Daily Afghan news e-mail

From Paul Wells, just back from Afstan:

A handy bonus once I returned home was a reminder to sign up for Moby's daily Afghan news roundup [emphasis added], emailed every morning (very, very early in Canadian time zones). It's mostly Western sources, not Afghan, but that's hardly uninteresting.

A sample of this morning's stories: Taliban fighters penetrate close to Kandahar for the first time in five years and appear to capture the Gulistan district in Farah province; a World Bank report on drugs and corruption, themes that will be eerily familiar to readers of the next issue of Maclean's... and domestic and international coverage of the allegations of abuse of Canadian-captured prisoners in Afghan jails.

Which means, yes, this Canadian controversy is being followed in Afghanistan itself and by concerned Afghan-watchers around the world. In case anyone involved feels like governing themselves accordingly...

Here's the URL to register.

There's also this at Milnet.ca: "The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread", at the top of the link (stories are posted from time-to-time during the day; the URL for the topic itself changes each month).

A different view of Afghanistan

Richard Johnson's "Postings from Afghanistan".

Complete slide show of the pencil sketches completed by Richard Johnson. Beautiful work.

About this blog and artist: The tradition of war art dates back to before the First World War. Recently Richard Johnson continued that tradition when he spent two months in Kandahar living with Canadian troops and documenting what he saw in words and sketches.

Richard's biggest influences are combat artist Howard Brodie and foreign correspondent Joseph Galloway.

"Brodie was doing it for the humanity of all, and Galloway was doing it so that no one forgot the sacrifices that were being made by young men and women far from home."

Afstan: Doomsayer refuted

Bruce Rolston takes on Michael Yon at Flit (kind of reminds one of the 2001 "brutal Afghan winter" predictions):

Michael Yon, today:

"Iraq is looking better month by month. But at the current rate, surely we shall fail in Afghanistan."

Michael Yon, very close to a year ago:

"Mark this on your calendar: Spring of 2007 will be a bloodbath in Afghanistan for NATO forces. Our British, Canadian, Australian, Dutch, and other allies will be slaughtered in Afghanistan if they dare step off base in the southern provinces, and nobody is screaming at the tops of their media-lungs about the impending disaster. I would not be surprised to see a NATO base overrun in Afghanistan in 2007 with all the soldiers killed or captured. And when it happens, how many will claim they had no idea it was so bad and blame the media for failing to raise the alarm? Here it is: WARNING! Troops in Afghanistan are facing slaughter in 2007!"

All this was wrong, of course, and thankfully so. With the season winding down, there have been 155 NATO combat fatalities to date in Afghanistan in 2007, up from 130 last year. In Regional Command-South, which Yon was referring to, the number has gone up from 83 to 91 with two historically fairly quiet months to go, but that's entirely due to one province, Helmand, where fatalities went from 30 to 50. In all the other southern provinces, combat fatalities (so far, knock on wood) are down so far from last year, with Kandahar province, where the Canadians have the lead, falling from 38 NATO KIA a year ago to 29 this year. Not miraculous, but not disastrous, either.

The increase in NATO KIAs, broken out by NATO regional command, actually looks like this, with the difference from last year given in parentheses:

RC South: 91 (+8)
RC East: 48 (+10)
RC West: 6 (+5)
RC North: 4 (+4)
Kabul: 6 (-2)

As one can see, the year has been more violent throughout Afghanistan for NATO (although to be fair many provinces still haven't seen a single NATO fatality), but in absolute terms the increase is at least as due to increased fighting in the American-run RC-East as it is to the fight in the south. Hmm. Wonder if anyone predicted that?

It would be nice if Yon first acknowledged that he hasn't been batting 1.000 so far in his reading of the war-that-isn't-Iraq, before making any new predictions about it.

TODAY'S IDIOCY

Norman Spector skewers Linda the Hippo (earlier stuff on the same thing here).

Update: Read the first comment.

Afstan: Two Canadian views (and one American's thoughts)

Short excerpts from columns today:

1) Dan Leger, Halifax Chronicle Herald:

Kandahar: why Canada’s war is all but over

If Canada and its allies can’t defeat a few thousand guerrillas, what does that say about the West’s moral and ethical stand toward terrorism and extremism? What kind of message does it send to the Taliban and its allies around the world?..

The Taliban know they must fear and respect our soldiers. The tragedy is, they have little to fear from our citizens.

2) Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star:

Will Canada stand with its allies?

It has become obvious that only a handful of nations are in for the long haul, which will be very long indeed. Will Canada stand with its traditional allies and do the same? The answer to that question is about us, not anyone else.

The Americans will stay because Afghanistan, despite the U.S.-led coalition that deposed the Taliban in 2001, is primarily their war. No Democratic presidential candidate has said a word about retreating from Afghanistan; quite the opposite, even as they rail over Iraq. The British, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed last week, will not abandon Helmand province, however protracted the mission – and they twice suffered defeat on Afghan soil in the 19th century. The Dutch have given notice [well, not quite yet - MC] they will hang in beyond August of 2008, the deadline originally set, doing far more conventional fighting in Uruzgan than had been anticipated [and don't forget the Aussies--see bottom at this link].

Canada is ... thinking about it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper indicating in the throne speech he would prefer troops to remain beyond 2009, at least till 2011, possibly in an exclusive training capacity...

3) More about what the Taliban were up to in 2001:

People still speak of the Buddhas as if they were there. The Buddhas are visited and debated. A “Buddha road” just opened. It boasts the first paved surface in Afghanistan’s majestic central highlands and stretches all of a half-mile.

But the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan are gone, of course, replaced by two gashes in the reddish-brown cliff. They were destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban in their quest to rid the country of the “gods of the infidels.” The fanatical soldiers of Islam blasted the ancient treasures to fragments...

...The visitor is drawn into the void as if summoned, not by vacancy, but by the towering Buddhas themselves.

Yet they are in pieces. Nasir Mudabir, 29, a director of the site, ushered me into a makeshift shelter where boxes with sandstone and plaster fragments from the two Buddhas are kept. Metal remnants of the bombs that destroyed them are preserved separately: they are jagged where the stones are smooth to the touch.

Why keep evidence of the barbarians’ arsenal? “It’s part of the story,” Mudabir said. “It’s history, bad or good. Instead of going forward, we went backward.”..

Hazara refugees, who have returned from Iran after Afghanistan’s decades of conflict, eke out an existence in Taliban-despoiled caves once covered with bright murals.

That this is a holy place, sought out by Buddhist pilgrims over the centuries, is written in light, form and stone.

The smaller, eastern Buddha, known locally as “Shamama,” stood 125 feet tall and has now been dated to the year 507. The larger, called “Salsal,” rose to 180 feet. It was constructed in 554. One theory holds that the builders were dissatisfied with the first and erected its neighbor in the pursuit of perfection...

...What began here in March 2001 has spread. The Taliban is back, sort of, seeping across the Pakistani border in a campaign fed by an Internet-borne jihadist message. The Web is a force multiplier for any guerrilla movement.

This was the Afghan burning of the books. The Nazis burned Brecht. The Taliban, then sheltering Osama bin Laden, bombarded the “un-Islamic” Buddhas. The burning presaged war. The destruction presaged 9/11: two Buddhas, two towers.

Heinrich Heine noted that “When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings.” When Buddhas buckle, people will be crushed...

Before. And then... Now this. Such mindless hatred--including from some of us.

What about more troops for Afstan?

A letter of mine in the Globe and Mail:

The next President Clinton

MARK COLLINS

October 29, 2007 - page A22

Ottawa -- John Ibbitson, in his informative essay A Superpower Overstretched, But Surprisingly United (Globe Essay - Oct. 27), points out the likely continuities in U.S. foreign policy if a Democrat, especially Hillary Clinton, becomes the next president. It is odd, however, that he does not mention her policy on Afghanistan, the issue likely of most concern to Canadians. In the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Senator Clinton wrote that "our military effort must be reinforced."

