Hockey Night in Canada star Don Cherry, right, signs heavy artillery during a Christmas Day visit to Canadian troops stationed at outposts in Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Steve Rennie/Canadian Press)

It comes as little surprise that the Toronto Star’s annual year-end darts and laurels take a few cheap shots while elevating others. Let’s look at a few:

Laurel: MUNIR SHEIKH: For integrity. The respected head of Statistics Canada resigned in protest over the census decision after Clement left the false impression that StatsCan agreed with the government’s decision.

Integrity? For what? Quitting a six-figure job during a recession over some ridiculous principle that people in a free society should be forced to hand over personal information to the government? How about a dart, for setting an example that when things don’t go your way, quit.

Dart: DON CHERRY: For lacking a sense of occasion. The hockey commentator used the platform he was given at the inaugural meeting of Toronto’s new city council to deliver an anti-“pinko” screed as tasteless as his jackets.

Dart for Don Cherry? Why, because he made a joke about Toronto’s pervasive socialist climate? Uh, gimme a break. First of all, when Rob Ford was elected there were more than a few people in Toronto calling it the second coming of Hitler. They called him a racist, a fat slob and an idiot. How about a dart for the complainers of Toronto for having so little respect for democratic will?

How about a laurel for Don Cherry, for being one of the few people who puts his money where his mouth is. For all of his promotion of our military in Afghanistan on Coaches Corner (something almost no other media personality will do), he wound up putting himself in harm’s way in Afghanistan to visit the troops. The same couldn’t be said for the Toronto Star’s editorial.

Laurel: PETER MILLIKEN: For affirming Parliament’s ancient rights. The Speaker of the House of Commons gave no ground in a showdown with the government over parliamentary access to secret Afghan detainee files.

Hm. About a dart for the opposition parties, for choosing to focus more on whether murderous barbarians have received an impossible standard of care instead of forcing the government to make a decision on the future of the mission in Afghanistan? Now the choice post-2011 training missions in safer places like Kabul have been snatched up by other countries. It’s 2005 all over again. Thanks to our dithering indigent “parliamentary rights”.

Laurel: JOHN FURLONG: For delivering. The head of the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee delivered an outstanding Games, notwithstanding bad weather and some bad luck in the early going. He also did it on budget.

Let’s not forget the boatload of taxpayer money. Furlong’s delivery notwithstanding, the Star can hardly be blamed for not caring about the Olympic Village boondoggle that is now the bane of Vancouver.

With all the brouhaha about the United Arab Emirates, I’m glad I got to see the city of Dubai before the country slapped visas on Canadians. Although I’m sure it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, I thought it was interesting to be able to see Muslim culture firsthand without actually having to wear body armour (I had just returned from Afghanistan).

The crazy thing about Dubai is that the humidity is on a level beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. And I grew up in Toronto. The place is just 36 degrees of intense humidity, day and night. There is no discernible change in temperature at any time.

Dubai is nothing but a city-shopping mall. Commerce is king, and no matter where you go you get harassed by street vendors running up trying to sell you their wares. Although it’s a novelty for one day, I can imagine it would be frustrating to live there.

Here are some of those unpublished pictures from that trip. All were taken October 6, 2010.

A shuttle bus drops people off from the al-Minhad airbase. It’s supposed to be hush-hush, but all the shops in the area know the Canadian soldiers come in to buy jewellery and fabrics.

These aren’t the iTunes you’re looking for.

Row upon row of shops line the streets of Dubai. The fashion clash between east and west is most apparent here with the tourists and the locals.

The latest fashions can be seen on display on the mannequins on the right.

Dubai is a contrast of extreme riches and extreme poverty. Air-conditioning companies must do well here.

Although some of the city is dirty and ugly, other parts are quite beautiful and colourful.

It’s not unusual to see traffic held up by men pushing carts, though there are no beasts of burden.

Some of the dresses on display are quite pretty and colourful.

It literally cost 30 cents to get on a barge to cross the river.

