Story states a new book claims Canadian efforts fell short in Kandahar

[Redeye]

I'm not schooled in COIN by any means; I've read some stuff and have mulled a bit, but I won't pretend to be anything but a rank amateur.

Intuitively though, your last para hints at something. If COIN is going to be in part predicated upon building a viable state, then part and parcel of that must seem to me to be a very simple, face value question- at the lowest level, the dude in the street - what are the most common interactions betwen the citizen and the state? This isn't an Afghan specific thing; it's the same question that pops into my head during a municipal or provincial election. Who are these dudes asking for my support, how do they differ from all the ther swinging dicks and what do they have to offer to my life in the real, practical sense?

I'm sure there are properly bureaucratic terms for this kind of analysis and that if I were PSYOPS or CIMIC I'd already 'get it'. You speak of the Taliban fulfilling the role of the police and judiciary. De facto, they are essentially the executive and the legislative in many areas.

Are we too focused on big picture, grand strategy, 'what-consultant-shall-we-hire-for-this' stuff to have maintianed focus on the simple reality of 'walking the walk', and 'deeds not words'?

I can't claim to be anywhere near an expert on the subject for the simple reason that it's morphing so fast it is almost impossible to keep up - and all while people scream "COIN is dead", no less. I do, however, have a bit of insight having been fairly well read in on the subject for quite a while (it was something that interested me even before I joined the army, actually, while I was in school), and I also work at the "Centre of Excellence" in Afghanistan which requires me to keep myself as up on current themes as best I can.

So, then, he's my assessment: you're right. There was too much focus on big picture stuff at the beginning especially. All this effort to build a national government with all the trappings of a modern republic in Kabul didn't actually change anything for a large chunk of the Afghan population.  What you're hitting on is essentially the crux of the theory that underpins the NATO COIN course, and the "COIN Framework" we teach here. An insurgency comes about when three things exist - a vulnerable population (meaning a population that has real or perceived grievances that can be exploited), lack of government control (meaning the government cannot legitimately exercise its authority to influence the population or resolve those grievances, and leadership available for direction. Mao noted in On Guerilla Warfare that when the first two exist, the latter can be supplied. The insurgency gains legitimacy in the eyes of the population by addressing those prerequisites, so the Taliban gained legitimacy in the south initially in that manner, and has been able in many places to retain it. They build their links to the population by gaining the legitimacy, while the connection between the population and the government weakens.

There was such focus on this top down approach that nothing was done to alter the situation as perceived at the lowest level by many, many Afghans, particular those far from Kabul, where the connection to the central government was weak and tenuous to begin with. It was not a challenge for insurgents to connect themselves to the population. They took on the role of the executive and judiciary functions while co-opting traditional legislative functions (though I don't know if you can really classify shura/jirga concepts as "legislative", more of a hybrid, but I think you get what I'm saying. They gained legitimacy because they did what was wanted and they continue to do so. It's not for nothing that Karzai frequently was derided as "The Mayor Of Kabul" in recent times.

There was some realization that this was the case, and a lot of lofty talk about shifting focuses to address this, to actually getting a COIN focus in place. However, there then became a realization that "we" (ISAF/Coalition) couldn't really be labeled as counterinsurgents, only the Afghans could - we would just be provided them the support they need to do so (Security Force Assistance is the new buzzword, and IDAD - Internal Defence and Development). But I don't see how that's seamlessly translating into building legitimacy for GIRoA at the "local guy on the street" level yet. That's not to say it isn't, I just don't know of any good examples.

The discourse around counterinsurgency seems to be getting more and more in depth and complex. Frankly it seems increasingly prone to the masturbatory academia that seems to attend any effort to figure groups of people out and why they do stuff we don't like (my degree is in something along these lines. Ugh.) It strikes me that there are many with a vested interest in convincing our powers that be how things ought to be done in the context of a theoretical ideal, as opposed to simply going out and *interacting* with the populations we operate within, discerning through those interactions what *they* want- and consciously NOT trying to extrapolate.

