CBC News Network at 1513 ET had footage of a helicopter involved in helping people stranded by snow along Highway 402 in southwestern Ontario. The caption underneath was: “Army to the rescue. Canadian Forces chopper…”

Oh dear. The helicopter was actually Air Force (see the CH-146 at middle bottom here)–as are all aircraft in the CF. This CBC website story is rather better:

Military helps rescue stranded Sarnia drivers
2 Griffon helicopters fly motorists to warming stations

Mark
Ottawa

Further to this post on Sebastian Junger,

Progressives, war, and what happens if NATO pulls out of Afstan

BruceR. gives his overall assessment at Flit–please read the whole post:

I still haven’t seen Restrepo yet, but Sebastian Junger’s War was brilliant, I thought, as a portrait of young men at war. His article here on the response he received is also very much worth reading…

…I don’t understand why anyone would assume that the Tajiks and Hazara and Kabuli Pashtuns who still hate the Taliban will not fight for their homes if we left. They’re not going to be so easy to roll the second time, and the fact the ANA make poor doorkickers in our concept of ops does not mean they’d do just fine against similarly armed Pashtun insurgents, especially if we left a SOF/FID/CAS/Fires thumb on the pro-government side of the scales.

We shouldn’t confuse a lack of Afghan army enthusiasm with being cannon fodder in the south with a lack of determination to fight for the north when the time comes…

…When I deployed, I remember looking at this pretty analytically. I had a contempt for the Taliban I no longer have quite so much, and the reports from the field were rosier than even my bullcrap filter could compensate for, so it’s fair to say I was of a more optimistic cast than now. But when I could look at it coldly and logically, I basically saw what Junger saw… that, worst-case, fighting in the south bought time in the north, and ISAF’s presence could give those people after 20 years of war an indeterminate number of years of relative peace while we were there. Worst case, we could give them a shot at normalcy. To me that was enough of a humanitarian argument to justify my serving in ISAF. Still is…

…If the violence starts ramping up again in the summer of 2011, as it has every year higher than the year before, than we really need to start digging the fallback positions and figuring out what ANSF with ISAF enablers can realistically hold onto in the years to come. Because the only alternative will be an indefinite, fruitless Western commitment.

Mark
Ottawa

Read all about the Canadians, and more, at Milnews.ca’s daily round-up.  Plus a major Washington Post story on the US Marines practicing COIN in Helmand à la Petraeus (with photo gallery):

Nawa turns into proving ground for U.S. strategy in Afghan war

Yesterday:

“Afghanistan: Progress-more needs to be done”/”Bleak Intelligence Brief”/Polish Update

Mark
Ottawa

Plus “CANADIAN FORCES AND CANADIAN DEFENCE ISSUES” and “INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENCE ISSUES”, the Conference of Defence Associations’ media round-up.

Then there’s this, rather sobering, on two major US estimates:

Afghanistan, Pakistan Get Bleak Intelligence Brief

WASHINGTON — New U.S. intelligence reports paint a bleak picture of the security conditions in Afghanistan and say the war cannot be won unless Pakistan roots out militants on its side of the border, according to several U.S. officials who have been briefed on the findings.

The reports, one on Afghanistan, the other on Pakistan, could complicate the Obama administration’s plans to report next week that the war is turning a corner. U.S. military commanders have challenged the new conclusions, however, saying they are based on outdated information that does not take into account progress made in recent months, says a senior U.S. official who is part of the review process.

The analyses were detailed in briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee this week and some of the findings were shared with members of the House Intelligence Committee, officials said.

All the officials interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified documents.

The reports, known as National Intelligence Estimates, are prepared by the Director of National Intelligence and used by policymakers as senior as the president to understand trends in a region. The new reports are the first ones done in two years on Afghanistan and six years on Pakistan, officials said. Neither the Director of National Intelligence nor the CIA would comment on either report…

In describing the Afghanistan report, military officials said there is a disconnect between the findings, completed in recent weeks, and separate battlefield assessments done by the war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and others that contain more up-to-date and sometimes more promising accounts [see here].

A military official familiar with the reports said the gloomier prognosis in the Afghanistan report became a source of friction as a preliminary version was passed among government agencies.

Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the contrast between the Afghan estimate and Petraeus’ reports.

