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read this article, pretty good.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=10fb76c0-661b-4afb-957f-5c0140ec4018
Canadian soldiers need all clear to fight for a chance at winning
Nigel Hannaford, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, August 23, 2008
It is a voice from the dead, telling Canadians how easy it is for the Taliban to make the weapons with which they kill Canadian soldiers.
Priddis freelance documentary filmmaker Garth Pritchard chokes up. On the screen is footage he took four years ago of Sgt. Shawn Eades, then a master-corporal, today one of the fallen on Afghanistan's high and dusty plain.
Eades is standing in the middle of an Afghan bomb factory. In a very matter-of-fact way, he describes contraptions.
"This is a detonator. They took a Bic pen, melted the end, some powder, a few wires. Join the contacts. Saw blades. They make a pressure plate for a mine from this."
He lifts a rag covering a cart like a table cloth. It's the kind of cart Afghan peasants use to take produce to market. Installed beneath is a crude rocket launcher, barely more than a piece of four-inch dryer exhaust pipe.
It's the kind of weapon the Taliban use when they want to attack a Canadian patrol in an Afghan market, and don't care how many of their compatriots they blow up in the process. Or sometimes, they just fill a car with explosive -- like the February day when 30 innocent Afghan shoppers were killed in an attack on a Canadian patrol.
"I lost a friend," Pritchard says of Eades. "He was the best, a true professional."
Eades was one of three Canadian combat engineers killed while performing route reconnaissance, when the vehicle in which they were travelling Thursday struck an improvised explosive device.
Pritchard, who has made a number of trips to Afghanistan and shot hundreds of hours of film there, says that sounds like a mission when combat engineers make routine checks of culverts, a common hiding place for IEDs.
Pritchard's footage also showed Eades handling the raw materials of these bombs -- the very weapon that killed him.
"We're losing over there," says Pritchard, who returned from his last Afghan filming session three weeks ago. "Four years ago, somebody told us where this bomb factory was. But, no more. What's changed?"
Senior army officers don't say that. "I don't know that the Taliban are getting any stronger," says Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, commander of the Forces in Kandahar. "What I would say is that they're much more aggressive this fighting season than they've been in the past."
Nor is the Taliban "holding any of the ground they're attacking us on. . . . So, in the case of an IED strike, they will inflict some casualties, but they don't control the road that they inflicted the casualties on."
Trouble is, until one can travel the road safely, neither does NATO.
So, are we losing or not?
In the sense NATO forces can stay in Afghanistan as long as the Afghan government wants them, no. We're not talking of the kind of military defeat the Russians suffered a generation ago, when their position simply became untenable.
But neither are NATO forces being allowed to win, something Pritchard attributes to restrictive rules of engagement.
The Predator is an armed aerial surveillance drone with remarkable and classified abilities to detect targets.
"The Predator is U.S. property. Normally we don't have the use of it, but one day we did and it picks up three bad guys. They're the senior management in the area, we think they're the people behind the big jail break. We ask for permission to launch (A missile). It's denied, too many other people around. We see these people get in a truck. They drive off. Rules of engagement. "
Another film clip. A Canadian colonel instructs a captain to expose his men to enemy fire. "What he's saying is we know they're there, but we can't shoot at them unless they shoot at us. Rules of engagement. It's like we're more worried about their innocent lives than our innocent lives, so some Canadian kid has to stick his neck out. Canadian commanders know how to win this war. We should let them do it. But we don't. We're in a war, but we're treating it like peacemaking."
Years ago, I asked a Canadian general how Ottawa could possibly play fast and loose with Canadian peacekeepers' lives, by sending them out with unloaded guns. He shrugged and said when you signed up, you agreed to become the Queen's unthinking enforcer, to be used as her government saw fit. Nobody said it was going to be fair, or make sense.
Nor is it the first time there's been a suggestion that western soldiers have been asked to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. Talk to a Vietnam veteran. But, creating a desert and calling it peace isn't the Canadian way, either.
I do not believe orders came from the Prime Minister's Office to treat innocent Afghan lives as more valuable than those of Canadian soldiers. However, one would have to be wilfully blind to ignore the political realities: Neither Canadian deaths on a large scale, nor accidental Afghan deaths as a result of Canadian military action, is good news at Sussex Drive with an election in 14 months at the max.
Pritchard says the rules of engagement should be changed so Canadian soldiers can win, or they should be brought home.