I wonder how our opposition politicians, many of our pundits and the Canadian people will react to that position.

Also Norman Spector's LETTER OF THE DAY.

U Vic students, stand and be counted

A motion to bar the Canadian Forces from recruiting on the University of Victoria campus in Student controlled spaces was soundly defeated.



It wasn't even close.

Congratulations to all those who turned out to defeat this motion. Best one minute and twenty seconds of video I've watched in a long time.

H/T Wolfville Watch

Another nattering nabob of negativism

Matthew Parris of The Times should try to reach an assessment based on something other than raw emotion:

...We should save our enthusiasms, our money, our international friendships and our soldiers’ lives, for what is doable.

Afghanistan is not. On Monday, November 5, Panorama on BBC One will show Taking on the Taleban: The Soldiers’ Story: not a crusade for or against Britain’s efforts, but a first-hand account of what we’re up against. Watch it and make up your own mind.

Paddy Ashdown seems to have decided already [see second part at link]. A stalwart supporter of the British military campaign in Afghanistan, Lord Ashdown, who is by no means an instinctive defeatist about the possibilities of intervention, now believes that Afghanistan is “lost”. He contends that we could have won had we and our allies put more in, early on. Perhaps. But we didn’t. Now we are at loggerheads with the Americans about the whole philosophy of nation-building there, and hopelessly underresourced in the Helmand province, which we try to control. Counter-narcotics has been an unmitigated disaster (the opium trade has more than doubled), and though we can win set-piece battles with Taleban forces, we seem powerless to consolidate what we have won.

I loved Afghanistan when I went there for The Times some years ago. I fell under its spell. But I was conscious even then of a vast and intricate web of human groups, feuds, ties, revenges and obligations, and an incredible fierceness in the air; and of how small were Nato forces, and how limited our understanding, in the face of such vastnesses of history and geography. I was conscious too that the Taleban is a way of thought first, an army second, and infinitely renewable. I wondered if we were out of our depth.

I am sure now that we must be, without a comparable commitment from others. We should be honest about that. If the rest of Nato is unwilling to do the heavy lifting, we should give up...

So the UK and Canada, each having suffered under 100 fatalities during a period in which the Taliban have regained control of not one major centre in Afstan, and during a period in which the Taliban have suffered major battlefield defeats, should just give up.

Certainly Afstan is a difficult place for any central government to establish its authority (murderous religious fanatics dealing with a civil-war weary country aside). Perhaps such authority, and our dreams of Western democracy, are not doable in any near future. But is that any reason simply to stop trying to prevent the return of a real enemy to most Afghans and, with its al Qaeda friends, to a much wider world? Particularly when there is now NO evidence that the effort to keep the fanatical elements of the Taliban from power is in fact failing. Just look at the north and west of the country. Just fight on, and reconstruct, in the south and east for a while longer. While the Afghan army and police are trained. Still, it is possible that in, say four years, it will be blindingly clear there is no reasonable prospect that Afghans--with diminishing future outside help--can prevent the Taliban from succeeding.

Surely though the cost in money and lives (minimal by any historical standard) to the West--even if much of Europe is essentially taking a pass--is worth that extended, major, effort. Do we want the Jihadists to have confirmed that they are indeed the strong horse? And if the Taliban and al Qaeda return will cruise missile and other bombings strikes, lord knows for how long, do the job for which the intervention in 2001 was required?

We are in Afstan above all else to protect ourselves. Secondarily we are there to help the Afghan people. Many may think use of this quote from Churchill too much; I think it is very relevant to the long run--and to the strong horse:

... if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science...

Earlier nattering nabob.

Update: A Dutchman, Dick Pels, political commentator and author from the University of Amsterdam, says things rarely said by our politicians and pundits:

There is also a more hard-headed aspect to the debate when it comes to terrorism. Two high-profile murders of over a half dozen linked to radical Islamists have solidified the threat in the minds of most Dutch.

"The sense that radical Islam is a threat and that the multi-cultural idea is a failure has become more deeply realized in the Netherlands than in Canada," said Pels...

"We didn't want to see that there are actually people in the world that want to kill other people because of nationalistic or religious reasons," said Pels.

"Now we are facing the threat by radical Islam and we were not prepared until very recently to realize, or face up to the idea that there are people who want to kill us."

Our revolution in military affairs?

This sure sounds impressive--but it's only a tool, not a Wii wand:

Canada's military has leaped into the 21st century, trading radios and maps dotted with pins for ultra-high-tech war rooms where commanders have access to constant data streams, real-time digitized maps, and live video feeds from drones, satellites and web cameras that travel with combat vehicles hunting the Taliban.

"We may still be in the mud, and the buildings we use may be made of plywood, but what we have now is comparable to a combat battle centre on a frigate -- or the bridge of the Starship Enterprise," said Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie. "This is a huge step forward. In distance, it is light years. In time, we have moved decades with one step. In terms of information, we are right up there with the Americans and British."

To nearly universal rave reviews, several state-of-the art operations rooms have been set up by the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment battle group in southern Afghanistan.

The biggest is a digitized battle suite at the Kandahar Airfield, where soldiers have been working around the clock in shifts. Their eyes are fixed on dozens of small computer screens in a cool, hushed room dominated by several huge computer screens on the walls and a red light on the ceiling that glows when contact with the enemy is expected or has begun, or when there are Canadian wounded or dead.

"If that red light is on, it means 'Go to your battle stations; there is serious business to be done,'" said Maj. Pascal Larose, an armoured officer who gave the first extensive tour for a journalist of the top-secret Provincial Operations Centre. "And that light is on almost every day."..

The Athena Tactical System, which was made entirely in Canada, runs up to 100 times faster than the best Internet connection Canadians have in their homes, Letourneau explained. It combines telephone communication, e-mail and chat rooms for an unlimited number of people online at the same time, as well as video, data and a website loaded with background information. It cannot be hacked into because it is an entirely enclosed system.

A key feature of the new system is a "blue force tracker," which marks the position of every Canadian vehicle. The vehicles, in turn, are fitted with transponders that communicate constantly over global positioning satellites. As friendly fire incidents are known in the military as "blue-on-blue" attacks, that is also the colour used to signify friendly forces.

Other colours and symbols are used to designate the location of enemy forces, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), unexploded ordnance and other threats. All this information can be placed on digitized maps or laid over satellite images. It can also be made instantly available to commanders in their vehicles in the field...

"Before we had to call everyone by radio to know where everyone was," said Lt.-Col. Alain Gauthier, who commands the Van Doo battle group. "This could take an hour and by then everybody had moved, so the picture I got was obsolete. This gives me an instant visual that is much more effective and precise. It gives me the capacity to trace the threat and warn all our vehicles instantly."

Gauthier conceded the digital revolution will "not solve all the problems of Afghanistan."

"It is a tool in decision making. The threat of this insurgency remains real. We still have to dismount [emphasis added]."..

Jack Granatstein unstaples Steve's paper

Here's the conclusion as Mr Granatstein shreds a usual suspect (more here):

Studies such as More than the Cold War, produced by New Democratic Party front organizations, do nothing to advance the necessary debate on defence.

Canada needs to examine its national interests calmly and rationally and then set about providing the military resources it needs to protect and advance them. Spurious comparisons that neglect the realities do nothing to this end.

J.L. Granatstein writes on behalf of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century (www.ccs21.org).

No need for me to add any emphasis there.

Update: A week after the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Star discovers Steve's "spurious comparisons" (in a piece Norman Spector selected as THE COLUMN I’M GLAD I DIDN’T WRITE):

...
Staples would have liked to dig deeper, tracking the shift in public spending from peacekeeping to combat activities. He also would have liked to explore what fell by the wayside as Ottawa devoted a larger share of public revenues to defence. He hopes to do both in future studies...