“It’s a very disciplined, structured process, so it’s got a cutoff date that’s substantially earlier in the game than, say, the military review,” Cartwright said in a recent interview.

He said officials will have to grapple with whether intelligence and battlefield reports are starting to diverge or whether the gloomier intelligence analysis is “more an artifact of time. Those are the questions that we’ll have to work our way through and either feel comfortable about or not feel comfortable about.”..

Update: This article from Time is illuminating–at least the Poles are a combat force:

For U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, Coalition Forces Are Mixed Blessing

U.S. forces have long expected to do the heavy lifting on the NATO mission in Afghanistan, but even then, the Army battalion that arrived in Ghazni province last summer were troubled by what they found. The Taliban were resurgent in areas that U.S. forces had pacified before handing control to Polish forces a year earlier. “It was as if the [Polish] were waiting for us to come back and release them from their base” and then take the credit, says one U.S. officer, describing how failure to patrol the roads has allowed a route between coalition bases to become choked with roadside bombs. Americans had to return to take charge, he said, because the Poles are “just kind of hanging around.”

Such criticism is common among U.S. officers who have served in Afghanistan, and it is directed not only at Polish forces but also at other NATO forces, some of which are hamstrung by so-called caveats that range from prohibitions against fighting at night to traveling without an ambulance, thereby precluding foot patrols. The Polish force is not bound by any of these constraints, but U.S. officers say the Poles’ top-down approach to war-fighting is ill-suited to a counter-insurgency campaign that requires real-time decision-making by mid- and lower-level officers on the ground. They add that the Poles’ six-month deployments strain continuity, and that logistics snafus make them dependent on U.S. support…

Via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs.

Mark
Ottawa

Yesterday:

All over the Afghan map

Latest:

1) Gates says troop infusion is making a difference in Afghanistan

Despite receiving sobering updates on Taliban resistance in the south and a potent insurgency in the east, the Defense secretary says progress ‘has exceeded my expectations.’

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan —

After two days in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he was convinced the massive infusion of American troops over the last year is turning around the 9-year-old war, even as U.S. soldiers remain locked in a grinding fight to control many parts of the country.

It was Gates’ most definitive statement yet endorsing the U.S. strategy to have Afghan forces formally take over lead security responsibility in more peaceful regions beginning in spring, while U.S. and Afghan forces fight together in the most violent regions through 2014…

At the same time, Gates received sobering updates during his visit. Only a few hours before he appeared with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a news conference in Kabul, Gates had been in restive Helmand province, where Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, the Marine commander in the southern province, said Marines were facing stiff resistance in Sangin, a longtime Taliban stronghold.

Mills said the fierce fighting was the logical consequence of the success Marines have had in driving insurgents out of former Helmand strongholds such as the city of Marja. “He’s got a hold on Sangin,” Mills said, referring to the insurgents. “The enemy is fighting with desperation.”

On Monday, a commander in eastern Afghanistan told him the Islamist insurgency remained potent. A U.S. official said the region had seen a 16% increase in the number of attacks from May through November compared with the same period in 2009. But the official also noted a 28% decrease in attacks that caused casualties to Afghan or Western forces.

U.S. officials concede that large parts of the south and east will probably remain too violent to permit large-scale withdrawal of U.S. and European troops in the near future…

The Afghan army and police remain too fragile and poorly equipped to be able to prevent the Taliban from infiltrating back into already-cleared towns and villages without Marines and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces remaining nearby to assist, U.S. officials said.

For that reason, though security has improved in some areas, Mills said the process of turning over security responsibility to the Afghan army and police in Helmand will be “deliberate” and a “very, very subtle process.”

…there were also reminders of how fragile the modest gains have been and how many additional personnel have been needed to make a difference.

An area in Kandahar that once had a Canadian army company of about 100 soldiers now has a full U.S. battalion of more than 800 soldiers, plus an Afghan army battalion [emphasis added].

The result has been a noticeable improvement in security, said Lt. Col. Peter Benchoff, who briefed Gates during his visit to Zhari district outside Kandahar. “The insurgents are still around, and we’ve got some work to do, but it’s been going pretty well.”

The unit’s base used to be regularly attacked with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The highway running outside the gates saw a roadside bomb attack almost every day. And a bazaar nearby had only a few open shops.