Agreed again. There's more money to be made writing the latest great COIN book that really only recycles old ideas - and a lot of the stuff out there is so complex and cryptic wanking that it offers little value. In my view, for COIN to really work, you have to make it simple enough that every soldier can get a grip on the mindset, which isn't actually that hard in a lot of ways. The framework we use in our lessons (I'll try to find an image to post) is simple, ANSF troops get it and get what it means to them fairly quickly. When I had the opportunity to teach at JMRC Hohenfels, we got some pushback from some people about why we had dropped a bunch of material that had previously been used. Our reasoning was simply that it was a bunch of theory that had no practical application, and thus not worth included. My training team decided to make the material simple but thorough, not adding in all sorts of intellectual wanking because it doesn't add to the course.

Is COIN itself flawed in that it tries to suck strategy as high as possible as often as possible? Again, to my very amateur eyes it seems that, more than anything else we've been in, this is where intelligent, culturally aware junior leaders- company level at highest, ideally at the platoon level embedded in a community - ought to be trusted to figure out what the most local portion of the population needs, wants, and expects, and to communicate that up and to act on it as much as is possible, as locally as is possible, and as quickly as is possible. We seem to like easily doctrinalized solutions, where maybe there needs to be mroe acceptance of each situation being different, contributing under 'mission command' to a bigger intent, but with MUCH less bloody interfrence in how it's done at the local level.

That's the idea that is pushed on the COIN Leaders Course - the problem that seems to come out of Lessons Learned is that while "every soldier a sensor" is an awesome concept, processing all the information obtained becomes difficult if not impossible, and it becomes easy to then impose our own ideas about what a community needs, wants, expects. And there are myriad stories of how that goes wrong. The most common (probably apocryphal given the variations I've heard but apt nevertheless) story involves building a well in the centre of town on discovering that local women must bring water from a source a couple of kilometres away. Sounds great, right? Sure, until you roll back through a few weeks later and discover the well destroyed. By the women. Why? Because you've taken away the time they had to socialize. They didn't view the water trip as an impediment, but as a positive thing and it wasn't recognized by outsiders as such. That's the kind of problem that comes up.

Am I wrong in thinking that CIMIC, etc, have perhaps lost perspective on themselves as enablers? That, as opposed to being an end unto themselves, with the consequential upwards-sucking of authority, responsibility, command, and decision making - they ought to be pushing assets as low as is possible to leave enablers at the greatest disposal of those with the highest resolution of local 'feel'?

That I can't speak to - I'm not a CIMIC dude (though that's probably, realistically, where I'm going to head), but maybe they have, or maybe the problem is that they're not being employed effectively as enablers. We have a hard task shaking off both a kinetic-only mindset (but don't mistake COIN for being non-kinetic - "hearts and minds" does sometimes mean "two in the chest and one in the mind"), and wanting to project our ideas of what's right on others. That's the whole "Afghan right" concept that we work toward here now - and it's well summarized in the Australian LL videos I mentioned by one of their officers: "If you've come up with a plan and a course of action that makes sense to you from your western perspective, then it isn't going to work, go back to the drawing board." (or something close to that).

 

[Old Sweat]

Matthew Fisher joins the debate with a critique of the book on the Canada.com website. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Canadian Afghan mission misrepresented in new book
Strategic errors made in Washington, not Ottawa
By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News June 25, 2012 12:01 PM

Canada's military effort in Kandahar has been heavily criticized and seriously misrepresented in a new book by a reporter and associate editor from the Washington Post who also wrote the highly regarded "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" about the U.S. war in Iraq.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan" asks a reasonable question: whether the U.S. should have surged troops into Kandahar or neighbouring Helmand province.

The author is considered a heavyweight around Washington and his earlier book inspired the film Green Zone starring Matt Damon. But Chandrasekaran reveals a misunderstanding of the history of the Canadian and American deployments in Kandahar and is apparently unaware of the many attempts that the overmatched Canadian task force there and political leaders in Ottawa made to get the U.S. and other NATO allies to join them in the fight.

Citing an influential American outside adviser, Chandrasekaran says Canada was wrong to not put combat troops in Kandahar City and complains that its troops were "focused on reconstruction activities, not providing security or gathering intelligence." According to a second hand account of what an American two star general had told someone else, Chandrasekaran wrote that the U.S. was loathe to push the idea that more Canadians should have been sent to Kandahar City because, as Chandrasekaran write, he did not want to "dictate to the Canadians where to place their forces."

