US focus on Kandahar/Orbat fun

If more US troops go to Afstan, it looks as if many might come there (nice to see an American story that pays considerable attention to our efforts, much as they now need help):

Obama's War: A City Quietly Falls [bit over the top, that]
In Kandahar, a Taliban on the Rise
U.S., NATO Struggle to Check Insurgents in Key Afghan Area
...
The slow and quiet fall of Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, poses a complex new challenge for the NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan. It is factoring prominently into discussions between Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the overall U.S. and NATO commander, and his advisers about how many more troops to seek from Washington.

"Kandahar is at the top of the list," one senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan said. "We simply do not have enough resources to address the challenges there."

Kandahar in many ways is a microcosm of the challenges the United States faces in stabilizing Afghanistan. The city is filled with ineffective government officials and police officers whom the governor calls looters and kidnappers. Unemployment is rampant. Municipal services are nonexistent. Reconstruction projects have not changed many lives. A lack of NATO forces allowed militants free rein...

...some officers maintain that NATO forces need to move into parts of the city. Other military officials in Afghanistan, including top leaders of the regional headquarters that encompasses Kandahar, contend that sending more foreign troops into the city would only pull in more Taliban fighters from rural areas, drawing NATO forces into perilous urban combat. But even they acknowledge there is a need for more Special Forces soldiers and military police [lots being done on that front already] who can mentor the local police force, as well as possibly more NATO troops on the city's outskirts...

By 2005, as Taliban attacks were increasing in eastern Afghanistan, the United States ceded responsibility for security in Kandahar province to Canada, which sent about 2,500 troops to the area. Although Canada has allowed its forces to operate without some rules that have limited the activities of other NATO members, Canadian commanders acknowledge that they did not have enough soldiers on the ground while Taliban activity increased over the past three years.

When Canadian troops conducted repeated missions to clear militants from areas around the city, there never were enough forces to stay to keep insurgents from returning. Canada did not have the resources to maintain a large presence in the city: That was left to the local police...

At 10 p.m. on a recent evening, two dozen Canadian soldiers rumbled out of their base on the city's eastern fringe in a convoy of armored vehicles. Their mission was the same as it is most days: Head to the police headquarters, link up with a squad of municipal policemen and go on patrol. The goal is to get the police out of their stations and into the community, to convince Kandaharis that somebody is protecting them.

Only five bothered to report for duty. In one green pickup truck.

When the Canadians stopped to talk to a man guarding a row of closed market stalls in one of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, the policemen stayed in their truck...

...For now, NATO will have to try to fix Kandahar -- not just the city but the entire province, which is the country's second-largest in land area -- with the Canadians and five U.S. Army battalions, four of which are part of the new forces sent by Obama [emphasis added, see end of post]. The overall troop deployment is far less than what NATO has in Helmand, which has fewer residents.

That has forced commanders to address the Kandahar problem indirectly. Instead of sending troops into the city, the military's initial approach is to deploy most battalions in districts around Kandahar. The goal is to target insurgent redoubts in those areas and cut off infiltration routes into the city...

NATO officials regard only one of the districts around the city as reasonably stable, and that is because Canadian commanders concentrated the bulk of their forces in the area over the past six months. They also poured money into development projects, with the aim of getting residents to band against the Taliban.

The effort in Dand district has shown promising signs...

But what occurred in Dand [more here, here and here] may be hard to pull off elsewhere, Canadians note, because that district has fewer tribal rivalries and is relatively small, resulting in a much higher concentration of NATO troops to residents than will be possible in other places. And thus far, NATO officials have been reluctant to embrace tribal solutions to combating the insurgency out of fear that will create a new class of warlords...

And now for more Orbat fun. From a CP story:

...
Canada has been going it largely alone for the past three years and the reinforcements couldn't come at a better time.

"It's been a huge bonus. When you think three years ago we were covering this massive region with a single battalion and here today in 2009 we're covering this region with eight battalions [emphasis added]," said Chief of Defence Staff General Walt Natynczyk in an interview with The Canadian Press at Forward Operating Base Ma'sum Ghar...

The US Army now has three combat battalions at Kandahar province, the CF have one. That's four. The US also has two combat battalions in neighbouring Zabul province. That's six [see end of this post]. Then there's that battalion of American MPs for Kandahar City (not a "combat" unit as such, maybe from the US Army's 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division--see end of this post). Now seven. There is also this US trainer unit, the 33rd Brigade Combat Team, in RC South. Perhaps a battalion from it takes the total up to eight.

Update thought: Maybe Gen. Natynczyk was including the Black Watch battalion based at KAF, which our media almost never mention.