Col. Arthur Kandarian told reporters who flew in by helicopter with Gates that “four months ago you would not have been able to fly in here without getting shot at.”

Now the base hasn’t been attacked in weeks. Only two bombs have gone off on the highways since September, and the bazaar is beginning to revive. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. forces are near being ready to go home.

The biggest constraint, just as in Helmand, is that the Afghan battalion working alongside Benchoff’s men was formed only this year and isn’t ready to take over security [emphasis added]…

2) New Push to Lift Kabul’s Firepower

KABUL—U.S. officials are considering Afghan requests to supply heavy weapons to Afghanistan’s armed forces for the first time, as a new target date for handing over security responsibilities prompts a reassessment of the country’s military’s needs.

The Afghan army is likely to be supplied with light armored personnel carriers next year, a major upgrade of its capabilities, a senior coalition official said. There are also plans to provide the Afghans with more artillery firepower, and with limited air surveillance and reconnaissance capacity.

Afghan requests for heavy weapons were previously brushed off as impracticable and unsuitable to the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy here…

It is unlikely that Afghan pleas for sophisticated weapons such as fighter jets or battle tanks will be satisfied in the near future, U.S. officials said. Arms purchases, the senior coalition official cautioned, “have to be weighted against what’s sustainable” by an Afghan army that is mostly illiterate and lacks the skills to operate and maintain modern weapons systems.

Until now, the $10 billion-a-year American effort to build Afghanistan’s security forces focused largely on wooing recruits, teaching them basic shooting skills, and shipping them off to fight the Taliban—with progress measured by manpower growth. There are currently 147,000 Afghan soldiers and 117,000 Afghan policemen.

While the coalition’s plans approved at a summit in Lisbon last month call for Afghan forces to assume responsibility throughout the country by end 2014, the only area where they already are in the lead is the capital, Kabul, and its surrounding districts.

Even here, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said, the underequipped Afghan forces still heavily rely on the coalition for functions such as logistics, air support and bomb disposal…

The current Afghan army, which Mr. Wardak described as “lighter than light,” has no tanks or APCs. The country’s air force possesses 40 Russian-made helicopters and 12 transport or training planes…

Mark
Ottawa

The end of a Wall St. Journal story; our media do not seem to have noticed so far:

Training Shortfall Persists
Defense Officials See a Shortage of NATO Specialists to Teach Afghan Forces
…
U.S. defense officials said they are hoping they can persuade Canada to help close the training gap. Canada has said it will send 950 trainers—not necessarily specialized—to replace its combat forces after they leave at the end of 2011. Washington wants Ottawa to send at least some of those trainers earlier.

A spokeswoman for Canada’s Department of National Defence said planning for the training mission was still under way [see 2) here].

I wonder how the government will respond.

Mark
Ottawa

I wish the Dippers and suchlike, and our major media, would read things like this from Bouhammer’s Afghan Blog; ain’t them Yanks and Rebels just awful?  Hell, it’s in the public domain so not worth the attention of Assiduous Asshole Assange.  Nor, more’s the pity, of the major media.  Not their agenda either:

Tobin’s Pass: Bridging a river, bonding the people

The following was sent to me by good friend JC who is currently serving in Afghanistan

PARWAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan – From pursuing insurgents over the
daunting mountain peaks of Afghanistan to rescuing a local villager’s
car over a 130-foot bank, the soldiers of 2nd Platoon, Troop A, 1st
Squadron, 172nd Cavalry Regiment, have proven their dedication to the
people of Afghanistan and fortified a steadfast bond with the people
of Parwan province. Nowhere is this bond more evident than in the
Ghorband District Center where laughter and song poured out of the
small concrete buildings as soldiers spend evenings sitting
side-by-side cross-legged on pillows with their Afghan National Police
counterparts.

This figurative bond is exactly why the soldiers were determined not
to leave Afghanistan without building a literal one for the people of
Ghorband, who desperately needed a bridge to cross a swift river that
parted two villages from the local bazaar and medical clinic…

U.S. Army Spc. Brian Lucas, a food service specialist from Sugar Hill, N.H., stops to take one last look at a bridge soldiers from the 2nd and Mortar Platoons of Troop A, 1st Squadron, 172nd Cavalry Regiment [more here], finished Nov. 10 for the residents of Ghorband District. (U.S. ARMY STAFF SGT. WHITNEY HUGHES)…

I do wish the Canadian government, through the Canadian Forces, allowed similar expression. Note that the immediately preceding link is an official one.