In fact, the Canadians did exactly what they had been asked to do by NATO in Kandahar City. This was to do what the Americans had done there before them. Acceding to requests from Brussels and Washington, Canadian reconstruction troops and civilians took over what had been a U.S.-led Provincial Reconstruction Base in the fall of 2005 when those Americans were withdrawn as the U.S. ramped up the war in Iraq.

The truth is that Washington had been so unconcerned about Kandahar City that between early 2002 and late 2005 — as the Taliban regained strength and began to cause serious security problems — it had never sent combat troops into Kandahar City, either. Nor did the U.S. establish a meaningful intelligence capability there.

What the Americans did in exiting Kandahar was leave Canada with a mess of Washington's making in a place that was fast becoming the epicentre of the insurgency. Given this ugly backdrop, and the fact that the U.S. has vastly superior intelligence gathering capabilities when compared with those of Canada, it is disingenuous to argue that it was Canada's and not the U.S.'s strategy in Kandahar City that was faulty.

The main point Chandrasekaran made in this excerpt from his book, which ran in the Washington Post over the weekend, was that Kandahar, not Helmand was the key battleground so, since Canada was responsible for Kandahar, it should have gone into Kandahar City in a big way. It is certainly arguable that Kandahar was more important militarily than Helmand, although opium from the latter was what provided vital financing to the Taliban. But if Kandahar was more important, why did the U.S., with several hundred thousand more combat troops than Canada, hand off this crucial assignment almost entirely to its northern neighbours?

Chandrasekaran also disses Canada for only having 600 combat troops to cover Zhari, Panjwai and Arghandab. In fact, the true number of Canadians operating "outside the wire" was nearly double that figure. Nevertheless, as every Canadian and American commander I spoke to during the years that I spent in Kandahar between 2002 and 2011 — and I spoke to several of the people whom Chandrasekaran interviews — that was never nearly enough troops to gain the upper hand. It meant that all Canada could do was rush around putting out fires until the (U.S.) cavalry finally arrived. And this is what the Canadians "heroically" did, according to many U.S. colonels and generals that I have spoken to.

Overlooked in Chandrasekaran's argument that Canada should have committed more combat troops to Kandahar was it was never possible for Canada to send more troops there. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might have said, "That was a known known." After decades of budget cuts Canada could only sustain about one brigade of 3,000 or 4,000 troops in the field at one time.

Canada took responsibility for the most vital districts in the Taliban heartland — as well as the rest of Kandahar — in 2006 after Washington, with scores of regiments, decided it had exactly ZERO conventional combat troops available to fight there. Other than a limited number of American, British and Canadian Special Forces soldiers, the only combat troops in the province when a battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry arrived from Edmonton early that spring were a handful of French air force commandos tucked up in mountains north of Spin Boldak near the Pakistan border.

Chandrasekaran asserts that one of the reasons the U.S. surge began with the Marines going to Helmand rather than to Kandahar, where he says they were more badly needed, was because the U.S. did not want to hurt Canadian feelings while the British in Helmand were more open to a partnership.

"Ottawa was reluctant to ask for more help," he wrote, because some Canadians "were convinced the security in Kandahar was improving, others didn't want to risk the embarrassment. . . . The geography of the province and the Canadians' desire to hold on to key districts around Kandahar City, made it nearly impossible to carve out a Marine-only area there" so the Marines were sent to "the next best option, even if it was less vital."

It is true that a super-strength brigade of U.S. Marines, under the command of Toronto-born and raised Brig.-Gen. Larry Nicholson, was sent to Helmand where it did an excellent of taking on the Taliban in places where the similarly overstretched British troops had had grave problems. But the idea that Canada sought to keep control of the most important areas around Kandahar City and had somehow kept the Americans out of the city and province is dead wrong.

The independent blue ribbon Manley report to Parliament in 2008 — which was accepted in its entirely by the Harper government and the Liberal opposition — demanded that Canada should leave Afghanistan altogether if the U.S. or other NATO partners did not urgently send troops to help them out. It was in response to Manley's 'no hold's barred' account of the weaknesses of the Canadian mission and a direct request to NATO and to Washington that the U.S. finally began to surge troops into Kandahar starting in 2009 with a single infantry battalion which went to Zhari where it operated under Canadian command.