Hillier vs. Harper

This is getting out of hand:

PMO rejects Hillier's timeline on Afghan mission

Hillier rejects claims he's at odds with PM over Afghanistan

CTV's Robert Fife, in this video, says Gen. Hillier went to Afghanistan "without telling anybody in government" (not even Minister of National Defence MacKay--come on). Mr Fife even implies the Chief of the Defence staff may be trying to provoke his own replacement (reported and denied earlier this month).

This is how the Toronto Star reports what Gen. Hillier said:

Gen. Rick Hillier, speaking at the end of a three-day visit to Kandahar, told reporters it will take "10 years or so" to build a national army that can defend the government against insurgents and potential external threats.

"You don't just build that overnight and the international community will have to be involved for some time to see this through to the final level where you've got a government that works effectively," Hillier said yesterday.

"It's going to take 10 years or so just to work through and build an army [emphasis added] to whatever the final number that Afghanistan will have, and make them professional, and let them meet their security demands."..

This is from the recent Speech from the Throne:

Our Government does not believe that Canada should simply abandon the people of Afghanistan after February 2009. Canada should build on its accomplishments and shift to accelerate the training of the Afghan army and police so that the Afghan government can defend its own sovereignty. This will not be completed by February 2009, but our Government believes this objective should be achievable by 2011 [emphasis added], the end of the period covered by the Afghanistan Compact. Our Government has appointed an independent panel to advise Canadians on how best to proceed given these considerations...

Now from the Prime Minister's Office:

The PMO has reiterated the government's position, laid out in the throne speech, that it believes the Afghan people will be able to defend themselves by 2011 -- years ahead of the timeline Canada's top soldier gave Thursday...

And then from the the general's "spokeswoman" (that's how the Globe and Mail wrote it):

Maj. Apostoliuk insisted the Throne Speech reference and the General's comments were about two different things.

“It's apples and oranges,” she said, promising the differences would be explained later through a statement from the General. “From Gen. Hillier's perspective, there is no difference of opinion.”..

It may be that the government's apple, according the CDS, essentially refers to a minimally sufficient combat capability while his orange includes a well-equipped and run army that does not need significant help from foreign personnel. The UK Chief of the Defence staff has just said this, similar to Gen. Hillier's view and even broader in scope:

He [Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup--what a name!] warned in an interview with Sky News that bringing Afghanistan into the 21st century would engage the international community for decades...

I think that the CDS is speaking the big picture truth. That is not necessarily inconsistent with believing the Afghan National Army can take over most military responsibilities at Kandahar, and elsewhere, by 2011. Nonetheless the government and the general are clearly not singing from the same spin book.

I'm afraid the best CDS in recent memory will have to go if he cannot say the same things as his political masters, spinmeisters though they may be. Or else very clearly and honestly explain the apparent discrepancies. But it's hard to be honest in the Ottawa political and media game regardless of the party in power.

As to underlying reality, I think this comment at the CTV site by shamaro nicely puts what I've been trying to say:

Both Hillier and Harper are right, it all depends on how you look at it. Hillier is talking about having a fully trained professional military excercising their sovereignty within their own country. Harper is looking at the Afghan army being able to defend itself in those hotspots around the country. It will take many years to fully train the Afghans, that is reality, Harper is just putting a bit of a political spin about where Canada is concerned in Afghanistan.

Instant update: Gen. Hillier was just interviewed by CTV's Mike Duffy. The CDS basically implied that the 2011 date in the Throne Speech referred just to the Kandahar area (yet the speech did not say that), whereas his remarks were referring to the broader military issues noted above. I suspected that's what he might say...but will it be good enough?

Gen. Hillier did say that his minister knew where he was. Does Peter talk to Stephen?

Upperdate: The Globe and Mail has a good editorial Oct. 27.

Arctic and maritime surveillance: Radarsat-2...

...is, after some delay, getting close to launch:

As its older brother inches toward a fiery death after a spectacular life of 11 years -- long for space flights -- Canada's new radar satellite is being boxed and prepared for a December launch in Russia.

Testing at Ottawa's David Florida Laboratory is finished. Radarsat-2 has been shaken to simulate the violence of launch, and baked and frozen to simulate the nasty weather in space. Through it all the $531-million satellite survived in great shape.

Now it sits, folded up to the size of a minivan, waiting for the giant Antonov aircraft that will fly it next month to Iceland, then to Moscow, to catch a train for Launch Pad No. 6 at Baikonur...

While Radarsat-1 had a resolution of nine metres, its younger brother can resolve to three metres.

The old satellite could find a bus; the new one, a small car, Brule says.

Radarsat-2 will be better at detecting changes in the type of Earth's surface.

It will know which sea ice is old and which is new; it will know which part of a forest the pine beetle has eaten. It will find oil spills at sea, and track them to the ships [emphasis added] that illegally pumped out their waste far from shore. And since it uses radar, not normal cameras, it can see at night or through cloud.

It will map, measure crop conditions, track ships approaching our Arctic coast [emphasis added--role for UAVs here too], sell images of Chinese cities to the government of China, which is trying to measure urban sprawl caused by squatters.

It will chart illegal fishing too [emphasis added], especially in remote oceans where poachers' vessels can evade sea patrols but not an eye in the sky [ditto for UAVs].

Radarsat-1 does a lot of this already.

"But customers are all asking: Can you do it faster and with better resolution," said John Hornsby of MDA, the space agency's private partner in the satellite's construction. MDA will also own and operate the satellite, but the space agency's contribution amounts to a "pre-purchase" of data from it.

As a result, images will be able to reach customers in as little as an hour or two, Brule said.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice said the satellite, which will orbit from pole to pole, will help Canada aggressively assert sovereignty in the Arctic, and will give the government and northern people information on the effects of climate change.

The launch date is likely to be either Dec. 8 or 15.

Lots of help for the Canadian Coast Guard, as well as the CF. The government news release is here.

Pie Pork in space, or why the C-130Js are taking so long

When will we ever learn? Military spending should buy military equipment, not support risky regional development projects. Good grief.

The Harper government is considering a $45-million boost to a space-tourism project in Cape Breton as one of the regional benefits flowing from a major purchase of military planes, sources have told The Globe and Mail.

PlanetSpace, the firm that would benefit, has hired Fred Doucet, a senior Conservative official from the Mulroney era, to help seal the deal.

The project is related to the Canadian Forces' purchase of 17 Hercules C130J cargo planes from U.S.-based manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. To get the plane contract, Lockheed Martin had to promise to spend the equivalent of the $3.2-billion purchase price in the form of regional benefits [and not just for Quebec].

Sources said Lockheed Martin's proposed list of investments, which was submitted to Industry Canada and is awaiting cabinet approval, includes a promise to spend $45-million over six years on PlanetSpace's project.

According to its website, PlanetSpace wants to send 2,000 people into suborbital space flights [note the, er, emotive name of the vehicle--which "borrows the overall aerodynamic shape and main engine thrust chamber directly from the V2 rocket"] over five years, even though the company has not started accepting reservations for the $250,000 trips.

The company has estimated it will cost about $150-million to build a launch pad and rocket on its site in Nova Scotia. It's not clear how much money the company already has or where its funding comes from...

The $45-million investment in PlanetSpace would not be a federal subsidy, but it would be the direct result of federal approval of Lockheed Martin's mandatory plan to provide regional benefits from the aircraft sale...

Then there's this. Was not one Silver Dart enough for Nova Scotia? As Norman Spector puts it:

Say it ain’t so Steve (please!)

Update: Not. Who were the sources for the first Globe story?

Industry Minister Jim Prentice aborted plans yesterday to approve a project to blast tourists into space under Ottawa's regional development program.