Mark
Ottawa

If this Conservative government–I’m talking to you Stockwell Day, Treasury Board president and erstwhile chair of the Cabinet committee on Afstan–cannot do something soon about this massive stupidity…The invaluable Matthew Fisher of Postmedia News reports:

Treasury Board rules could heighten risk in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The lives of Canadian soldiers could be put at greater risk because of Treasury Board regulations that prevent Task Force Kandahar from continuing to employ its best cultural advisers.

About half a dozen of Canada’s top advisers, who are ethnic Afghans with Canadian citizenship, have been told that they cannot be rehired when their current contracts expire. They are being let go because of government rules that state that if they work for more than three years for any federal department they must be offered permanent employment in the public service.

The often highly educated advisers attend top level meetings between NATO, Canadian and Afghan officials and regularly accompany Canadian troops on dangerous combat missions to provide on-the-spot political and cultural guidance.

The issue has not only infuriated the advisers, who want to continue working with Canadian troops, but has frustrated the officers whose soldiers work with the cultural advisers alongside Afghan forces…

Meanwhile the CF’s last combat rotation is in place:

Afghanistan: The countdown is on
Canada’s war in Kandahar in final phase

Canada’s war in Kandahar formally entered its final phase Saturday with the transfer of command to a battle group led by 1st battalion, the Royal 22nd Regiment…

Mark
Ottawa

Conference of Defence Associations’ media round-up.  I’ve excerpted the F-35 pieces:

…
In the Globe and Mail, Harry Swain, former deputy minister of Industry Canada, examines the number of  F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that Canada intends to purchase. Swain contends that Canada will buy 65 because this is the exact number the CF requires to achieve this capability. He notes that the silence from senior brass who determined that number was needed suggests that, “$16-billion was the biggest number they could get away with, not the smallest number of planes we need.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/the-eco…

In Le Devoir, Alec Castonguay reports that the regional economic benefits that will come with the procurement of the F-35 are considerably overstated by the Conservative government. The government reports that there will be up to $12 billion in economic benefits, however American sources suggest that these benefits will be closer to $3.9 billion with a possible peak at $6.3 billion.
http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/311543/retombees-economiques-du-f-35…

In Vanguard magazine, Peter Burn argues that the procurement of the F-35 is sound and prudent policy both in terms of defence and industry. He suggests that the aircraft’s flexibility enables it to play multiple roles, while the regional economic benefits will prove to be profitable for Canadians.
http://www.vanguardcanada.com/F35CriticismWontFlyBurn…

The main problem with Mr Swain’s argument, which makes a great deal of overall sense about Canadian defence policy especially concentrating on the Army, is that Canadians are simply not prepared to turn over air defence and surveillance of our territory to the US–which would be the consequence of our not buying new fighters (whatever type).  And, pace Mr Swain, UAVs are not yet ready or able to perform that role and won’t be for some time to come.

Of course the problem with focusing on the Army is that contracts for its equipment do not provide the prospects of vast por(c)k–and hopefully votes, notably in la belle province (that’s why the Bloc joined the coalition supporting the F-35)–that Air Force and Navy ones do.  Army equipment is considerably cheaper.

Earlier:

The Canadian Forces’ future, or, why the Globe and Mail is not a newspaper

Mark
Ottawa

Lots of cautionary intellectual nutrition at Flit.

1) Today’s essential Afghan reading

Alex Strick van Lindschoten has spent more time in Kandahar City than many Kandaharis. His opinion is always worth listening to. His “Five Things David Petraeus Wants You to Believe” is cutting:

Truth #1: “It’s Working!”
Truth #2: “The Night Raids and Targeting of the Insurgency’s Leadership is an Effective Tool.”
Truth #3: “The Military Effort is Subservient to Broader Political Goals.”
Truth #4: “Mullah Mohammad Omar is irrelevant.”
Truth #5: “Don’t mind the Afghan Government.”

Another old-time Afghan hand, Tim Lynch, is with the Marines in Sangin these days. His posts give a good sense of what COIN is supposed to look like, when it’s resourced and fully committed to.

