Afstan: What a post-2011 training mission might look like/Update: EU police "behind the fence line"

How could the government (any maybe the Liberals) say no? I mean a very slight chance of, er, ramp ceremonies, eh?

Behind the fence line, NATO says
Little chance of combat for troops kept in Afghanistan, Canada told

NATO is promising Canada that it's unlikely any troops it keeps in Afghanistan beyond next summer would ever face combat.

"Our mission is not to be out there in combat," U.S. Lt.-Gen. William Caldwell IV, who commands all training of Afghan army and police [as head of the newish NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan, which now includes the US Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan], said in an interview. "We operate behind the fence line ....

"If there is a concern about casualties, there have been no casualties in my command for nine months, while casualties are up" among other NATO forces in Afghanistan, he said.

Canada has lost 143 soldiers and a diplomat since deploying to Afghanistan in 2002.

Caldwell said Canadian troops would be "an absolutely superb fit" to train Afghan soldiers and police [how about police training without the CF?] for war because most of them already had combat experience in Afghanistan.

"We do not operate in the field, but it takes somebody who has done that to be a trainer," he said. "Ideally, they would have served in an operational force."

The deployment of trainers would also cost Canada a fraction of the billions of dollars it currently spends on the combat mission in Kandahar, which Parliament has said must end by next summer.

It would also drastically reduce the size of Canada's military manpower commitment in South Asia to less than 600 from nearly 3,000 there now...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has gone much further than Parliament did by stating Canada would leave no troops in Afghanistan beyond next year [nice to have that fact pointed out again in the major media--the government has been lying, more here].

However, the Liberals have hinted they may be willing to strike a deal with the government to back a training mission of exactly the kind identified by Caldwell.

Informal feelers about that possibility have already been made between Liberal and Conservative MPs and senators [more here]...

Canada has a pool of about 10,000 combat-experienced soldiers and could provide as many as 600 trainers at a time, military sources say. However, because so many of the trainers would have to be combat-experienced senior NCOs and officers, the army could more easily sustain a force of about 400.

The 200 mentors [Operational Mentor and Liaison Team--OMLT] Canada now has overseeing Afghan troops in Kandahar frequently go into combat alongside them [see middle of this post, plus here and here]. They operate under Canadian command and have an entirely different mission than Caldwell's trainers, who are all employed in heavily fortified police and army academies.

Meanwhile, the US is having to step in now to fill a gap in NATO-supplied trainers--see second part of this post.

Update: For one example of training "behind the fence line", see the Update here--if EU police forces can do it, why not the CF? Just asking. As should our politicians and pundits. I'll wager some Afghans are.