Afstan: Canadians back in combat/Yankee imperialism/Brits, Canadians and US Marines

Looks like the Taliban are reverting to some of their tactics from 2006:

Operation Rolling Thunder ends successfully
Top-secret engagement [??] sees Canadian troops involved in heaviest fighting this year against Taliban militants

PASHMUL, AFGHANISTAN...

Code-named Operation Rawa Tander, Pashto for Rolling Thunder, the joint Canada and Afghan military mission was aimed at disrupting insurgent activity in one of Kandahar province's most dangerous areas, Pashmul.

Located in Zhari district, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, the area is a hornet's nest of insurgent activity. The battle-scarred region, southwest of Kandahar, has been the site of several, often bloody, battles for Canadian soldiers since 2006.

The operation, which involved multiple platoons, started before day-break on Tuesday and, by 6:15 a.m., bullets were already ripping through Pashmul, a collection of small, ancient villages and farmland. The few locals still living in the area either fled by foot or hunkered down in their compounds before the fighting started. Most are poor farmers.

Canadian and Afghan soldiers were able to sneak up on a suspect compound and take the militants by surprise. The insurgents, toting AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, returned fire for about half an hour from a grape hut.

The battle ended a short time later after the Canadians called on U.S. military air support to drop several bombs, including Hellfire missiles, on the area.

As the week progressed, the fighting intensified, with yesterday being the most hard-fought for Canadian and Afghan forces.

About 8 a.m. yesterday, a large number of insurgents began shooting at the soldiers from several positions. The terrain, which was mainly lush grape fields and small groves of dense trees, made it difficult at first to tell exactly where the militants were hiding.

For about two hours, the two sides exchanged fire, with the Canadian and Afghan forces calling in air and artillery support. More than 30 rounds of artillery fire whistled through the hot, spring morning air and hit mud grape huts and compounds where the insurgents were positioned.

By 11 a.m., the shooting had largely stopped. A short time later, Afghan National Army soldiers followed a trail of blood into one compound. Four insurgents were inside; only one was alive. He was later detained.

During the lengthy operation, several dozen insurgents were killed or injured. Only one Afghan soldier was hurt; he accidentally shot himself in the foot. No Canadians were injured...

More:

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Canadian troops have swept through a volatile district west of Kandahar in an operation designed to ferret out nests of insurgents.

The four-day swing, code-named Operation Rolling Thunder, was conducted alongside Afghan government forces.

The operation saw several firefights in Zhari district, long a hotbed of Taliban activity.

No Canadian casualties were reported yesterday by military officials who released information about the operation.

An unknown number of militants were believed killed in the operation.

The Taliban had for months been using roadside bombs and booby traps to chip away at better armed NATO troops. Over the last few weeks, however, they have chosen to stand and fight small-arms engagements, using AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades.

Speaking on background, Canadian commanders conceded there has been a "significant increase" in direct-fire attacks, but they are not ready to conclude that the Taliban have switched tactics...

Since the end of the poppy harvest, tens of thousands of local young men have become unemployed. The Taliban were believed trying to recruit them as fighters, and there has been a steady increase in violence.

NATO's principal base in the region, Kandahar Airfield, has also been hit almost nightly with 107 mm Chinese- or Russian-made rockets. The wildly erratic attacks have caused little damage.

And a particular success:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canadian and Afghan forces appear to have scored a modest victory in an operation west of Kandahar this week, killing a mid-level Taliban commander and a handful of militant foot soldiers.

Afghan police identified the dead insurgent leader on Saturday as Mullah Tohr Agha, a group commander in the volatile Zhari district.

"We are quite satisfied," Gen. Sayed Agha Saqib, the provincial police chief of Kandahar said at news conference in the provincial capital, where some of the captured fighters were paraded out for the local media.

Agha was killed in an air strike Friday on a compound near Pashmul, Saqib said in a later interview.

His elimination is important to the effort to bring stability to the restive region because Agha's cell was apparently involved in planting roadside bombs, burning schools and a co-ordinated campaign of assassination attempts on local government officials.

"They were not selling cucumbers," Saqib added dryly.

As many as 16 other Taliban fighters were killed and up to 40 were taken prisoner, but Saqib conceded that police will have to check the identities of those in custody to ensure they are bona fide militants.

Canadian commanders were not able to confirm the Afghan police account, but seemed pleased that the four-day sweep of the eastern portion of the district had netted some gains...

Meanwhile the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders manages to find the terrible implications of what many consider increasingly successful US counterinsurgency efforts in the east; I strongly suspect Mr Saunders read the piece at the link and decided to put his own spin on things; gotta keep the paper's agenda going:

Afghanistan: colonialism or counterinsurgency?
Americans bring Afghans their new 60-year plan

Good grief. More on the US in eastern Afstan here. All of which is not to say that things are easy there--see also this post.

Mr Saunders also has a very snarky tone combined with a poor grasp of history:

In practice, I found, it looks and sounds a lot more like old-fashioned colonialism. In the tents of Naray, I had the distinct feeling that I had strolled into Uttar Pradesh at some point after 1858, in the early days of the British Raj.

UP, or United Provinces, were not created until 1902 as the "United Provinces of Agra and Oudh" (see last para at preceding link), shortened to "United Provinces" in 1935; Independent India changed the name to Uttar Pradesh in 1950. Mr Saunders could hardly have been there in the "early days" of the Raj, even in his imagination. Plus it would have been an odd "distinct' feeling" since UP is flat and Hindi-speaking whilst eastern Afstan is hilly and populated by Pathans.

Update: See the excellent first comment by Dave on Mr Saunders' approach to committing journalism. Meanwhile, as for the Brits:

British troops put Taliban 'on the run'
Forces tactically routed, says army commander

With some help from US Marines (as noted in story above too):

Optimism Grows as Marines Push Against Taliban

Upperdate: US Marines again:

U.S. offensive taking pressure off Cdns in Kandahar