This should be the end of the Afghan detainee issue as something, er, serious...

...but, given Canadian blinkers and self-referential obsession, it will not be. At the end of the year this is the one thing about Canada in Afstan, and related politics, that you should read--and very carefully. From Terry Glavin (paragraphs not in order, read the whole blinking thing; please):

"The news managers here in Canada have trouble understanding the Afghan story. . ." [not just an understatement, also a terrible indictment - MC]

...you really need to listen to this interview with Matthew Fisher on the subject, towards the end of an conversation that provides a rare overview of Canada's engagements in Afghanistan in their proper context. I awaited Matthew's verdict on the "detainee issue" with some trepidation, because there is no Canadian reporter who knows these subjects better than Matthew does. As it turns out, Matthew was even more full-throated about it all than I was.

I happen to be convinced that Matthew holds certain views about Afghanistan's potential that are rather too pessimistic, a consequence of the amount of time he's spent in the damnedest and most dangerous parts of the country, and the sorts of savagery he's seen, up close. But nevermind all that. Here's what Matthew had to say about the Great Detainee Rumpus of 2009:

"It is preposterous," Mathew begins. I especially noticed this: "People trying to compare this to Somalia . . . the cavalier use of the term war crimes. . . we are not even within a million miles of reaching any of these points. It is a tremendous slur to ever invoke words like these. These are words that were used, and with reason, for the holocaust, for the genocide in Cambodia, for the horrible things that happened with tens of thousands of people being slaughtered in Rwanda. . ."...

"I believe it's because the news managers here in Canada have trouble understanding the Afghan story. We don't have a history of war correspondence, or covering wars, and somehow, if the war is political at home, it's manageable. . . most of the coverage for the past few months has been devoted to covering emails at a time when there are several thousand Canadian soldiers out walking point every day, and at extreme risk, in Afghanistan."

Certain well-suspected suspects are also brought before the bar:

...
It's not just that William Schabas and Michael Byers started all this and got nothing for their 2007 war-crimes complaint to the International Criminal Court apart from a whack of uncritical press and a pat on the head from the ICC along with a fancy 'don't call us, we'll call you' letter. It's not just that Byers and Schabas teamed up with Stephen Staples and got another free pass recently by calling a press conference to announce that they were reviving the effort, only this time they'd appended to their pleadings a sheaf of newspaper clippings with Richard Colvin's name in the headlines.

It was Matthew's reference to the Cambodian genocide that reminded me that the William Schabas who loudly proclaims Canadian war crimes in Afghanistan is the same William Schabas who has loudly objected to the genocide findings against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Stalin's atrocities in the Ukraine? Not genocide, says Schabas. Rwanda? Yes, the crime of genocide, a war crime. Bosnia? Nope, not a righteous bust - it was just ethnic cleansing. Darfur? Why no, Your Honour, the International Criminal Court is legally wrong to prosecute Sudan for genocide, because while the Khartoum regime may well have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs, it didn't mean to. And the ICC was wrong about Srebrenica, too...

Thank you Mr Glavin.

US Army 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Maywand district//Predate: More on US forces at Kandahar

Further to this post,

Afstan: Typical Canadian reporting--balderflippingdash

Murray Brewster of CP is one of the abler of our journalists covering military matters. But in this round-up and look-ahead piece about the CF in Afstan he manages not to mention the US Army's 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team that has been operating at Kandahar since late summer (that unit by itself is considerably larger than the whole Canadian contingent in the province)...

what almost all our major media can't be bothered to report (via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs):

Perilous patrol through heart of Taliban territory
Troops try for rapport with locals

Photographs [seven in all] by Mary F. Calvert/ The Washington Times
A Stryker vehicle is a reminder of the potent force available to Americans. It is parked outside the barracks for members of Blackwatch unit with the 5th Stryker Brigade at Combat Outpost Rath in the Maywand District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.

HUTAL, Afghanistan | Villagers stared at the Americans as they made their way into a small bazaar where goat meat hung from hooks amid stands of used clothing, pots, pans and various trinkets.

For the Afghans, the big Americans in full battle gear looked like beings from another planet. At each turn of the road, soldiers on the point knelt on the ground, automatic weapons ready. The men and women on the security walk were staggered in zigzag formation to keep casualties low in case Taliban sharpshooters were in the area and taking aim. Capt. Casey Thoreen, 30, the commander of the unit, monitored his radio for intelligence.

Fifteen minutes later, the unit arrived at a local clinic. It was empty and ominous looking with an open gate. Villagers in the bazaar began to leave. Shopkeepers closed their shops, throwing tarps over their goods. Children who had been cadging the troops for candy and pencils scattered.

"A suicide bomber is in the area," Capt. Thoreen said after receiving a radioed intelligence report. "We've got to move, now!"

Last month, President Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, which will bring the total contingent to about 100,000 by fall. For those already here [part of the first Obama surge], the hope is that the reinforcements will turn the momentum in an eight-year war that insurgents appear to be winning.

A reporter and photographer from The Washington Times who visited southern Afghanistan recently witnessed the hardships the Americans face. It's an especially difficult security situation for the men and woman assigned to the small Combat Outpost Rath in the heart of Kandahar province's Taliban territory...

Members of the Blackwatch unit, Bravo Company 2nd Battalion 1st Infantry Regiment, with the 5th Stryker Brigade [more here], recall what happened to Capt. Ben Sklaver, 32, of Medford, Mass., in October. Capt. Sklaver was attached to the Stryker brigade but assigned to the 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion, U.S. Army Reserve, out of Greensboro, N.C.

A suicide bomber surprised Capt. Sklaver, Pfc. Alan H. Newton Jr. and an interpreter, killing all three, while they were in the town trying to improve relations with the locals...

Their mission had brought them to the unassuming village of Hutal, known for its ties to the Taliban. A village school just outside Combat Outpost Rath stood empty. Taliban informants had made it impossible for children, especially young girls, to attend classes.

Instead, the girls, some as young as 4, could be seen gathering water from a nearby well and sitting alongside the salmon-colored walls of the village giggling and talking quietly.

The village clinic is also empty most days; only one doctor makes rare visits. Villagers say medicine is limited and most of what has been requested winds up being sold on the black market.

Afghans do go, however, to the combat outpost for treatment.

"We're treating everyone from the U.S. soldier to the Afghan villager," said Capt. Jason Paul Adams, the battalion's physician assistant, from Louisville, Ky...

For about a year until this September there was a US Army battalion at Maywand as part of the CF's Task Force Kandahar. That battalion has now moved to Zhari district (still part of our task force) and been replaced by the one from the Stryker BCT--Task Force Stryker is not under CF command. Not that our media have paid much attention to the US forces with our task force either.

More photos of Task Force Stryker at Maywand here.

Predate: Our media have not also mentioned the Stryker BCT's battalion in Arghandab district:

The unit taking the most fatalities at Kandahar is American

And more on the US units under Canadian command:

Afstan: CF like the fish in the sea (with three US battalions for company)

Afstan: Terry Glavin interviewed by Rex Murphy--"reporters embedded at the D'Arcy McGee's pub in Ottawa"

On CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup:

...

November 29, 2009
"What's your reaction to the Afghan detainee issue?"

Introduction Guests Mail

Listen to the program in Mp3 (One two-hour file - 32 kbps)
(To download: right click and choose 'Save Target As') ...

Quotes from Mr Glavin and a direct link to the latter's part of the program, via Kate MacMillan:

Excerpts courtesy EBD;

"It's a disgrace, if you ask me, it's a complete disgrace that we're running around playing this sort of 'gotcha' journalism in Ottawa while we've got all of these soldiers engaged in this epochal struggle here, and treating - by the way - Taliban prisoners with kid gloves."

