Taliban on the run: Canada unleashes secret weapon

[Wezil]

Polls this morning indicate 60-40 in favour of continued presence....

I don't have a problem with Harper's visit to Afghanistan. He had a rare opportunity to do the right thing (show the troops their government supports the mission) and score political brownie points with photo ops. Harper should take advantage of this opportunity, he will need all the brownie points he can get in the next election.

[Last Conformist]

Tingkai is just sour because this might make Canukh troops feel a bit better about their leadership and their mission.

[Fake Boris]

If he had some testicles he should have gone on a patrol mission with the boys.

[KrazyHorse]

If he had testicles he would have walked point.

[Fake Boris]

What does that mean?

[KrazyHorse]

http://www.answers.com/point+man&r=67

[Ben Kenobi]

Wow, what a strategy. Why is it just now that the NDP and the Liberals are against the war?

Where were they back in 2001, when they had the opportunity to speak out against Mr. Chretien.

They had their chance, this is just a transparent attempt to blame the war on the Conservative government.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Wow, what a strategy. Why is it just now that the NDP and the Liberals are against the war?

I agree, having him the point man would have been a great strategy

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
http://www.answers.com/point+man&r=67

I actually looked for 'point', but there were so many examples that I couldn't be bothered to read them all and guess which meaning you had in mind.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Wow, what a strategy. Why is it just now that the NDP and the Liberals are against the war?

Way to ignore the last two pages, Ben. The NDP has been pushing to end Afghanistan since day one. It's the most serious disagreement I've had with that party for the last 4 years.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


I actually looked for 'point', but there were so many examples that I couldn't be bothered to read them all and guess which meaning you had in mind.

That's fine.

Walking point = being the point man = being out in front, generally in the most danger from the enemy/booby traps

[The Mad Monk]

War: Canadian-style
Bringing the war home | A special report
Mar. 12, 2006. 06:52 AM

MITCH POTTER
STAFF REPORTER - THE TORONTO STAR

SOMEWHERE NEAR GOMBAD, AFGHANISTAN - Eyes are watching tonight as the blackness settles in on the barren mountaintop. Eyes that seek Canadian blood. They have been watching for weeks, from the very first moment Alpha Company of the First Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group made its presence known in the high hills of the Shawali Kot region of northern Kandahar Province.
Everyone can feel the eyes.

"Tonight is different, something weird is going on," a Canadian soldier announces tersely, his face drawn with tension.

He points toward the distant shadows of the western valley below, where telltale car headlights push through the darkness. He points to the eastern valley opposite, and here too the single headlamp of a motorbike can be seen flickering along a goat path. All of this movement is wrong, because nothing in these war-ravaged valleys moves after dark. The night means danger, a time for the ethnic Pashtun villagers to stay indoors and wait for daylight. Those who defy the darkness are the dangerous ones.

The Canadians do not panic. There is no need, for, after a hard day's hump through knee-high rushing rivers and on up the mountainside laden with full combat attire, they have settled upon a campsite from which all can be seen. It is a campsite others have favoured before them, judging by the empty weapons cache discovered nearby.


From here, the Canadians have the strategic advantage. They have a belly full of high-energy MREs — meals, ready-to-eat. They have night-vision equipment. They have clandestine Rules of Engagement more generous than anything their kind has known since the Korean War. And they are ready.

It helps also that they came with friends — a dozen Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits and their special-forces trainers, who work under the flag of a country that can't be named at the request of Canadian Forces.

In the falling dark, a commotion erupts. The Afghan army regulars have snatched their weapons and now are bounding down the mountain in pursuit of an enemy scout they spotted below the Canadian position. The unarmed intruder escapes capture, fleeing into the night.

Calm is restored, but sleep comes fitfully under a dazzling canopy of stars. There was no room for tents in the Canadian backpacks; the soldiers hunker down on the bare ground in bivvy bags, weapons at their side. They take turns on sentry duty in two-hour rotations.

An icy wind arrives before daybreak, bringing with it a climactic culture shock. The Canadians remain snug in temperatures that don't quite qualify as winter camping. But their Afghan companions are a shivering mess, numbed by altitudes no Afghan contemplates outside the summer months.

The morning brings new challenges still. The Canadians will resume their march down to the isolated village of Kundalan, where they are required to change hats, transforming instantly from warriors to peacemakers. The pointy tip of the Canadian army must blunt itself, if only for a moment, to extend the hand of friendship to the locals.

The campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds will play out repeatedly in village after village over the platoon's 10-day mission. Tragically, it will be a campaign from which not all the Canadians will return.