When the full surge was finally ordered by President Barack Obama in December, 2009, half a dozen U.S. combat units and an intelligence regiment headed for Kandahar and, at long last, Kandahar City. In a relatively short time these Americans and the Canadians, now with the much smaller, more manageable combat zone that they had long sought, quickly turned the security situation around.

There had been foot-dragging by Brig.-Gen. Dan Menard in 2010 about when to hand over formal control of parts of Kandahar to U.S. forces. But this bit of theatre disappeared quickly when Menard was abruptly replaced by then Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance. Within a few days of returning to Kandahar for his second tour in late May of that year, Vance sat down at the Provincial Reconstruction Base in Kandahar City with a group of American combat colonels and told them that by July 4th the U.S. would have total responsibility for and command of the city. In fact, it was on July 1, Canada Day, and not Independence Day, that the Americans finally resumed responsibility for a battle space they should never have never left and, for the first time committed large numbers of combat troops to tackle the Taliban there.

So, why is Canada somehow to blame for the very late arrival of U.S. combat forces in Kandahar City and Kandahar province? Sure, Canada made mistakes. It overreached. It lacked helicopters of its own early on. As was widely known, it never had the means to deploy enough combat troops to defeat the Taliban there. But it was Washington that pressed Ottawa to go to Kandahar because it didn't want its ground troops there. Except for fighter jets, the Canadian Forces went over with everything it had. More than 150 Canadians died fighting the Taliban in Kandahar at a time when the U.S. was pursuing grander ambitions in Iraq. Strategic errors about how and where to fight the Afghan war were made, but they were made at Washington's behest, not Ottawa's.

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

 

[daftandbarmy]

Matthew Fisher joins the debate with a critique of the book on the Canada.com website. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Canadian Afghan mission misrepresented in new book
Strategic errors made in Washington, not Ottawa
By Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News June 25, 2012 12:01 PM

Canada's military effort in Kandahar has been heavily criticized and seriously misrepresented in a new book by a reporter and associate editor from the Washington Post who also wrote the highly regarded "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" about the U.S. war in Iraq.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan" asks a reasonable question: whether the U.S. should have surged troops into Kandahar or neighbouring Helmand province.

The author is considered a heavyweight around Washington and his earlier book inspired the film Green Zone starring Matt Damon. But Chandrasekaran reveals a misunderstanding of the history of the Canadian and American deployments in Kandahar and is apparently unaware of the many attempts that the overmatched Canadian task force there and political leaders in Ottawa made to get the U.S. and other NATO allies to join them in the fight.

Citing an influential American outside adviser, Chandrasekaran says Canada was wrong to not put combat troops in Kandahar City and complains that its troops were "focused on reconstruction activities, not providing security or gathering intelligence." According to a second hand account of what an American two star general had told someone else, Chandrasekaran wrote that the U.S. was loathe to push the idea that more Canadians should have been sent to Kandahar City because, as Chandrasekaran write, he did not want to "dictate to the Canadians where to place their forces."

In fact, the Canadians did exactly what they had been asked to do by NATO in Kandahar City. This was to do what the Americans had done there before them. Acceding to requests from Brussels and Washington, Canadian reconstruction troops and civilians took over what had been a U.S.-led Provincial Reconstruction Base in the fall of 2005 when those Americans were withdrawn as the U.S. ramped up the war in Iraq.

The truth is that Washington had been so unconcerned about Kandahar City that between early 2002 and late 2005 — as the Taliban regained strength and began to cause serious security problems — it had never sent combat troops into Kandahar City, either. Nor did the U.S. establish a meaningful intelligence capability there.

What the Americans did in exiting Kandahar was leave Canada with a mess of Washington's making in a place that was fast becoming the epicentre of the insurgency. Given this ugly backdrop, and the fact that the U.S. has vastly superior intelligence gathering capabilities when compared with those of Canada, it is disingenuous to argue that it was Canada's and not the U.S.'s strategy in Kandahar City that was faulty.