There’s no question the Marines are probably more effective man for man than most ISAF contingents at the moment…

2) A reader comment, and an ISAF return (with a Monty Python video)

A well-placed U.S. civilian official who has served in southern Afghanistan and whose opinion I’ve come to respect offers his thoughts on a couple recent posts:

You are right on the mark on pointing out the mismatch between Canada’s desire to have all of its future training positions “behind the wire” and the actual available slots in NTM-A. I haven’t seen any media reports about this. Is DND not paying attention or are they not saying anything for fear of getting smacked down by the Privy Council Office?

On another issue, I see a lot of arrogance and even hubris connected with the U.S. surge in Kandahar. Demolishing grape huts and replacing them with a “better” design?..

BruceR’s comment…

As far as hard-knock ops, I think we need to start considering that our current way of war can actively inhibit any kind of truces or negotiated settlements. The shoe that didn’t drop with the Fake Taliban Fiasco is that if we had known enough about the real Taliban leader to confirm the impostor’s identity, odds are he’d have been JPEL’d and dead long before ["joint prioritised effects list"]. By not taking prisoners of war (we don’t, really, they almost all are let go) and engaging in targetted assassination against the equivalent of section commanders and up, we’ve already removed any realistic possibility of dialogue or reconciliation. There’s no realistic role for a third-party neutral mediator, either… no insurgent leader of any weight could reasonably expect that a trip to, say, Saudi Arabia for instance, to engage in negotiations would not result in their electronic trail leading back to the crosshairs of a Hellfire in the end…

Update: This Canadian officer certainly seems a bit rash:

Canadian colonel says Taliban defeated on battlefield

The outgoing commander of Canada’s mentoring team in Kandahar says the Taliban were routed this fall and won’t present a significant threat in the future.

Col. Ian Creighton says the lull in violence that’s trickled across southern Afghanistan over the past few weeks has nothing to do with onset of colder weather, as in previous years.

He says the Taliban were defeated on the battlefield.

The blatantly upbeat assessment is at odds with American officers at NATO’s southern Afghan command, who last week said it will be the spring before they can be sure the recent offensive through the Taliban heartland was successful.

Creighton, whose soldiers teach and fight alongside Afghans [that's the type of training we're going to stop doing in 2011], says militants that managed to flee will find NATO and Afghan forces holding their ground and will run into a “brick wall” if they try to return…

One can hope.  Meanwhile, further to this post on the US Marines sending tanks to Afstan,

Where Canada and Denmark led…

the conclusion of a challenging article by a US Army officer:

Tanks, But No Tanks
Why heavy armor won’t save Afghanistan.
…
It may be counterintuitive, but we actually need less armor, and we need to be more flexible and unpredictable. Instead of dictating that no unit can leave its base unless in an MRAP [our Army has them too] or MATV, we must allow them to use Humvees, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, and ruggedized pickup trucks when appropriate. Knowing their movements are being watched at all times, units need to use deception, such as varying the time of day and night they move, their routes of travel, and the types of vehicles in which they conduct missions, to keep the insurgents constantly guessing. Insurgents cannot possibly booby-trap and watch every road, trail, and wadi in Afghanistan but they can and do hammer us on the few roads that will support armored vehicles.

This is a very unconventional war being waged in the most difficult terrain possible, and we are responding very conventionally. Instead of allowing such ingenuity and its associated risk, the coalition’s default response has been to add more armor and widgets to ever larger vehicles that are the very antithesis of basic counterinsurgency operations.

We may not be able to “defeat” the IED, but we can make it irrelevant. To do so will require us to rely upon the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the junior leaders who are most in tune with the local dynamics and terrain, not on technology or defensive-minded mandates designed to prevent casualties at all costs. Marginalizing the IED will also require higher commanders to accept greater risk and allow their subordinates to sometimes make mistakes — even deadly ones. But that’s the only way to start connecting with the Afghan people, who are the ones who will defeat the Taliban in the end. It’s time to start playing to win instead of trying to avoid losing.

Maj. Michael Waltz served as the director for Afghanistan in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense and as an advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney on South Asia and counterterrorism. He currently commands a U.S. Army Special Forces unit in the reserve component that recently returned from Afghanistan.

I cannot imagine a Canadian officer writing so bluntly in our media.

Mark
Ottawa