Drugs, dogma and insurgents


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Some of these Canadian soldiers have been to Bosnia, some to Croatia, some also to Kosovo, and many have seen the far more stable face of Afghanistan from the capital, Kabul, where Canadian Forces have contributed handsomely to NATO peacemaking efforts almost since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

But none has seen the modern stone-age family quite the way it presents itself in these distant and deeply tribal mountains north of Kandahar.

Here, mud-walled homes stand in clustered communities that lack virtually everything one associates with modernity. They have no electricity, no teachers, no doctors, no roads worthy of the name, no means with which to rise from the ashes of a quarter century of conflict.

What these villages do have are mosques, with calls to prayer five times a day the only sound that carries apart from the crowing of roosters. And, interspersed among spindly wheat sprouts, one can see the green beginnings of what will become a new poppy harvest — the obvious harbinger of opium-processing drug lords whose interest in reversing any Afghan recovery matches that of remnant Taliban insurgents.

Drugs and medieval religious dogma, an unholy alliance that is filtered further still through the almost inscrutable subtleties of Pashtun tribal rivalries, is what the Canadians find themselves up against.

What these particular Canadian soldiers bring with them, however, is something more substantial than most Canadians realize — actual combat capability. A capability that, despite the Cold War-era teachings of the Canadian military, includes more than a little knowledge of modern counter-insurgency techniques.

It would be unfair to quote them by name, for they hardly deserve the top-down retributions of the Canadian Forces' bloated middle management. But know this: Many of Canada's front-line combat soldiers, who number barely 3,500 in total, view as wholly inadequate the training they receive at home.

"The teaching model is still based on the assumption that when we go to war, that war will be conventional, as in the Godless Russian hordes lined up in tanks coming at us from one direction," a veteran non-commissioned officer at Kandahar Airfield told the Toronto Star.

"It is not the fault of the instructors. That was the environment they came up in. But at the same time, that's not what war is anymore. The reality today is counter-insurgency. The top Canadian brass realize this and so do the front-of-line soldiers. But in between, there is a layer of the army locked in hidebound thinking, basically resistant to change.

"So a lot of us deployed in Afghanistan today have basically had to throw out the book and educate ourselves. It's really not that difficult, because so many armies around the world have been training in counter-insurgency techniques for so long now that there is a substantial library of knowledge available. And we're studying it on our own."

In other words, Canadian soldiers in training are buying and reading books and going online in search of post-Cold War military doctrine, particularly the strategies of dealing with an insurgent or guerrilla-style enemy (who hits and runs, rather than standing and fighting).

Some combat soldiers here say the decayed state of military education in Canada is merely a by-product of overall neglect for the forces as a whole by successive Canadian governments. And that, they say, speaks to Canada's enduring cultural love affair with the notion that our soldiers are simply peacekeepers, nothing more and nothing less.

Capt. Kevin Schamuhn, 26, commander of Alpha Company's 1st Platoon, into which the Star was embedded at Gombad, articulated the reality of the battlefield that surrounds him with a yearning for what used to be.

"I crave World War II. You have Germans in grey uniforms with specific weapons. Roger. Got it. No problem," he said.

"But here in Afghanistan, I've shaken hands with a dozen enemies. I'm sure of it. And that one kid walking around in the background, who knows what's in his head? If they are able to come out and fight us one-on-one, there's no doubt we would have the overwhelming authority and dominance in the region. But they don't play by our rules.

"Nobody in the chain of command has a false sense of that reality," Schamuhn added. "It's just that the mechanisms of the Canadian military system have been inactive for so long that it is taking time to get the cobwebs out. Okay, so this is a counter-insurgency. Let's deal with it head on."

[The Mad Monk]

War: Canadian-style
Part 2
Mar. 12, 2006. 07:21 AM

A fruitful meeting

The Afghan with one eye sits fidgeting through the Canadian platoon leader's monologue. Capt. Schamuhn has made the Canadian case abundantly clear, via an Afghan interpreter.

"I cannot promise to solve all your problems," Schamuhn tells the leaders of the tiny village of Kundalan, who are gathered in an impromptu shura — an Arabic word that means "consultation" — at the request of their announced guests from Canada.

"What I can do is help your government solve your problems for you. You must understand that these are not Canadian problems, these are Afghan problems. The Canadians are here to help the Afghan government find solutions.

"But I want to emphasize one point — we will not be here forever. We are only here temporarily to help get your government back on its feet. My concern is for after we leave. You are the men who must take the initiative to become actively involved in solving your problems, so you will have better lives after we're gone."

The one-eyed man raises his hand, announcing dramatically, "Now it is my turn to speak."