Mr. Prentice stepped in after The Globe and Mail reported that PlanetSpace was in line for a $45-million share of the regional benefits flowing from a major purchase of military planes from U.S.-based manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

"There have been no discussions between Industry Minister Prentice or any member of his staff regarding Lockheed Martin investing $45-million of its own money in the so-called PlanetSpace space-tourism project in Cape Breton. Nor will there be any such discussions," Bill Rodgers, Mr. Prentice's director of communications, said in an e-mail yesterday...

Sources said the company had won initial approvals to spend $45-million over six years on PlanetSpace's project.

But Mr. Rodgers said the government will not play a part in the project under which tourists would pay $250,000 each for a short voyage into space.

"Space tourism does not qualify as an IRB [Industrial Regional Benefit] under the Government of Canada's procurement policies and Minister Prentice has absolutely no intention of changing that. Space tourism will be left to tourists," Mr. Rodgers said.

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin said it is up to Industry Canada to approve the company's regional-benefits plan. The spokesman added that Lockheed Martin will "not have a problem meetings its IRB obligations," under which the company must lock in 60 per cent of investments before the contract is signed...

"Defence of the Realm"

Four posts at a UK blog that might fit well here (via tomahawk6):

"Dammit, I spilled my water bottle"

Hands off – it's our war!

Vanity in the driving seat

We really should not gloat

Baby steps for NATO on Afstan

This week's meeting of defence ministers has produced indications of small, additional troop commitments to help the Dutch in Uruzgan:

NATO allies rallied yesterday with pledges to assist Dutch troops in war-torn southern Afghanistan in a move widely interpreted as a dose of political courage as the Netherlands approaches a crucial parliamentary debate on its role in the international mission.

Dutch media reports last night named France, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech republic as either confirmed, or in the process of confirming modest military deployments to Uruzgan, where 1,700 Dutch soldiers are locked in the thick of fighting one province away from the Canadians in Kandahar.

De Volkskrant newspaper said the French commitment, though initially not expected to exceed more than a few dozen military trainers, was especially important for the Netherlands as public pressure mounts for a withdrawal of troops.

The promises, discussed during a closed-door meeting of NATO defence ministers at the Dutch seaside resort of Noordvijk, included pledges from five other nations to send more military personnel to Afghanistan. But the cumulative numbers are expected to fall far short of the battalion-sized increases sought by U.S. officials...

Dutch military analysts told the Toronto Star that beneath the façade of high tension, the Netherlands is quietly cobbling a pragmatic solution, including symbolic support from other allies, which will enable a one-year extension of the Dutch mandate in Uruzgan...

Pretty small beer but, I'm confident, enough for the Dutch to extend their mission. If Canada can also get help at Kandahar that will make it simpler for our government to extend our own mission (though doubtless with a reduced combat role--my analysis ishere).

Sadly, as far as I can see, the story above was not carried in the NY Times, Washington Post or LA Times; two solitudes, or something. This is a story that I don't think you'll see in our media, more solitudes:

Dutch troops launch offensive against Taliban in southern Afghanistan

This story also gives some more detail about the NATO meeting:

On Wednesday diplomats said nine nations had pledged more troops to bolster the 41,000-strong NATO force. The offers ranged from 20 to 200 troops from countries including Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and non-NATO members Georgia and Croatia. Officials said it could add around 1,000 extra troops in total.

Germany offered about 100 instructors and France 50, but there was no sign those nations, along with Italy, Spain and Turkey, were dropping a refusal to send combat forces to the battlefields in the south and the east.

The CDS is asking for rather more (where's the minister?):

...General Rick Hillier was asked about this week's NATO decision to rent helicopters flown by civilians [maybe from a Canadian company?] for use in southern Afghanistan, and why no military aircraft could be found to do the job.

Gen. Hillier said there were helicopters available in European countries, and called on his European counterparts to provide more equipment and troops on the ground...

Gen. Hillier specifically listed three things on his European wish-list: helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and ground troops. He said he has spoken regularly to his European counterparts about the issue, and pointed to some positive steps taken by countries such as Portugal, which recently sent a company of troops to the dangerous Panjwai district west of Kandahar city emphasis added]...

Here's a view that will find little acceptance in Germany (or most of quasi-pacifist Western Europe):

Time for the Bundesmacht

See the table at the bottom of this link for a list of country troop contributions to ISAF (the Canadian total is considerably less than the standard 2,500 figure because quite a few of our personnel committed to the mission are not included, e.g. "National Support elements").

Update: More good stuff from the Danes:

Denmark is in the process of ramping up its own force in Helmand to almost 700 from just under 400 and is adding four Leopard 2 tanks, inspired in part by Canada's successful use of tanks in neighbouring Kandahar...

NATO and Video

The Danes provide an update,

NATO wants to publicize Taliban outrages; gets Danish funding for video gear,

to this earlier post.

Waiting for the Big Bad Bear off the east coast

Further to this post (with video), CF-18s are now positioned at Goose Bay:

Canada has stationed several fighter jets at a central Labrador air base to prepare for a possible response to Russian military exercises in the Arctic.

About six CF-18 fighter jets have been stationed at 5 Wing Goose Bay this week, on standby to intercept any Russian military aircraft that may come close to Canadian or U.S. airspace.

Russian bombers have been testing the North American air defence response, and though the action has not been seen as hostile, Lt.-Col. Brian Bowerman, the acting wing commander, said the Canadian force is alert.

"You have to be ready, and this is what they're doing," he said. "They're practising to be ready if they need to intercept [Russian] aircraft."

The Canadian jets, which have been flying missions from Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay for the last five days, are expected to stay at the base for several weeks. About 50 support personnel have accompanied them...

Beginning in 1985 Goose Bay supported allied military training but the memorandum of understanding expired in March 2006, putting an end to what used to be a permanent allied detachment.

There is no permanent CF-18 presence at the base, which serves as a forward operating location for CFB Bagotville, providing support for that base.

Many countries have faced the same budget restrictions seen in Canada, explains Capt. Tom Burkhart, and have been doing alternative training elsewhere. The base remains a permanent establishment for allied training but none are presently at Goose Bay, he said.

Update: More Bear videos (h/t to Fred).

UAVs for Arctic surveillance?

Further to this post and this one (see ends of posts), this makes sense:

Remote-controlled aircraft will patrol Arctic: military

It seems to me that we are likely to buy one aircraft for Army support (not the Predator) and another for Arctic--and I would presume general maritime--surveillance. Surely the Global Hawk would be best suited for the latter role in terms of range and endurance?

Meanwhile, Steve Janke (with the Arrow in mind) muses over building our own UAVs. I don't see the problem he does with US-sourced aircraft--after all any replacement for the Aurora is likely to be from the US (unless we give up on long-range manned maritime surveillance completely).

In any event we've been there before with UAVs.

The timeline to the real progress being made at Kandahar

Read this excellent article, "Reflections on Canada’s first 18 Months in Kandahar and Prospects for the Future" (p.10 at link), in the Autumn 2007 issue of On Track, published by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute. Some excerpts:

Most importantly, my [Dr. Lee Windsor, Deputy Director, Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society, University of New Brunswick] research involved a three week stay in Kandahar in April 2007 to experience the challenges Canadian soldiers face on the ground. There I spoke to Canadian soldiers and government officials, NATO partners, leaders from the aid agency community, and Afghans. I also had the unfortunate opportunity to witness the daily threats and strain endured by our soldiers when one convoy I hitched a ride with was ambushed and another struck by a suicide car bomb that killed eight Afghan civilians.

One of the most obvious preliminary findings is that public discussion over the mission is based on little hard and timely information about what is happening
on the ground, especially because the situation is both complex and rapidly evolving. Debate in Canada is based on a perception of life in Kandahar that is out of date.
What is needed is a historical timeline of the past 18 months and of what has been accomplished to date...

On the matter of expanding ISAF throughout Afghanistan, evidence suggests that NATO nations decided together that the best combination of forces for the difficult Kandahar job was the old Dutch-British-Canadian team that worked so well as Multi-National Division South West in Bosnia [emphasis added]. Having the most modern and robust vehicle fleet and being highly interoperable with US forces, Canada was a natural choice to deploy first.

