Our government, i.e. the prime minister, has basically lost interest (if they ever really had much)–even while the CF have some six more months of combat:

Conservatives shut down key Afghan cabinet committee
…
Military historian Jack Granatstein questioned whether the committee accomplished anything.

“I guess the question is: what has it been doing up till now?” he said. “There are a number of people who think it hadn’t been doing anything.”

Mr. Granatstein said Mr. Harper, and Mr. Harper alone, guided Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan and that his sense of direction lately has to be questioned.

When Mr. Harper came to power in 2006, he pledged that Canada would never “cut and run” while he was prime minister.

After Parliament approved a two-year extension to July 2011, Mr. Harper was adamant that the mission would end as scheduled, but he eventually agreed to have non-combat military trainers stay on for three more years.

Douglas Bland, chair of the Defence Management Studies Program at Queen’s University in Kingston, lamented the disbanding of the committee because it focused bureaucrats from several departments on important national security issues and forced them to work together.

“A lot of bureaucrats have come to understand the broad meaning of national security and they need leadership from the cabinet to keep that up, otherwise they’ll wander off and do other things that bureaucrats do in the stovepipe democracy,” Mr. Bland said [emphasis added, likely a key consequence of disbanding the committee--civilian bureaucratic institutional structures, and knowledge, related to conducting war will rapidly atrophy].

“The lesson has been (that) war-like operations — and that’s what this was — require the attention of ministers and especially the prime minister.”

Mr. Bland said it is simply not good enough to leave the Afghanistan mission as an agenda item for cabinet’s Foreign Affairs and Defence committee…

Actually it’s been clear for three years or so that Mr Harper had lost any real commitment to the military mission:

Prime Minister grumpy about Afghanistan

Meanwhile his tardiness while finally flip-flopping to agree to an ongoing CF training mission is leading to its own problems:

Well, well, well: The consequences of delaying our Afghan decision

Great way to run a (serious?) country’s war effort. As for combat:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided to send an additional 1,400 Marine combat forces to Afghanistan, officials said, in a surprise move ahead of the spring fighting season to try to cement tentative security gains before White House-mandated troop reductions begin in July.

The Marine battalion could start arriving on the ground as early as mid-January. The forces would mostly be deployed in the south, around Kandahar [emphasis added--to where our soldiers now are?], where the U.S. has concentrated troops over the past several months…

Mark
Ottawa

The Jerc has landed:

Canadian pilots will be able to drop cargo to troops on the ground with far greater accuracy now that a new Hercules aircraft has arrived in southern Afghanistan.

The first of Canada’s new Hercules C-130J aircraft arrived at Kandahar Airfield over the weekend, with a second scheduled to arrive later this spring…

The new aircraft look almost identical to the old ones, except that they are slightly longer and can seat up to 125 people instead of 92.

But that’s about where the similarities end. The new Hercules are largely automated and require fewer crew members.

Pilots say it will be easier to drop supplies to soldiers because a computer now calculates wind speed, weather conditions and other variables. The computer can hit a drop point within 30 metres. Before, when it was done manually, supplies could land much farther from the drop point.

“When we’re doing an air drop, the computer’s actually doing the drop and we’re monitoring it. So it tends to be much, much more accurate,” Wintrup said.

Most of the flying to ferry troops and equipment around Afghanistan is done by Canadians.

The Conservative government ordered 17 new Hercules aircraft from Lockheed Martin three years ago at a cost of $1.4 billion [more here]. So far, the company has delivered five aircraft. Two will be in Kandahar and the rest will be based at the air force base in Trenton, Ont.

The entire order is supposed to be filled by the end of 2012…

From the DND news release:

…
The first CC-130J Hercules tactical aircraft arrived in Canada on June 4, 2010, six months ahead of the original scheduled delivery date. The Air Force team demonstrated its agility, flexibility and professional capabilities by readying the aircraft and its crews for deployment to Afghanistan in less than seven months. Training, maintenance and operation procedures needed to be adapted to the specific characteristics of this aircraft, while ensuring an efficient and effective implementation schedule that will facilitate safe, effective, and sustained operations…

All 17 CC-130Js will be based at 8 Wing Trenton, along with the future Air Mobility Training Centre that will house the equipment and personnel required to train the operators and maintainers of the CC-130J Hercules aircraft…

More on the plane here and a photo:

Remember all the controversy over the Conservative government’s effectively sole-sourcing this contract, ignoring the Airbus A400M? Well the A400M was a paper aircraft in 2006 and the Jerc was a real one–and has been delivered ahead of schedule. Meanwhile the A400M is still in flight testing and will be several years late entering service.

