Canadian and American troops board an American Chinook in Kandahar. (pic: USAF)
Canadian Brigadier-General Dan Menard, commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, says that help for his severely overstretched Canadian forces in Kandahar is on the way in the form of three American battalions, two of which have already arrived with one more due in the spring.
Menard and his Canadian forces have been standing tall in and around Kandahar City with about 1,200 troops (out of a Canadian force of 2,800), for some time, but with so few troops to cover such a large area, “holding terrain was extremely difficult” he said today on a conference call with reporters. The addition of the three American battalions will give Menard about 5,200 troops to cover a battlespace formerly manned by his 1,200 Canadian grunts. Menard also pointed out that “the Americans have never reinforced a foreign command with three battalions since the Second World War.”
In all the talk about troop numbers and misisons however, the Afghan National Army and police were never mentioned during the call. While Menard said that “ultimately, Afghans will have to defeat the insurgency,” none of the reporters on the call, nor Menard himself, brought up how they might do this. (Afghan forces were going to be my follow-up question, but I was cut off before I could ask.)
Manard's goal over the winter months is to use his Canadian troops to establish a “ring of stability” around Kandahar City (where 85 percent of the people in the province live), which “will serve as a barrier to insurgent approaches to the city.” The American forces will also operate near the city, as well as pushing out farther into the countryside.
Explaining how he plans to lay the groundwork for the 2010 fighting season through the quieter winter months, Gen. Menard said that “we’re staging everything to be ready for the campaign season, we’re focusing all our energy on stabilization.” He pointed out that stabilization is “not going compound by compound kicking doors, a lot of it is in a non-kinetic way…it is a fantastic time to exploit different projects.” He added that “I am extremely positive that by next summer we will see a different campaign season” form previous years, and that his forces “will be in position to deal with [insurgents] on our terms where we want them to fight and not the opposite.”
The new forces that are pushing out into the towns and villages around Kandahar—and staying there, instead of leaving—are already having some effect on the population, he insisted. He cited cases where Afghan villagers handed insurgents over to ISAF forces, “and they’ve never done that in the past.” A big part of the mission is to get young Afghan males working in order to reduce economic incentives to join the insurgency, he said, adding that his Task Force is employing more than 1,000 Afghan “fighting age males” on various projects. Excellent idea, but I would also like to know how the Afghans employed by the Army and Police are doing.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 12/23/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
http://www.thunderrun.us/2009/12/from-front-12232009.html
Posted by: David M | December 23, 2009 at 12:31 PM