The night life is a completely different experience than the day, though the heat is the same.

Men having Chai at the waterfront after evening prayer.

Photo credit: Master Corporal Pierre Thériault, Canadian Forces Combat Camera

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are up by 20 per cent from the first 10 months of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009, according to the United Nations. But here’s the important part:

The report concluded that the number of civilian casualties attributable to insurgents increased by 25 percent during the 10-month period. It said insurgent groups were responsible for killing or injuring 4,738 civilians during that period, while 742 were killed or wounded by Afghan and international troops – a drop of 18 percent.

In a statement Thursday on its Web site, the Taliban called the civilian casualty figures in the report “a propaganda stunt aimed at concealing American brutalities.”

U.S. airstrikes, long controversial in Afghanistan because of the high incidence of civilian casualties associated with them, were the leading cause of civilian deaths by NATO forces, the report said. At least 162 civilians were killed in airstrikes and 120 were wounded during the 10-month period.

These figures show the Taliban is responsible for 86.5 per cent of harm that comes to Afghan civilians. Significantly, the 742 casualties caused by NATO represented a drop, consistent with their strategy in 2010 to minimize collateral damages.

Part of the strategy of the insurgents, as I was told when I visited Afghanistan in September, is to stage “spectaculars”, which are large explosions causing heavy civilian casualties in order to cause fear and anger at the presence of foreign troops. These spectaculars, however, have had the opposite effect in generating sympathy for the Taliban.

Unfortunately, as the Afghan war reaches a crescendo during the surge, new statistics show that NATO casualties have reached a record high:

The number of NATO troops killed this year also reached a new high, according to a tally kept by the Web site icasualties.org. At least 705 international troops were killed here this year, far more than the 521 killed in 2009, the previous record.

The 101st Airborne, “Screaming Eagles”, for instance, lost 104 men in 2010, which is one less than the most lost in a single year since the Vietnam war.

Photo: Adrian MacNair, Oct. 2, 2010

When I first got invited to Afghanistan by the DND, I almost didn’t read the email. It was all in capital letters and marked urgent, the modus operandi of the Nigerian banker. After I opened it and read the contents, I almost wanted to pretend I didn’t read the email because the idea was terrifying.

I’d been writing about Afghanistan for a couple of years from the safe confines of my home, a veritable keyboard warrior who could come to no harm beyond the odd coffee spill. When I was actually presented with the opportunity to go and see the place for myself I felt like a barking dog who had suddenly had his leash broken — I stopped barking for a moment and turned around to see whether I could tie the leash back up.

My sense of foreboding was melodramatic. I envisioned bullets and bombs and harrowing moments of duck and cover. I literally had no idea what to expect and the DND wasn’t going to hold my hand and telling me there was absolutely no way I could be harmed.

The truth is that getting harmed was part of the risk of the invitation, and getting past that mental stumbling block was the hardest part of the decision. Only once I had come to peace with the idea of dying could I put it behind me and simply focus on the opportunity.

My fears, while entirely understandable, were disproportionately unfounded in relation to reality. Although Afghanistan is a dangerous place, the truest thing that can be said for reporters (and a little less so for soldiers) is that you’re statistically safe.

I had imagined this place where bullets and rockets flew overhead and the roads were strewn with IEDs. And I suppose that’s what a lot of Canadians probably imagine based on media reports and quick glimpses through the rare footage NATO doesn’t consider a breach of operational security.

The truth is that the military base of Kandahar Airfield is so vast that living there feels a lot like going to summer camp, only the perimeter fencing is kilometres away from the centre, and there are multiple perimeter fences. When we went out in the Cougar AFV, we had been driving for about 10 minutes when a soldier informed me we were still inside the wire.

The (perhaps false) sense of security one gets in KAF is so palpable that within a day my fears had ebbed away and been exchanged with a strong desire to do something that involved being on the other side of that wire. My previous morbidity had been supplanted by a need to get outside of the immediate safety of 40,000 armed soldiers and see what was going on.