Our four C-17 strategic airlifters were also, sensibly, sole-sourced and arrived quickly and on time. Another plane that had been proved in service. In the case of both these transports there really was only one aircraft that fit the CF’s bill. Whereas in another case we really do not know.

Meanwhile another very-long planned aircraft purchase continues to go nowhere.  This from the Liberals’ federal Budget, March 23, 2004, “The Importance of Canada’s Relationship to the World“:

…
Another major priority for Canada’s military is the purchase of modern Fixed Wing Search and Rescue aircraft (SAR) to replace older Hercules aircraft and Canada’s fleet of Buffalo aircraft. Under Defence’s current plan, deliveries of the new aircraft will begin much later in the decade. This budget sets aside non-budgetary resources to allow the Department of National Defence to move this acquisition forward in time without displacing other planned capital investments. By doing so, the Government will accelerate the process so that deliveries of the replacement SAR planes to Canada’s military can begin within 12 to 18 months…

Well it’s now 2011 and just last spring this government essentially went back to the drawing board on the whole project–see also “Rescue Required: Canada’s Search-And-Rescue Aircraft Program”. I strongly suspect a major cause for delays is lobbying by Bombardier to have a (unsuitable) version of its Q-Series considered. And others are lobbying too:

Union selfishness and new Air Force aircraft…

Almost seven freaking years and no competition is now under way. Help.

Update: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

You can’t always get what you want. See this Nov. 17 post by BruceR. at Flit:

I hear Mazar in spring is even nicer than Kabul in winter

Matthew Fisher continues to perform the sin of actual journalism by trying to pin down people on where Canadian troops in Afghanistan post-2011 will be going and what they’ll be doing. This was telling:

As Canada is insisting that most of its trainers will be in or near the capital, which is already awash with trainers from other countries, there is immense interest in what specific training tasks Canada is to be assigned by NATO and how its trainers will be shoehorned into already-crowded bases in the capital…

…the demand for what could be readily offered [by the CF] becomes rather small. So in the Kabul area, there were only 106 critical jobs in police and army training that could be filled by “regular” soldiers as of the NTM-A [NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan] annual report, dated three weeks ago… far less than what Canada is now offering…

Looks like Bruce was bang-on:

Canadian trainers likely to be sent across Afghanistan

The Canadian Forces is rushing to draw up a list of military trainers to send to Afghanistan once Canada’s combat mission ends next summer, but senior officers say training positions in the safer regions of the country are already growing few and far between.

The federal government announced earlier this year that up to 950 Canadian soldiers would participate in a three-year mission to train the nascent Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police force.

The Conservative government insisted that the Canadian trainers would be based “inside the wire,” working in secure bases in the relatively stable area around Kabul, the Afghan capital.

But the NATO training organization in Afghanistan is expanding rapidly and needs trainers at sites across the country.

Many of the training jobs in Kabul have been snapped up by nations who committed to the training mission much earlier and Canada may have to send its soldiers into riskier regions of the country.

Maj.-Gen. Stuart Beare, the Canadian deputy commander of the NATO training mission, told CTV News that the coalition needs military and police trainers in almost every province of Afghanistan…

Col. Paul Scagnetti is one of a group of Canadian officers that helped establish the Afghan Army Command College in Kabul, helping to train the Afghan army’s future leaders.

“They know how to fight, there’s no doubt about that: They’ve been doing it for 30 years,” Scagnetti said. “What we’re trying to do is give them a structure, an organization that’ll make them more effective in their fighting.”

But Scagnetti and his fellow trainers have been so successful that they’ve put themselves out of at least one training job: when the new Canadian-funded college opens next spring it will be run by Afghans [I think that may well be the staff college that Brian Platt posted about when he was in Kabul--unembedded--in early November] .

Caught by surprise at the government’s announcement of the training mission, the Canadian Forces is now working overtime to draw up plans for where the Canadian troops will go and what exactly they will be doing.

Lt.-Gen. Marc Lessard, the head of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, acknowledged that Canada may have little choice but to send soldiers into more volatile regions of Afghanistan.