Later...

"Well, this is the funny thing - and we've all struggled with this here - I've talked to a number of journalists about this who are with me, and the journalists that are here, and we're all scratching are heads and wondering what is the story here, exactly? You tell me. What's news? How is it possible that any editor in his right mind could think that Peter MacKay conceding that we've known that some of these drooling brigands that are apprehended by the Afghan national army get their ears boxed a little bit from time to time? That's the way it was, that isn't the way it works now, by the way, not since 2007. The process is meticulous, it is squeaky-clean, it is public, it involves corrections Canada, the international Red Cross, the military police, the Afghan security and intelligence group, NATO - all of these detainees, and there's hardly any, by the way, we rarely turn anyone over to the Afghans any more. By the way, if an insurgent who kills a Canadian soldier gets apprehended on the battlefield, and puts his eye out or something like that, he goes into the same triage system as Canadian soldiers do, and if he's hurt a little bit more than a Canadian soldier is, he gets priority.

"All of this is old news. I'm sorry, (but) I mean, I spent fifteen years working for the dailies, and I've done a lot of sort of book writing and magazine writing ever since, and I'm not one of these embittered and cynical old journalists, but this is a bunch of reporters embedded at the Darcy McGhee pub in Ottawa trying to make a nuisance of themselves."

Listen to it here: MP3

This interview with Canwest News' Matthew Fisher a month later might well be listened to as a follow-up.

The Taliban also kill a Canadian journalist

Michelle Lang of the Calgary Herald; one can understand the ordering in the headline. Ms Lang had a blog. This beautiful photograph of hers ends up all too relevant:

Panjwaii is a volatile and dangerous district for the Canadian Forces. In October, an improvised explosive device killed Lieut. Justin Boyes during a foot patrol in Panjwaii...

Update: More from Patrick White of the Globe and Mail (via Terry Glavin).

US miltary report on ANA weaknesses

NBC news video from Dec. 29:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Plus a NY Times story on an historical look:

Internal Army Report Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan

In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells.

But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a “small footprint” in Afghanistan and because Iraq was drawing away resources, General Barno commanded fewer than 20,000 troops...

But as early as late 2003, the Army historians assert, “it should have become clear to officials at Centcom and D.O.D. that the coalition presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for proper counterinsurgency, the historians write, referring to the United States Central Command and the Department of Defense.

“A Different Kind of War,” which covers the period from October 2001 until September 2005, represents the first installment of the Army’s official history of the conflict. Written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and based on open source material, it is scheduled to be published by spring.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the manuscript, which is still under review by current and former military officials...

The lack of resources was also apparent in the training of Afghan security forces [emphasis added], the history shows.

Early in the war, the training program was hampered by poor equipment, low pay, high attrition and not enough trainers. Living conditions for the Afghan army were so poor that Maj. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry likened them to Valley Forge when he took command of the training operation in October 2002.

“The mandate was clear and it was a central task, but it is also fair to say that up until that time there had been few resources committed,” Mr. Eikenberry, now the ambassador to Afghanistan, told the historians, referring to the army training program...

"Torture in Afghanistan: The Liberals knew" redux

Further to this post earlier this month,

Afghan detainees and the former Liberal government...

I've come across this one from April 2007:

A post by CTV's David Akin on his blog...

Funny that our major media have completely forgotten about that of late. Shameful.

Predate: More from Radio-Canada in April 2007 (via an acute observer):

Prisonniers afghans torturés
Une pratique déjà connue

Google translation:

The former Liberal government had been accused by Canadian diplomats in Kabul in 2003, 2004 and 2005 that torture was commonplace in Afghan prisons.

A report in 2004 the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and obtained by The News reveals that "the surveillance reports of the Independent Commission of Human Rights in Afghanistan indicate that torture remains a common practice for police officers, including the 'stage of the investigation. This measure is used to obtain confessions from detainees. "

In 2005, another report shows that military, police and intelligence services are involved in arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, extortion cases, cases of torture and killings of individuals suspected of having committed crimes. The paper also reported cases of rapes of women, girls and boys by the police commanders and their troops.

An agreement still

Despite warnings from Canadian diplomats, the Paul Martin government has nonetheless signed an agreement with the Afghan government in December 2005, to deliver to the Afghan authorities and non-Americans to all prisoners captured by Canadian soldiers.

In the wake of the controversy surrounding alleged mistreatment of detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, and torture of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, that Canada had taken this decision.

The opposition Liberal Stéphane Dion in the House of Commons now accuses the Harper government to condone violations of the rights of prisoners in jails in Afghanistan.

Afstan: Good news--Globe and Mail catches up with Terry Glavin/And, gasp, blasts our government

Mr Glavin was writing from Afstan about this brave Afghan over a year ago, and again with a Christmas message from him this year. Patrick White of the Globe now catches up (good on him, better late than...the sort of positive story our media far too infrequently run):

An Afghan success story: a place where women are free to dream

Esanullah Eshan is a man under siege.

It's not so much the weekly threats of beatings or bombings that dog him from first prayer to last. It's figuring out where to seat the 500 brassy women who stream through the doors of his school, the Afghanistan-Canadian Community Centre [see here], to risk their lives in pursuit of diplomas, jobs and dreams.

Just beyond the school's gates, merely showing their eyes in public could be a punishable offence. Here in Mr. Eshan's office, the sexes are startlingly equal.

"Sir, I have no space to work," said one in perfect English, her eyes trained squarely on her principal.

"Sir, you must sign this form," said another.

"Sir, when will I get my diploma?"

Mr. Eshan, who opened the school in 2007 with funds from individual Canadian donors and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), can barely keep up. Since it opened, the community school's population has exploded from 100 to 700 students - a rate of growth that has stretched both Mr. Eshan and his building. With enrolment growing, he and a group of Canadians are trying to cobble together funds for an expansion. If they can't meet their target, Kandahar's one and only vocational school for women could be forced to start turning away prospective students.

"As you can see, we are at capacity already," he said in one of the school's computer labs recently, where a line of women waited for open computers. "So much time is taken just finding seats for them all. We have been mobbed. We need more computers, more Internet capacity, more space."

Mr. Eshan has cooked up an expansion plan with the help of the Canadian International Learning Foundation, an Ottawa-based charity that funds education in war-torn regions and has launched a website to support Mr. Eshan's work (http://www.theafghanschool.org). The addition - he calls it the Information Resource Center - would feature an expansive library of English books, television, videoconferencing screens and high-speed Internet. Around $20,000 would do the trick, he said, but there are high barriers to progress in this southern Afghan city where conservative views of a woman's place in society reign...

Read on. But, in the apparent interest of being fair and balanced, there is also this piece today by Globeite Graeme Smith (of detainee abuse-exposing fame, see "From Canadian custody into cruel hands", April 2007):

Canada ignores local lawyers offering free advice to detainees

Not "free" for Canada though:

...
Mr. Ibrahimi calculates his group could tackle the problem with an eight-month pilot program costing $47,600 (U.S.). That is a modest sum by the standards of foreign-assistance efforts in southern Afghanistan. Canada has spent $4-million on physical upgrades to Sarpoza, but has never supported legal aid for detainees in the prison...