He is not the leader of Kundalan, that title belongs to one Salah Makmad, who had opened the meeting by describing the plight of this wholly illiterate village of some 130 families. Water is the biggest issue; rather, the inability to store water. When the spring runoff subsides in the coming weeks, Kundalan will run dry through yet another parched summer.

Schamuhn's assistant, Lieut. Trevor Greene, 41, has already taken down the details. As Canada's civil-military co-operation officer on the ground with 1st Platoon, Greene is a dove among the hawks of Canadian combat.

He has already learned that when the people of Kundalan get sick, one of two things happen. Maybe they go to Kandahar, he is told. Or maybe they just die. And Greene has already learned that Kundalan's leaders, however much they welcome a school, will not allow the education of girls. Not even if a separate school is constructed.

The one-eyed man draws breath and unleashes his torrent of doubts and reservations. Firstly, he says, the village has already seen American soldiers come with notepads in hand, dutifully writing down all that ails Kundalan. The village has nothing to show for all their promises.

It may be that Canada is trying to help a government that has no intention of helping this village, he continues. And even if Canada's help makes it to Kundalan, he concludes, the village then runs the risk of inviting attacks from Taliban fighters.

Schamuhn acknowledges the concerns but stands firm. He tells the villagers that they must make a choice. The Canadians are ready to do their best for Kundalan, but Kundalan has a critical role to play.

"Already we have been bombed," Schamuhn says. "Lieut. Trevor was in the vehicle that was bombed. And the Canadian base at Gombad came under rocket attack 10 days ago.

"As much as I want to help you and focus on humanitarian aid, I cannot do that if we're always fighting people."

The one-eyed man softens at this news and, in the next breath, his combative tone vanishes. "If you give us a school, a medical clinic, we can keep security in these places. We can help you. The Taliban is not made of Afghans. It is made of Pakistani people who come here to fight," he says.

The sudden Afghan warmth is sanctified by the serving of tea and bread. With it comes the rest of the villagers, who until now had stood at a distance. The Afghans remark favourably on the Canadians' willingness to share in the ritual, noting that when U.S. soldiers came to visit, they refused the offer of the sweet tea.

"My American friends have weak stomachs," laughs Schamuhn, raising his glass to salute his hosts. "So when they drink your chai they get sick."

Schamuhn cannot help but pay an additional compliment, commenting on how the village elders have spent an entire hour squatting on bended knee.

"I am a young man from Canada, much younger than you," he tells them. "But I could not sit in such a position for more than a few minutes without feeling pain. The Afghan people obviously have very good genes."

A round of handshakes follows and the Canadians withdraw, satisfied that an ice-cold village has begun to show the first signs of thaw. On the march out of Kundalan, a special-forces adviser accompanying the party points to fist-sized plants growing on one of the village's fields.

"Poppies," he says to no one in particular.

[The Mad Monk]

War: Canadian-style
Part 3 | The creeping dust finds its way everywhere
Mar. 12, 2006. 06:55 AM


The birthplace of dust

A constant tension reverberates in the background at the Canadians' forward operating base camp, a steel-reinforced compound that, from the exterior, has the deceptive appearance of being made entirely of mud like every other building in the valley.

But the soldiers of Alpha Company have something here they don't get at the mother base to the south, where Canada's military brass resides — freedom from rules. The dress code is lax and there is a deceptively high tolerance for diversions, from the playing of guitar — an army-issue acoustic six-string has made its way here — to spontaneous games of Euchre.

There is a trade-off for the soldiers of 1st Platoon, and that is that they are expected to be "switched on" at all times. They must know their own jobs and the jobs of those above and below, so as to slip seamlessly into alternate roles on a moment's notice.

There is no running water here. And so there will be no showers for 10 days, let alone the ability to wash one's clothes, body or hands, even.

Antiseptic, waterless soap is readily available as a stopgap; the soldiers are also expected to make ready use of wet wipes as a means of maintaining basic hygiene.


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'We're basically chasing the bomb planters around the country. Hopefully they will eventually get tired of being chased and move out of Afghanistan altogether'
U.S. Army Specialist Russ Snyder

Ratpicker operator
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There is a plywood outhouse, already heavily decorated with locker-room graffiti. Each day the unluckiest of the bunch assumes the task of removing the catch barrel, dousing its contents with diesel and setting it alight. The acrid smoke, thick with fecal matter, only adds to the airborne hell that is southern Afghanistan, the apparent birthplace of dust.

