Porc et les nouveaux avions

I guess I was on to something about why the C-130J contract is taking so long (along with the one for Boeing CH-47 helicopters):

The federal government has to be careful not to destabilize Montreal's thriving aerospace industry by handing out billions of dollars in contracts with no guarantee any of it will go to Quebec, Quebec Industry Minister Raymond Bachand warned yesterday.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with new federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Public Works Minister Michael Fortier, Bachand said the key to success in the global economy is through economic clusters such as the one that has grown up in Montreal around the aerospace industry...

"The government of Canada still has a responsibility when you hand out $17 billion worth of contracts, it is a massive intervention in the economy, to not destructure the economy and to encourage the clusters where they are found," Bachand said.

Fortier, however, was optimistic contracts will flow naturally to Quebec without the need of any intervention. "Since a big part of the (aeronautical) industry is found in Montreal and the expertise is in Montreal, naturally Montreal should receive a large share of those contracts."

He also suggested future government contracts could flow to Montreal-based companies. "There are other contracts that will be awarded, for helicopters, for other planes - and I think before judging whether or not Montreal has gotten its share, you should wait to see the overall contracts."..

The question of just how much business Quebec's aerospace industry will get from military spending has been a point of contention between Ottawa and Quebec - in particular between Bachand and former federal industry minister Maxime Bernier, who preferred to let market forces prevail.

Bachand was optimistic yesterday as he emerged from his meeting with Prentice, even though Prentice's office said there has been no change in the government's position that subcontracting decisions are up to Boeing.

Getting a unified strategy for Afstan

A former commander of Canada's Strategic Advisory Team in Kabul furthers some thoughts expressed by former UK Liberal Democratic leader Paddy Ashdown and the UK and US defence secretaries on the need for a more unified strategic approach in Afghanistan. And attracts the usual mindless anti-mission rants in the "Comments" to the online only Globe piece.

I wonder if Canada is doing anything diplomatically on this front.

French Fighters to Kandahar

Not all that one would wish but certainly something; can you imagine the opposition uproar if our government said it was deploying CF-18s to Kandahar? The French are going to station six fighter jets with acombat mission at Kandahar, and increase by 150 their troops training the Afghan National Army at Kabul (h/t to Cameron Campbell).

As usual our media have not reported this though Paul Wells and Norman Spector noticed.

First CC-177 flight to Kandahar

Our first Globemaster III is certainly getting to work fast:

In the pitch darkness of night, the Canadian military's new C-17 transport plane touched down softly at Kandahar Military Airport on Wednesday in southern Afghanistan.

The pilots landed the giant carrier with its lights extinguished, guided solely by night-vision goggles.

"We took a tactical approach with the night-vision goggles, with the airplane lights turned off, with the engines idling,'' said Maj. Jean Maisonneuve, chief check pilot at 429 Transport Squadron, 8 Wing, in Trenton, Ont.

"In a way, we're sort of pioneers.''

The gigantic, 200-tonne bird of steel is expected to have an effect on Canadian troop confidence as they continue to battle with Taliban insurgents, Maisonneuve said in a short interview shortly after landing.

"This plane will have a positive impact on the morale of the troops. Speaking with my colleagues, I can tell you that everyone is happy to know that we have modern tools at our disposal and a better (transport) capacity than before,'' he said...

Last week, the C-17 made its inaugural flight by transporting aid equipment to Jamaica to help in the aftermath of hurricane Dean.

But on Wednesday, the giant grey-blue plane's delivery to Kandahar included 35,000 kilograms of equipment destined for Canadian troops. It was scheduled to depart for Canada just a few hours after landing.

The second C-17 purchased by Canada is slated to arrive in November 2007 and two others in the spring of 2008.

Home sweet home

Letter from Kandahar: Week 23

... to celebrate this I have compiled a list of things I am going to miss about this place when I return home:

· Being able to throw my dinner plate in the trash
· Driving no faster than 16 km/hr
· Being startled out of a deep sleep by a fighter-jet taking off (I really will miss that but only during the day and evening – they are so cool)

I will miss sleeping on a cot – it’s like camping all the time

· Having to walk 500 metres to go the bathroom, especially in the middle of the night. Once home I may have to walk down my stairs, circle my house and walk back upstairs before going just to relive the good memories.
· I will really miss manoeuvring my way over gravel to walk anywhere
· Putting my dirty laundry in a bag, bringing it to a big bin and eight days later receiving it back – clean and sometimes folded and just a little bit dusty
· Sleeping in a room with seven other people
· Free bottles of water everywhere you go
· Stepping into a shower, turning on the tap, and seeing just a drizzle come from the nozzle
· The unforgettable aroma, nay, stench from the "Poo Pond" that wafts throughout the camp
· I will miss sleeping on a cot – it's like camping all the time
· Living out of a box
· I will miss having my meals cooked for me every day

You've just can't begin to appreciate simple things in live like a private bathroom (and the time to enjoy it in silence) until you've been deployed for a while.

Job protection for Reservists - update

To be honest, I'm surprised, but shouldn't have been. I've received several responses to my initial request with one common theme. No one wished to be identified with their story, especially from those with negative experiences.

I'd like to take this opportunity to ensure anyone who wishes to share their story that it will be kept in the strictest confidence if you desire. If you wish, you can email me at brownteddy@hushmail.com, a totally secure and anonymous system. There is a story to be told, and I certainly wish to tell it from your perspective.

I'm currently studying the laws enacted by Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia regarding Reservist job protection.

I'm interested in hearing from any Reservists and employers in those Provinces who have been affected by these laws. I'd also like to hear from employers, large and small, on what impact they think legislation such as this would have on their business if it were enacted in their Province.

bluebloggingsoapbox@gmail.com

Edit: email address corrected.

Generally speaking

An interesting topic at Milnet.ca on the state of the U.S. Army's general officers (based on a couple of recent articles, one by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, USA)--with comparisons to the Canadian Army:

Reaction to "A Failure in Generalship"

Afstan politics are all about caskets

Andrew Coyne tells the truth about opposition positions--though I suspect he's too optimistic about Canadians generally:

Let us now give thanks for Gilles Duceppe. Let us erect statues to his memory. Let school children across the country recite poems in his honour. For the Bloc Quebecois leader, though he certainly did not intend it, may have single-handedly saved the Afghanistan mission, and with it Canada's reputation as a reliable ally...

...Mr. Duceppe's statement last week, demanding that the Prime Minister state explicitly, in what is expected to be a new Speech from the Throne this fall, that Canadian troops will be withdrawn from combat at the expiry of the current mission, or face defeat in a confidence vote, has achieved several things...

with his customary subtlety and exquisite sense of timing, Mr. Duceppe has made hash of the opposition's careful public relations strategy: the statement came one day after two soldiers from Quebec were killed in an explosion (another had been killed a few days before), a connection Mr. Duceppe made no attempt to deny. If there is a more precise definition of cutting and running --Casualties? Get us out of here-- I do not know it.

That is indeed the closest thing we have had to an explanation of the opposition position. We know they want Canadian troops withdrawn, but until now it has never been made clear why. They can have no complaint with the mission's legality: our troops are there under a United Nations' mandate, with the support of the democratically elected government of Afghanistan. Nor, outside of the NDP, do they pretend the Afghans do not need defending. Someone has to do the fighting, they concede--just not us.

And the reason we should be excused? That much is now clear, if it was not before: Because it involves hardship, and because they hope to appeal to that section of the public that believes hardship is unnecessary -- that our enemies can be defeated without hardship, if they must be defeated at all. All that guff about having "taken our turn" was always a smokescreen...

...I suspect that the wave of revulsion Mr. Duceppe's statement has stirred in other parts of the country will wash over Quebec as well, and that this country will discover again those reserves of self-respect that are hidden to so many of its leaders.

Calling 011 + 93 +...

This appears in the Globe and Mail's Report on Business (B7); pity that it's not in the main news section where a lot more readers might see it and get some appreciation of what really is going on in much of Afstan:

Cellphones transforming Afghan life

About 150,000 people subscribe to cellphone service each month in Afghanistan and there's "no end in sight" to the growth, the country's Communications Minister said yesterday.