Somewhat related:

"Torture in Afghanistan: The Liberals knew" redux

Matthew Fisher interviewed about Afstan

Our best war correspondent, now working from Kandahar for Canwest News, on CFRA, Ottawa:

...
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Year in War
Madely in the Morning - 8:10am --- Rob Snow is joined by Matthew Fisher, CanWest Foreign correspondent, Middle East and South Asia bureau chief, to discuss the Afghanistan war and the future of the mission.
mp3 (click here to download)...

More from Mr Fisher here, here, here and here.

Afstan and tanks: Quel scandale!/Lots on Leopard 2s

The Army needs replacement tanks in Afstan and that will cost money. The horror! The Ottawa Citizen reports--on the front page of course:

Canada to ship 20 tanks to Afghanistan as pullout looms

Canada will ship another 20 tanks to Afghanistan in the fall of 2010 to replace those that have been destroyed by insurgents or worn out through repeated use.

The Leopard 2 tanks will be shipped directly from Germany, where they are being refurbished, to Kandahar starting in September.

Although the tanks will only be on the ground for nine to 10 months before they have to be shipped back when the Canadian military mission ends in July 2011, Defence Department officials say the armoured vehicles are essential...

The cost of shipping the tanks from Germany to Afghanistan has not been determined, as that will depend on the type of transport used, according to DND spokeswoman Annie Dicaire.

The government spent $1 million to transport each tank when the first group of Leopards were originally sent from Canada to Kandahar in the fall of 2006 [more here]. At the time, it used commercial aircraft and U.S. military planes. Since then, Canada has received its own C-17 transport aircraft, which could be used to move the Leopards.

The Canadian Forces already had deployed 20 Leopard 2 tanks to Afghanistan and before that as many as 15 Leopard 1s [Taurus ARV uses the Leopard 1 chassis, see here and here]...

Canada is spending $1 billion on the tank project, which saw the purchase of 100 used Leopards from the Netherlands.

The tanks are being refurbished by the manufacturer, Krauss Maffei-Wegmann of Germany. That firm was awarded an $87-million contract in June for the repair and overhaul of some of the armoured vehicles.

More on that contract and lots of detail on the new Leopard 2s:

The Tank Replacement Project
...
The Tank Replacement Project will provide the Canadian Forces with a long-term, sustainable replacement for its 30-year old Leopard 1 main battle tank fleet and ensure that our troops have the equipment they need to get the job done. These tanks, once repaired, overhauled and upgraded, will provide the Canadian Forces with a sustainable heavy, direct-fire capability until 2035.

When completed, the Canadian Forces Leopard 2 fleet of 100 tanks will be made up of the following:
--40 tanks for use on operations (2 squadrons)
--42 tanks for use in training in Canada (2 squadrons)
--8 Armoured Recovery Vehicles (“tow-trucks” for tanks)
--10 additional tanks for use in force mobility

Leo 2 Update (via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs):

The Torch and tusks

The blog at Walrus magazine notices us:

Weekend Links

December 26th, 2009 by Matthew McKinnon | Comment »

The second in a weekly series of recommended links from The Walrus Blogroll… [scroll down at right]

5. “Afstan: Typical Canadian reporting—balderflippingdash” by Mark From Ottawa | The Torch
The group blog about our national military fact-checks Canadian Press reporting about Canadian Forces activities in the Afghanistan battle zone: “…no wonder so many Canadians — public, pundits, and politicians — are so ignorant of Afghan realities when this is the sort of stuff that appears in our major media. Fie.”..

Via Babbling.

Afstan: Only two more rotos to go/Scoop Update

Now that battle group tours have been extended (eight, then nine, months), that means that the next such roto, Task Force 1-10, will complete its tour around March 2011, leaving only one further roto before the CF's military mission at Kandahar is scheduled to end, starting in July 2011, more here.

Not having to do detailed planning for a further roto (which would have been necessary had these two tours not been extended) unless directed to do so by the government avoids any post-2011 "gotcha!" stuff from opposition parties or the media. And also mean the Army can begin seriously planning broader, non-Afstan specific, training etc. Training which has been adversely affected by the needs of the mission.

Update: It does seem we have rather a scoop. Someone well-informed has confirmed the above are the last two planned battle group rotos--a further one by the PPCLI (regiment's battalions listed at left here) scheduled for spring 2011 is no longer in the works. The final will now be largely Van Doos. Below is from an unclassified briefing from Land Force Western Area earlier this year, page titled "Current and Future Deployments":

HQ 5-09 – Task Force (TF) Head Quarters (HQ) in Afghanistan – 195 deployed
TF 1-09 – Quebec-led TF in Afghanistan (includes LFWA tank squadron and engineers) – 79 deployed
TF 3-09 – LFWA-led TF for Afghanistan – 1900 deploying [more here]
Op PODIUM – LFWA-led land component for Vancouver Olympics – 1500 in training
TF 1-10 – Ontario-led TF – 2100 currently training [see first para above]
TF 3-10 – Quebec-led TF – in planning stages
TF 1-11 – LFWA-led TF for Afghanistan – in planning stages and awaiting Government direction
HQ 5-11 – LFWA-led HQ for Afghanistan – in planning stages and awaiting Government direction

So presumably Quebec-led "TF 3-10" above will become TF 1-11 and the LFWA "TF 1-11" above is no more. Unless there are directions from the government.

Upperdate: To clarify: though not a battle group it seems there will be a final LFWA/PPCLI infantry roto in the second part of 2011 to look after things generally as the mission is wound down.

Hornets and a Polaris

CF-18s with their refueller

Afstan: A dead canadian soldier speaks/Extension of CF tours

Army Lieutentant Andrew Richard Nuttall is our latest fatality. He had a blog. Excerpts from his final entry:

Update from Afghanistan 4
December 1st, 2009
...
The last I left you was saying I was moving to a new house with no internet. Well many things have changed, yet many things stay the same. The new place was working out excellently for us, and a platoon of ANA (afghan national army) which we started to work with very closely. We spent many long days fixing and improving our compound, as well as the typical patroling around our AO. The situation around this new home was much more tense and fragile than our last, the last time the locals saw any uniformed troops was some americans who ran through the place guns blazing. As such they were quite wary, and so were we because of the high amount of insurgent presense we were expecting. Either way though during all of the days we’ve spent there nothing kinetic (aka fighting) has gone on, and that is relatively typical of the situation here. On one side the people are frightened, impoverished, and seek nothing but safety and prosperity for their families. On the other side is a very small subset of a combination of extreme Salafist muslims (aka seeking to impose an extremist version of islam on the entire world), anti-western mercenaries, and misguided brainwashed (generally) youths that utilize cowardice hit-and-run and ied tactics in order to sway the civilain population of afghanistan and north america to pull their troops out. Then there is us in the middle, an array of nations trying to combine our traditionally conventional forces and conduct combined operations with the young but capable ANA (and young but immature Afghan National Police, ANP), in a barren country with many more needs than just militaristic. Complicated, yes, confusing, only a bit, frustrating, unfortunatly too much...

...we found ourselves moving not too far down the road, which works out well as the new place is close to the village we’re trying to improve and is more comfortable. I tried to include as many pictures of the place we’re in now, most of the troops live in the mud hut, while the hq staff is outside in the tent. The mud hut themselves are only a bit dusty (and mouse infested), but are really warm at night and cooler during the day (perfect for afghanistan weather). Plus we’re slowly building up some other nice morale boosting amenities, warm water for showers, a dvd player, a gym with actual weights (instead of sandbags), and of course we’ve got the foosball table and dart board plus many board games. The longer we stay here the better it gets. The other big event that happened was Eid. Its the muslim version of christmas, all of the locals will go home with their families and cook big meals. I had the lucky chance to be at 2 different Eid dinner celebrations with the ANA, where we butchered some local goat and sheep, boiled it in a curry like water, and had it with the best tasting basil i’ve had, of course lots of rice, and huge pomogranetes for desert. Wow it was so delicious...