The creeping dust finds its way everywhere, from the deepest pores of the exposed members of the LAV crews, who stand two abreast with guns at the ready through the open sentry hatches of the vehicle, to the inner workings of the weapons themselves. Hundreds of cases of aerosol air duster will be consumed during this mission.

In the indelicate words of one soldier, "Boogers around here make good sandbags — if you can ever get them out of your nose."

The camp was by all descriptions a den of filth last month when the Canadians took over from the departing U.S. forces, members of Task Force Gun Devil's Legion Company. But whatever their sense of hygiene, the former occupants win high praise from the 1st Platoon's leaders for the manner in which they handed over the file on these valleys.

"The Americans went out of their way to stay with us until the very end," says the Canadian platoon's Warrant Officer, Justin Mackay, 33. "They showed us the site of every IED (improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb) and every rocket attack; they helped us understand the mood in the various villages, which ones were friendly and which were problematic.

"They stayed until the day before they were due to fly home, which was impressive."

The area around Gombad went bad not because of those particular U.S. troops but because of their predecessors, a U.S. infantry company that opted to bar itself within the compound's gates and venture only rarely "beyond the wire," the Canadians say. The valleys were allowed to fester unchecked with an ever more emboldened insurgency, eager to test the will of the coalition soldiers.

Now that turf must be reclaimed, village by village, with Canadian boots on the ground.

[The Mad Monk]

War: Canadian-style
Part 4
Mar. 12, 2006. 06:56 AM

LAVs and luck

A breathtaking sunrise washes away our first chilly night in the desert en route to Gombad, illuminating mountain ridges that belonged by turns to Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Timur, the British and the Soviets. Everyone, it seems, was able to take Afghanistan. None was able to keep it.

The Canadian troops are mindful — some are in awe — that vast armies of horse-mounted warriors once trammelled these plains. And now they will mount their modern equivalent — the high-tech LAV III, a Canadian-made light-armoured troop carrier upon which their survival in Afghanistan depends. Each platoon, like the 1st, has three of them.

To comprehend life in a LAV, imagine climbing inside a giant, eight-wheeled, tempered-steel fortune cookie. The cookie is designed to sustain direct explosions beneath it. Should the cookie crumble, most likely you will die.

The LAV did not crumble when a mechanized section of 1st Platoon was struck the evening of Feb. 9 in an area that some of the soldiers now call "Sphincter Alley," a narrow, natural ambush site on the approach to Gombad.

Some who were in the LAV that night remember a blinding flash of light, others a massive boom, others still recall nothing but the shock wave. As the 10-man section emerged from the vehicle, it was apparent the injuries were limited to cuts and bruises, save for those of Lieut. Trevor Greene, the CIMIC officer, who would be evacuated back to Kandahar Airfield with a moderate concussion.

"It sounds strange to say, but because nobody was badly hurt, the attack was the best thing that could have happened to the unit," says Sgt. Scott Proctor, commander of the 10-man mechanized section.

"It let everybody know this isn't Wainwright anymore. This is not a training exercise. This is a place where, if you don't pay attention, somebody will get killed."

Proctor, 36, from Espanola, Ont., kept his unit overnight at the bomb scene. The next morning they found what hit them — the remains of two buried artillery rounds with wires attached. They learned that an insurgent had triggered the device by remote control in real-time from his hiding spot overlooking the scene. He was crouched behind a cover of desert bushes uprooted and tied together in the fashion of a duck blind.

The $3.5 million LAV didn't appear much worse for wear — a front left tire was shredded and various parts were lying on the ground. But in fact it was a write-off, its hull apparently cracked by the blast. It had done its job, though, saving the 10 men inside.

The LAV III, however effective, is hardly perfect in these uneven hills north of Kandahar. Rollovers have become an issue for the rather tippy 20-tonne vehicle, whose sheer heft can ravage the sometimes soft shoulders beneath it. Powered by a 350-hp Caterpillar engine, it is rated to move 40 kilometres-per-hour off-road. The soldiers know that, in a pinch, it can do more than twice that.

Warrant Mackay rates the LAV III as an outstanding piece of kit that brings Canadian Forces into "a whole new world." The key, he says, is the vehicle's electronics package, which includes the STAB System, a device that automatically compensates for movement of the vehicle so that, even over washboard terrain, the LAV's turret gunner remains on target.

"Not everyone can be a gunner with this machine, because the eyes and the body get different messages, and that makes some people nauseous," says Mackay.

"But compared to the old systems in the Grizzly, the LAV outranges, outperforms and fires on the move with phenomenal power."