Speaking after the launch of the nation's fourth cellphone service provider, Amirzai Sangin predicted the telecommunication and information technology sector would "be the engine of growth for Afghanistan."

Afghanistan's economy is growing quickly, due mostly to the infusion of foreign aid since the downfall of the Taliban in 2001. But the country's living standards are among the lowest in the world and it faces mounting security problems.

Its economy is predominantly rural, and trade and industry are badly hampered by crumbling roads and chronic electricity shortages. Not including the illicit trade in opium, the nation's few exports include dried fruit and carpets.

But like in other developing nations, cellphone service providers have been doing brisk business, bringing communication to poor villagers who until four years rarely, if ever, used a telephone.

"In Afghanistan, the majority of our people will be connected through mobile phones," Mr. Sangin said. "...We have gone straight into the age of personal communication."

Calling rates are currently about 10 cents a minute, with the cheapest phone cards on sale for the equivalent of $1. Coverage is generally available in all the country's 34 provinces.

Mr. Sangin said the country's telecommunications and IT sector employed about 50,000 people and was crucial to opening opportunities for trade between districts as well as other countries.

So far, 12 per cent of Afghanistan's 25 million people have cellphones [emphasis added].

Yesterday, Emirates Telecommunication Corp., or Etisalat, became the fourth service provider to compete in the Afghan market. The United Arab Emirates company said it had invested $300-million to set up service.

Salem Al Kendi, Etisalat's Afghan chief executive officer, predicted brisk growth in Afghanistan and said the company hoped to move into other countries in the region.

Job protection for Reservists

I'm currently studying the laws enacted by Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia regarding Reservist job protection.

I'm interested in hearing from any Reservists and employers in those Provinces who have been affected by these laws. I'd also like to hear from employers, large and small, on what impact they think legislation such as this would have on their business if it were enacted in their Province.

bluebloggingsoapbox@gmail.com

Edit: email address corrected.

Latest in the "right tools for the job" category

Considering the source, I'll wait to hear the other side before making any decisions on this issue.

Faulty drones risk lives: troops

Afghan spy plane can't always provide best information; builder says it has offered fix

David Pugliese

The Ottawa Citizen

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Canadian troops in Afghanistan are being put at risk because of the limited capabilities of the aerial drones that provide them with surveillance, say soldiers on the ground.

The use of the Sperwer unmanned aerial vehicles in Kandahar are being hindered by extremely hot temperatures, the aircraft's limited endurance, as well as serviceability problems, military officers said privately. Those limitations have also resulted in gaps in surveillance coverage during recent firefights in the Kandahar area, putting soldiers at risk, they add.

Defence Department officials declined for reasons of operational security to discuss specifics related to the Sperwer's performance in Afghanistan.

But the firm handling the Sperwer contract, Rheinmetall Canada, says they've been standing by for months with low-cost improvements to the system that will significantly increase the aircraft's endurance and could be put in place in a matter of days in some cases. But the Quebec-based company says it has yet to hear back from the Defence Department.

If the contractor is correct, that low-cost improvements can be quickly delivered, it's certainly an option to be considered. Would continuous route surveillance be possible if the Sperwers were upgraded? Lacking any choppers, this would seem to be an option to help reduce IED risk, in conjunction with the new Buffalo and Husky deployment.

A call to arms

The Asian Pacific Post ("recognised by The Georgia Straight as the best English language ethnic media in the 'Best of Vancouver 2003' awards"--scroll down at links for the text) makes some very good points:

Why are all the Canadian soldiers being killed in Afghanistan white?

Where are our new Canadians from China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and the rest of Asia?..

...visible minorities are vastly under-represented in the Canadian Armed Forces. It is a entirely different world from that found on our home soil.

Of the 1.6 million new Canadians between 2001 and 2006, the vast majority — 1.2 million — were new immigrants, mostly from Asia...

But it is apparent that Canadian minority groups are shunning our military.

A random sampling of the ethnic communities in B.C., for the purpose of this opinion piece, drew some unfortunate responses.

“I don’t think Chinese families see careers for their children in the military,” said a Richmond-based political activist.

At a Vancouver Sikh temple, a group of devotees were in unison – “we did not come to Canada to fight”.

“No way.. I brought my sons here so they did not have to join the national draft,” said a South Korean businessman.

The prevailing attitude is that joining the Canadian military means fighting and going to war.

There was little recognition of duty, valor, peacekeeping, disaster aid and the right – no, the obligation of Canadian citizens to defend the values we all came to Canada for.

If we as new Canadians do not hesitate to fight for equal rights, we must also not hesitate to defend those rights.

Our strength as new Canadians must not only be measured in economic terms.

We must permeate and be present in all aspects of Canada.

That includes the Canadian Forces.

Via Peter Worthington--and I agree with his conclusion:

Bravo, Asian Pacific Post! It's an attitude the rest of Canada's (North America's) mainstream media might emulate, had they the courage.

Meanwhile back at Afghanistan, the circle is squared:

Liberal MP and defence critic Denis Coderre rejected the view that the Afghan mission is a bust.

"The Conservative approach regarding Afghanistan is a failure, but the mission itself is not a failure. It is noble," he said...

Got that folks?

Max Hastings, for his part, says the British Army is still up for the call to arms whilst he argues well the negative interpretation of the situation there.

CC-177 delivers supplies to Jamaica

Image by Sgt. Kevin MacAulay, CF Combat Camera

Speaking of the right tools for the mission—our brand-new CC-177 Globemaster III flew its first operational mission last week, delivering supplies to Jamaica for the victims of Hurricane Dean:

"By using our new C-17, Canada’s New Government is responding today to the humanitarian emergency in Jamaica with a large shipment of emergency aid supplies," said Minister Oda. "The 32 tons of supplies, such as tarps, jerricans and buckets that we are sending will bring much-needed relief to the victims of Hurricane Dean."

"Today’s shipment of such a large quantity of supplies across this long distance would not have been possible without our new C-17 Canadian Forces aircraft," said Minister MacKay. "I am proud that we now have this capability, and the Canadian Forces can contribute toward this important relief effort and helping to alleviate the human suffering caused by Hurricane Dean."

-- DND/CF, "Canada Sends New C-17 to Jamaica with Supplies for the Victims of Hurricane Dean", August 23rd, 2007.

This is what you can do with the right tools for the job. And there are sound reasons for employing a Globemaster, and not some other type of airlifter. Useful to keep in mind when a skeptic starts spouting nonsense about how the C-17 is an unnecessary purchase, and how these missions can be accomplished by other craft.

For the record, yes, a CC-150 Polaris can accommodate this payload. However, a Polaris (like all commercial aircraft) requires specific cargo loading/unloading equipment known as a K-loader. It's actually pictured above (the thing the camo-clad loaders are standing on), during the upload process at CFB Trenton.

The K-loader has to raise itself up to cargo door height, take on a couple pallets or containers, lower itself to ground level, and then something else (like a 10,000lb forklift) has to come grab the pallets and shuffle them off to a cargo receiving area. Then the K-loader raises itself again and grabs the next few pallets. Rinse and repeat until the payload is offloaded. If it sounds slow and boring, that's because it is.

Palletised payloads, however, can be directly downloaded from the C-17's rear ramp by a 10,0o0lb forklift without any K-loader involvement. The C-17 could actually carry its own forklift from the airfield of origin to the destination, and offload that first via the rear ramp. So even if your destination has no cargo-handling capability whatsoever, you can still bring your own. There's many sound reasons for using the Globemaster rather than the Polaris.

The CC-130H Hercules would also be an unsuitable choice for this mission. Moving thirteen 463L pallets (32 tons in total) from from CFB Trenton to Kingston, Jamaica, requires three aircraft—H-mod Hercs can only carry six pallets at a time—or one aircraft making three return trips. The CC-130 also has a rear ramp however, so it too can be offloaded by a forklift.