Another big (ish) piece of news that some of you may know already, but my tour is being extended over here. Since canada seems determined to pull out at the end of 2011, their going to extend the last three tours, starting with mine. The effect they’ve told us is only a 3 week extension. But from what I can infer, the effect it will have on me will turn my 6 month tour into almost 8 months [emphasis added]...

From the statement by his family:

...
We were proud of his decision to join the military. He believed his service in Afghanistan was making a difference...

Via Terry Glavin, with much thanks.

Update: More on future CF battle groups:

Afstan: Only two more rotos to go/Scoop Update

Upperdate: Mr Glavin also conveys a moving Christmas message from an Afghan.

On this day...

...count your blessings.

Remember all those who aren't drinking coffee in their pajamas side by side with their spouse, listening to Christmas music and watching their kids open presents under the lights of the tree.

Remember those who have sacrificed all that, for this year at least, in order to serve the rest of us half a world away.

And be sure to remember in your prayers those families for whom Christmas will never be the same.

Celebrate your good fortune, and remember those whose service protects you and yours.

"THE CANADA FIRST DEFENCE STRATEGY – ONE YEAR LATER"/Update: CF budget cuts this FY and St. Steve Staples

We at The Torch were distinctly unenthused by the "Strategy": see the posts here and here and follow the links.

Now there is a paper by Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) George Macdonald, fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, and former Vice Chief of the Defence Staff. Read between the lines of the "Executive Summary" for the unappetizing reality (links added):

While the Canada First Defence Strategy, formally issued in June 2008, is a welcome encapsulation of the Government’s perspective and plans for Defence, it is very general in its strategic framework and fails to prioritize any of the initiatives described. The existence of a small but steady increase in defence funding over the longer term is very positive for planning purposes, but the ability to meet the demand for capability with the supply of resources will remain a major challenge. Adjustments to the Strategy will certainly be required as circumstances and priorities evolve, suggesting the need for a mechanism to make modifications from time to time.

Some progress has been made in implementing the policy and the specific investments identified, notwithstanding the difficulty in quantifying relevant performance measures. Announcements related to large capital purchases, often considered the bellwether in assessing the development and sustainment of military capability, have been few and far between, although some recent activity is encouraging. Moreover, some projects have suffered setbacks or have stalled.

Having said this, the acquisition of equipment is only one part of the Government’s overall defence strategy. An objective examination of progress in the other three pillars of the CFDS – personnel, readiness and infrastructure – indicates some movement towards achieving a balanced military capability, even though the actual measurement of success is challenging.

Pp. 4-6 give a useful summary of progress--and not--on major equipment acquistions (there are many useful links in footnotes throughout the piece). A few excerpts from the final section of the paper, "Concerns with the CFDS":

...there is still no obvious strategic framework, that is, no identification and prioritization of CF contributions to overall Government defence and security objectives; hence, there is no way to assess the actual utility of the CFDS and, more specifically, whether resources are adequate. The CFDS is essentially a mechanism to capture and update the Government’s thinking on defence objectives and funding. No linkage is made, for example, with a broader national security environment or the future of the defence industrial base. Having said this, the document does provide an adequate policy foundation from which to extrapolate direction in developing military capabilities...

...the combined demand for frigates and destroyers [supposed to be replaced by a "Canadian Surface Combatant", see here and here], new fighters (more here), SAR aircraft, armoured vehicles, uninhabited aerial vehicles (more here), etc in the numbers proposed will almost certainly exceed the funding available. Moreover, the demand between 2015 and 2020 will be acute as funding for these major undertakings overlaps...

...And one must not forget the need to address all pillars of a capability, especially that related to personnel, which will continue to consume about half of the defence budget. Demographic projections for the segment of the population from which military manpower will be drawn in the future suggest that efforts to recruit, train and retain the right people will become increasingly challenging...

One suspects the author was rather bending himself in order not to be too critical of the government. See also the end of this post:

Afstan hitting UK defence budget hard--and the CF?

Update:

Canadian military faces $190 million in cutbacks
All three arms of service will be affected to help pay for defence strategy amid federal deficit
...

The air force is required to cut $59 million while the navy has $52 million in reductions to make, according to the Canadian Forces. It was recently revealed that the army's portion of the reduction is $80 million.

Reductions by the air force represent seven per cent of its annual budget; the navy cuts represent six per cent. The army's share is five per cent of its budget [surely their operational budgets or something, not their total budgets - MC]. All three services are reducing travel and attendance at conferences...

Steve Staples, president of the Rideau Institute in Ottawa, said the Defence Department is in a better position than other departments to weather the expected cuts to the federal government's planned disbursement. He said social, health and arts spending likely will be hit hardest as the Conservatives tighten budgets.

"These cuts that DND has to make are a drop in the bucket since the department has been enjoying large increases each year for many years," said Staples, who has criticized what he calls excessive spending on the military. "Compared to other departments, DND is the teacher's pet of the government."

The money saved is to be "allocated to best meet responsibilities defined by the Canada First Defence Strategy," an e-mail from the Canadian Forces noted...

But the CFDS barely describes any concrete, discrete, responsiblities. See above.

As for St. Steve Staples and the Rideau Institute, saying that he has been critical of "excessive spending on the military" is the usual limp and hardly complete description of the joint or its president that our media usually employ, e.g. (the first example below is from the same reporter):

...the Rideau Institute, which has opposed the Afghan war and large-scale defence spending...

No need for the "has". It just plain opposes--past, present and future, regardless of the situation or facts. And it might have been worth including this aspect:

...the Rideau Institute, a left-leaning public-policy group...

"Far" left-leaning, I'd say. Just look at usual suspects who are involved.

Upperdate: Should have noted Mr Staples' real labour of love, never mentioned by our journalists and no longer mentioned at the Rideau Insitute site itself (as far as I can see):

About Us

“A ceasefire is always the first step to achieve peace.”

Ceasefire.ca is a project of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs, a public policy research and advocacy group based in Ottawa. Ceasefire.ca is the institute’s main public outreach and advocacy arm...

...it has pushed Canadian politicians of all stripes to oppose the war in Afghanistan...

...in order to act as strong political forces in Ottawa that lobby for peace, the Rideau Institute and Ceasefire.ca are not registered charities (and therefore cannot issue tax receipts for donations until the federal government changes its charity laws)...

You can contact Ceasefire.ca through the Rideau Institute.

Rideau Institute
The Hope Building
63 Sparks Street, Suite 608
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5A6
CANADA
t. 613 565-9449 ext.24
e. sstaples@rideauinstitute.ca
w. www.rideauinstitute.ca

Get the picture that our media, either conciously or out of culpable ignorance, do not to give?

Predate: More on Ceasefire.ca and our journalists' being economical with the truth (literally):

The Globeite secret agenda revealed!

Afstan hitting UK defence budget hard--and the CF?

The Economist spells out the effects, mainly on the Royal Air Force and Navy:

The war bill comes due
Ships and planes are cut to help the army fight the Taliban
...
The National Audit Office, a government-spending watchdog, says that shortfalls in the defence budget will total at least £6 billion over the next decade, assuming that spending merely keeps pace with defence inflation (projected at 2.7% a year) [emphasis added]. If spending stays flat—a more realistic prospect—the gap could total £36 billion...