DND had scheduled to have us flown in by helicopter to the forward operating base in Kandahar City, Camp Nathan Smith. As the logistical difficulties of securing a helicopter for a VIP tour shifted, we went from being told we were going to fly there in a Black Hawk to the choice of going in LAVs.

The number one killer of NATO forces, by far, has been improvised explosive devices buried under the road by Taliban fighters at three in the morning. The sudden opportunity to jump into an armoured vehicle and face that same risk as the soldiers brought me temporarily to that initial panic I felt when I first received the email from DND.

The panic lasted for a few brief moments and then I turned to the group and said I wanted to do it. One of the other journalists was also quick to sign on, while the other two were mulling it over. The Globe and Mail journalist would need permission from home, since he wasn’t initially authorized to do road travel outside KAF.

When we geared up for the trip, I felt nervous excitement. My military escorts grabbed ammo from the depot and loaded their weapons. When we met up with the convoy there were at least 20 soldiers who would be travelling to the FOB. It was then that I realized this whole squad was going to act as the protective team for the VIPs — us.

This was significantly different than being an embedded journalist observing soldiers going on missions. I didn’t want somebody to get hurt because they had to ferry a bunch of journalists to a powerpoint presentation in CNS. The very thought made me queasy.

But the moment that really changed my perspective on this trip took place while riding in the Cougar. The rear of the AFV was manned by a 23-year-old male soldier and a 20-year-old female reservist from Nova Scotia. She had joined the military at 16 and this was already her fourth year. A 20-year-old woman (with pigtails, when she took off her helmet) whose job was to kill anything that tried to attack this convoy. Her job.

I always felt like I could relate to the soldiers as a working class kind of guy, but I never really put myself in their shoes until that ride. All of the worrying and sleepless nights and fear over a four-day trip to Kandahar, and these kids are putting in six month tours. Some of the older ones are on their third and fourth tour, the most senior guys were even in Kabul in 2002.

The thing is, even though I know the soldiers respected the journalists for going outside the wire, it isn’t possible for us to understand what they do by living one day in their shoes. It isn’t possible to do parachute journalism, interview a few soldiers, ride in an armoured car and then fly back to Canada a week later. The embedded journalists — like Matthew Fisher, Louie Palu, Jake Wright — who actually stay for a while and get a sense of what it’s like are the ones experiencing the real Afghanistan. I saw but a shadow.

But what inspired me was seeing our professional soldiers, some as young as the 20-year-old in our convoy, carrying on inside the military bubble of operational procedure. Despite the bad press at home, the lack of interest from regular Canadians and the difficult working conditions, we have nearly 3,000 Canadian soldiers doing their jobs in an efficient and professional way. Day in and day out, until they’re finally called home.

Just a couple of British lads on summer vacation.

Not to be cheeky with the headline but, well, what do you make of this?

British-based men of Afghan origin are spending months at a time in Afghanistan fighting Nato forces before returning to the UK, the Guardian has learned. They also send money to the Taliban.

A Taliban fighter in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan last month told the Guardian he lived most of the time in east London, but came to Afghanistan for three months of the year for combat.

“I work as a minicab driver,” said the man, who has the rank of a mid-level Taliban commander. “I make good money there [in the UK], you know. But these people are my friends and my family and it’s my duty to come to fight the jihad with them.”

Talk about your part-time summer jobs.

It’s a little odd, you’ll have to admit, to work in Britain under the safety of the rights and freedoms they then aim to destroy in Afghanistan. These people were in the bathroom when God was handing out logic.

On the other hand, it doesn’t appear to be an epidemic:

British military officials say there have been no recent reports of British Taliban in Helmand in southern Afghanistan and that the overwhelming majority of foreign fighters are Pakistanis. Not since John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, was captured in late 2001, has the US admitted to having successfully captured an insurgent from a western country.

I’m not sure what Omar Khadr qualifies as then, but I guess I’ll take their word for it.