The main point Chandrasekaran made in this excerpt from his book, which ran in the Washington Post over the weekend, was that Kandahar, not Helmand was the key battleground so, since Canada was responsible for Kandahar, it should have gone into Kandahar City in a big way. It is certainly arguable that Kandahar was more important militarily than Helmand, although opium from the latter was what provided vital financing to the Taliban. But if Kandahar was more important, why did the U.S., with several hundred thousand more combat troops than Canada, hand off this crucial assignment almost entirely to its northern neighbours?

Chandrasekaran also disses Canada for only having 600 combat troops to cover Zhari, Panjwai and Arghandab. In fact, the true number of Canadians operating "outside the wire" was nearly double that figure. Nevertheless, as every Canadian and American commander I spoke to during the years that I spent in Kandahar between 2002 and 2011 — and I spoke to several of the people whom Chandrasekaran interviews — that was never nearly enough troops to gain the upper hand. It meant that all Canada could do was rush around putting out fires until the (U.S.) cavalry finally arrived. And this is what the Canadians "heroically" did, according to many U.S. colonels and generals that I have spoken to.

Overlooked in Chandrasekaran's argument that Canada should have committed more combat troops to Kandahar was it was never possible for Canada to send more troops there. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might have said, "That was a known known." After decades of budget cuts Canada could only sustain about one brigade of 3,000 or 4,000 troops in the field at one time.

Canada took responsibility for the most vital districts in the Taliban heartland — as well as the rest of Kandahar — in 2006 after Washington, with scores of regiments, decided it had exactly ZERO conventional combat troops available to fight there. Other than a limited number of American, British and Canadian Special Forces soldiers, the only combat troops in the province when a battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry arrived from Edmonton early that spring were a handful of French air force commandos tucked up in mountains north of Spin Boldak near the Pakistan border.

Chandrasekaran asserts that one of the reasons the U.S. surge began with the Marines going to Helmand rather than to Kandahar, where he says they were more badly needed, was because the U.S. did not want to hurt Canadian feelings while the British in Helmand were more open to a partnership.

"Ottawa was reluctant to ask for more help," he wrote, because some Canadians "were convinced the security in Kandahar was improving, others didn't want to risk the embarrassment. . . . The geography of the province and the Canadians' desire to hold on to key districts around Kandahar City, made it nearly impossible to carve out a Marine-only area there" so the Marines were sent to "the next best option, even if it was less vital."

It is true that a super-strength brigade of U.S. Marines, under the command of Toronto-born and raised Brig.-Gen. Larry Nicholson, was sent to Helmand where it did an excellent of taking on the Taliban in places where the similarly overstretched British troops had had grave problems. But the idea that Canada sought to keep control of the most important areas around Kandahar City and had somehow kept the Americans out of the city and province is dead wrong.

The independent blue ribbon Manley report to Parliament in 2008 — which was accepted in its entirely by the Harper government and the Liberal opposition — demanded that Canada should leave Afghanistan altogether if the U.S. or other NATO partners did not urgently send troops to help them out. It was in response to Manley's 'no hold's barred' account of the weaknesses of the Canadian mission and a direct request to NATO and to Washington that the U.S. finally began to surge troops into Kandahar starting in 2009 with a single infantry battalion which went to Zhari where it operated under Canadian command.

When the full surge was finally ordered by President Barack Obama in December, 2009, half a dozen U.S. combat units and an intelligence regiment headed for Kandahar and, at long last, Kandahar City. In a relatively short time these Americans and the Canadians, now with the much smaller, more manageable combat zone that they had long sought, quickly turned the security situation around.

There had been foot-dragging by Brig.-Gen. Dan Menard in 2010 about when to hand over formal control of parts of Kandahar to U.S. forces. But this bit of theatre disappeared quickly when Menard was abruptly replaced by then Brig.-Gen. Jon Vance. Within a few days of returning to Kandahar for his second tour in late May of that year, Vance sat down at the Provincial Reconstruction Base in Kandahar City with a group of American combat colonels and told them that by July 4th the U.S. would have total responsibility for and command of the city. In fact, it was on July 1, Canada Day, and not Independence Day, that the Americans finally resumed responsibility for a battle space they should never have never left and, for the first time committed large numbers of combat troops to tackle the Taliban there.