...his plans amount to a mini-review in favour of the army, which expects to be fighting the Taliban for several years [emphasis added] (the new Chinooks will not start arriving until 2012 [22 of them]), at the expense of the navy and the air force. The army may be bleeding in Afghanistan, but in Britain it is winning the battle for the budget.

And it looks like the CF is being hit by Afstan too:

New Close Combat Vehicles for the Army--and the coming budget crunch/Lagging Leopards

More on our government's future, meagre, defence budget plans here, here, here and here. Remember that our defence spending is only some 1.2% of GDP--and is likely to go quite a bit lower as a percentage.

Embedded US trainers with the ANSF

Bouhammer's Afghan Blog on why the US National Guard is well-suited for the role (equivalent to the Canadian OMLT and POMLT), and on ETTs in action (via The Thunder Run, done daily):

So do you think you know what an ETT (embedded training team) member does? ETTs have been the true tip of the spear in Afghanistan since Task Force Phoenix [more here and at the end of the Update here] was first stood up in 2002. Task Force Phoenix and the ETT teams were initially charged with standing up, training, mentoring and assisting the Afghanistan National Army. The first mentoring was done by the active duty 10th Mountain Division. After Iraq kicked off in 2003, it was realized that the mission would need to be transitioned to the National Guard as there were not enough active duty forces to do the Phoenix mission in addition to the other ones they were being tasked.

The mission of training and empowering a country’s indigenous Army has always been a mission of the Special Forces and what they have mastered over the last 40 years. However there was not enough of them either, so National Guard was tapped. However if there were a 2nd best option to Special Forces doing the mission, then it was the National Guard...

Earlier:

Problems training and mentoring the ANA

Plus from BruceR., Canadian Army reservist and former ANA mentor, at Flit:

Posts worth reading

In response to a request, here's some posts on this blog since I returned I think sum up some of my recent thinking on Afghanistan...

One wonders how many Canadian journalists have bothered to read them.

Afstan: Typical Canadian reporting--balderflippingdash

Murray Brewster of CP is one of the abler of our journalists covering military matters. But in this round-up and look-ahead piece about the CF in Afstan he manages not to mention the US Army's 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team that has been operating at Kandahar since late summer (that unit by itself is considerably larger than the whole Canadian contingent in the province). Mr Brewster refers to the Arghandab district but seems unaware that a battalion of the Stryker BCT is there now and taking heavy casualties.

Mr Brewster is apparently also unaware that a second US Army BCT will deploy at Kandahar in Spring 2010. So by next summer there will be one Canadian infantry battalion at Kandahar, along with something like nine/nine US Army infantry battalions (two are now part of the CF's Task Force Kandahar) . Nothing on that from Mr Brewster.

Moreover he never mentions the US Army's 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade which has been at KAF since spring 2009--and which has provided most valuable support to Canadian troops.

He also writes that

...there have been reports that 800 U.S. marines will deploy in early January with more to follow. They will flood districts around the city, places that have etched themselves into the consciousness of Canadians — Panjwaii, Zhari, Shah Wali Kot and Argandaub...

I do not know where he's seen reports about substantial numbers of Marines coming to Kandahar. Everything I've seen indicates clearly that the great majority of the large number of additional Marines being sent to Afstan will go to Helmand province. As for their "flooding" the districts of Kandahar where the CF are now largely concentrating their efforts, with considerable US Army combat help: balderflippingdash.

I guess Mr Brewster doesn't look at the Marine Corps Times. Pity. And no wonder so many Canadians--public, pundits and politicians--are so ignorant of Afghan realities when this is the sort of stuff that appears in our major media. Fie.

Predate: One Canadian reporter, Matthew Fisher of Canwest News, did notice the second US Army BCT coming to Kandahar.

"Rough times in the Arghandab"--for the US Army

Further to this post,

The unit taking the most fatalities at Kandahar is American

BruceR. at Flit analyzes the nature and challenge of operations in the district (and explains how the main "ring road" in Afstan is being pretty effectively defended against IEDs).

More on roads, in this case Helmand:

...
Perhaps the most tangible evidence of the new approach is road-building. The International Security Assistance Force is forging into enemy territory with the help of a cheap, resilient, honeycomb-like frame that stabilises and reinforces soft soil and sandy roads, and allows them to be laid quickly. There are 14 miles of road due to be completed by the spring, but if successful, the Neoweb system could be used extensively across Helmand and beyond.

The benefits could be immense. Roads demonstrate that ISAF has fulfilled its promise to help local people get their produce to market before it rots. Journey times to the economic hub at Gereshk will be cut from four hours to half an hour.

New roads will also allow the British patrol bases strung out along the route to be more easily resupplied. Between the bases there will be Afghan-run checkpoints, and much of the route will be monitored by advanced CCTV cameras, some hung from barrage balloons – a scene reminiscent of the First World War [more on roads at 1) here]...

Tactical Vest Replacement: One More Time

First, we had the call for new load bearing equipment (in this case, for “modular fighting rigs“).

Then, we didn’t anymore.

As of today, the CF is trying again (this time seeking “modular vests“) – this, via MERX:

The department of National Defence has a requirement for three (3) different systems of modular vests with components and specialized pouches. The systems have to be military off the shelf or commercial off the shelf and in accordance with the Purchase Description dated September 2009.

If you’re interested in what’s part of each of the three system combos, you can download a short summary here (via Milnet.ca).

Once again, they’re hoping to see these things soon:

Delivery requested: To commence as soon as possible and be completed by 30 April 2010.

More, as it happens.

Crossposted at MILNEWS.ca

What's going on at Kandahar?

A topic thread at the SMALL WARS COUNCIL, take a look.

"Not your father's military"

A Canadian soldier reflects on his many years of service (links added, via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs):

A soldier's story
Russell D. Storring
10 years of change in the Canadian Armed Forces

In 2000, I was stationed at Camp Shilo, Man., with the 1st Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, one of the most storied units of the Canadian Armed Forces.

We had just undergone the Forces-wide changeover of our olive drab combat uniforms for the new ones with the digital camouflage pattern known as CADPAT.

It was similar to many European and U.S. designs. But we all joked that it looked like it was patterned after a jar of relish.

Apparently it was designed on a computer program so as to greatly reduce the enemy's ability to view us, particularly with night-vision goggles.

Today, as my almost second decade of being a soldier winds down, I look back on the last 10 years of rapid change in the Canadian military, much of which had a positive impact on me personally.

These changes ranged from the new relish-jar uniforms, as well as new communications equipment and vehicles, to fitness, pay, military culture and even the civilian perceptions of soldiering itself...

From where I sit, Canada's involvement in Afghanistan has been about much more than new equipment or personnel.

Change has affected training, military culture, pay and promotions as well as a slew of other issues that simply evolved or fell into place because of the pressures of modern combat.

Although I joined in 1991 as a soldier, Canada's military was perceived as an army of peacekeepers and much of the training was focused around this concept.

Today, with constant rotations in and out of Afghanistan, our training, fitness and mindset have evolved away from the peacekeeper mentality back to soldiering and war fighting.

Concepts such as the three-block war — fighting, peacekeeping and rebuilding all in the same theatre — which had been discussed for years, are now an everyday reality and put into successful action by Canada and its coalition partners.

Another change has been that the deployment tempo for almost every soldier seemed to increase as a result of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

I only had one (UN) tour in the 1990s, in Rwanda. But between 2003 and the end of 2008, I completed three six-month-plus tours in Afghanistan...

Russell Storring overlooks Kabul in 2005 on his second tour in Afghanistan. (Russell Storring/CBC)

In the early 1990s, I wore my uniform to work and to Remembrance Day, and tried not to stop anywhere else along the way.