A very rare lull in homework has allowed me to comment in the National Post on the media’s coverage of the new Asia Foundation survey for Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly I’m not pleased with what the media decided to pick up on as the important story. Rather than focus on the positive signs in the survey, the Canadian Press picked support for negotiation with the Taliban as the big story. But there are serious concerns that such an arrangement would be beneficial for the people.

In reporting the news journalists are often faced with the task of gathering enormous amounts of information and then deciding the most important or relevant bits to pass on. Often the important parts are buried deep in the raw information.

When it comes to the 232-page document released by the Asia Foundation about their Afghan survey, the same problem poses itself. What The Associated Press decided was critical in the survey is that 43 per cent of Afghans strongly support Karzai’s negotiations with the Taliban.

Read the whole thing…

The government screwed up. Again. This time it was in their handling of the Canadian military base, Camp Mirage, in Dubai. Because of the handling of negotiations over potential flights to Canada by commercial aircraft from the U.A.E., we’re going to have to spend $300 million to relocate the logistical support base for our operations in Afghanistan to Cyprus.

The feds have tried to pass this off as a case of the U.A.E. making unreasonable demands, but the truth is a little less harrowing. The Emirates demanded more landing rights for two national carriers, but only in Toronto.

Canada offered each U.A.E. carrier a total of seven new flights to Canada, but none of them to Toronto, the only city the Emirates wanted. When that offer was turned down, Canada made a second one with flight offers to anywhere but Toronto. Not exactly your good faith bargaining considering Camp Mirage was on the line. According to an anonymous government source cited in the CBC article, the deal could have been done if the U.A.E. was granted one more flight to Toronto per day.

Let’s assume for the moment that allowing the extra flights was slightly inconvenient. Unreasonable even. Was it worth giving up Camp Mirage for it, and the quarter billion dollars that will have to be spent to relocate to Cyprus? Dubai is situated 1,600 km from Kabul and 1,200 km from Kandahar. Cyprus is 3,000 km from Kandahar Airfield, and fully 3,400 km from what could be Canada’s new post-combat role in Kabul.

Then there are the immediate diplomatic disadvantages to our petty standoff with the U.A.E., as the country moved to slap visas on all Canadians intending to travel there in 2011. Although that’s largely symbolic with the low number of Canadian tourists, it’s disappointing that Canada has chosen to rankle a potential ally in the Middle East, particularly one that has helped us in our mission in Afghanistan.

As Andrew Potter wrote in Macleans, you take your hosts for granted and this is the kind of fiasco you get. Let’s not forget that we were guests in Dubai, and this wasn’t your average landlord we were tenants under. This was an integral part of logistical operations in Afghanistan and a jumping point into theatre that required only a two hour flight.

I was as surprised as anyone else when, two weeks after I had gone through Mirage myself, I heard the U.A.E. had denied the defence minister the right to land on his own base. What do you have to do to enrage a country that badly?

Quid Pro Quo. We were given a base of operations that is strategically the safest location for Canadian Forces in the region (we do not want to put a base in Pakistan), and all it took to keep it there was let a few more planes land in Toronto.

I finally have time to continue posting my pictures from the trip I took to Afghanistan nearly a month ago. If you find these interesting, you should bookmark the blog of Brian Platt, a UBC student who is currently in Kabul and not stuck “behind the wire”.

On the left is Colonel Abdul Aziz and on the right is a Lieutenant-Colonel whom I cannot seem to identify from my notes. I wrote a story about this trip to the JOCSC on my blog, but unfortunately no news media picked it up. I think it’s worth a read if you’re interested in how ANA progress is going.

We were given a tour of the facility and shown officers who were busy in an exercise. To the right is our Canadian military liaison from the embassy, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Muth.

Officers had to get into groups of three and work out triangulation using a map and visible points in the city. One of the officers moved out of the shot while I was photographing.

You can see the diversity of the ANA in this photograph and the ones previous. The officer on the right, who had his name tag and rank blocked out, is Russian in features. The officer on the left looks more Uzbek or Tajik. And of course the Lieutenant-Colonel in the picture previous is more Indo-Pakistani.

