Afstan: Ottawa Citizen's bad reporting

Mike Blanchfield either has not done his research, or else he has an "agenda" (just like David Pugliese?).

After delays and controversy, Aug. 1 has been set as the day Canadian troops in Afghanistan will finally transfer to a NATO-led command after almost a year under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign.

"The handover will be a very smooth one. I'm hoping to be present (in Kandahar)," David Sproule, Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, said in an interview yesterday at Foreign Affairs headquarters.

Mr. Sproule said he has spent "a fair bit of time" recently discussing the change of command with Lt.-Gen. David Richards, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, as well as Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of Defence staff.

The expansion of the NATO mission into southern Afghanistan has been fraught with delays and was expected to come much sooner this year.

Canada will take command of the newly expanded NATO presence in southern Afghanistan, and will contribute about 2,200 troops to a 6,000-strong southern force that will comprise more than 3,000 British military personnel and about 1,400 from The Netherlands.

In all, the southern mission will expand NATO's total force in Afghanistan to about 16,000 troops.

Since Canada redeployed its military to the south last August, it has been under the banner of Enduring Freedom, which some critics claim has hampered the Forces' ability to conduct non-combat reconstruction missions. Enduring Freedom operates separate from NATO forces and is, for the most part, leading the anti-terror combat operations against the Taliban insurgency that has swept through southern Afghanistan in the last year...

Lots of nonsense here. This is what Col. James Yonts, spokesman of the US-led Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, said on February 20 this year:

...at the end of the day when this transition [to NATO in the South] happens in late July...

I do not see any significant delay from "late July" to August 1. Mr Blanchfield is creating the impression that there are problems with our mission in southern Afghanistan--where Canada will continue in command when control there shifts from US Operation Enduring Freedom to NATO--that simply do not exist.

Moreover, the bulk of our forces were not redeployed to Kandahar in August last year. A Provincial Reconstruction Team of some 200 soldiers was deployed then which--contrary to the impression in the story--has been doing reconstruction work. Most of our troops remained in Kabul with NATO ISAF. Some moved later to Kandahar (under Operation Enduring Freedom) and their base in Kabul, Camp Julien closed on November 29. Our battle group at Kandahar only started arriving in mid-January this year.