The story of the first Canadian rotation into Kandahar is one of managing a demanding handover from American forces as Operation Enduring Freedom ramped down, paving the way for Dutch and British contingents to flow into Helmund and Uruzgan Provinces. The Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team started in Kandahar City in 2005, taking steps to replicate the nation-building effort that worked in northern Afghanistan...

...When aid and reconstruction did appear on the horizon on a large scale in 2006, it posed a massive threat to the dominance of the Taliban in their heartland. It offered people hopes of stability and thus threatened absentee landlords and drug gangs who controlled them; these power brokers thrived in the lawless south and provided the Taliban with most of their operations budget. Reconstruction, especially of the road network and water management system, provided an end to a dependence on poppy growing by tenant farmers and threatened the power of feudal drug lords over their serfs, thereby threatening Taliban funding. As a result, it appears the reconstruction effort was directly targeted by militants.

After the much revered Foreign Service Officer Glyn Berry was killed in those early attacks, CIDA and Foreign Affairs pulled out of the city. The PRT ceased to function for a few months in early 2006 as the nonuniformed Canadian departments scrambled to reassess their prospects. By summer 2006 the Canadian Battlegroup returned to the Kandahar city area to restore security; CIDA returned, a new and highly capable Foreign Service officer was assigned, and the PRT was poised to restart operations. Before it did, and much to everyone’s surprise, a new and greater threat appeared.

A large Taliban force massed west of the city, apparently preparing for a major offensive and testing international resolve. The goal, it seemed, was to prove to Kandaharis that Canada and NATO was unwilling to fight to protect them and that the only future possible was under Taliban rule. The result was Operation Medusa, the systematic effort to defeat the Taliban force in Zhari and Panjwai Districts and prevent it from interfering with the restoration of civil society and reconstruction. No one anticipated that Canada’s reconstruction effort would require a conventional battle to launch it...

...had the 1RCR [1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment] not defeated the Taliban in Pashmul, reconstruction efforts under the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan would have ended permanently.

The defeat of the main Taliban force at Pashmul altered the political and social landscape in Kandahar by dramatically improving the credibility of the international
community among locals. As a result Canada’s third rotation to Kandahar that arrived in February 2007 could finally proceed as planned, with all mission components carrying out their assigned tasks. This fundamental timeline is apparently not understood in Canada, where impatience is rife at the perceived slow progress of the mission [emphasis added].

Only in the past six months was the Battlegroup, based on 2nd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, able to push presence and security patrols outward into the most important agricultural and population areas around the river-centered ancient irrigation system. In effect, they have created a security bubble outside Kandahar City. Currently, the latest Battlegroup, based on 3rd Battalion of the Royal 22é Régiment, continues to protect and expand that bubble.

This security bubble was greatly enhanced in the past months with the arrival of soldiers and aid workers from a number of NATO and UN members in all provinces in the south. Growing international presence and improved professionalism and capability among the Afghan National Army is driving the Taliban into increasingly remote areas. In their absence aid and reconstruction work has increased...

Small numbers of hardcore Taliban and foreign fighters still try to disrupt NATO efforts. However, for the most part, calm and prosperity is returning inside the Kandahar Afghan Development Zone. So too are the aid agencies. In addition to Canadian, American and British government aid agencies, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, the Red Cross, a variety of UN elements, the World Food Program, and even Sarah Chayes’ Arghand Cooperative are all delivering short-term aid and long-term development projects throughout the area [emphasis added]...

The operational concept behind the Canadian security and reconstruction mission achieved traction in February 2007. Since then, NATO and the UN have made monumental strides forward as additional forces and development resources pour into the south, multiplying security and assistance capacity threefold from where it was but a year ago.

The debate over whether Canada should continue its role in Afghanistan is critical to the functioning of our democracy. The picture painted by the popular press and many critics, of a high blood price paid for minimal signs of progress, is misleading. Those weighing the merits of the mission must do so with a clear understanding that the sacrifices to date have borne significant fruit.

Vacationing, wait, out

Visiting allies in warm and sunny places...nothing to report other than soft pink beaches and enough alcohol to stun a whale.

We'll catch up when I get back.

Afstan and NDP economy with the truth

This document is generally more accurate that what one has become accustomed to from the buggers-out:

Dissenting opinion of the New Democratic Party To the Standing Committee on National Defence

Respectfully submitted by:
Dawn Black, MP

Yet Ms Black cannot forgo mendacity:

In spite of the establishment of ISAF under UN mandate, the US has maintained its anti-terrorism coalition forces of approximately 8000 soldiers, which have no official UN mandate...

This is from the most recent, Sept. 2007, UNSC resolution--similar to annual preceding ones:

“The Security Council...

“Recognizing that the responsibility for providing security and law and order throughout the country resides with the Afghan Authorities and welcoming the cooperation of the Afghan Government with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)...

“Reiterating its support for the continuing endeavours by the Afghan Government, with the assistance of the international community, including ISAF and the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) coalition, to improve the security situation and to continue to address the threat posed by the Taliban, Al-Qaida and other extremist groups, and stressing in this context the need for sustained international efforts, including those of ISAF and the OEF coalition...

“Welcoming the completion of ISAF’s expansion throughout Afghanistan, the continued coordination between ISAF and the OEF coalition, and the cooperation established between ISAF and the European Union presence in Afghanistan, in particular its police mission (EUPOL Afghanistan)...

“5. Calls upon ISAF to continue to work in close consultation with the Afghan Government and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General as well as with the OEF coalition in the implementation of the force mandate...

Does that not rather sound like an "official UN mandate"? Why do these fools continue to try to mislead people with untruths? Are they no longer capable of recognizing truth, so deep is their hatred and petty mindendness? And are our government and media so dim, or careless, as not to be able to refute them?

Another Afghan poll

This one was done by the Asia Foundation for the US Agency for International Development (well, that will kill its credibility for some regardless of the Foundation's credibility). The results are rather similar to the recent Environics poll--but I guess that's just an imperialist conspiracy:

Afghans feel that the security situation in their country has deteriorated compared with last year but say life is better now than under Taliban rule, a U.S.-funded survey released Tuesday found.

About 46 percent of more than 6,200 adults surveyed nationwide feel security is the biggest problem afflicting the country, while 29 percent think it is unemployment, according to the survey, which was conducted by the Asia Foundation and paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"In the 2006 survey, it was unemployment first, followed by security and corruption, and this time around it is security first followed by unemployment and poor economy. This further underlines the deterioration in security in the eyes of the common Afghans," the survey said.

Despite the rise in violence, about four in 10 responding to the survey said they felt the country was heading in the right direction [Environics said 51%]— roughly the same as in the 2006 survey. Half of those surveyed said they were more prosperous today than during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

Afghanistan is experiencing its worst bout of violence since the Taliban were removed from power in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001. More than 5,200 people — mostly militants — have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

"Insecurity is the main reason for the people to believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction," the survey said.

While lack of security was the top-ranked national issue, those surveyed identified a lack of electricity and water, and unemployment as the main problems on a local level, the survey found.

The foundation said the survey was conducted in all 34 provinces and was the largest comprehensive opinion poll ever conducted in Afghanistan. Some 6,263 people aged 18 years and over were interviewed in person by a team of 494 trained interviewers between June 11 and June 22, 2007. The margin of error was 2.4 percentage points, it said.

"Almost half of the people of Afghanistan (49 percent) think that their families are more prosperous today than they were during the Taliban regime," the survey found. "However more that one-fourth of the people (28 percent) think they are less prosperous today."

Over 80 percent of the respondents said they have confidence in the Afghanistan's National Army and the country's troublesome police force [emphasis added--almost the same as in the Environics poll; one just hopes the results simply reflect accurate polling], while over half said they do not trust the formal justice system and would rather rely on traditional forms of justice — decisions by local councils — to settle their disputes.