An ANA mentor, who was himself mentored by ISAF, teaches officers about topography. These officers will use these skills to return and fight the Taliban.

“Practice measuring straight line distance.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Hirschmann, Germany, and Major Jones, Canada, are two ISAF mentors who work at the college.

A rare shot of Kabul traffic. I say rare because, like most of this trip, I was disappointingly stuck in the backseat of a bulletproof car watching an intensely interesting world sail by and being unable to do anything to record it.

One of the few success stories of Afghanistan is their free press. Andrew Potter picked up on this story.

Kabul’s young and hip demographic is the one involved in the democracy-building measures of Afghanistan: the free press, the elections, the wireless market. This is because they’re the few of the literate citizens.

This could be any news studio in North America. But it isn’t. It’s Afghanistan.

Women play a prominent role in the post-Taliban workforce of Afghanistan. The top reporter and news director at Tolo TV are women.

The last of his kind. The only copy editor to still write and edit only by hand.

The studio was running a live TV show while were there. The operators were quite polite and we didn’t realize we were actually distracting them from a live process.

The show that was running live. Don’t quote me on this, but I’m fairly certain the woman was a co-host.

That’s it for my Afghan trip. Be sure to check out Brian’s website if you find the subject interesting. You can also read some of my previous dispatches here:

Embedded in Afghanistan: Day two
Embedded in Afghanistan: Day five
Embedded in Afghanistan: Day six

A forensic psychiatrist has testified at the sentencing hearing of Omar Khadr that he is “likely” to become a jihadist following his release from Guantanamo Bay. Dr.Michael Welner identified three important factors that would make his reintegration into Canada — something his supporters have consistently advocated for — difficult:

First, Omar Khadr has shown an almost complete lack of remorse for his crimes. Whether it be the IEDs he helped build and plant, the war crimes he helped commit, or the soldier he has admitted to murdering, Khadr hasn’t shown any genuine remorse. His emotionless attitude about it all would indicate that he is not sorry for his crimes, and would even suggest he’s proud of his accomplishments.

In apologizing to the wife of the soldier he murdered in Afghanistan, Khadr even drew a parallel between himself and apartheid prisoner Nelson Mandela saying, “you won’t gain anything from hate.”

“Love and forgiveness are more constructive, they will bring people together and solve lots of problems,” he added.

Khadr said to Sergeant Christopher Speer’s widow: “I am really, really sorry for the pain I have caused you and your family.”

She refused his apology, saying she would always consider him a murderer. And according to a forensic psychiatrist, she’s probably right.

Khadr has also refused to speak to any psychologists during his entire eight-year detention, Welner testified, which means that he hasn’t attempted to seek help for his terrorist pathology. This would indicate that his admission of guilt is more self-serving than a sudden act of conscientiousness. In other words, he’s going through the motions.

The third point raised by Welner is Khadr’s continued ties to al-Qaeda. Not only has the young terror apprentice never apologized for his actions — save the seemingly insincere one to the widow — he has a family in Canada that is also unrepentant for their militant views.

His mother and sister, famous for going on the CBC and complaining that Canada is a horrible place full of homosexuals and drug addicts, have yet to admit culpability in the poisoning of the minds of the male children in the family. That the family continues to have connections in Pakistan and Afghanistan is doubtless, though the Canadian government would likely never issue him a passport again.

Welner said Khadr has “been marinating in a radical jihadist community.”

This is no doubt true as well. And because of his myriad supporters here in Canada who will convince him he is a victim in the entire equation, it’s likelier he will come to see himself through the eyes of the sympathizers who will surround and shelter him during the repatriation process here.

It should at least concern people that Omar Khadr has never sought out the psychological services offered to him in Guantanamo Bay. In most criminal cases this is a red flag of remorselessness, and often weighs in the decisions of parole boards.

Before Khadr is released back into Canadian society — though that may be nearly a decade from now — I hope he is forced to undergo a psychiatric examination. If not for his own sake, then at least for ours.