“The direction I have from (Chief of Defence Staff) Gen. Natynczyk is that it is to be Kabul-centric,” Lessard told CTV News. “And what that means is that the emphasis is to be on Kabul, but not solely Kabul.”

Details of the training mission may become clearer after a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels later in January…

Update remark: Politics, politics, all is politics.

Mark
Ottawa

Further to this post,

Militants? Insurgents? Nice flipping guys?

Douglas Bland does not speak with forked tongue in the Ottawa Citizen:

Merely stating the obvious
It is quite proper for a military counter-insurgency manual to identify native Warrior Societies as a potential threat to Canadian sovereignty

A masked Mohawk Warrior protests in Kanesatake in January 2004. To suggest that the Mohawk Warrior Society can be viewed as an insurgency is not to label anyone, or any organization, terrorist, argues Douglas Bland.
Photograph by: Shaun Best , Reuters, Citizen Special

The Canadian Forces does not owe the Mohawk Warrior Society or the wider First Nations an apology for references to the society in the first draft of the armed forces manual on Counter Insurgency Operations, or COIN…

The various so-called Warrior Societies proclaim in their several websites that their organizations are armed forces meant to act as a type of militia in the defence of First Nations communities and their rights. They are, arguably, an open challenge to the sovereignty of Canada, unless, of course, Canada surrenders in some fashion its right and responsibility to defend all Canadian territory and all Canadian citizens, including every reserve and all aboriginal people, to the self-appointed Warrior Societies…

…to suggest that the Mohawk Warrior Society can be viewed as an insurgency is not to label anyone, or any organization, terrorist. To suggest that the Canadian Forces prepare its commanders to conduct anti-insurgency operations in Canada, as they did against the FLQ and at Oka, demands no apology.

The entire discussion, however, may be moot given the government’s apparent preference to cede its sovereignty to every First Nations challenge [emphasis added, Dauntless Dalton is no better] – including this one — a policy that will surely inflame disputes and make the Canadian Forces COIN training all the more necessary.

Douglas Bland is chair of the Defence Management Studies Program at Queen’s University and author of the novel Uprising, the story of a future aboriginal insurgency in Canada.

Mark
Ottawa

Canadian apologomania continues (and what may it cost in money in the end?).  Paul at Celestial Junk has some real acid in his keyboard:

Cozy Up To Violently Militant Organizations

I guess it’s the new CPC plan to attract Liberals:

According to CBC, the Canadian Forces are going to provide a ‘heartfelt’ apology for listing the Warriors in a counter-insurgency manual in 2006…

It all makes sense now, that Mr. “I have never had any tolerance whatsoever for crime” is in The House.

And the “T” word wasn’t even used.

Mark
Ottawa

…all things considered, compare with the US below; most of us are clearly proud of how the forces have fought in Afstan (so much for the torture fracas, always mainly an inside the Queensway thing, not a Timmies’ one–see the third para here):

Canadians trust military more than government: Poll

Canadians have more trust and confidence in Canada’s armed forces than they do in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, according to a new study.

The study, based on polling conducted by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) and released exclusively to iPolitics, found that 75.7 per cent of respondents had trust and confidence in the Canadian Forces to do a good job compared to only 54.1 per cent who trusted the federal government.

While faith in both the Armed Forces and the federal government tended to rise with age, one of the sharpest divides was among English-speaking respondents — 80.3 per cent of whom trusted the military and 52.7 per cent of whom trusted the federal government.

The military also outranked the federal government among francophones. The poll found 71.7 per cent of French-speaking respondents had confidence in the military while only 49.2 per cent had confidence in the federal government.

The gap was much smaller among allophones, those whose first language is neither English or French. The poll found 67.3 per cent of allophones [hurl! that's PC-speak for most immigrants, esp. more recent] trusted the Armed Forces while 57.5 per cent trusted Harper’s government [really good news for the government and for Jason Kenney].

The lowest support for the military was among 18-24 year olds — only 51.2 per cent trusted the Armed Forces to do a good job. That age group was also the least likely to trust the federal government with only 47.8 per cent confident it would do a good job…

The U.S. military, which has been embroiled in Iraq, had the confidence of 80.7 per cent of respondents. President Barack Obama’s administration, which has struggled to restore the U.S. economy, had the confidence of 41.5 per cent…

Via Spotlight on Military and Other News (changed title). I was surprised the Anglo-Franco (more PC-speak, really RoC/Québec) split is so small. And quite depressed about the young people. Just shows what progressive education and a likely reliance on television (if any) news can do.