Each Herc carries a crew of five—2 pilots, 1 navigator, 1 flight engineer, and 1 loadmaster. That's fifteen people to move these pallets, or a week of duty days for a single aircrew. The Herc would make each 1,568nm trip in 6 hours—that's 12 hours including the return trip. So for a single CC-130H aircraft to move these 13 pallets, it would require three 12-hour trips, or three aircraft making a single 12-hour return flight. Not including ground handling, offload and refueling times.

In contrast, a single CC-177 can fly all 13 pallets to Jamaica in 3 hours, 49 minutes, using a single aircrew of three (2 pilots, 1 loadmaster). And it can carry sufficient fuel for the entire journey. Tack on the return trip and you have the entire mission completed in just under 8 hours, not including ground handling and offload times.

Remind me why the CC-177 isn't the best choice in this scenario?

Right tools for the mission

Lorne Gunter telling it like it is.

The biggest question I have is why more hasn't been done to beg, borrow or steal some chopper support for the Afghanistan deployment. Are the Americans that over-stretched they can't spare a few airframes for the Canadians to take over? Hell, there's got to be a couple thousand MI-8T Russian choppers around that we can rent. Regardless of the cost, we need the capability.

It's been obvious since the beginning that most of the casualties were coming from the resupply convoys to our forward bases. I'm glad to hear the Husky and Buffalo minesweeping vehicles will be on the ground in a few weeks. This is a capability we should have had before even deploying into the Kandahar area.



Picture from the Canadian American Strategic Review
(click on pic for full size)

Update: second link fixed. Here's an article from today's Globe and Mail regarding the purchase and deployment.

Training for Afstan

Taking it very seriously--reservists on Exercise Maple Defender 2007:

1) The Sudbury Star (h/t to Celestial Junk):

Kandahar comes to Alberta; CFB Wainwright has been transformed into a full-scale replica of the Afghan terrain where our soldiers fight the Taliban...

2) Ottawa Citizen:

$140M simulator saves soldiers' lives in Afghanistan: army
High-tech laser tag tells troops when they 'die,' and how to prevent it next time

You've got to be kidding

An athletic leg isn't a covered prosthetic for members of the Canadian Forces, probably the most athletic workplace in the country? You're kidding, right?

Fix this, Minister MacKay. Fix it now.

(And note to whomever was proofreading the article prior to publication: it's Dieppe, not Dupe. That's just an embarrassing lack of historical knowledge on display, and an even more embarrassing lack of attention to detail.)

Polls, damned polls and questions

A lot depends on what you ask:

As the Canadian death toll climbs in Afghanistan, conventional wisdom would suggest that public support for the bloody mission will plummet in direct response.

Polling data accumulated over the past year and a half, however, tells a more complex tale, indicating that opinion on the divisive issue has held relatively stable -- sometimes even after troop deaths -- and that Canadians may be more likely to approve of the historic military mission when they are told more about it.

"It's been incredibly consistent," said John Wright of pollster Ipsos Reid. "We've polled during some of the worst times for the Canadian military, we've been in the field when there have been six soldiers killed ... We've been sure we can [conduct polls] whenever sentiment would be worst, and it seems to have held."

In fact, what pollsters ask people would appear to have almost as much impact on opinion as what is happening in Afghanistan itself [emphasis added], some analysts say.

When questions in a Defence Department poll emphasized protecting civilians and rebuilding the country, support for the mission shot up.

When asked by Decima Research if they thought the number of Canadian casualties was acceptable, on the other hand, two-thirds of respondents answered in the negative.

The deaths of soldiers from the Quebec-based Van Doos regiment could alter the whole equation. In the one province already firmly opposed to sending troops to Afghanistan, a CROP survey partly conducted after the death of Private Simon Longtin on Sunday recorded an 11 percentage point increase, to 68%, of Quebecers opposed to their compatriots being involved in the conflict. That was before the two most recent deaths.

But until the past few days, at least, opinion levels were surprisingly predictable.

A series of polls conducted by Ipsos Reid for CanWest News Service and Global Television since January, 2006, all asking the same question, has seen support for the mission roller-coaster from 44% to 52% [an eight percent variation is a "roller'coaster"?], then back down below 50%, then up again to a peak of 57% last fall. There has been a slow slide to 50% support since then, but the results over 18 months plot a relatively flat line that has hovered around 50% backing...

Strategic Counsel has recorded similar fluctuations and a similar range of variation in its polls since early 2006, after a fast drop from 55% support in March of that year.

The difference is that its surveys have backing for the mission hovering around the 40% mark, 10 points below those of Ipsos Reid.

A spokesman for the company refused to comment on its results, citing its contract with another media outlet. Rob Huebert of the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies suggested the difference in the two pollsters' results can be traced to the questions they pose.

Ipsos Reid asks respondents about their support for "the use of Canada's troops for security and combat efforts against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan."

Strategic Counsel asks simply about "the decision to send Canadian troops to Afghanistan."

"They set up the issue differently," Prof. Huebert said. "It is not a coincidence that the one that clearly defines the threat gets the higher response ... People won't think immediately of why we are there. If you mention Taliban and al-Qaeda, people will clue in."

In a string of polls for the National Defence Department in late 2006 and early 2007, Ipsos Reid tweaked the questions even further, and found dramatic differences in response.

When the question referred to military operations that help to secure "the environment for the civilian population" through activities "that include combat," backing shot up to the low 60s.

After a lengthy preamble that said Canada is trying to improve human rights for women and build a more free and democratic society in Afghanistan, another question drew support from 81%.

It suggests that explaining the purpose of the mission is all-important if the government wants to boost the tepid support among Canadians for the operation, said Alex Morrison of the Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies.

"The polling has indicated to the government that it is not doing a good job of communicating why we are in Afghanistan. The government recognizes that but consistently refuses to do anything about it," he said.

"Unless the government starts telling Canadians often, frequently, why we are there, I don't think the numbers will change very much."

Latest:

Canadian support for the mission holding steady: poll
Albertans at 72% are most likely to back deployment, while nearly two out of three Quebecers are opposed

'Highway of Heroes'

A Liberal government seems prepared to do a Good Thing:

A stretch of Ontario highway that's become a sombre repatriation route for soldiers killed in Afghanistan, drawing impromptu gatherings of mourners saluting that sacrifice, is set to be renamed in their honour, the province said yesterday.

The 170-kilometre section of Highway 401 between CFB Trenton where the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers arrive and the forensics centre in Toronto that receives them has been dubbed the Highway of Heroes.

More than 14,000 people have signed an online petition to officially rename the stretch of highway where people gather on overpasses to wave flags, display placards of support and salute the processions of hearses and limousines.

Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield said there were "no barriers to making this happen."

"I think when you consider the sacrifice that the soldiers and others have made, it's just a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect on that sacrifice and to be able to acknowledge it," Ms. Cansfield said in a phone interview, adding that she became aware of the online petition on Wednesday.

"There's no reason not to do it. All we need to do now is get into the process of how quickly we can do it."

The government says it's considering several options in terms of dedicating a portion of the country's busiest highway, currently named the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway.

"We don't know whether we rename one little part of it or if we leave the name and have that part of it dedicated," said Jamie Rilett, Ms. Cansfield's spokesman. "We're kind of early in the process to know which direction it's going to go, but there'll definitely be something dedicating that part of the highway to the fallen soldiers."

The cost to dedicate the highway with signs will be minimal, he added.

The man behind the petition, 22-year-old James Forbes of London, Ont., said he's pleased he's attracted so much attention...

Here's a comment on the Globe story that well illustrates why Mortar Guy is fed up (me too):

Beatriz Perez-Sanchez from Toronto, Canada writes: Given that Canada's soldiers are being sacrificed needlessly in an unwinnable war to suit the foreign policy objectives of Washington, it would be more fitting to rename it the Corridor of Cannon Fodder.

Then there's this one:

The Emperor's Paparazzi from Canada writes: Why are these people considered heroes? Because they joined the armed forces for a steady job and excitement of playing with weapons?

Hurl.

Letters

So the military brass are sending or have sent hundreds if not thousands of letters to army veterans asking them to re-enlist to support the home front. Now I know this doesn't mean much to most of you, but to those of us on the Supplementary Reserve List it means a great deal. Especially so if you served in the army, and even more especially so if you were trained to captain, major, sergeant or warrant officer level. I'm a former navy fid so I'm not feeling the heat right about now. But what about you, Brooks? Received any letters recently? Babble on, brother.