The LAV's top-mounted 25mm cannon is the biggest gun — it fires a supersonic round whose shock wave alone can be fatal within one metre of its target. But there are many more inside. Each mechanized 10-man section comes with a range of standard-issue Canadian-made C7-A2 assault rifles, two of which are fitted with M203-A1 grenade launchers. Then there are the C9 machine guns for creating cone-of-fire coverage, fed by belt or magazine. Inside the LAV are two types of C8s — the "pencil-neck," for shorter range fire and the "heavy-barrel" centre-weighted gun. All fire the same ammunition — 5.56mm. The C-class also includes the C6, a GPMG or general-purpose machine gun that works as both a mounted or handheld firearm, firing 7.62mm rounds.

Inside each LAV you will also find M72 66mm rocket launchers, 60mm mortars, and a Remington 870 shotgun, suitable for blowing locks away and kicking in doors. It serves the same purpose as that you would find in a police cruiser.

The last piece in the gun kit is the leg-holstered 9mm Browning handgun. And if all else fails, Canada's frontline troops have been issued new German-made bayonets.

With this kind of firepower, one wouldn't expect Canadian soldiers to need much else in situ. But the men of 1st Platoon come also with a few superstitious tricks up their sleeve. One has gone so far as to have the symbol for "luck" tattooed onto his neck in Mandarin. Others, when asked about good luck charms, empty their pockets to show such unlikely totems as "three lucky bullets."

Pvt. Matt McFadden, 32, of Wallaceburg, Ont., wears around his neck a silver pendant he calls "beer and money."

"It belonged to my grandfather and there's a story behind it that I've never heard," says McFadden. "My uncle gave it to me to wear in Afghanistan, and when I get back he promises to fill me in on what it represents."

Cpl. Jeremy Hand, 32, of Brantford, Ont., wears a chain with crucifix, St. Christopher medallion and a holy medal, all of which came from different members of his family. "I'm not overly superstitious but it feels better to have it on," he says.

Pte. Daniel Hodas, 25, of Courtenay, B.C., came to Afghanistan with a prized Zippo lighter that his grandfather carried in Korea. But he left it behind at the platoon's lockup at Kandahar Airfield for safekeeping.

Cpl. Aaron Penner, 24, of Winnipeg and Pte. Chad Wright, 30, of Comox Valley, B.C., both carry Bibles given by their families. "I have it in my bag most of the time," said Wright.

Pte. Charles Matiru, 25, a Kenyan-born Canadian who now calls Vancouver home, shrugs off such talismans. "My luck is right on my bed in the compound. It's called a C7-A2 assault rifle," he says.

The `ratpicker'


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There are secret weapons in the field of which, under the rules of engagement for embedded reporters with Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, we can say very little. But if Canada's preparations for counter-insurgency are in any way akin to those of the U.S. Forces in Iraq, they almost certainly will include a substantial deployment of special forces from various countries in the vicinity of the Canadian regulars.

They are likely also to include the cultivation of information on local villages from sources other than the direct face-to-face encounters 1st Platoon is undertaking in the area. Put another way, paid collaborators.

But there is one weapon we can describe — the "ratpicker." We saw it first after a tense dismounted patrol through the comparatively hostile village of Padah, where scowling men ignored the friendly but cautious waves of the marching Canadians and in some cases admonished Afghan toddlers who waved back in greeting.

Dead ahead on the other side of Padah was the ratpicker, or Meerkat — a kind of giant praying mantas on wheels whose sole purpose is to detect and disable roadside bombs before the Canadians drive over them.

U.S. army Specialist Russ Snyder, 28, of the 391st Combat Engineer Battalion, has been driving the Meerkat and its larger variant in Afghanistan for almost a year. A reservist and former Philadelphia city cop, Snyder's crew is the only mine clearance team of its kind in country — and therefore in high demand.

The team was assigned to Canada's Alpha Company after the Feb. 9 blast and has since been running its high-powered metal detectors across the broken roads of the region, siphoning danger. What the Meerkat doesn't detect, it triggers by accident. The driver, entombed in an armoured compartment, remains unharmed. The broken components of the machine are quickly replaced.

"I've been hit a few times but that's what the vehicle is designed for," says Snyder.

"Last June, I hit a double-stacked TC6 anti-tank mine, which sheared off the back of the vehicle. But we replaced the destroyed section and were up and running again in three days. Sometimes when pieces blow we can have it up in as little as 30 minutes."

The hope is that, before Snyder's team is called elsewhere in Afghanistan, bomb-planting insurgents will accept the futility of their efforts and move elsewhere, away from the Canadians at Gombad.

"We're basically chasing the bomb planters around the country," says Snyder. "Hopefully they will eventually get tired of being chased and move out of Afghanistan altogether."