadian soldiers killed and hundreds more injured.
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Bringing the war home
Anthology of first-person accounts from front lines of Afghanistan features compelling tales, hard truths
Richard Helm, The Edmonton Journal Published: Sunday, January 20
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With Canadian soldiers continuing to die in Afghanistan and NATO commanders facing new U.S. criticism of their fighting tactics there, Kevin Patterson thinks it's high time to bring the war home.
The B.C. doctor and author does just that with Outside the Wire, a new anthology of first-person accounts written by Canadian soldiers, doctors and aid workers from the front lines of the war in Afghanistan. Patterson co-edits the collection with Jane Warren, drawing on visceral, intimate material that features some compelling dispatches by soldiers, including Cpl. Gordon Whitton of Edmonton from his two tours there in 2006.
Some hard truths for home is also precisely what Patterson had in mind when he ran afoul of military brass last year with a published account of his experiences while volunteering with other civilian medical workers at Kandahar Airfield, the main coalition base in southern Afghanistan. In an article for the American magazine Mother Jones, Patterson related, in graphic detail, the operating-room death of Cpl. Kevin Megeney, a young reservist from Stellarton, N.S. Megeney was shot March 6, 2007, purportedly by another Canadian soldier. Cpl. Matthew Wilcox has since been charged with manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death and negligence in performance of duty.
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An updated listing of NATO troops and others !! Serving in AFghanistan
MILITARY BLOG SITE - WITH ROBBY MCROBB The Guardian
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The CBC Canada's national Media service has produced a well documented list of Canadian Operations in Afghanistan. Well worth the read for information and perhaps assist you in your thoughts of the Afghan Mission.
Canadian troops in Afghanistan
There are currently three Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan.
The largest is Operation Athena with 2,500 troops. This is Canada's contribution to NATO's International Security Assistance Force. According to the Canadian Forces, this operation includes:
A battle group in Kandahar.
30 CF members with the Multi-National Brigade Headquarters and Signal Squadron in Kandahar.
300 CF members with the National Command Element in Kandahar.
300 CF members in the National Support Element in Kandahar.
250 CF members with the Theatre Support Element in southwest Asia.
Health Service Support personnel at the Multinational Medical Unit at Kandahar airfield.
The Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar of approximately 250 military and civilian personnel.
Other countries in ISAF: ......
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Blast kills British soldier in southern Afghanistan
Last Updated: Monday, January 21, 2008 | 6:40 AM ET CBC News
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A British soldier was killed and five others were wounded when an explosion struck a NATO patrol vehicle in southern Afghanistan, according to Britain's Ministry of Defence.
The ministry said the soldiers' vehicle hit a mine Sunday northeast of Musa Qala, a town in northern Helmand province.
Musa Qala had been held by the Taliban for 10 months until U.S., British and Afghan forces retook it last month.
One soldier died at the scene and the five others were airlifted to NATO bases for medical treatment, the ministry said in a statement. The wounded soldiers were not in a life-threatening condition.
A total of 87 British forces personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001
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Desperate Afghans swarm Canadian health clinic
Brian Hutchinson Canwest News Service Sunday, January 20, 2008
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SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan - An elderly man pulled a wooden cart through the crowd and stopped, exhausted, before the main gate to this dusty city's regional district centre.
In the payload of his wagon was a thin, frail figure: His ailing wife. "She is dying," said the man.
He brought his wife here Sunday in the hope she might receive medical attention from a team of Afghan and Canadian military doctors, dentists, nurses, and medical technicians.
The aged couple joined almost 300 other men, women and children clamouring for assistance. Ragged, poor, and ailing, they came from all around Spin Boldak, a city of 30,000 that's just six kilometres from the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, at the very edge of Kandahar province.
An initiative of the Canadian military, the so-called Village Medical Outreach (VMO) clinic was advertised on local radio and on roadside billboards. Word also spread by word of mouth and even reached nomadic Kuchi living on the city's fringes.
People came in droves; some walked to the clinic barefoot. Others limped along on crutches. Dozens of children arrived in the arms of their fathers, or their mothers, clad in blue burkas.
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