Perhaps officialdom is right. But, obviously, the victory parade won't be soon.
nhannaford@theherald.canwest.com
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=10fb76c0-661b-4afb-957f-5c0140ec4018
Canadian soldiers need all clear to fight for a chance at winning
Nigel Hannaford, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, August 23, 2008
It is a voice from the dead, telling Canadians how easy it is for the Taliban to make the weapons with which they kill Canadian soldiers.
Priddis freelance documentary filmmaker Garth Pritchard chokes up. On the screen is footage he took four years ago of Sgt. Shawn Eades, then a master-corporal, today one of the fallen on Afghanistan's high and dusty plain.
Eades is standing in the middle of an Afghan bomb factory. In a very matter-of-fact way, he describes contraptions.
"This is a detonator. They took a Bic pen, melted the end, some powder, a few wires. Join the contacts. Saw blades. They make a pressure plate for a mine from this."
He lifts a rag covering a cart like a table cloth. It's the kind of cart Afghan peasants use to take produce to market. Installed beneath is a crude rocket launcher, barely more than a piece of four-inch dryer exhaust pipe.
It's the kind of weapon the Taliban use when they want to attack a Canadian patrol in an Afghan market, and don't care how many of their compatriots they blow up in the process. Or sometimes, they just fill a car with explosive -- like the February day when 30 innocent Afghan shoppers were killed in an attack on a Canadian patrol.
"I lost a friend," Pritchard says of Eades. "He was the best, a true professional."
Eades was one of three Canadian combat engineers killed while performing route reconnaissance, when the vehicle in which they were travelling Thursday struck an improvised explosive device.
Pritchard, who has made a number of trips to Afghanistan and shot hundreds of hours of film there, says that sounds like a mission when combat engineers make routine checks of culverts, a common hiding place for IEDs.
Pritchard's footage also showed Eades handling the raw materials of these bombs -- the very weapon that killed him.
"We're losing over there," says Pritchard, who returned from his last Afghan filming session three weeks ago. "Four years ago, somebody told us where this bomb factory was. But, no more. What's changed?"
Senior army officers don't say that. "I don't know that the Taliban are getting any stronger," says Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson, commander of the Forces in Kandahar. "What I would say is that they're much more aggressive this fighting season than they've been in the past."
Nor is the Taliban "holding any of the ground they're attacking us on. . . . So, in the case of an IED strike, they will inflict some casualties, but they don't control the road that they inflicted the casualties on."
Trouble is, until one can travel the road safely, neither does NATO.
So, are we losing or not?
In the sense NATO forces can stay in Afghanistan as long as the Afghan government wants them, no. We're not talking of the kind of military defeat the Russians suffered a generation ago, when their position simply became untenable.
But neither are NATO forces being allowed to win, something Pritchard attributes to restrictive rules of engagement.
The Predator is an armed aerial surveillance drone with remarkable and classified abilities to detect targets.
"The Predator is U.S. property. Normally we don't have the use of it, but one day we did and it picks up three bad guys. They're the senior management in the area, we think they're the people behind the big jail break. We ask for permission to launch (A missile). It's denied, too many other people around. We see these people get in a truck. They drive off. Rules of engagement. "
Another film clip. A Canadian colonel instructs a captain to expose his men to enemy fire. "What he's saying is we know they're there, but we can't shoot at them unless they shoot at us. Rules of engagement. It's like we're more worried about their innocent lives than our innocent lives, so some Canadian kid has to stick his neck out. Canadian commanders know how to win this war. We should let them do it. But we don't. We're in a war, but we're treating it like peacemaking."
Years ago, I asked a Canadian general how Ottawa could possibly play fast and loose with Canadian peacekeepers' lives, by sending them out with unloaded guns. He shrugged and said when you signed up, you agreed to become the Queen's unthinking enforcer, to be used as her government saw fit. Nobody said it was going to be fair, or make sense.
Nor is it the first time there's been a suggestion that western soldiers have been asked to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. Talk to a Vietnam veteran. But, creating a desert and calling it peace isn't the Canadian way, either.
I do not believe orders came from the Prime Minister's Office to treat innocent Afghan lives as more valuable than those of Canadian soldiers. However, one would have to be wilfully blind to ignore the political realities: Neither Canadian deaths on a large scale, nor accidental Afghan deaths as a result of Canadian military action, is good news at Sussex Drive with an election in 14 months at the max.
Pritchard says the rules of engagement should be changed so Canadian soldiers can win, or they should be brought home.
Perhaps officialdom is right. But, obviously, the victory parade won't be soon.
nhannaford@theherald.canwest.com