I remember most Canadians seemed indifferent to the Canadian Forces and, on occasion, I remember getting yelled at, or even being given the middle finger salute by not only adults but young children as well.

It was disheartening at times, but I was never one to let it get to me.

Today, it is the complete opposite. I am almost always stopped when I am in uniform by both old and young Canadians, and thanked for my service and what I do...

This is definitely not the military it was when I joined in 1991. The changes to the way the Canadian Forces does business, both at home and abroad, even right down to the culture of being military has changed, I believe, for the better...

With Pathans

A Canadian writer, Matthieu Aikins, now in New York City, has written a marvelous article about his spending time earlier this year with Pathans in Quetta and then just across the Durand Line in Spin Boldak. Also with time in Kandahar and Kabul. The article is in the December 2009 issue of Harper's magazine. I urge you most strongly to buy it.

Mr Aikins captures remarkably, to my mind, a great deal of what Pathans are all about. I was a very junior diplomat at the Canadian embassy in Islamabad from 1975 to 1977. I was also the designated "our man in Kabul" since we then covered Afstan from Pakistan. I went up the Grand Trunk Road, across the Indus at Attock, to Peshawar (Jan's and Dean's) and then through the Khyber Pass (ah, Shagai Fort), the border at Torkham, Jalalabad and on up the Kabul River Gorge (more here)

to Kabul three or four times a year (two or so weeks per trip) to be the Canadian embassy in Afstan. Actually one room in the chancery of the British embassy in their Curzonian compound in the northern part of the city near the Intercontinental Hotel. About which I made a rebellious point of not using, unlike most Westerners with money (or on expenses), rather going to the downtown Hotel Kabul; the current version is nothing like the place at which I stayed .

Meanwhile, after few months in Isbad, it came to pass that my best friend in Pakistan was a Pathan, of good family and quite Westernized, up to a point. In any event Mr Aikins' words ring very true. Excerpts, with which he concurs:

The master of Spin Boldak:
Undercover with Afghanistan's drug-trafficking border police

...I arrived in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan Province...

Perhaps because tourists have become a rare sight in this violent city, a Toyota Land Cruiser stopped just ahead of me and two men in the front beckoned to me. Their plump, clean- shaven faces were unthreatening, so I walked over to chat. When they learned I was a foreign visitor, they invited me for a sumptuous lunch, and later we drove around the city’s crowded bazaars and toured a restricted area of the military cantonment. I decided not to introduce myself as a journalist; they seemed to accept that I was simply a young traveler interested in poking around their rough corner of the world.

A few days later, one of the men, Jahanzeb, introduced me to his cousin, Sikander, who soon began taking me out around the city himself. As I had already discovered, Pashtuns are a frank and friendly lot with visitors, and one night, cruising around in the Lexus that Sikander used as a mobile office, he confided to me that he was shipping forty mon, or two metric tons, of opium once a month from the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak...

The most important of Sikander’s connections was Colonel Abdul Razik, the leader of a tribal militia and border police force that extends across Kandahar and Helmand provinces— which produce 80 percent of Afghanistan’s opium, which in turn is nearly 90 percent of the world’s crop...

At thirty years of age, Razik was the most powerful Afghan Border Police officer in the southern part of the country—a formerchild refugee who scrambled to power during the post-9/11 chaos, his rise abetted by a ring of crooked officials in Kabul and Kandahar as well as by overstretched NATO commanders who found his control over a key border town useful in their war against the Taliban. With his prodigious wealth, loyal soldiers, and connections to top government officials, Razik was seen as a ruthless, charismatic figure, a man who brooked no opposition to his will. I asked Sikander if he would take me to Afghanistan for a day to show me Razik’s operation, and he agreed...

I was learning...that Boldak is a special sort of border town. The big business there is cars—right-hand-drive cars, to be precise, used cars bought mainly in Japan and shipped in duty-free via Dubai. Afghanistan is a left-hand-drive country, but the vehicles are intended for Pakistan. They are sent overland from Karachi in sealed containers, unpacked in Spin Boldak, and sent right back across the border, with forged papers and baksheesh given to various officials along the way. This may seem like a strange journey, but it’s a simple matter of comparative advantage. Under the Afghan Transit Trade agreement, which dates to 1965, Pakistan allows Afghanistan-bound goods to traverse its territory duty-free. Afghanistan is a free port with minimal duties, whereas in Pakistan taxes and customs can double or even triple a vehicle’s cost. This price differential, combined with widespread corruption and inefficient law enforcement in both countries, has created an enormous market for smuggling [in my time Swedish Ifö toilets were doing the turn-around]...

The conjoined mention of “Abdul Razik” and “drug smuggling” by a Western journalist in Kandahar was enough to cast a chill over most interviews. But on condition of anonymity, two other Kandahari politicians—Achakzai tribal elders with clean reputations and who were widely respected—made similar assertions to me about Razik’s involvement in drug smuggling, his private prisons, his vast wealth, and his entanglement in a network of corrupt high officials and major drug smugglers. An official at the Kandahar office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, who asked not to be named, agreed that Razik was operating his own prisons and conducting extrajudicial executions...

A grim irony of the rising pro-Taliban sentiments in the south is that the United States and its allies often returned to power the same forces responsible for the worst period in southerners’ memory—the post- Soviet “mujahideen nights.” In the case of Gul Agha Shirzai (now governor of Nangarhar but still a major force in Kandahar), the same man occupied the exact same position; in the case of Razik, nephew of the notorious Mansour, it is the restoration of an heir. By installing these characters and then protecting them by force of arms, the ISAF has come to be associated, in the minds of many Afghans, with their criminality and abuses. “We’re doing the Taliban’s work for them,” said one international offi cial with years of experience in counternarcotics here...

“We were facing the worst-case scenario in 2006—a conventional takeover by Taliban forces,” said Brigadier General Jonathan Vance, the Canadian commander of ISAF forces in Kandahar Province [more here]. He was proud that his country’s small contingent had been able to hold the insurgency more or less at bay. But he admitted that the life of the average Kandahari had become less secure as the Taliban began to tighten their grip on Kandahar city. “I don’t have the capacity to make sure someone doesn’t rip their guts out at night.”

Military officers like General Vance find themselves in a peculiar fix when confronted with characters like Abdul Razik. These entrenched figures hold posts or wear uniforms whose legitimacy must be respected. But many of those who maintain their power through corruption and coercion were originally installed by the U.S. military—a fact not lost on Afghans, who tend to have longer memories than Westerners here on nine- or twelve-month rotations.

I asked General Vance if he was aware that Razik was directly involved in the drug trade. “Yes,” he said. “We are completely aware that there are a number of illicit activities being run out of that border station.” He had few illusions about Razik, with whom he interacts directly. “He runs effective security ops that are designed to make sure that the business end of his life runs smoothly, and there is a collateral effect on public order,” he told me. “Ideally, it should be the other way around. The tragedy of Kandahar is that it’s hard to find that paragon of civic virtue.”..

...Razik is hardly at odds with his government. After the first round of national elections closed on August 20, his men forcibly took Spin Boldak’s ballot boxes into his house for “safekeeping” overnight. It was just one of the many reports of electoral fraud in Kandahar Province, which polled overwhelmingly for President Karzai, according to the independent Election Commision of Afghanistan. The count from Spin Boldak’s polling stations: Karzai, 8,341; his main challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, 4.'