Professional

Why is Christie Blatchford my favourite journalist when it comes to reporting on the CF?

Well, for a few reasons. Firstly, she...*ahem*...doesn't just talk about the casualties of an operation, she talks about the background for that operation:

It was the savage attack on Haji Kheerbin, the 48-year-old district chief of the volatile Zhari area about 30 kilometres west of Kandahar, that led to the mission.

Mr. Kheerbin was preparing for prayers with his three young children at his side here last Friday when a suicide bomber approached and blew himself up. The youngsters, two sons aged 6 and 12 and a three-year-old daughter, died with their father in the blast.

Secondly, she...*ahem*...doesn't just talk about the casualties of an operation, she talks about the objectives of that operation:

The objective of the joint Afghan-Canadian mission was to retake Gundy Ghar, a large hill about 15 kilometres west of Canadian bases at Masum Ghar and Patrol Base Wilson. As recently as this spring, Gundy Ghar was the site of a small Canadian strongpoint, or reinforced position, but had fallen once again into Taliban hands.

Canadian Forces traditionally have been stretched thin as they take pieces of ground along the Arghandab, then either hand them over to the ANA or ANP or attempt to hang onto them until the local forces, both still rapidly growing and becoming professional, can muster up sufficient numbers to hold them.

The hill at Gundy Ghar offers long views over the green and fertile valley and is strategically important.

Thirdly, she...*ahem*...doesn't just talk about the casualties of an operation, she talks about the strategic context of that operation:

An operation conceived in one tragedy had ended in another, and that in itself is a very Afghan story.

But it was also an illustration of why security is so critical in southern Afghanistan - without it, government leaders and politicians, teachers and doctors and the workers of foreign aid organizations - all of them keen to help this country rebuild - not only can't function, but are also sometimes in grave danger.

It was a civilian, Dave Puskas, an orthopedic spinal surgeon from Thunder Bay, Ont., just finishing up two months at the base hospital at Kandahar Air Field, who put it better than anyone else.

"To suggest that being in a combat is a failure of this mission is so wrong," he said yesterday, just hours before he boarded a plane for home. "Security is the pillar on which everything else depends. Chaos and anarchy never built anything."

Imagine that: a journalist who will dig beyond the shallowest "if it bleeds, it leads" aspects of the story and into the whys and hows of the military operation behind the deaths. A journalist outside the field of sports reporting who is willing to talk about the objectives and strategies of the game itself, rather than just watching the emotional roller-coaster of the crowd in the stands.

We need more like her.

Rant on

"Mortar guy" over at Army.ca spent a year in Kabul with SAT-A, and has studied insurgencies intensively over the past three years as part of his work towards a Master's degree:

I've had enough. Consider this my rant against ignorance; my protest against agendas, half-truths, and lies. For almost two years I have been closely following the news from and about Afghanistan and it has been demoralizing to say the least. I spent a year in Kabul with the Strategic Advisory Team and watched the media only report the deaths our Forces suffered rather than the successes we (not just the SAT) achieved. I have watched "experts", editorialists, politicians, protesters, activists and pundits mangle facts, misread situations and push agendas. Most of what I have read and seen has been flawed to one degree or another. As a result many Canadians I have spoken to are wholly unaware of what we are doing there and why we are doing it. The debate has been so muddied by poor reporting and incomplete information that most people are stunned when they hear of our successes.

At the same time I have heard only reactive, ineffective whimpers from our establishment. Our government and DND in particular has done a poor job of getting the message out. Granted things are improving but you only have to look at the News Room on the DND website to see that the majority of news releases concerning Afghanistan concern the deaths and injuries we have suffered in Kandahar. In other words we are playing into the media's "if it bleeds, it leads" approach to coverage.

It gets better, and more specific after that. Oh yes, you absolutely need to read the whole thing.

Sort yourselves out

Memo to the folks at CanWest: the nickname Van Doos refers exclusively to members of the Royal 22e Régiment. Twenty-second corresponds to vingt-deuxième, which gets slurred into vandoo.

The nickname does not refer to every soldier from Quebec, or to francophone soldiers, or to any other made-up mishmash you care to fabricate.

The soldiers were members of Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment, also known as the Van Doo, which took over command of the mission Aug. 1. The two slain troopers are the second and third members of the regiment to die in Afghanistan since Sunday. In all, 69 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in the war-torn country since 2002.

The late MCpl Duchesne was not a Van Doo, he was a member of 5e Ambulance de campagne (5th Field Ambulance). Get it right.

Update: At least the CBC has the good grace to correct its story and admit to the error. Better not to screw it up in the first place, though.

And, geez, even Christie got this one wrong:

It was the regiment's third death since it arrived on the ground in southern Afghanistan less than three weeks ago.

No, it was the Battle Group's third death. Not everyone in the Battle Group is a Van Doo, folks.

Up-the-chain-of-command-date: Looks like I'm not the only one who noticed.

Martin misleading on Afghan healthcare and the Canadian mission

I read an op-ed by Member of Parliament Dr. Keith Martin yesterday, and shook my head. He seems to have a basic grip on his facts, but no context for them whatsoever:

If you wanted to win the hearts and minds of a people, what would you do? Clearly, enabling them to access health care when they are sick and at their most vulnerable must rank near the top. Therefore it makes it utterly mystifying why Canada, with our hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money pouring into Afghanistan, have neglected this most obvious initiative. Nowhere is this need more acute than in Kandahar's Mirwais Hospital, a modern hell on Earth.

Look, I have no desire to be treated at Mir Weis, and I have no doubt that it is as scary a medical destination as Dr. Martin asserts. But to extrapolate from that one hospital's condition that Canada is "neglecting" health care is unfair in at least two different ways: it ignores significant progress made, and it ignores the fact that Canada is working within an alliance of nations all contributing to the rebuilding of Afghanistan in various ways.

Dr. Martin should concede that Mir Weis itself is improving. I'm not in a position to know if it's "enough" or not, since I don't know how fast a pace of improvement the Afghans can handle, but work is being done by Canadians or with Canadian funds at that hospital (from an e-mail with a DND source):

Canada is a strong supporter of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is playing a lead role in improving public health care delivery at Mirwais Hospital. Canada's most recent contribution to the International Committee of the Red Cross totalled $3 million. With Canadian assistance, UNICEF is also helping establish a Maternal Waiting Home at the hospital; once it is once fully operational, it is estimated that the facility will benefit more than 1000 female patients each year.

Furthermore, while healthcare in Afghanistan is nowhere near Western standards, it's miles ahead of where it was under Taliban rule in late 2001. Some stats:

• 4,000 new medical facilities opened


• 83% of Afghans now have access to basic healthcare (as of early 2007), compared to 8% in 2001


• 7.2 million children vaccinated against polio


• 4.3 million children vaccinated against other childhood diseases


• 4 million women vaccinated against Tetanus


• 3.4 million people provided with hygiene education


• Village Medical Outreach (VMO) missions had provided basic medical care to more than 2000 Afghans in the remotest areas of Kandahar when I wrote this post in November of last year

And that's not counting any of the more low-key donations various CF bodies have put into Afghan hands - like wheelchairs, like stuffed animals, like medicine, like diagnostic kits for nurses, like baby formula and bottles, like a solid waste disposal truck for the infamous Mir Weis. It also doesn't include indirect measures taken by Canadians to improve the health of Afghans, like digging wells to provide clean water, or building roads that allow them to seek timely medical care, or helping repair irrigation canals that improve crop yields and thus improve nutrition among the general population. But don't for a minute forget that those projects also help Afghans lead longer and healthier lives.

Note also that the World Bank put out a report in April of this year that applauded the fact that "almost 6 million people in rural areas of Afghanistan now have access to primary health care, many for the first time." I'd encourage anyone interested in the improving health of Afghans to at least read the abstract provided here:

• The number of people visiting a health center in rural areas has increased four-fold since 2004. In most low income countries the average is 0.3 visits per person per year, whereas in Afghanistan it is approaching 1.0 in areas covered by the project.