So, why is Canada somehow to blame for the very late arrival of U.S. combat forces in Kandahar City and Kandahar province? Sure, Canada made mistakes. It overreached. It lacked helicopters of its own early on. As was widely known, it never had the means to deploy enough combat troops to defeat the Taliban there. But it was Washington that pressed Ottawa to go to Kandahar because it didn't want its ground troops there. Except for fighter jets, the Canadian Forces went over with everything it had. More than 150 Canadians died fighting the Taliban in Kandahar at a time when the U.S. was pursuing grander ambitions in Iraq. Strategic errors about how and where to fight the Afghan war were made, but they were made at Washington's behest, not Ottawa's.

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Fantastic job Matt 

And I suppose that this recent Canada bashing has nothing to do with the upcoming US election? Things that make you go Hmmm....

 

[Infanteer]

Good critique by Mr Fisher - he is right about KC.  It was vital ground, but that doesn't really mean you need to occupy it; the key terrain of the outlying districts was where to be.  If anything, the NDS were capable of dealing with KC.

 

[CombatDoc]

i think that history will show that the CF held the vital ground around Kandahar City.  If this area had been lost, I suspect the entire coalition effort in southern Afghanistan would have been lost.  Although the CF was significantly  under resourced, the US was a) very slow to differentiate Afpak vice Iraq as the centre of gravity and b) slow to surge troops into the area.  It wasn't until around 2010-2011 that the major surge around KC occurred.

 

[Redeye]

Good critique by Mr Fisher - he is right about KC.  It was vital ground, but that doesn't really mean you need to occupy it; the key terrain of the outlying districts was where to be.  If anything, the NDS were capable of dealing with KC.

And there was much success for Canadians there. Interestingly, the Canadian strategy in Dand district features prominently into a USMC publication I was just reading yesterday as we clean out our library.

Mr. Fisher's recap jogged my memory about things like the Manley Report etc, and seems to be about spot on.

 

[fake penguin]

I'am curious from form members on here that have done multiple  tours in kandahar. Did you see a big difference between 2006-2009 and after 2009 when the surge happened?

 

[fraserdw]

Re-visionist BS, history will remember us.

 

[Loachman]

I'am curious from form members on here that have done multiple  tours in kandahar. Did you see a big difference between 2006-2009 and after 2009 when the surge happened?

Yes. Huge - Big Picture-wise at least.

 

[Armymedic]

It is my opinion that we held our own in Kandahar province and kept K City from falling back into Taliban control.

But I could not credibly argue the point that with only 2000 troops in a small portions of the province that we made a substantial difference in the entire area (the Marouf region was largely ignored); esp when debating against the American view of how much better conditions turned out to be a mere 6 months after the US surged in troops (albeit several yr to late) into the area.

 

[Old Sweat]

Here is a link to an oped piece in the Chronicle-Herald regarding the book. Note that it appears, I say again appears, to be based on the excerpt that appeared in the Washington Post and not on analysis of the whole book. (I heard part of an interview with the author of the book last week and the conversation was solely about the interplay between the various factions in the US establishment. I have ordered a copy from Amazon and will post a review in due course.)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/113008-taylor-new-book-shows-rewriting-of-afghanistan-war-story-has-begun

 

[cupper]

Here is a link to an oped piece in the Chronicle-Herald regarding the book. Note that it appears, I say again appears, to be based on the excerpt that appeared in the Washington Post and not on analysis of the whole book. (I heard part of an interview with the author of the book last week and the conversation was solely about the interplay between the various factions in the US establishment. I have ordered a copy from Amazon and will post a review in due course.)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/113008-taylor-new-book-shows-rewriting-of-afghanistan-war-story-has-begun

I heard a couple of interviews on NPR while traveling last week and the Canadian angle was only a brief mention. The majority of time it was critical of the political decisions and higher ups at the Pentagon over ruling or ignoring the advise of the ground commanders.

 

[dogger1936]

"Another bone of contention raised by the Americans was Canada’s woeful teeth-to-tail ratio for those troops actually deployed in theatre. According to the book, barely 600 Canadians out of a contingent of 2,830 were sent on combat missions outside the wire. The rest of our soldiers presumably relaxed safely inside the perimeter, enjoying Tim Hortons coffee and playing street hockey."