Afstan: Let's hope Brig.-Gen Ménard is right

Optimism again (but compare with Helmand):

Taliban will be marginalized by 2011: Top Canadian general

A Canadian soldier aims his weapon during an operation in the Panjwaii district of Kandahar province, Sept. 19, 2009.
Photograph by: Finbarr O'Reilly, Reuters

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Bolstered by thousands of American troops, Canada's top general in Afghanistan is predicting the Taliban will be marginalized from most of Kandahar's population by the time the Canadian military mission ends in 2011.

Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard said that with more than 5,000 Canadian and U.S. soldiers under his command [actually there are a fair number from our Air Force, and some from the Navy too], coalition forces will be able to hold areas in the violent province far more effectively than in recent years.

"What I can do is marginalize the insurgency in our area and they can become irrelevant to 85 per cent of the population of Kandahar province," said Menard, when asked what he could achieve before Canadian troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in the summer of 2011.

"This is what I think I can certainly achieve."

The comments, made to reporters during a conference call Tuesday, come as the number of American soldiers under Menard's command grows.

In total, three American battalions are now part of Canada's task force in Afghanistan and Canada's responsibility in Kandahar is shifting to focus on securing the areas in and around Kandahar City.

Menard said Tuesday he will not take an area without holding it — a goal that has often remained beyond Canada's grasp in recent years...

The brigadier-general might also have mentioned the US Army brigade combat team that has been in the province for some time, and the one that is coming next spring--units whose presence is crucial to the success of the CF-led forces' concentrating their area of operations. Maybe he did and the reporter didn't mention it.

Another photo, from DND:

DND Handout

Canadian soldiers watch as an Afghan policeman hands out candy to village children.

Update: I think the conclusion of this CP story implicitly acknowledges the two US Army BCTs:

...
Menard says he hopes Canadian and American troops will have created a ring of security by then, allowing the vast majority of civilians in Kandahar province to live and prosper free of insurgent threats.

Germany's evolving Afghan mission--and maybe a real scandal

Further to this post,

Afstan: Bad times for the German mission

something that might really "sully" a country's reputation--excerpts from a lengthy article in Spiegel Online:

Escalation Desired
Germany Intensifies Mission in Afghanistan

REUTERS
German Bundeswehr troops in Afghanistan: In the past year, reconstruction teams have been transformed into Taliban hunters.

The German-ordered air strike that led to civilian casualties in Afghanistan in early September was more than an aberration by a Bundeswehr officer. The German government and the military leadership have long supported taking a tougher approach against the Taliban.

He said nothing about the crux of the matter. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was standing in the German parliament, the Bundestag, giving a speech that was filled, as usual, with well-made sentences, and yet it resolved nothing.

His appearance in the Bundestag last Wednesday [Dec. 16] had been preceeded by reports that morning that Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the former inspector general of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, had accused the defense minister of "not telling the truth."

It was a declaration of war, an outrageous move for a senior military commander to be making against his defense minister. In his speech to the Bundestag, Guttenberg could have dismissed the accusation, but he didn't. Instead, he attacked the opposition while saying nothing about Schneiderhan's central charge.

Officials with the Defense Ministry are now claiming that Schneiderhan and Peter Wichert, a state secretary in the defense ministry, concealed the fact that there were other reports on the Kunduz bombing (in addition to the NATO report Guttenberg already had) when the defense minister specifically asked the two men about the existence of such reports in a meeting on Nov. 25. In an interview with the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Schneiderhan rejected this claim, saying: "With regard to the afternoon of the 25th, he is not telling the truth."

Both Schneiderhan and Wichert have since been dismissed. But Guttenberg will not be able to remain in office for long if it turns out that he lied about his conversation with the highest-ranking soldier in the Bundeswehr. For the time being, however, it remains a matter of one man's word against another's.

It is now up to the Bundestag Defense Committee, which announced last Wednesday that it would also serve as investigative committee in the Kunduz scandal, to determine who is telling the truth. The committee plans to hear testimony from Guttenberg and Chancellor Angela Merkel soon, and a civil trial could ensue. Meanwhile, Schneiderhan has stated that he had not authorized the publication of the remarks he was quoted as saying.

The committee will also have to determine what really happened in the early morning hours of Sept. 4, when German Colonel Georg Klein ordered an air strike against Taliban fighters gathered around two kidnapped tanker trucks that resulted in numerous civilian casualties.

A Whitewashing Campaign

The incident also marked the beginning of a massive campaign to cover up and whitewash what actually happened in Kunduz. Not a single politician or senior military official told the public the full truth. The subject was to be kept off the radar during Germany's fall parliamentary election campaign, so as not to ruffle the feathers of an already skeptical electorate. Now the incident has been magnified to a far greater extent than would have been the case if those involved had decided to come clean with the public in the first place.

This was precisely what the chancellor had promised voters: that nothing would be withheld or sugarcoated. Precisely the opposite occurred, resulting in a disaster for German democracy...

From Bridge Builders to Combat Soldiers

The group of senior German government officials would convene several times after that initial meeting, always at the Defense Ministry, and it introduced an unspoken paradigm shift: Bit by bit, the bridge builders of the PRT were to become combat soldiers.

The German position shifted a little further in early May [2009]. The BND had located a local Taliban leader named Abdul Razeq, and its agents knew where he was and what he was planning. Razeq, who apparently headed one of the local terrorist cells, was believed to be responsible for various attacks on the Germans. The Bundeswehr knew that it could catch him, but it had to be interested in catching him. Until then, it had had no interest in Razeq.

Then things changed. This time the Bundeswehr sent out its KSK special forces unit. Sixty kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Faizabad, in northeastern Afghanistan, the elite unit stormed a farmhouse and then chased Razeq as he fled into the mountains, where he was caught. The Germans then flew Razeq to Kabul on board a Transall military transport aircraft and turned him over to a special prosecutor.

By now it was clear that the Germans had changed their position. Now they were hunting the Taliban.

Meanwhile, back in Berlin, the defense ministry and senior military officials were hard at work to ensure that German soldiers would be capable of engaging in combat.

Part 2: The Bundeswehr Gets Teeth

On April 8, 2009, the following sentence was deleted from the NATO operations plan: "The use of deadly force is prohibited, unless an attack is underway or imminent."

The Germans had originally included these "national clarifying remarks" in the wording of the NATO plan to ensure that Bundeswehr soldiers would only be permitted to shoot in self-defense. In statements relating to the NATO rules of engagement numbered 421 to 424 and 429A and 429B, the Germans clarified that they did not wish to characterize their attacks as "attacks," but as the "use of appropriate force." But now none of this applied anymore.

At this time, the defense policy experts at the Bundestag were addressing concerns about military equipment. Rainer Arnold, the defense policy spokesman of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentary group, said that it was irresponsible to "send soldiers on their dangerous missions without giving them the protection that would be possible as a result of superior Western technology." Arnold wanted the Bundeswehr to have combat helicopters in Afghanistan.

His counterpart with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Bernd Siebert, campaigned for the Panzerhaubitze 2000 ("Armored howitzer 2000"), a serious weapon, the use of which quickly came to be associated with dead civilians.

The soldiers, for their part, were not just concerned about the lack of equipment, but also the question of what exactly they were permitted to do on this mission. The German government has been consistently reluctant to refer to the conflict as a war, even though the men and women stationed in northern Afghanistan had long felt that they were involved in one, except that they were not being truly permitted to fight...

Despite the deleted clauses in the NATO operations plans, the Germans still face limited options. Under the rules of engagement, which every Bundeswehr soldier stationed abroad carries with him in the form of a so-called pocket card, the German troops are only permitted to defend themselves against attack, ward off attacks or provide emergency assistance.