• The Ministry of Public Health has contracted with NGO service providers in districts where 80% of the population are living - boosting access to health care in rural areas.


• An independent assessment shows a 40 percent increase in patient satisfaction.


• 60 percent increase in the number of functional health centers in the 11 provinces financed by the project during Phase I. Third party evaluations show that the centers are fully supplied, equipped, and staffed. There is almost no absenteeism, which compares well with up to 40 percent absenteeism among public sector doctors elsewhere in South Asia.


• The number of pregnant women receiving prenatal care per year has increased from 8,500 in 2003 (5 percent of pregnant women, based on the baseline household survey) to 123,000 in 2006 (63 percent, based on health management information system data). An ongoing household survey should confirm these numbers soon.


• NGOs maintained and even expanded services in unstable areas. In Helmand, one of the more insecure provinces, the number of patients seen more than doubled, from 157,000 in 2004 to 338,000 in 2006, despite the assassination of four health workers and the destruction of 15 percent of health centers.


• The number of patients diagnosed as a proportion of the expected number of TB cases has increased from less than 10 percent to almost 50 percent in less than 2 years (still short of the international standard of 70 percent).


• 8,000 patients have been diagnosed and are receiving effective TB treatment.


• More than 10,000 community health workers–half of them women–have been trained and deployed. They have helped increase family planning and childhood vaccination.


• The number of facilities with trained female health workers has increased from 25 percent before the project to 85 percent today.


• By providing virtually free health services, the project has helped increase access to preventive and curative care. It has, thereby, reduced the health-induced financial shocks that frequently push poor families deeper into poverty.

Again, I'm not trying to paint a misleadingly rosy picture of healthcare in Afghanistan, since the country has a long way to go:

After 30 years of civil strife, Afghanistan had almost no national health system in place. This meant that the country faced a serious development challenge, and the international community had to build the public health and health care delivery systems virtually from scratch. Most of the health problems in Afghanistan are not amenable to quick fixes, requiring long-term investment in nutrition programs, the creation of sanitation systems, and the development of a new generation of health care professionals.

No, I'm just trying to provide some context by letting you know where the country started in 2001, and what progress has been made up to this point.

Nothing is more indicative of the lack of context in Dr. Martin's piece more than this line, though, as he cites the shortcomings of Afghan medical care:

Afghanistan has an infant mortality rate of 140 per 1,000 births; and the under-five mortality rate of 230 of 1,000 children.

Prior to the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan had an infant mortality rate of 165 per 1,000 births:

Infant mortality has dropped by 18 percent in Afghanistan since 2001, in one of the first real signs of recovery for the country five years after the ouster of the Taliban regime, health officials said Thursday.

"Despite many challenges, there are clear signs of health sector recovery and progress throughout the country," said Muhammad Amin Fatimi, the minister of health.

The infant mortality rate - the number of children who die before their first birthday - has dropped to 135 per 1,000 live births in 2006 from 165 per 1,000 in 2001, according to a countrywide survey by Johns Hopkins University, he said. By comparison, the infant mortality rate in France in 2005 was 5 per 1,000, according to Unicef.

That represents a drop of 18 percent and means that 40,000 to 50,000 infants who were dying annually during the Taliban era, are alive today, Fatimi said. [Babbler's bold]

I'd guess there are at least 40,000 sets of Afghan parents who would disagree with Dr. Martin's assessment that Canada is failing them in the area of improving healthcare, cradling a live baby in their arms as proof.

Healthcare in Afghanistan has improved in leaps and bounds over the past five years. It's not improved to the point where any of us, including the Afghans themselves, would want it in the long term, but it's miles ahead of where it was before the Taliban were overthrown. Canada has contributed, and should continue to contribute to developing the Afghan healthcare system - both with quick impact projects like distribution of humanitarian aid, and with long-term capacity-building projects like hygiene education and vaccination programs.

Dr. Martin's piece mischaracterizes that effort, and unfairly minimizes its impact. Canadians need a more well-rounded picture than what he provides them if they're to hold an informed position about Canada's contribution in this regard.

Update: A good discussion of the pros and cons of Dr. Martin's article, including opinions from some folks who have actually seen Mir Weis hospital with their own eyes, can be found in this thread at the indispensable Army.ca.

Upperdate: Bev Oda replies to Martin in the National Post.

It's not just about safety

One of the legitimate functions of a politician is to draw light and heat to a problem. Oftentimes, their attention and scrutiny forces needed changes upon a bad situation.

I wish I had more confidence in the motives of those politicians quoted inthis story to limit themselves to that goal:

Someone must be held accountable for the Canadian Forces' failure to replace the Snowbirds' faulty lap belt system that was responsible for the crash that killed Captain Shawn McCaughey in May, opposition parties said yesterday.

Defence critics for the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP said the military has to explain how a lap belt that first malfunctioned in 2002 was not changed until after Capt. McCaughey's death.

Liberal MP Denis Coderre said it is difficult to understand why someone had to die before the faulty component that connects the lap belt to the parachute was finally modified.

"Who was responsible for this equipment? Who was responsible for the decision-making process?" Mr. Coderre asked.

Bloc MP Claude Bachand said the situation "simply doesn't make sense."

"There really was negligence here and there has to be someone who is held responsible," he said.

You see, it sounds to me like they're just looking to score political points with this - against Gen Hillier or whichever Conservative politician is most convenient.

The report into Capt McCaughey's death was already public, and the pilot-restraint system was replaced. So the immediate cause of the crash has already been discovered and corrected in order that the same issue doesn't crop up again.

The bigger problem here, I suspect, is a systemic one that allowed a known problem to remain a danger for so long before it was fixed. I doubt there's any one officer upon whom total blame can be fixed for letting a safety report languish on a desk for too long, or one maintenance tech who didn't properly repair a latch. No, I'd guess that in an overtasked and underfunded CF, this particular problem simply never reached the top of enough people's "to do" piles.

Unfortunately, even with all the funding and manning in the world, there's never enough time to cover everything. While one would hope a pilot-restraint problem would be considered a critical issue, in the context of a military focused on a mission in Afghanistan, on fundamental organizational transformation, on budgetary constraints (the capital acquisitions don't help the operational budget), on the ongoing personnel crunch in many military occupations, I don't know whether yet another equipment problem in a demonstration team's forty-year-old aircraft attracts the attention it should:

“The problem within DND is, and always will be, that the priority for an aerobatic demonstration team will never measure up to the priority of a real combat capability,” [retired LGen] Macdonald said.

Which brings me to Dawn Black's comment:

New Democratic MP Dawn Black said Capt. McCaughey's death was a "preventable loss."

"Safety always has to be the prime concern" in the Canadian Forces, she said.

I hope that the reporter left out some context with that partial quote, because otherwise Ms. Black is astoundingly ignorant of one of the fundamental principles of military service: namely, that safety is not the prime concern, the mission is. The concept of "unlimited liability" - the idea that a member of the Canadian Forces may be required to die in the service of his or her country - puts the lie to any thought of safety as the CF's prime concern.

Capt McCaughey's death was almost certainly preventable. Measures have been taken to ensure a similar death is not visited upon another pilot of his squadron. More measures need to be taken to ensure that problems of this nature aren't allowed to linger in decision-making limbo as long as this one did.

But as concerned as each of them is with safety, I don't know a single military pilot who would make it his or her "prime concern." Each time they go up, they're fully aware that they might not come down again in one piece. And they go up anyhow. Just as the soldiers riding LAVIII's across a dusty desert halfway around the world know they might meet an explosive death, and our sailors know they might disappear under the waves one night with barely a trace.

As safe as we try to make it, a military career will always be a dangerous one. No matter what comes of the opposition's concerns about a faulty lap-belt, that reality will not change.

Red Friday Rally, Toronto, Friday Aug. 24 at the CNE

Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun gives some details:

It's a Red Friday Rally where you can show your support for the troops, go for a roller coaster ride and have some cotton candy, too.

It doesn't get any more Canadian than that.

It could go down as another piece of history for the Canadian National Exhibition -- a giant Red Rally to support the troops on Friday near the automotive building inside the Exhibition grounds.