About 80 percent of the people felt that cultivation of opium poppies was wrong, with 50 percent of these respondents citing religion as the reason, but only about 10 percent linked the trade to terrorism, insecurity and corruption in the country, it said...

The survey is available here.

Second CC-177 delivered and operational

That was snappy.

Delivery:

Oct. 19, 2007

Canada has now received its second giant strategic airlifter, the CC-177 Globemaster III.

The big bird landed at its new home of 8 Wing Trenton at around 6 o'clock last night on time, piloted by Aircraft Commander Major Jeremy Reynolds. His first officer was Captain Jeff Jackson while the loadmasters on board were Warrant Officers Pete Lessard and Dave Evans.

The aircraft left the Boeing plant in Southern California earlier this week after undergoing rigorous flight testing and evaluation by Canadian Forces and Boeing personnel.

Acquiring strategic airlift allows Canada to make timely and relevant contributions to international operations that few other countries can, and to be able to better respond to crises domestically.

Examples include:

* Supporting humanitarian aid operations through Canadian Forces' Disaster Assistance Response Team operations;
* Providing relief to domestic crises such as floods, ice storms and forest fires; and
* Transporting two combat ready Light Armoured Vehicles to Afghanistan.

Currently, the only strategic airlift capability the Canadian Forces owns is the CC-150 Polaris (or modified Airbus A310), which is limited by its cargo carrying capacity and the operational conditions under which it can be used...

Operational:

FREDERICTON - One of Canada's new heavy-lift aircraft for the Canadian Forces is making quick work of transporting equipment from Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in New Brunswick to a training exercise in Alberta.

The new CC-177 Globemaster is an imposing site at the Fredericton airport where two air defence anti-tank systems have been loaded for the flight to Cold Lake, Alta.

The military took ownership of the huge aircraft last Thursday - the second of four it will own by next April [emphasis added].

Aircraft commander, Maj. Jeremy Reynolds says when compared to the old Hercules aircraft, the Globemaster allows him to move more than twice the payload, over a longer distance, and in a shorter amount of time.

The Globemaster has a wingspan of almost 52 metres.

Reynolds says despite their size, the new planes have the latest computer technology and handle like a small aircraft [?!?]...

Now, consider such a flight in the context of rapid disaster relief...

Mr. Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre, CPC) [now Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]:
Thank you.
Thank you, General, and thank you, gentlemen, for joining us.
As we all know, operations is the rose and logistics is the stem upon which it grows.
I just have a comment with regard to strategic airlift and the use of it in North America. You may or may not have been involved with it--probably not--but all the heavy equipment for the ice storm and the floods in Manitoba was moved by U.S. Air Force C-17s. It would be nice to have our own...

A primer on Afstan

An excellent post by an American who has worked as a civilian there (the post was provoked by comments at the CBC website)--please read it.

Who Are The Taliban?

H/t to GAP.

How our developing strategy in Afstan is being implemented

Working with the Afghans to spread security and then development; sounds sensible to me:

FOB WILSON, AFGHANISTAN -- Amid a flurry of construction, one of the most ambitious projects at Forward Operating Base Wilson has little to do with tanks or artillery. It's an unassuming building where Canadians hope to bring representatives from various Afghan emergency agencies together around a desk and a phone to create Kandahar's first 911 service.

For Canadian troops in Afghanistan, combat missions are increasingly taking a back seat to mentoring and construction projects, a tour of virtually every major forward operating base in the province suggests.

In the past few months, almost exactly coinciding with the arrival of Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment, the Vandoos, Canadian soldiers have made the mentoring of their Afghan counterparts the top priority, implementing programs designed to ensure Afghan soldiers are able to hold on to the territory Canadians fought to claim - and then reclaim, after the Afghans lost the ground again - from the Taliban.

The Canadians are also greatly expanding the infrastructure they plan to hand over to the Afghans. The FOBs, which used to be small Canadian outposts in the dangerous Panjwai district, have grown considerably, becoming launch pads for ambitious projects ranging from an integrated 911-type service to an elite Afghan police division...

"The idea is that you have to take real estate," said Sergeant-Major Gerry Trottier, who heads up the engineering functions at the base, as he surveys the construction from atop one of the command buildings. "The [FOB] is a means of securing that real estate." Like many soldiers at other bases, Sgt. Trottier points to the nearby road system as a measure for gauging the progress Canadians are making here. Cars, trucks and the occasional cyclist pass by under the afternoon sun without hassle.

"You can see it in the movement on the road," he said.

Still, just a few hours earlier in the day, insurgents opened fire on one of Sgt. Trottier's dump-truck drivers as he drove toward the base, and such attacks are still a daily occurrence in many parts of the province.

While Canadian troops may have the means to effectively fight back against anyone who fires on the base, their Afghan national army counterparts - those who are expected to take over when the Canadians leave - are not as well equipped and trained.

Lieutenant-Colonel Alain Gauthier, head of the Canadian battle group in Kandahar, points to a number of steps the Canadians have taken to make sure they won't be fighting for the same ground again after handing control over to the Afghans. Recently, members of the Canadian police mentoring teams began living at police checkpoints with the Afghans, partially as a means of reducing harassment of the local population by the notoriously corrupt Afghan police force...

More on training:

The Afghan police and Army are in dire need of more training, and when US Defense Secretary Robert Gates attends a summit of NATO defense chiefs starting Wednesday in the Netherlands, he is expected to demand that member countries send additional trainers to a nation considered crucial in the war on terror.

As violence rises in parts of Afghanistan, the mission to build a strong security force there is flagging in part because NATO members that had pledged support as recently as last year have yet to fulfill all their commitments, US defense officials say.

Secretary Gates said last week that pressing those countries to step up will top his agenda during the two-day meeting.

"I expect this subject to be the centerpiece of those discussions – of people meeting the commitments they have made," Gates said.

Gates is seeking not only more trainers, but also a "strategic plan" for adding trainers and better coordination of economic and civil development in the country [see link for Canadian view]...

...Gates, who was in Kiev Sunday, is asking Ukraine and other Eastern European countries for help, according to a Reuters report.

"The greatest shortfall that we face right now, both in terms of increasing the size of the training base and in taking units into combat and employing them, are trainers," said Army Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command for Afghanistan, during a briefing at the Pentagon last Thursday...

The training mission needs an additional 60 training teams – consisting of about 16 individuals each – to help the Afghan Army and police, according to Major General Cone. Currently, about 22 teams are on the ground and another 20 or so are promised by NATO countries. The 60 new teams would bring the overall program to 100 training teams...

Scott Taylor gets these things right

Nice stuff here:

...
In The Unexpected War, authors Eugene Lang and Janice Gross Stein would have readers believe that the increased military role undertaken by Canada in Kandahar was Gen. Rick Hillier’s baby. To be fair, when the word first came out that Eugene Lang was working on an "insider" book detailing Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, the political knives were immediately drawn in Ottawa. Having been the key adviser to defence ministers John McCallum and Bill Graham, Lang clearly had a rare insight into the political dynamics that dragged Canada into an "unexpected war" in Afghanistan. However, because of his actual advisory role in drafting the preparatory blueprint — right down to the controversial agreement on the handling of detainees — political hacks predicted Lang’s book would be a partisan whitewash.

Those prognostications have proved to be correct, as Lang has indeed produced the Liberal party’s revisionist version of events. Missing from the equation is any of the well-docu-mented mishaps and mistakes the former government made. For example, the multitude of screw-ups and eventual firing of Art Eggleton warrants a mere paragraph in the telling, and John McCallum’s public drunkenness scandal does not see the light of day. According to Lang, Canada’s commitment to a military mission in Afghanistan was Gen. Rick Hillier’s personal project that was the right thing for the Liberals to agree to at the time. However, once the Harper government was elected and extended the mission to 2009, it became the Conservatives’ mistake.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien, on the other hand, names a different scapegoat in his just-released memoirs, My Years as Prime Minister. According to Chretien, it was his nemesis and fellow Liberal and prime minister Paul Martin who fathered the faltering Kandahar mission. "When my successor took too long to make up his mind about whether Canada should extend our term with the International Security Assistance Force, our soldiers were moved out of Kabul and sent south again to battle the Taliban in the killing fields around Kandahar," claims Chretien.

