Canadian Troops Sieze Control Over Taliban Insurgents

Form a Story by Tom Blackwell
via Canwest News service (National Post)
November 1, 2008
Kandahar, Afghanistan


Canada's Afghanistan mission commander said on Oct. 31 that his troops have secured a series of important victories.

Brig. Gen. Denis Thompson says Canadians have eliminated Taliban commanders, seized bomb factories and broken up supply centers.
With help of Pakistani security forces on the border, Canadian forces plan to deny the insurgents their safe havens over the winter.

"We've faced some interesting challenges," he told reporters. "For every challenge, however, there are successes that we don't hear enough about . . . This summer we were able to significantly disrupt the insurgents' command and control network. Many of their mid- and senior-level commanders were neutralized, including several key IED experts."

Also,heavy-lift helicopters that Canada is expected to acquire from the U.S. by this January should tactically help "push troops deeper, with a larger force into insurgent country," he said.

Thompson went on to say that there is a ""perception" in Afghanistan that security is deteriorating due to a suicide-bomber that blew himself up inside a heavily-guarded government building in Kabul.

He blamed that sense in part on the Taliban's tactical shift to more bombings and other terrorist activity and less conventional warfare, though Canadian officers have been making much the same point for almost two years now.

Thompson also said that Afghan police have arrested three people thought to be responsible for several of the targeted assassinations that have terrorized Kandahar City.

Indeed, there have been setbacks recently, such as the brazen escape of 1,100 militants and criminals from a prison in Kandahar City in June and a subsequent assault by hundreds of insurgents just north of the city.

Elissa Goldberg, the top Canadian civilian official in Kandahar, conceded that the prison break was a "challenge and a setback."
She lists a "phenomenal" list of achievements Canada has made on the development front, including:

- The launch of a $50-million project to refurbish the Dhala irrigation dam;

- The establishment of a new police training center;

- Counter-IED tutoring for officers to help them respond more safely to roadside bombs;

- Work on 50 new schools, and plans to train 3,000 teachers over three years; and

- Enrolling another 7,000 Kandaharis in an adult literacy program.