"I really want to break the record," Capt. Wayne Johnston said yesterday. "I really think we can do it."

The previous record was Canada's first Red Rally for the troops in Afghanistan in Ottawa last September. "They had 10,000 people and it was fabulous," said Johnston. "It would be so great if we could be even bigger."

There is a good chance of it happening since about 70,000 people are expected down there Friday. Johnston, the man behind organizing the Sapper Mike McTeague Wounded Warrior Fund, says tourists from the U.S. and abroad are invited as well.

At 2 p.m. Friday, not too far from the Princes' Gates, he hopes to see a sea of red. The famous freelance photographer known as Smitty is going to go up in a helicopter and take a picture and send it to Afghanistan...

The Toronto Sun and the CNE are backing this event. Just consider with all of the people at The Ex, this could be quite memorable. For me, the important thing is not the record but a massive show of support so those men and women who serve overseas understand that we at home not only care about them but are with them 100%.

Toronto and area has come up so big in this area so far. Last Sept. 29, I will never forget the emotion as 3,000 or came to the GTA's first Red Rally at Yonge-Dundas Square.

So many municipalities have followed suit. I was at terrific rallies in Barrie and Whitby myself and I know there have been big ones in places like Kingston, Kitchener and, of course, Petawawa.

We should also not forget to mention that the Highway of Heroes is Hwy. 401 -- from Trenton to Toronto. It has become a sad but real ritual for people to line the highway and overpasses to say thank you to the soldiers coming home in flag-draped caskets...

Also at the CNE:

Operation Connection is underway at the CNE.

This year the military has expanded its endeavours at the fair. After more than 650,000 people visited the Canadian Forces' exhibit at the CNE last year, military officials asked organizers for another 743 square metres of real estate. That's almost half again as much as last year's 1,765 square metres.

"We are without question the busiest booth at the CNE [emphasis added]," said Capt. Wayne Johnston. "We asked for additional space because of sheer volume. You couldn't move at times last year."

It's all part of Operation Connection, a massive project now in its second year, designed by the military to educate the public about who they are and what they do.

With the Afghanistan mission in the news on a regular basis, it's a chance for the public to speak to men and women who have been there, as many of the 140 military officials who will work the site have been to the front lines.

Recruitment officers are also present. If you walk through the main gates of the CNE, chances are one of the first things you'll notice is a huge canvas banner, "Join Us," billowing high over a fleet of military equipment.

The Canadian Forces has kicked its public education and recruitment initiatives into high gear this year and is well on target to exceed its recruitment goal of 700 GTAers for the year. This past weekend, about 130,000 people went through the exhibit with well over 100 stopping each day to talk seriously with recruitment officers...

Update: CBC Newsworld and CTV Newsnet both carried the rally live from just after 1400 till just before the half hour--good on them (I also saw CBC giving good coverage of the CF exhibit at the CNE). Don Cherry was on stage, CDS Hillier spoke (OK but not his best) followed by new MND MacKay (so so).

Man, she has a way with words...

"Pte. Auclair will do all this, of course, seriously and gracefully, because Pte. Longtin would have done it for him, and because it's right, and because he loved his brother in arms."

Go read what Christie wrote about bringing a bud home for the last time.

Count your blessings...

...even the small ones: at least they didn't say "Soldiers jubilant after death of comrade!"

And people wonder why many in the paid media are so often mocked and derided around here. Numpties.

Fisking Michael Byers' bilge

The professor is one of the "experts" the media love to quote whom I love to loathe. Letters to the editor sent August 18 that were not printed:

1) To the Globe and Mail:

Prof. Michael Byers, in his interview with Michael Valpy ('This is Stephen Harper's war', August 18), is either terribly ill-informed about the role the United Nations, and German, troops have played in the Congo--or else he is being very economical with the truth. First Prof. Byers says that "A couple of years ago, a very large UN peacekeeping force brought relative peace to the Congo..." Not quite. The force, MONUC, has been in the Congo since Novermber 1999 and is still there. While there may be relative peace in the Congo the situation is still unstable so the force will likely stay for some time to come. And, by the way, MONUC has sustained 109 fatalities.

Prof. Byers then says "...there was a core, 2,000-soldier contribution from Germany." Wrong again. MONUC has had no German troops. There were German troops in the Congo but they were only there from July to November 2006 and they were not part of the UN force. Rather they were part of a separate European Union force that was authorized by the UN Security Council to deploy briefly to support MONUC during the period before and after Congo's July and October 2006 national elections. The EU force totalled some 2,400 personnel of which only 780 were German. Moreover not all the EU troops were actually in the Congo; many were stationed in neighbouring Gabon on standby.

Prof. Byers goes on to claim that the German troops played an important role in training developing country troops with the UN force and turning them into much better soldiers. That is simply false. The German troops with the EU force had no such role during their short presence in the Congo.

Given the complete inaccuracy of what Prof. Byers says about what the Germans did in the Congo, it is astounding that he should hold up that fictional role as a model for what he thinks Canada should be doing in Darfur. He also ignores the simple fact that the Sudanese government will not allow any large contingent of Western troops into the country as part of the UN force for Darfur that the UN Security Council recently authorized.

One cannot but be amazed that one so fast and loose with facts is employed as a professor of global politics and international law at the University of British Columbia.

References:
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/monuc/facts.html
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/showPage.asp?id=1091〈=EN
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVOD-6QQGL9?OpenDocument
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2084630,00.html
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/en/Aussenpolitik/RegionaleSchwerpunkte/Afrika/Kongo-Einsatz.html
http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070808/LETTERS08-1/Letters/commentLetters/commentLetters/6/6/10/

2) To the Toronto Star:

Thomas Walkom, in his column August 18, quotes Prof. Michael Byers as saying about Afghanistan that "The optimal solution would be a proper UN development operation. It wouldn't be perfect by a long shot; it could fail."

Prof. Byers appears unaware that the UN already has a very large development operation in the country, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) with some 1,000 staff--the great majority of whom are Afghans. The mission's headquarters are in Kabul and it has offices throughout the country. UNAMA is supported by the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations. What more does the good professor want?

Reference:
http://www.unama-afg.org/about/overview.htm

A different kind of beach...

‘You never forget’

Vets commemorate 65th anniversary of Dieppe
BY CRAIG PEARSON
STAR STAFF REPORTER

Code named Operation Jubilee, some 6,100 Allied servicemen — including 4,963 Canadians — stormed the beach at Dieppe.

The mission represented the Allied forces’ highest single day losses for the war. Only 2,200 Canadians returned to England that day. Of the 3,367 casualties, 1,946 were prisoners of war, while 907 died.

Of the 553 members of the Essex Scottish regiment who joined the raid — most from Windsor and Essex County — 105 were killed in action. Eventually 121 would make the ultimate sacrifice.

“I think about it all the time,” said Snook, a retired Heinz maintenance manager. “You never forget seeing your buddies lying dead beside you.”

Of the 432 Essex Scottish who were not killed, only 48 returned to England. The others were all captured and spent the remainder of the war in POW camps.

The Dieppe Raid

Windsor Star photo album of 2006 trip to commemorate the Dieppe Raid.

Brit coverage of Afstan

One mildly positive story, two pretty gloomy (but note the newspapers)--a post at Milnet.ca.

Update: The Independent supports the war:

...We did not and do not support the invasion of Iraq, flawed in its justification and calamitous in its outcome, but we did accept the need for intervention in Afghanistan to root out the Taliban which was harbouring al-Qa'ida.

Iraq and Afghanistan are two different fronts, two very different campaigns. In Afghanistan the presence of our troops is justified and useful...

Meanwhile Liberal leader Stéphane Dion wants the prime minister to announce we are pulling out in February, 2009 without even the need for a vote in Parliament--his national defence critic, Denis Coderre, agrees of course (in the context of the death of a Canadian soldier).

It's certainly liberating, not having to pander to public opinion

Liberal Senator Colin Kenny sure doesn't pull any punches with the ruling Conservatives, nor with his own Liberal party in this op-ed:

Our national government rules the country from the Commons. The primary role of that national government should be the physical protection of its citizens, plus the advancement of their interests at home and abroad. To do this effectively -- particularly in times of domestic or international crises -- a country needs a military with a little muscle on its bones.