Mark
Ottawa

1) NATO fails to deliver half of trainers promised for Afghanistan

…
A further complication is that some contributing countries, including Canada, have placed restrictions on how and where their trainers can be used in Afghanistan.

The pledge of Canadian trainers last month came with the caveat that they not be used outside the Kabul area or “outside the wire,” such as in mentoring roles that would put them in the field with Afghan soldiers or police officers.

Although the makeup of the Canadian training force has yet to be announced [the US has been pressing us], the limitation sets a domino effect into motion. To find places for them, NATO commanders will likely have to move trainers from other countries out of bases and schools in the Afghan capital…

Lots more on that wee difficulty from BruceR. at Flit.

2) Foreign troop deaths in Afghanistan top 700 in 2010: site

…
The latest figures came as The New York Times reported that senior US military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing to expand special operations ground raids across the border in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas.

But the story was denied by a spokesman for ISAF, who said there was “absolutely no truth” to any suggestion that ground operations into Pakistan were planned.

3) U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan

WASHINGTON — Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan’s efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

The plan has not yet been approved, but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan. Even with the risks, military commanders say that using American Special Operations troops could bring an intelligence windfall, if militants were captured, brought back across the border into Afghanistan and interrogated…

…one senior American officer said, “We’ve never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across.”..

Update: From Terry Glavin:

…

…
All I’m saying here is that nothing cheers me up more than the sight of an unveiled Afghan woman cradling a machine gun [actually an AK assault rifle variant].

Mark
Ottawa

Further to this post,

Why the Globe and Mail is not a newspaper, Part 2 (Congo section)

Milnews.ca picks up on Mr York’s continuing quixotic quest to get more Canadian troops committed to the heart of darkness (remember that he’s supposed to be a reporter):

…
The Globe & Mail‘s Geoffrey York (AGAIN) flogging his favourite question:  why isn’t Canada helping the Congo? “It has become a grim Christmas ritual: hundreds of innocent civilians massacred in remote corners of Africa by the Lord’s Resistance Army, one of the world’s cruellest and bloodiest guerrilla forces.  Now, fearing a Christmas attack for the third consecutive year, the United Nations is mobilizing 900 peacekeepers to protect villages in Congo, and the United States has promised its own action against the LRA.  But activists are calling for a much stronger response to prevent another wave of gruesome attacks by LRA fighters…the CF already HAS a presence in Democratic Republic of Congo.  This isn’t the first time he’s asked for this – more here on his last call in August [October actually] for Canada to do more there.  Also, more on Canada’s national interests (or lack thereof?) in Congo at Army.ca here…

Plus from Mr York’s “story” in which his, er, leanings are clearly revealed:

…
The LRA has emerged as a classic test of the “right [responsibility actually] to protect” doctrine, championed by former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy and others. The concept of “right to protect” suggests that the international community has the right to intervene in sovereign states to prevent atrocities and protect civilians. Canada took a leading role in pushing the concept and getting it adopted at a world summit in 2005 after the furor over the UN’s failure to act during massacres in Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990s. But the concept was dropped when Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006 [emphasis added].

Supporters of the “right to protect” concept argue that Canada should do more to pursue the LRA, perhaps by contributing more troops to the UN mission in Congo, where the past two Christmas attacks took place, or by putting pressure on countries such as Sudan that are suspected of giving covert shelter to the LRA…

Right. A bit of that irresistible Canadian pressure and all will be well. Sure. Hurl. Earlier on Mr York’s undoubted heroes and R2P:

There’s a responsibility to protect us from Pink Lloyd and Soft Rock

Mark
Ottawa

I bet you won’t see this reported in our major media, esp. given a possible motivating factor:

Sweden to Strengthen Presence in Afghanistan

Four days after the first jihadist suicide bomb on Swedish soil injured two in an attack in downtown Stockholm, lawmakers voted 290-20 with 19 abstentions on Dec. 15 to extend the country’s military presence in Afghanistan.

The decision allows the government to add troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. About 500 operate there now; the government now has authority to increase that to 855. Next year will also see more UAVs and tactical and troop transport helicopters sent to the theater [of course no Canadian political party will consider keeping our Air Wing in Afstan].

The vote in parliament, which was supported by the opposition Social Democrats and Green Alliance [emphasis added], gave no firm date for the provisional withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. The expectation among government and opposition groups is that this may happen in 2014.