We barely had enough to do OP duty at times. We collapsed COP's we couldn't support manpower wise or with materials effectively. We went out on operations to places we would leave in a week and never return during roto.

Anyone remember Hadji, Zangabad, Mushan?

Remember leaving one roto and coming back to see 50m of route fosters paved on your next deployment? What a total waste of manpower and money.

Sure we got some great TIC's in with some good body counts at the end of a OP...but then what? We would leave and go back to the FOB. Abandon the area which was destroyed by maneuver damage for the Taliban to come back in and exploit.

I never seen any improvement aside from the ANA's ability.

We did what we could with the troops we had. The running joke of "I AM SPARTA" (i.e 300 men) wasn't far fetched.

 

[dimsum]

"Another bone of contention raised by the Americans was Canada’s woeful teeth-to-tail ratio for those troops actually deployed in theatre. According to the book, barely 600 Canadians out of a contingent of 2,830 were sent on combat missions outside the wire. The rest of our soldiers presumably relaxed safely inside the perimeter, enjoying Tim Hortons coffee and playing street hockey."

I find it ironic that the American military, of all organizations, are slagging another country's teeth-to-tail ratio.  I'd be very surprised if 1 in 5 US military personnel are the "teeth".

 

[dogger1936]

I find it ironic that the American military, of all organizations, are slagging another country's teeth-to-tail ratio.  I'd be very surprised if 1 in 5 US military personnel are the "teeth".

They still put a Stryker brigade where we had less than 600 men. A few more teeth.

 

[Old Sweat]

I am posting this story from the Winnipeg Free Press, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act, here because it seems to build on the attempt to blame Canada. If, in particular, UK General Richards is quoted correctly, then he either has been saddly misinformed or his recollections were incorrect.



U.S, British criticism of Canada's military efforts in Afghanistan 'wrong'

By: Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press

Posted: 3:01 AM

American and British criticism of Canada's long and often bloody military efforts in Afghanistan has a ring of revisionism that ignores key facts, experts say. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Colin Perkel

TORONTO - American and British criticism of Canada's long and often bloody military efforts in Afghanistan has a ring of revisionism that ignores key facts, experts say.

In particular, they say, the notion that blithely optimistic Canadians were reluctant to ask for outside help as they struggled alone in Kandahar province, which had been abandoned by the Americans in favour of Iraq, is ludicrous.

"The war (in Afghanistan) isn't exactly going well, so people look around and try to fix blame wherever they can," said Canadian military historian, Jack Granatstein.

"The Americans and Brits are good at this historically."

In his recent book "Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan," Washington Post author Rajiv Chandrasekaran criticizes Canada for only having about 800 on-the-ground combat troops to cover the province.

He cites one U.S. adviser as saying Canadian soldiers were "focused on reconstruction activities, not providing security."

The author also writes the U.S. didn't push Ottawa to send more troops into Kandahar city because it didn't want to "dictate" to the Canadians or embarrass them, and that Canada was "reluctant" to ask for help.

"That's wrong," Granatstein said. "We tried repeatedly to get assistance. Basically, no help came."

In fact, a secret communique from then-U.S. ambassador in Kabul Ronald Neumann to Washington brass in September 2006 — amid Canada's bloody battle known as Operation Medusa — notes Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser appealed for more troops.

The Wikileaks-published cable cites Fraser as telling a delegation of the North Atlantic Council about the troop juggling that was already going on.

"If I were king for a day, I'd request several battle groups," Fraser said. "We can balance forces, but not forever."

Promised French help never materialized, and although the U.S. did send in some troops, it would take several years — when President Barack Obama finally turned his attention to Afghanistan — that an American "surge" began to offer relief to the Canadians.

A senior Canadian commander, who asked not to be identified, said Canada had been looking for partners, and the eventual flood of American troops into the province underscored the crying need for added strength.

"The U.S. shift from Iraq to Afghanistan put sufficient forces into play to begin to do a better job of counter-insurgency," the commander said.