Not everybody agrees. There are many Canadians who decry the use of military force generally. And given the number of stupid wars that have taken so many lives over the centuries, they have a point. But anyone who lives in the real world knows that tyrants don't bend to diplomatic pressure unless there is the threat of force behind that pressure. We're simply not going to help contribute to a better world by eviscerating our military.

I believe that the people who have been running our country for the past couple of decades -- be they Liberals or Conservatives -- have declined to invest reasonable amounts of public money into Canada's military. I also think that this is likely to leave the physical, economic and cultural protection of future generations of Canadians largely to chance.

The rest of Kenny's piece is equally worth reading. I'd encourage you to do just that.

Teach a man to fish...

I wish we were hearing more about the Operational Mentor Liason Teams (shortened to OMLT, pronounced "omlette"), but Christie Blatchford, as always, delivers the goods:

When this rotation of the OMLT arrived last February, it was mentoring less than 20 per cent of soldiers from the ANA's 205 (or Hero) Brigade; as Lt.-Col. Eyre's group departed southern Afghanistan this week, it was mentoring more than 80 per cent. In February, the 2nd Kandak (or battalion) was using its medical platoon to man a checkpoint, with medics still being regularly pressed into service as extra riflemen; now, medics are treating wounded. In February, ANA soldiers were still scrounging for equipment and supplies wherever they could, as they had learned to do; now, they get them through the ANA's own logistics kandak.

But more important, Lt.-Col. Eyre says, is that at the kandak level - the 2nd Kandak, which operates in the volatile Zhari-Panwaii area just west of Kandahar city, is the battalion with which the OMLT has worked most closely - ANA commanders are planning operations.

"Up to that point," Lt.-Col. Eyre says, "it was all coalition-led [the International Security Assistance Force, commanded in the south by multinational NATO forces]. The battle group would say, 'We think we need an operation here, we'd like you to participate.'... Now, they're [the ANA] at the stage where their kandak commander would say, 'We think we need to go into this area and this is what I'd like to do, and this is what I need the battle group to provide me, whether a quick reaction force or artillery.' "

It's called building capacity, and it's not just the focus of Canadian efforts here, it's also the only way, Lt.-Col. Eyre believes, for the ANA and ultimately for Afghanistan to succeed.

I'm tempted to just reprint the whole damn thing, since there's just so much fantastic stuff in there - about trust and OPSEC, about how mentoring is a two-way learning process, about the ANA as an instrument of national unity. Go read it.

"There they go, the boys in the bright green sportscar...

...who do they think they are? And where did they get that car?"

(With apologies to Trooper, but I figured since we are talking about Armour, using a Trooper song was a must!)



From an e-mail I received yesterday:

These tanks are able to operate in higher desert temperatures as their electric turret systems and more powerful engines generate significantly less heat when operating than the hydraulic systems of Canada's 30-year-old Leopard 1 fleet.

Between the cooler operating temperatures, the cooling vests and thermal blankets, the heat issue has been significantly mitigated. No doubt it is still freaking hot in those things, but I think it is much more bearable now.

And even hotter for the Taliban on the receiving end of that gun.

Thanks again to the Germans for loaning them to us (not leasing, members of the press, loaning).

First Leopard 2 arrives at Kandahar

No airco though!

The first of 20 newer Leopard 2 tanks for the Canadian Forces landed in Kandahar on Thursday but crews must still resort to water-filled cooling vests to cut the stifling heat inside the hulking steel beasts.

The tank, the first of 20 leased from Germany, was delivered by an Antonov transport aircraft in the early-morning hours. The Leopard 2 tanks promise more firepower, better landmine protection, longer range and better mobility than the 30-year-old Leopard 1 Canadians now use in Afghanistan.

But for all that technical superiority, the Leopard 2 still doesn't have air conditioning - a key drawback in a land where high temperatures regularly reach well into the 40s Celsius and tank crews have suffered dehydration.

To avoid wilting in the extreme heat, the four crew members - pilot, gunner, loader and crew leader - wear cooling vests to circulate chilled water over their bodies.

"I don't know if it's the best way, but I can tell you it works," said Capt. Craig Volstad of the Lord Strathcona's Horse armoured regiment based in Edmonton.

The tank rolled off the Antonov aircraft two hours late, with mechanical problem in one of its turrets. Military spokesman Capt. Hubert Genest called it a "minor glitch that will take 15 minutes to fix."

The 19 other 62-tonne tanks leased from the German army are expected to be delivered to Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan over the next few weeks...

Starting in the fall of 2008, the army is expecting to get the first of the 100 slightly used tanks Canada has bought from the Netherlands.

The first deliveries will come just months before the Canadian government's commitment to Afghanistan is supposed to expire in February 2009...

Some comments at the Lord Strathconas Horse message board.

And see:

Canadians train on the Leopard 2A6M

Bang!

"Staying the Course in Afghanistan"

German newspapers make the case in a forceful and clear way, unlike our government:

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
...
"Afghanistan cannot be allowed to become a beachhead from which militant Islamists and their terrorist spearheads can launch their harmfulness and totalitarian ideology into the world. The goal of winning over the 'hearts' of the Afghans may be pathetically exaggerated, but protecting Germany's security interests is not."

"When it comes to ramifications, whoever speaks of withdrawing from Afghanistan -- as the left does -- aligns themselves with the murderous Islamists in this power struggle ... A withdrawal today would amount to a flight from responsibility."

The leftist Die Tageszeitung writes:

"It would be disastrous if the German government allowed the Taliban to dictate its policies [emphasis added] ...

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"No one who wants to be taken seriously demands the immediate withdrawal of Germans. However, the general discussion about whether or not German troops should remain in Afghanistan is heating up, and the motto "keep going on as before" can no longer suffice. The government would prefer to extend its three current mandates: participation in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), deployment of the six aerial reconnaissance Tornado jets and support of the anti-terror Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The Greens and strong factions in the Social Democratic Party are demanding a pullout from OEF, which they equate with fighting terror with terror ... A withdrawal of Germany's small special forces contingent from OEF would be little more political posturing. But Germany's already limited influence would be further reduced."

"On the other hand, the time left before autumn to debate the fundamental strategy is far too short. For this reason, the three mandates should be extended for the time being, until a new plan can be developed with the allied forces. ... In addition, we need to get the more moderate forces in Afghanistan, which today are still supporting the Taliban, involved in the process of establishing peace."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"The fact that the police officers had absolutely nothing to do with the military deployment didn't matter a lick to the people who planted the bomb. Nor did the fact that the kidnapped engineers -- one of whom has been killed -- came to this land to help construct a new, civil society. The Taliban's goal is simply to oust the foreigners and once again establish their own Islamic regime throughout the country."

"For this reason, it really does no good to start debating again about whether the German army should be withdrawn from Afghanistan. Getting this debate started is the terrorists' goal. But even after a retreat, there would still be German soldiers in the country working at the embassy and providing assistance and whose ideas and resources would remain an unbearable provocation to the fundamentalists."

"Germany chose to get involved with the reconstruction and modernizing of Afghanistan. Unless we want to hand the country and its population back over to the fundamentalists, withdrawal is not an option. We must prevent the country from once again serving as a haven for international terrorists. And the bitter truth is that these three policemen will probably not be the last German victims of terror in Afghanistan."

Meanwhile back home:

Stop muddling Afghan file, Ottawa is warned
Military experts say Canadians won't be won over unless government is more open, stresses progress

Update: Optimism from the Brits:

Des Browne, the defence secretary, said yesterday that British forces could be at a "turning point" in bringing stability to Afghanistan, but suggested that there would still be a substantial UK military presence in the country for many years.

And going further than other ministers have done, he said in an interview with the Guardian that he had "no doubt" that the Taliban was being supplied with weapons from Iran, via drug routes...

Mr Browne, recently returned from his fourth visit to Afghanistan since he was appointed 14 months ago, painted an optimistic picture of the effect of heavy, often ferocious, fighting between British troops and the Taliban in recent weeks [sort of like the Canadians last year].