Sounding the Attack

At the behest of members of parliament, the legal department at the Defense Ministry amended the soldiers' pocket cards. The cards now read: "Attacks can be prevented, for example, by taking action against individuals who are planning, preparing or supporting attacks, or who exhibit other forms of hostile behavior." The Bundeswehr was sounding the attack, as the Germans began a major military offensive in an attempt to regain control over the region surrounding Kunduz.

"The time had come to commence the escalation," then Inspector General Schneiderhan told the Berlin press on July 22...

I wonder how all this will affect Germany's future role in Afstan. From a recent Spiegel inteview with NATO's Secretary General:

...General Karl-Heinz Lather, the German chief of staff at NATO military headquarters, says that two battalions are needed in the Kunduz region alone, one for combat missions. That could mean up to 2,000 men. What do you expect from Germany?

Rasmussen: I don't want to discuss concrete numbers before the international conference on Afghanistan in London on Jan. 28. However, a number of European governments have already pledged a total of 7,000 new troops in recent weeks. It's more than I expected, and I'm convinced that it will get even better than that.

SPIEGEL: The French are skeptical. And (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel has not held out the prospect of any concrete commitments yet. What makes you so confident that you will in fact get the soldiers you want from Berlin?

Rasmussen: I know very well that Berlin attaches great importance to NATO and solidarity, in terms of sharing the burden. For this reason, I feel confident that the German government will take the right decision, one that serves both German and NATO interests...

Update: But note Positroll's comment, with which I generally agree.

Afstan: Helmarinedshire/Initiative not necessarily with ISAF

News about that other very difficult province in Regional Command South, a province virtually ignored by the Canadian major media. The Brits trying to get by--with a lot of help from their friends (one also notes that neither of these Daily Telegraph stories mentions the Leathernecks):

1) Afghanistan: Glimmers of hope in Helmand

Thomas Harding spent two weeks with the Coldstream Guards to observe the West's new counter-insurgency strategy - using cash as well as bullets and bombs against the Taliban

Charm offensive:soldiers from the Coldstream Guards meeting Afghans in the Babaji area
Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley

...
Lt Gen Sir Nick Parker, the senior British commander in Afghanistan [actually in an ISAF HQ postion], warned this week that Nato appears to have "lost the initiative". And yet the mood in Helmand is surprisingly positive, particularly when compared to the gloom on the home front.

I have spent the past fortnight with the Coldstream Guards in patrol bases near Babaji, site of the summer's bloody Panther's Claw offensive. It might be only a small snapshot of Helmand, but this is where the new doctrine of counter-insurgency is being applied and, while it is still in its early stages, there is a glimmer of hope that it will work.

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the overall commander in Afghanistan, ordered the use of "courageous restraint" because too many civilians were being killed and wounded, and their houses and crops destroyed, in crossfire. The essentials of the doctrine include dropping fewer bombs, and using cash instead of munitions.

Perhaps the most tangible evidence of the new approach is road-building. The International Security Assistance Force is forging into enemy territory with the help of a cheap, resilient, honeycomb-like frame that stabilises and reinforces soft soil and sandy roads, and allows them to be laid quickly. There are 14 miles of road due to be completed by the spring, but if successful, the Neoweb system could be used extensively across Helmand and beyond.

The benefits could be immense. Roads demonstrate that ISAF has fulfilled its promise to help local people get their produce to market before it rots. Journey times to the economic hub at Gereshk will be cut from four hours to half an hour.

New roads will also allow the British patrol bases strung out along the route to be more easily resupplied. Between the bases there will be Afghan-run checkpoints, and much of the route will be monitored by advanced CCTV cameras, some hung from barrage balloons – a scene reminiscent of the First World War [more on roads at 1) here]...

..."We are trying to do a 10-year campaign in 18 months [emphasis added]," a senior officer warned.

The hardcore Taliban in Babaji number between 150 and 200 but many villagers are coerced or paid – the "10-dollar Taliban" – to fight, scout or help evacuate the wounded.

The Taliban have plenty of fight in them: nightly there are reports of convoys being attacked; in one instance, a remote police outpost was overrun, with seven killed. And, in one three-hour contact, British troops fired 80 mortar rounds, five guided rockets, three Javelin missiles and thousands of small arms rounds.

The Taliban are shrewd fighters, not only in their choice of sites for bombs, but also in choosing where to initiate attacks, to give themselves the opportunity to escape the forces on the ground and the bombs and spy planes in the air. "They won't take us on unless they feel that they have us," says one intelligence officer.

This is a battle for the support of the people and to win that, British forces have to get among the population. That means exposing themselves on foot patrols, which have accounted for the majority of the 104 fatalities this year.

When they "advance to contact" it is out in the open, in the full knowledge that the enemy will engage them at their most vulnerable. In the background, intelligence is reporting the enemy issuing commands such as "ready the machine gun" and overhead, unmanned drones either spot villagers running away or insurgents getting into position. When they come into "contact", the soldiers have to decide instantly whether to stay in the open in an area the mine-detector has checked, or jump into the nearest ditch, chancing an IED laid to target men taking cover...

...It seems tiresome to have to write about the lack of helicopters for the fourth year running. The introduction of six Merlins in the coming weeks [more here] may ease the situation, but the Army's ability to mount operations to get behind the enemy is restricted [the UK is also planning to buy 22 new Chinooks for Afghan operations--delivery to start in 2012, the Brits will be sticking around for a good while]...

A substantial increase in armed drones would be a boost: commanders are crying out for more Reaper aircraft to observe the enemy unseen and then strike immediately [more here; our Heron UAVs are of course unarmed, more here--the government has a massive aversion to the CF's doing any shootin' from the sky in Afstan]. Time and again insurgents get away from a firefight or from laying a bomb because of a delay, even of a few minutes, in getting aircraft overhead.

And despite an extra 500 British troops, some officers believe there should be more...

See the Update at this post for my wondering about the nature of the fighting in Helmand compared to Kandahar, and the much greater number of ISAF troops committed to the former.

2) Taliban have the initiative, British general admits

The Nato mission has “lost the initiative” against the Taliban but will have the insurgency on the back foot within six months, the most senior British commander in Afghanistan has said.

Lt Gen Sir Nick Parker admitted in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that the alliance’s successes had “not been as good as the success of the insurgents”.

Nato has not had “sufficient resources”, its command structures have been inadequate and it lacked “the right cultural approach.”

“We do realise that we have lost the initiative,” he said, speaking at the ISAF (International Stabilisation and Assistance Force) headquarters in Kabul.

With the insurgents still able to mount numerous attack across southern Afghanistan the general admitted that they had become “too effective” but added that the insurgency was “about to be undermined”.

Asked when the initiative would be regained he said: “Come and speak to me in June or July [emphasis added].”

With at least half of the 30,000 American surge [lots of Marines and one Army BCT, see this post again] along with 500 extra British troops deploying in the coming weeks a new offensive will shortly be launched against the Taliban...

He added: “I do worry sometimes that we are finding it very difficult to communicate to the public why this is worth it but this is worth it because it will bring peace and harmony back to a country that has been a base for international terrorism and will become so again if we don’t do something about it...

With more than 100 British troops killed this year the general said it was a “staggering fact” that while the 10,000 strong force represented a tenth of Nato troops but fought 30 per cent of the “kinetic events” and suffered 20 per cent of the casualties...

Predate: Royal Marines have also been active in the province, more here (note also the usually ignored Danes--with, gasp, tanks, video here) plus photos.