Canadians Help Corral Taliban as Major Operation Begins
Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News • Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Can...923/story.html
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan —
The Royal Canadian Regiment battle group established blocking screens to try to trap the Taliban this weekend as U.S. and Afghan forces swooped down on the Horn of Panjwaii, which has been one of insurgents’ last strongholds in Kandahar.
The long-anticipated air assault to clear the Horn, where many Canadians have lost their lives in recent years, is part of a much larger operation that has been evolving for weeks. The crucial part of the campaign in western Panjwaii was declared to have officially begun Saturday, with about 800 Afghan troops supported by a much smaller number of Americans, the New York Times quoted Maj.-Gen Nick Carter, NATO’s commander in the South, as saying.
To support the operation, Canadian engineers have recently built trenches, berms and other barriers on the eastern margins of the Horn. They are designed to funnel travellers into checkpoints manned by Afghan and Canadian forces. Other Canadian soldiers have taken up key ground near the Horn to deter insurgents from trying to run this gauntlet.
“(The Canadian) job is primarily to enable the operations in the Horn of Panjwaii by stopping uncontrolled movement to the east,” said Lt.-Col. Doug Claggett, Task Force Kandahar’s chief of staff.
The farming area about 50 kilometres west of Kandahar City is home to about 8,000 Afghans, many of whom are well known for being sympathetic to the Taliban and its leader, Mullah Omar, who was born in the area. It has long been used by the Taliban as a bed-down area and logistics hub for insurgents headed to the provincial capital.
Clearing this area of Taliban is considered necessary because “the Horn of Panjwaii has been an area that has not had the same security emphasis for the last little while,” Lt.-Col. Claggett said. The intent now was, he said “to provide the same security effect in the west of Panjwaii as elsewhere.”
If the operation is successful, it would undoubtedly enhance security in the much more densely populated Canadian sector, too, because “anything that happens in one part of Panjwaii effects the other part,” he said.
Holding the Horn has proven to be a persistent problem for NATO since Canadian troops arrived in the South in 2006. The first task force to take a crack at the area was led by Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant in 2007. Not a shot was fired during Operation Baaz Tsuka and the area remained quiet for several months before security began to deteriorate.
A year later, in a bloody operation that lasted several months, Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche’s task force eventually launched an attack on the Horn from north of the Arghandab River. But the small Canadian force, which was still virtually alone in Kandahar, did not have anywhere near enough troops to hold the area, nor was the Afghan government able at that time to provide sufficient security personnel or administrators to maintain effective control.
As a result of these shortcomings, Canada closed several patrol bases it had established in the area.
After the Canadians quit the Horn, the Taliban moved in to fill the vacuum created with large numbers, heavily sowing the area with homemade landmines and meting out their own particularly violent form of Islamic justice.
“They have had courts set up, but not in one specific area,” said Lt.-Col. Roger Cotton, who does future battle planning for Task Force Kandahar.
“It is an area where they have had freedom of movement because there has not been enough GIROA (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) and coalition presence.”
Should the campaign in the Horn and others that have taken place in the Canadian sector in Panjwaii finally result in an enduring Afghan and NATO presence, “if they (insurgents) come back in the spring, it is going to be a lot harder for them to establish a foothold,” Lt.-Col. Cotton said.
This weekend’s assault involved far more troops than Canada and the Afghans were able to devote to this task in the past.
The effort has been enormously helped by the recent arrival of more than 10,000 U.S. combat troops in Kandahar as well as a big increase in the number of Afghan soldiers available.
Since the U.S. troop surge and the arrival of additional Afghan forces, Canada’s task force has been able to concentrate almost its entire focus on the Panjwaii and Dand districts.
As well as transferring command responsibility to U.S. forces for Kandahar City, Arghandab and Zhari at the beginning of July, the Canadians handed control for the Horn of Panjwaii directly to NATO’s Regional Command South during that month.