Seven soldiers have been killed in Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan, in the past 10 days. Separately, a Briton working for the private security firm ArmorGroup who was shot dead in Kabul was named last night as Richard Adamson.

Mr Browne told the Guardian he was "genuinely surprised" at the progress British troops had made in promoting sustainable security against the Taliban.

Asked if the British mission in southern Afghanistan had reached a turning point, he replied: "I think the honest answer is, yes, it could be." Asked if there would still be thousands of British troops there in 10 years' time - more than 7,000 are deployed there now, a figure that will rise to 7,800 by the end of the year - he said: "I do not envisage we will be in anything like the same profile on the present scale." However, he added: "I think it's too early to put a time on that [Exactly! MC]."..

On the outgoing Minister of Defence

The esteemed Dr. Jack Granatstein has written what I see as a balancing piece on the tenure of Gordon O'Connor in today's Globe & Mail. It details the positive elements of O'Connor's time as MND, which have been largely ignored in the media feeding frenzy accompanying his recent shuffling to Revenue.

While I believe Dr. Granatstein is writing with the noblest of intentions - to publicly recognize the contributions of a long-standing public servant, and to argue that while he had his faults "he handled the important matters well" - I believe some of the points our eminent historian uses to support his argument are quite a stretch. In fact, Gordon O'Connor wasn't nearly as successful as Granatstein paints him to be.

It's important to agree on what a MND should do, before we assess what he did do. I'd argue that a Minister of National Defence has three prime areas of responsibility: vision or policy, internal politics, and external politics. Vision is the big-picture direction of the CF - what our military should be, and how it should be utilized. Internal politics are the behind-closed-doors management of your department's bureaucracy, and the equally quiet caucus and cabinet negotiations on behalf of your department. External politics are dealings with your opposition, the media, and the Canadian public.

I believe that Minister O'Connor shone at none of these aspects of his job description, although he performed some better than others. I'm in agreement with Dr. Granatstein that Gordon O'Connor's time at the helm of DND wasn't the unmitigated disaster that the press is telling us it was.

But it wasn't great.

When it comes to vision and policy, O'Connor's record is mixed. While Granatstein rightly points to the improved emphasis on Arctic sovereignty as an O'Connor accomplishment, he fails to note the less useful policy ideas that have been quietly shelved or amended to mesh with realities on the ground: heavy naval icebreakers, a reconstituted Airborne Regiment, territorial defence battalions. He also fails to mention that while the Defence Policy Statement written under Bill Graham by Rick Hillier's staff and at his hands-on direction was a much-needed navigational aid for those charting the CF's future, a revised Defence Capabilities Plan has been indefinitely stalled by the politicians and bureaucrats at DND and PCO, according to information I've received.

O'Connor's ability to engage in internal politics is also mixed, although it's here that his performance was strongest. It's fair to credit him with securing a great deal of the capital budget that has enabled the equipment acquisition announcements we've seen over the past year and a half. But I wonder if the Conservative government really needed that much persuading, or if it would have boosted funding regardless of which rump happened to warm the MND's chair.

I'm more prepared to credit O'Connor with the way he managed his equipment budget and the Byzantine defence acquisition process. The Leopard purchase was brilliant: withdraw money already allocated for a new and controversial piece of kit (the MGS), funnel it into a fire-sale purchase of barely used but more proven kit, and get more bang for your buck more quickly than you could have any other way. I'd also challenge anyone to name another MND who has been able to shepherd a multi-billion dollar aircraft procurement from the idea stage to first tail delivery in eighteen months. O'Connor did it with the Globemaster.

On one factual point, I must correct Dr. Granatstein: the CF's new M777 155mm howitzers were purchased under the Martin government, when Bill Graham was MND, not on O'Connor's watch. Same with the RG-31 Nyala mine-protected patrol vehicles, and the Sperwer TUAV's. Check your dates, sir. If we're going to give O'Connor credit where it's due him, we should also extend the same courtesy to his predecessor.

Within his own department, as Peter Worthington points out in a Sun column today, O'Connor got his own bureaucrats moving on a number of outstanding issues surrounding veterans who were getting the shaft from DND, for which he deserves a great deal of praise. But he also publicly blamed subordinates for not following his direction on reimbursement of military funeral expenses, and appeared to be poorly informed on a number of issues - from detainees, to the number of magazines a soldier needed to take into the field, to how many ANA soldiers we could reasonably expect to have trained up in Afghanistan by next spring - suggesting he didn't understand his department's operations as well as one would expect.

Of course, when one considers external politics, O'Connor was a disaster. Although the criticism of him as defence industry shill was horribly unfair (ask his former client Airbus just how much they like him, with so many Boeing and Lockheed purchases), and the supposed contradictions between him and Hillier on ANA training were completely fabricated by a bloodthirsty press, many of O'Connor's other public wounds were self-inflicted. Those failings are well-documented, and I won't bother to revisit them here.

So, of the three aspects of O'Connor's job description, he gets a mediocre grade on two of them, and a failing grade on the third. And here's where I disagree most of all with Granatstein's assessment:

But on the issue of fighting the war in Kandahar, the truly important matter, Gordon O'Connor was sound as a bell....he handled the important matters well.

As I've said too many times to count at The Torch, the military battle in Afghanistan isn't the big worry: we should be kicking Taliban ass any time we engage them, and our troops do just that. No, the single biggest threat to the Canadian mission isn't the military fight that Granatstein wants to credit as a success to O'Connor, it's the battle for domestic public opinion in Canada. If we don't have that, the slow and painstaking progress our soldiers are making in Afghanistan will be washed away in an unwise and premature withdrawal.

Gordon O'Connor didn't handle the "important matters" well, because the most important matter for him to handle was public opinion, and he bungled it. The military was quite capable of dealing with the soldiering, if only he had been able to maintain the support of the average Canadian.

And I regret to say that that failure, beyond all the good things this dedicated servant of the Canadian public accomplished, will be the final word on Gordon O'Connor's public life.

Counterinsurgency realities in Afstan

I urge you to read this article by a USMC captain who has served in Afstan and Iraq, and is now teaching the subject in Kabul:

...one of my many gratifying moments at the academy came at the start of a class on targeting. I told the students to list the top three targets they would aim for if they were leading forces in Zabul province, a Taliban stronghold. When I asked a U.S. officer to share his list, he rattled off the names of three senior Taliban leaders to be captured or killed. Then I turned and asked an Afghan officer the same question. "First we must target the local councils to see how we can best help them," he replied. "Then we must target the local mullahs to find out their needs and let them know we respect their authority." Exactly. In counterinsurgency warfare, targeting is more about whom you bring in than whom you take out...

On the last afternoon of the course, I asked my students to define victory in Afghanistan. We'd talked about this earlier in the week, and most of their answers had focused on militarily defeating the Taliban or killing Osama bin Laden. Now the Afghan officers took the lead in a spirited discussion with their U.S. and NATO classmates. Finally the group agreed on a unanimous result, which neatly expresses the prize we're striving for: "Victory is achieved when the people of Afghanistan consent to the legitimacy of their government and stop actively and passively supporting the insurgency."..

This article in the WSJ is also worth reading (though I detect some boosterism):

...
Afghanistan is still a poor rural country with a mainly illiterate population, but it's improving rapidly, and with the exception of Helmand Province and a few bad districts in Uruzgun, Kandahar and Loghar [emphasis added], it's much like any number of developing countries in terms of security. We can't give every country everything they'd like, and it will take decades for the rule of law to be as firmly established here as it is in the West. But we can and are helping the Afghans pull themselves up to the next rung on the development ladder.

A simple truth

I'm afraid Norman Spector is bang on--especially when one considers the anti-Americanism that pervades so much of Canadian society and which dictates that actual fighting is only something those nasty Yanks do (and usually for bad reasons):

"Fundamentally, the problem is that what the Conservatives are doing (in Afghanistan), whether you agree with it or not, is not in harmony with where most Canadians' heads are at," says Spector.

"We're not used to it. We have a whole generation who have never known real war."