“We will not be intimidated. Our resolve is firm. What we are trying to achieve is to bring security and well-functioning civilian institutions to Afghanistan. When the U.N. calls, Sweden will come,” said Fredrik Reinfeldt, Sweden’s prime minister…

So a country with a population just under a third of Canada’s will be keeping almost as many troops in Afstan as we will after 2011. And the Swedes will not all be inside the wire:

…
A group of Swedish officers and soldiers who are part of the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT) are based at Camp Mike Spann, about 12 kilometres south west of Mazar-i-Sharif. They act as mentors to the Afghan army and currently support commanding officers at corps and brigade level…

Seems those Vikings, even the neutral Swedes, get things–esp. the Danes (see the “Danish note” here; the Danes, unlike the Swedes, have had a serious combat role and are continuing it–unlike us).  I regret even thinking this but just maybe this country needs a real terrorist attack to wake up.

Update: A version of this post is at the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute’s 3Ds Blog.

Mark
Ottawa

Bouhammer’s Afghan Blog explains some realities.  The Afghans are Muslims and people too:

…
COIN is just another mission in combat, no different than a deliberate defense or a movement to contact. COIN is also not new, we have been doing it for years. We did it in WWII, Vietnam, etc., etc. Our US Special Forces have been executing COIN since their inception in the 60s. It has had other names like Foreign Internal Defense (FID) which it was known as for years in the Special Ops Community. And just like the risk that SF takes or our ETTs and MITT teams have been taking for years, the teams must always have their guard up and always paying attention to the local nationals, never fully trusting them. When I was an ETT a few years ago my team was always in “RED” status on our weapons and we always had at least one weapon with us on the FOB. Since we lived with the Afghans on the FOB, our guard was always up that one of them could turn on us. There have been embedded advisors (ETT, PMT, STTs) being killed by Afghan forces since we started embedding with them. Does that mean we just abandon the mission and not train them anymore?

…I am not saying to trust them all, as I never did 100% because they didn’t have US ARMY on their chest, but you have to trust them some as we are tasked with embedding and training them. Just because they are an Afghan or a Muslim does not mean they are the enemy. I have met many Afghans that I would and I did proudly fight side by side with. I have many good memories of breaking bread with them and drinking chai. I have seen Afghan soldiers killed, tortured, and wounded as a result of trying to defend their country and sometimes trying to protect and defend Americans fighting with them…

So the West should just give up, especially Canada–a country of some 33 million that has taken some 150 dead, almost all in the last five years. A war that averages 30 dead service members a year? Quelle catastrophe, or, what does a country have armed forces for?

Update: From the rather sceptical NY Times:

NATO Push Deals Taliban a Setback in Kandahar

KABUL, Afghanistan — As the Obama administration reviews its strategy in Afghanistan, residents and even a Taliban commander say the surge of American troops this year has begun to set back the Taliban in parts of their southern heartland and to turn people against the insurgency — at least for now.

The stepped-up operations in Kandahar Province have left many in the Taliban demoralized, reluctant to fight and struggling to recruit, a Taliban commander said in an interview this week. Afghans with contacts in the Taliban confirmed his description. They pointed out that this was the first time in four years that the Taliban had given up their hold of all the districts around the city of Kandahar, an important staging ground for the insurgency and the focus of the 30,000 American troops whom President Obama ordered to be sent to Afghanistan last December.

“To tell you the truth, the government has the upper hand now” in and around Kandahar, the Taliban member said. A midlevel commander who has been with the movement since its founding in 1994 and knows it well, he was interviewed by telephone on the condition that his name not be used.

NATO commanders cautioned that progress on the battlefield remained tentative. It will not be clear until next summer if the government and the military can hold on to those gains, they said. Much will depend on resolving two problems: improving ineffectual local governments and strengthening Afghan troops to fight in NATO’s place.

The Taliban commander said the insurgents had made a tactical retreat and would re-emerge in the spring as American forces began to withdraw.

But in a dozen interviews, Afghan landowners, tribal elders and villagers said they believed that the Taliban could find it hard to return if American troops remained…

Meanwhile, maybe this is the paper’s effort to be fair and balanced:

Taliban Extend Reach to North, Where Armed Groups Reign

The growing violence is the north is not exactly new news, see here and here.

Mark
Ottawa