Glossed over in Chretien’s account is the fact that our initial battle group was committed to Kandahar under his direction as part of the U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom. Despite months of advance notice, our troops deployed wearing dark green uniforms to a desert climate, were transported into theatre aboard American aircraft and were ferried about the battlefield courtesy of U.S. choppers. The years of Liberal government neglect of our military resulted in this embarrassing state of affairs, but it was during Chretien’s so-called safe deployment in Kabul that the rust-out of our army’s equipment proved fatal. Our troops suffered three fatalities while patrolling in unarmoured, obsolete Iltis jeeps, and the backlash sent defence procurement bureaucrats scurrying to purchase a fleet of new armoured Mercedes G-wagons...

Keeping the Buffalos flying

Yet another effort to maintain one type of fixed-wing SAR capability?

Air force wants retiring Brazilian planes to keep aging Canadian Buffalos going

This is where things stood in July.

Update: Interesting comment at Milnet.ca (C-295 has been in the running with the C-27J for our new fixed-wing SAR aircraft, and lost out to the C-27J in the US's Joint Cargo Aircraft competition):

This plan has already slipped to the right. Apparently the Brazilians are not so eager to get rid of their Buffalo's. They were replacing them with the EADS C-295 and have discovered that they weren't quite up to the job that was being presented to them. Apparently EADS made these machines look better on paper than they really were - big shocker there!

Defense spending: Gross misrepresentation

More lies, damned lies, and statistics. Oh my god! We're spending as much as during the Korean War! The militarists are taking over! The Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese regurgitates this by Bill Robinson and St. Steve Staples:

After adjusting for inflation, Canada's defence spending today is 2.3-per-cent more than during its Cold War peak in 1952-53, according to the report, to be released today.

It was produced for the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

"Remarkably, the last time Canada spent more money on the military was when Canadians were fighting the Nazis," added the report.

"In 1952, Canada was at war in Korea and the first hydrogen bombs were being tested [actually, only one bomb was tested that year], supercharging the arms race. The irony is today, Canada is spending as much money fighting in Afghanistan and contributing to the 'war on terrorism' as it did at the height of the nuclear arms race against the Soviet Union."..

I wonder why Mr Pugliese did not do a bit of research to provide context:

By 1953, Canada was allocating more than 8 percent of its GDP to defence spending...During the final year of the Korean War, Canada’s defence/GDP ratio was the fourth highest in NATO [reasonable given that most members were just recovering from the devastation of WW II]. Our defence budget that year accounted for 45 percent of all federal spending...

Moreover, most military equipment today, even adjusted for inflation, costs an awful lot more than it did in 1953. Compare the costs of ships and aircraft, then and now, and it helps explain why we have comparatively so many fewer these days. In other words you have to spend much more now per piece of equipment in order to have even minimal strength (unless you only want a gendarmerie--see below).

While these days (Feb. 2007):

Well, guess what? We spend about 1.1 per cent now. Back in more reasonable times -- take the year 1991 -- we spent 1.6 per cent...

So, by the only realistic gauge of the burden of defence expenditures, we are in fact spending considerably less than at the end of the Cold War. And guess what? We're in a war now so increasing defence expenditures seem reasonable. Unless you're Messrs Staples and Robinson who want the CF essentially reduced to a lightly-armed gendarmerie suitable only for non-combat, UN-only, peacekeeping missions. They certainly don't want this horrifying dollar measure of defence expenditures: "Double?" (but read the details in Babbling's post).

Afstan: The Toronto Star notices the other fighting allies

The paper seems to be on a reporting roll. From yet another good story, this time by Olivia Ward--read the whole piece:

In the volatile south, Canadian and American forces are joined by Dutch, Danish, Australian, Romanian and Estonian troops. Poland has upped its numbers of soldiers fighting with the British in perilous eastern Afghanistan...

Good on the Star again.

Shame on the Ottawa Sun

Outrageous headlines, Oct. 22:

Front page:

BATTLE FATIGUE
Troops overseas divided on future of Afghan mission

P.3 for the story itself:

Troops split on staying

The Canadian Press story itself quotes a total of two--that's right, two--soldiers who express doubts about whether the mission is worthwhile. Some split, some division. In the face of completely misrepresentative headlines like this no wonder many Canadians are uncertain about, or do not support, the mission.

And from the Toronto Sun:

Canadian combatants divided

But the Calgary Sun gets it right:

Mission deadline called unrealistic

I guess in Calgary the headline writer actually read the story closely. Here's the original CP headline:

Soldiers agree Afghanistan needs Canada past 2009, debate what mission can do

The second part of the report, not included in the Sun stories, also provides considerable useful detail from which to assess the situation.

Afstan: NATO's pathetic public communications

Video may be large part of the answer. Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star has another good story (poor CF communications have also been a major frustration for Babbling):

The classified video that is about to change the way NATO reveals itself to the world was aired secretly to a select group of military brass one month ago.

The clandestine clip, shot from a top-secret military platform, shows a Taliban fighter with an AK-47 over his shoulder.

Just before he rounds a corner and prepares to open fire against NATO soldiers, the man reaches into his backpack, pulls out a burqa and disappears under the head-to-foot robe, instantly transforming himself into another faceless woman in the Afghan crowd.

Senior NATO spokesperson James Appathurai was in the room when the footage was shown to headquarters staff in Brussels.

The Toronto-born public affairs specialist, envisioning a YouTube coup, asked for permission to release the video immediately.

Permission denied. It is classified, after all.

Fast forward less than a month, and the frustration of working within the confines of Cold War-era caution no longer shows on Appathurai's face. Weeks of intense internal debate sparked by the video in question has led to a sea-change in NATO's entire approach to public diplomacy, with the order for wholesale change coming now from the very top – Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Scheffer crystallized the change in a major speech last week that itself passed below the public radar.

Addressing a Copenhagen gathering of insider delegates, including a sizeable contingent from Canada, he said NATO is "frankly in the Stone Age" when it comes to many aspects of public diplomacy.

"When there is an incident in Afghanistan, the Taliban are quick to say there have been high numbers of civilian casualties. The wires pick it up, then the TV stations, then the Web," Scheffer said. But by the time NATO has investigated, checked the results and passed the information through its approval system, "our response comes days later – if we are lucky. By that time, we have totally lost the media battle."

Scheffer also faulted commanders for tending to deal only with reporters from their own countries.

"The result? The population of Canada thinks Canadian soldiers are fighting alone. So do the British and the Dutch. That undermines solidarity, diminishes the multilateral nature of the operation and makes it harder to sustain," he said.

"Canadians need to see Danish soldiers in the south, and Romanians and Poles as well as Dutch and British and Estonians and Americans [emphasis added--The Torch has been trying to do its bit, Romanians, Australians (end of post), and Danes too]."

Scheffer's words were music to the ears of Appathurai, who has been the "lone voice" urging his colleagues to awaken to tempo of 21st-century communications.

"The Taliban is making videos every day and NATO is not on TV," Appathurai told the Star. "The Taliban has websites. We don't have websites [not quite], certainly not an effective Afghan website...

The issue will be revisited this week when NATO defence ministers meet for informal discussions Wednesday and Thursday in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Sources say NATO will put new emphasis on Web videos, including the declassification of images previously thought too sensitive to publicize, and place a premium on fleet-footed communication, possibly using rapid-reaction teams to mobilize when Taliban-conceived falsehoods hit the press.