"No amount of criticism or 'woulda, shoulda, couldas' even comes close to the game-changing nature of the surge."

In another book on the war, author Sandy Gall cites British Gen. David Richards — who commanded allied forces in southern Afghanistan in 2006-2007 — as suggesting under-resourced Canadians were never up to the Kandahar job in the first place.

According to the book, British forces only ended up in neighbouring Helmand because Ottawa wanted the "prestigious" role of taking on Kandahar province.

David Bercuson, who with Granatstein authored a paper on the lessons of the war, said in an interview the British were "wildly under-strength" in Helmand, and their tactics were "little short of stupid."

Canadian forces struggling to keep a tenuous grip on Kandahar — key Taliban territory — were forced to rescue British troops in Helmand on several occasions.

Granatstein and Bercuson — senior research fellows with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute — conceded Canada made mistakes.

For one thing, they argue, Canadians were poorly prepared for their first shooting war in 50 years because they simply didn't know what they were getting into in Kandahar.

The strength and determination of the insurgency caught the Canadian military leadership by surprise. Nevertheless, the troops managed — if barely — to stop the insurgency from overrunning the province.

"The Canadians fought well, didn't have enough troops (but) did a good job nonetheless holding Kandahar province, which was a critical area for the Taliban," Granatstein said. "We stopped it from falling."

In his memoir, Britain's former Afghan ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles notes Canada's unrelenting and seemingly misguided optimism — particularly on display by Chris Alexander, his Canadian counterpart and now a Conservative MP.

Granatstein called the optimism — also displayed by successive Canadian commanders — as a "transparent PR move" given the increasing antipathy in Canada toward the Afghan war effort.

Alexander did not respond to a request for comment.

In reality, it is still early days in gaining the solid perspective only time — and the release of mounds of documents that remain under wraps along with information from still reticent key players — can bring.

In the interim, Bercuson said, Canada risks having its mission defined by others.

"There's a danger that will happen," Bercuson said. "Until we start getting stuff out of our own, we won't be able to define our mission there."

 

[observor 69]

Interesting article, Thanks OS.

 

[Old Sweat]

I am going to offer an opinion about the attempts to blame Canada and the response by Granatstein and Bercuson.

This was nothing new and it was particularly in favour in some British circles when Montgomery's generalship and command style began to come under attack. The gist of the arguments was that it wasn't really his fault; instead the Canadians undermined him with their incompetence. While we were not above reproach, this largely tended to ignore some quite notable clangers like Villers-Bocage on 13 June and Goodwood on 18 July. The Brits had also fired one corps commander and at least two division commanders and declared one division non-effective and disbanded another. It was quite interesting that none or at least most of our detractors did not cite any Canadian sources or seek to interview any of the players who were still alive. For the most part, it successfully deflected criticism of Montgomery onto Crerar et al.

I suggest that in the case of Kandahar province, examination of sources and citations may show something similar. As the book has yet to become available in Canada (I have a copy on order) I may be in incorrect here. If so, I apologize in advance. One example - Rajiv Chandrasekaran cites an American civilian expert who claimed we had no more than 600 troops outside the wire, but apparently did not attempt to confirm this from Canadian sources. That is not good intelligence analysis, journalism or historical research.

Just as I would not be afraid to compare Totalize to Goodwood, I would welcome an objective analysis of the early British operations, tactics and equipment in Helmand against the performance of TFs 1-06 through 3-07.

 

[LieutenantPrivate]

They still put a Stryker brigade where we had less than 600 men. A few more teeth.

I have to agree.  The problem wasnt with the individual Canadian troops.  They wanted to fight.  The problem is the lack of aggression and risk adverse nature of some of our leadership.  Argue what you want, but its true.  We are very much a logistics-based army.  Too many pencil-pushers, not enough fighters.
Hate away....

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I have to agree.  The problem wasnt with the individual Canadian troops.  They wanted to fight.  The problem is the lack of aggression and risk adverse nature of some of our leadership.  Argue what you want, but its true.  We are very much a logistics-based army.  Too many pencil-pushers, not enough fighters.
Hate away....

Actually, the problem is exactly the opposite of how you have described it.  If anything, we have far too few logisticians and our "fighters" pay lip service to logistical planning.