I’d like to continue sharing pictures from my recent trip to Afghanistan. Many of them didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked, and I now regret being a little camera-shy after the military made me delete a few photos, but I hope you like the ones I have chosen.

I don’t make up the stereotypes. I just report them. Three Canadian soldiers return with Tim Hortons resupply.

Corporal Logan of the National Support Element shows me weapons confiscated from Taliban fighters by the Canadian military. The rifle closest to him is very old. Although he explained the names of all the weapons, I’d be lying if I said I remembered them. Of course everyone recognizes the two AK-47s on the table, or rather two versions of the two million out there.

Like any type of heavy machinery operation, the NSE requires heavy duty cranes to tow broken vehicles or to pull them out of mud. In one operational challenge, we were briefed by the NSE that they had to rescue three vehicles stuck in Kandahar mud over a period of five days.

The NSE gave us a first-rate tour of weapons and vehicles. I’d love to identify these great guys, but we just didn’t have time to go into formalities. The tours were always short and rushed.

A C7 rifle with grenade launcher attachment. This is the first time I’ve ever held a real weapon. Obviously you can see the clip is out. I didn’t know how to hold the weapon properly.

The dust in Kandahar gets everywhere. Sensitive equipment has to get covered up and oft-used vehicles look like they’ve been sitting there for a long time. I don’t know what the trees in the picture live on. It doesn’t seem to rain very often.

This thing, believe it or not, is an ambulance. Photography inside was forbidden.

“What the hell am I looking at?” you may be asking yourself. The answer is that you’re looking at a very tiny portion of thousands of parked armoured vehicles outside the interior perimeter wire. What they’re doing there I have no idea. I do know that KAF is expanding outwards like an oil spill. Whether those vehicles will be used at some point, or whether they’re just a means of keeping workers in weapons factories in America off the unemployment line, I have no idea.

You’re not surprised the Canadians built a hockey rink in the middle of a desert, are you?

Something that I think a lot of people in Canada don’t realize is that not only is KAF filled with thousands of armoured vehicles, it’s also filled with 40,000 soldiers all armed with automatic rifles. A Taliban insurgent would have be extremely suicidal to attack this fortress. Yet they still do sometimes.

Kandahar actually has a pretty nice looking airport. This is on the air base itself, so Kandaharis who have to travel must go through security clearance to get onto the base. At this point we left Kandahar behind.

The plane we hope will be able to make it to Kabul. This thing didn’t mess around on the runaway. It basically started up and took off.

The interior of the plane. Yeah, it’s small. We seemed to fly the entire way at only around 15,000 feet, but I couldn’t really tell you for sure. The rusty brown mountains of Afghanistan were below us the entire way. It was here that I came to the conclusion we will probably never be able to hunt the Taliban down in the thousands of nooks of crannies in this mountainous terrain.

Obviously nobody is going to be able to get a good photograph outside of a tinted airplane window, but photoshop does its best job of showing what the Kandahari landscape looks like.

I know this isn’t the best picture, but what you’re looking at is the vast orange desert south of Kandahar City. It’s a sort of natural defensive position for NATO because they know they don’t need to guard the south. Insurgents are being pushed southwards and have nowhere to go because the desert is actually on the top of a large escarpment. Anyone foolish enough to traverse the desert can be spotted easily by drones.

This is just to give you an idea of what you’re looking at. The big red desert in the above picture is what you were looking at in the other picture. The next picture will show the Arghandab river and the Karamullah lake. You can see Canada’s signature project of the Dahla Dam if you look on Google Earth.

The Arghandab is the lifeblood of Kandahar, and provides some of the most lush vegetation in what is otherwise an inhospitable landscape.

In case I didn’t quite make it clear, southern Afghanistan is one large, rust-brown desert with tiny oases interspersed among craggy mountains.

We arrived in Kabul at sundown, so the fading light didn’t help with the photographic quality.

I’ll share my images of Kabul soon.