"This is a turning point because now there is consensus that NATO needs to do much, much better at communication, first and foremost with video," said Appathurai.

"We need to be on YouTube."

Appathurai said NATO's failure to communicate deepens perceptions of failure on the ground – perceptions that play directly into the hands of the enemy.

"The average Canadian or Dutchman sees what NATO is doing either as a stalemate between us and the Taliban or as a series of random acts of violence, without being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But there is a tunnel and there will be light. The challenge for NATO in Afghanistan is to do everything possible to bring us to it. And the challenge for those of us here in Brussels is to make sure people can see it coming."

Let's hope those ministers glom onto YouTube.

Looking forward in Afstan

It looks likely that the Dutch will extend their commitment until 2010, with a somewhat reduced troop presence. If Canada in the next few months decides essentially to remove all our troops from combat in 2009 we will be the first to bug out, with very negative diplomatic and alliance consequences. Not to mention the consequences for the Afghans--but see below regarding possible replacements for us.

I imagine the Dutch, and NATO, expect it will not be too hard to find replacements--perhaps from smaller/newer NATO members--for their 400 troop reduction suggested in the piece just below (hell, that's only around half a battalion).

Surely by 2009 Canada/NATO should be able to drum up replacements for around a quarter of our combat troops. As far as I can determine from the figures here our battle group at Kandahar actually comprises at most near 1,600 of our current total 2,500 CF personnel commitment to ISAF. So with a quarter drawdown the need would--as with the Dutch--be around 400 troops from other countries (very rough reckoning). Indeed, as more is turned over to the Afghan National Army and Police, one might expect that our combat, and support strength, could be drawn down a fair bit. Such a scenario would enable the government to outline a plan to keep the CF in strength at Kanadahar--but a significantly reduced strength, with more support from NATO, and with less combat. Back to the Dutch:

Dutch military operations in Afghanistan could be extended for two more years after August 2008 but with fewer troops, a Dutch daily reported on Saturday.

Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf quoted sources as saying Chief of Staff Dick Berlijn had advised the government that it could keep a maximum of 1,200 soldiers in southern Afghanistan from about 1,600 now.

A spokesman of the Dutch Ministry of defense declined to comment, saying any advice given to the government was private.

The Dutch government, under NATO pressure to keep its troops in the volatile Uruzgan region, is reviewing its mission amid growing public pressure to withdraw as casualties increase.

A Dutch pull-out could see the Canadians follow suit. They are stationed in Kandahar in the south and must also decide whether to extend their mandate which runs until February 2009.

The issue is likely to feature prominently at an informal NATO meeting in the Dutch town of Noordwijk on October 24-25.

The Netherlands should remain the "lead nation" in Uruzgan but help from other countries was necessary in areas such as defending military camps, transport and air support, the Dutch newspaper reported Berlijn's advice as saying.

Berlijn and Dutch defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop told NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Friday about Berlijn's ideas, the newspaper said...

In fact, from the above, it would seem the Dutch military envisage many of the replacements being used for support purposes.

Even should Canada basically bug out of combat some at NATO seem confident that we can be replaced:

Important, yes. Irreplaceable, no. That is NATO's candid assessment of Canada's role in the controversial effort to stabilize Afghanistan.

In a surprise admission from NATO headquarters in Brussels, a senior military source estimates the cohesion of the Afghan alliance now is sufficiently stable to withstand a Canadian withdrawal.

"It would be a disaster if Canada withdrew its forces and was not replaced. But would that be the case? Almost certainly not," the NATO source told the Toronto Star on condition of anonymity.

"If Canada needs to withdraw from Kandahar, we will find a way of replacing those capabilities. It might not be easy, but we will find a way. I'm fairly confident we could."..

Thus far, none of the 37 nations contributing militarily to the NATO-led mission has announced any intention to leave. Insiders in Brussels say Canada is highly unlikely to become the first unless Ottawa first engineers a side deal that would see the arrival of replacement troops from other countries to assume the difficult task of securing Kandahar [or maybe only part of it--see above - MC]. In effect, the length of Canada's continued deployment will depend almost entirely on the skill the Harper government applies to persuading others to take its place...

In fact the British may be able to provide more troops as they withdraw from Iraq, as indeed might the Americans. And the Democratic presidential candidates generally seem very supportive of the Afghan mission--notably Sen. Clinton (a fact not often mentioned by our pundits):

The forgotten frontline in the war on terror is Afghanistan, where our military effort must be reinforced. The Taliban cannot be allowed to regain power in Afghanistan; if they return, al Qaeda will return with them...

The Aussies might also pitch in, even it the current government loses the Nov. 24 election.

Here's the metaphor for NATO's overall plan: the "two-horses" strategy (which is exactly the "exit strategy" the Canadian government and military have been putting forward for some months--not to give any great credit to us, it's just obvious):

There is a new metaphor making the rounds at NATO headquarters here that rings like simplicity itself. When you think of what Canada and its allies are doing in Afghanistan, think not of the ravages of the opium boom, the complexities of Pashtun tribalism, the elusive battle for hearts and minds or the indefatigable challenge of telling friend from foe.

Think instead of two horses...

"We are at the stage now where, as NATO, we have to ride two horses by simultaneously straddling two very challenging tasks," explains senior NATO spokesperson [Canadian] James Appathurai, speaking on the record amid a series of background briefings at alliance headquarters in Brussels.

"One horse, NATO has been riding since the beginning. That is the task of actual combat, the job of pushing the Taliban off its pedestal, out of its bases and onto its back feet in southern Afghanistan. We have to stay on that horse. For now, NATO must continue fighting to keep the Taliban off-balance.

"The other horse NATO must ride now is to accelerate and expand the training of, equipping of the Afghan army. You are going to see a very big push now on training Afghans to the point where they will be able to fight their own fight. And as they take on that role, NATO will be able to phase down its role in combat, providing the Afghans with embedded trainers, air support and border patrol – but not actually be on the front lines.

"This two-horses moment is the most delicate stage of the mission because we need to ride them simultaneously. It's like being in a circus – but we have to be able to do it. That's where we find the light at the end of the tunnel."

Several NATO sources estimate 2011 as a target date to reasonably expect Afghan army battalions emerging in numbers sufficient to allow for a role reversal, with Afghan army regulars taking the lead against anti-government fighters as NATO troops fall back.

NATO's estimated timeline happens also to coincide precisely with that outlined in Ottawa on Tuesday [emphasis added, nicely convenient], when Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government proposed maintaining a Canadian military presence in Afghanistan until 2011. The Conservative throne speech called for Canadian troops to "shift to accelerate the training of the Afghan army and police so that the Afghan government can defend its sovereignty."..

Now a simple truth that, I think, must be recognized:

Van Kappen [NATO adviser, retired Dutch military commander] suggested such Afghan dialogue could lead eventually to an international reckoning on some more deeply held assumptions about the country's future.

"More and more analysts are beginning to think that a strong central government in Kabul – which absolutely underpins the NATO-led effort – is a bridge too far," he said. "Instead, it may be necessary to achieve stability first in the regions – including an accommodation for the political needs of the Pashtun south –which is something the Afghan people are more familiar with, based on their background and history...

Congratulation to the Star's Mitch Potter for excellent reporting from Brussels in the stories above.

Update: One effort to get newer members to provide vital help:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will ask Ukraine and other eastern European countries this week to send troops to Afghanistan to cover a shortfall in trainers for the Afghan army, a senior U.S. defense official said.

Gates, who landed in Kiev on Sunday to meet Ukraine's government and attend the Southeast Europe Defense Ministerial, has grown increasingly frustrated by the failure of NATO allies to fulfill promises made to Afghanistan, his aides say.

He is particularly worried about a shortfall of more than 3,000 trainers for Afghan security forces -- a need that military commanders voiced a year ago...

Upperdate: A straw in the wind:

UK troops to fill Nato's boots in Afghanistan