"Afghanistan isn't just Canada's war"

Further to this post, Matthew Fisher of Canwest News (winner of the 2007 Ross Munro Media Award for "a significant and extraordinary contribution to increasing public understanding of Canadian defence and security issues") does more to, er, broaden Canadians' perspectives:

Afghanistan isn't just Canada's war
British successes and tragedies mirror our nation's ordeal in Kandahar

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan -- Like most of his countrymen, Pte. Colin Walstow admitted that he "did not have a clue" that Canada was fighting only 60 kilometres to the east of where he was serving as a combat medic for the British army in Helmand Province.

Most Canadians suffer from a similar myopia.

They have been so focused on Canada's war in Kandahar that most don't know the British have been fighting and dying in almost similar numbers in neighbouring Helmand [see this UK MoD site, "Operations in Afghanistan"].

Since 9/11, 152 Britons and 117 Canadians have died in Afghanistan.

Britain has sent 8,300 troops and five infantry battalions to Helmand [units listed here]. Canada has about 3,000 soldiers and one infantry battalion in Kandahar [emphasis added, see 2 R22eR Battle Group here--one of those British battalions has often been assigned to help the Canadians at Kandahar, see here and here].

The British have mostly fought from light-armoured Land Rovers. That is a path that Canada abandoned shortly after moving their forces from Kabul to Kandahar in 2006 because its jeep-like vehicles were considered vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.

Canadian soldiers mostly use armoured personnel carriers and heavily armoured RG-32 trucks [RG-31 actually, not really trucks, more here and here] to get around. They also have Leopard tanks.

"If you've got the enemy within, laying bombs and attacking with small pockets of men, there are not many scenarios in this small zone for armour," said Col. Greville Bibby, the British contingent's deputy commander, adding that the populated terrain was not practical for heavy vehicles.

"Our experience in Northern Ireland is that you can't influence the people from behind 10 inches of armour. You can't do it whizzing past with armour, pushing them off the road."

Still, the similarities between how the Commonwealth allies are prosecuting this violent, opium-fuelled war in the Taliban heartland are more striking than the differences. After the Brits and Canadians won one-sided early battles against insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar, the enemy now mostly causes mayhem by planting IEDs.

And just as the Canadians are about to hand over the largely unpopulated northeastern and southeastern half of Kandahar to a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade, the British are transferring the largely unpopulated southern half of Helmand to a U.S. Marine Expeditionary Brigade [more on those deployments here].

The Brits and the Canadians have embraced the growing American presence and have adopted nearly identical strategies to try to win Afghans over. They are using reconstruction teams comprised of civilians and soldiers that are "as joined at the hip as an organization can be," Bibby said.

The British and the Afghan government already have established five protected communities within a security bubble since early last year.

Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance, Canada's commander in Kandahar, revealed a similar strategy last week in the town of Deh-E-Bagh.

Bibby and other soldiers at British headquarters, expressed frustration with journalists for seldom wanting to report on the non-military war.

"The British media focus on the kinetic stuff," said Sgt. Paul Crawford, a Royal Engineer who had served previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They want to film firefights. But the majority of what we do is stability and construction." [Our media don't even do much "kinetic stuff", generally rooted as they are at the KAF deathwatch.]

As in Canada, there is also a war to be won at home. While hugely supportive of their troops, many Britons remain skeptical about the mission.

"My impression is that there is a lack of understanding as to why we are here," Bibby said. "Like so many things political, the media use this to discuss political implications, rather than what is actually happening on the ground."

There were hard facts to support the contention that "there are absolute signs of progress," said Lt.-Col. Nick Richardson, a Royal Engineer who runs media operations in Helmand.

"During the Taliban time, there were one million kids in school. There are six million now. Back then, eight per cent of the population had access to health care. It is now 80 per cent. And 35,000 kids are alive because of immunization programs."

Unlike Ottawa, which has announced its combat mission in Kandahar will end late in 2011, Britain has an open-ended commitment in Helmand.

"It has been challenging. We are almost working at capacity," Bibby said. "But we can do it and I am confident that we can keep going at this level as long as we keep doing it."

As far as I can see the story was not carried by the Ottawa Citizen or Montreal Gazette, which use Canwest News. Pity.

Predate: And there may be 2,000 more Brits coming.