The waiting game

[Ani_Ibi]

The waiting game

This is a long but interesting article on staying power in Afghanistan.

The handoff of Regional Command South to NATO is due to occur this year, on a date yet to be determined. But already some U.S. officers fear that the NATO troops will not pursue the Taliban as aggressively as the Americans do, and that cutting or eliminating the Special Forces role in the Taliban’s strongholds in the south would only compound the error… Indeed, the Taliban’s resurgence this year is a direct result of coalition complacency…

The coalition’s failure to establish a permanent security presence in any but the largest towns has allowed the Taliban to create what U.S. officers refer to as a “sanctuary” in Oruzgan, northern Helmand, northwest Zabul and northern Kandahar provinces… But if the Taliban’s sanctuary is inside Afghanistan, its “safe haven,” as TF Bayonet commander Col. Kevin Owens described it, is across the border in Pakistan’s virtually lawless Pashtun tribal areas…

But if the Taliban is trying to create the impression in the coalition’s minds that they are finished as a threat to Afghan stability, that raises the question of why all indices of violence in southern Afghanistan… appear to be on the rise… The consensus among Special Forces and conventional U.S. officers in Afghanistan is that there has been more fighting because the units that arrived in the spring of 2005 have pursued the enemy far more aggressively than those they replaced”…

“The United States Army doesn’t have any staying power here… We have enormous mobility, enormous firepower, a lot of resources and wherewithal, but we can’t just stay here and do their job… The Afghan national security forces are getting better and better every day, but they’re not capable of taking over the counterinsurgency fight at this point in time… I am constantly thinking about what the enemy’s going to do next. He’s waiting to see what we’re going to do next. He’s got time on his side. I don’t.”

 

[Ani_Ibi]

EDITORIAL: We aren’t ready for Kandahar

This editorial is about the Canadian lead troops in Kandahar.

One of the first things Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper should do after being sworn in tomorrow, is to emphasize to Canadians the huge new role that our soldiers are about to embark on in fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We’d suggest a televised address to the nation by Harper to stress the fact that 2,200 of our soldiers are about to take the lead role in hunting down al-Qaida terrorists in one of the most dangerous places on earth – Kandahar…

Canadian soldiers first arrived there shortly after the terrorist attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001 to assist American troops in hunting down al-Qaida terrorists. In the more than four years since, 6,000 Canadians soldiers have rotated through Afghanistan, many serving at Camp Julien, the Canadian military base in the capital of Kabul. Eight of our soldiers have been killed, including four in the infamous U.S. friendly-fire incident.

Last month, a Canadian diplomat died and three soldiers were seriously wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Kandahar, the new base for Canada’s operations. The public needs to be reminded that our mission in Afghanistan is not “peacekeeping” – and indeed, is the furthest thing from peacekeeping imaginable. Our soldiers will not only shoot in self-defence, but will engage in aggressive operations designed to root out the enemy.

Their orders will be to shoot-to-kill, if necessary… The last thing they need as they embark on this risky assignment is a political debate raging back at home that we should have had a year ago, to ensure that Canadians were fully prepared for this significant escalation of our role in Afghanistan. The worst thing would be to have Parliament debating this, with all the usual suspects on the left calling for our troops to be brought home, while our soldiers are in theatre.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Here is some more about the A-stan police and bit more on the Canadian troops there.

Wild West of the East

The three Afghan police officers visiting the Canadian provincial reconstruction team this week were visibly impressed at the display of military hardware all around them, but it was only when they saw the boots waiting for them outside a supply tent that their eyes lit up.
Colonel Mohammed Hussein, the Afghan police liaison officer with the Canadian team, looked on with a smile as the officers excitedly loaded four bundles filled with uniforms, boots and such basic police equipment as flashlights and whistles on to the back of their four-wheel drive truck, chattering happily to each other in Pashtun…

“The problems are being solved but it will take some time I think. It is happening slowly”… “We’re out here in what some people would call the Wild West – where the rubber meets the road in terms of policing in Afghanistan – and we’re dealing with a force that has virtually nothing”… Supt. Martin and the other members of the reconstruction team have trained hundreds of Afghan police officers in everything from running highway checkpoints to investigating bombings.

They also run schools in maintaining police vehicles and have handed out uniforms and equipment to more than 800 officers in the Kandahar district. Last week, the national police broke ground for a modern police substation in the city’s north end paid for by $360,000 in Canadian funding… Three days of fighting in the province of Helmand, just to the west of Kandahar, which cost the lives of six police officers, began Thursday when about 200 Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol near the town of Sangin. Afghan National Army troops and American forces joined the fighting. At least 19 Taliban fighters were killed, including three commanders, and eight were captured, officials said.