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[Fighting the good fight and waging the Good War to defend Western Civilization...in Kandahar. The U.S. and its wholly-owned subsidiary may not have fought 'shoulder-to-shoulder' since they slugged it out together in the aptly named Devil's Brigade in WWII, but the NATO neighbors bombed the civilian infrastructure - and the civilians themselves - of Yugoslavia with wild abandon in 1999. Canadian cannon fodder? Heavens no. Chretien's Foreign Legion - under U.S. control and not command, mind you - is fighting shoulder to shoulder with its fraternal equal in the already conquered, defenseless Afghan city of Kandahar. And Big Brother smiles approvingly.] The Toronto Star Jan. 10, 05:35 EDT Canada, U.S. to fight together, again Mitch Potter STAFF REPORTER When Canadian troops join U.S. forces in Kandahar next week, it will be the first time the two countries have fought shoulder to shoulder since the fabled Devil's Brigade battled its way to Rome in World War II. "What makes this assignment stand out in Technicolor is the fact that it's just us and the Americans in Kandahar, side by side," said retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, a veteran of nine Canadian peacekeeping missions. "To find anything comparable you have to go back to the days of the Devil's Brigade, which was half Canadian, half American, a force of 4,000 in total, going into Italy and becoming the first Allied soldiers to walk into Rome." And while the U.S. will lead those combined forces, MacKenzie dismissed caterwauling about loss of Canadian sovereignty and fears our troops may be used as cannon fodder as "just plain wrong." "The fact is Canada will control the destiny of its own forces. The confusion comes from a lack of understanding of two clearly defined NATO terms �`Operational Command� and `Operational Control.� Some people are using them interchangeably but they are very different things. "Our troops will be under Operational Control of the Americans. That means the U.S. commander cannot change the rules of engagement without first securing permission from Canada. It also means everything happens within each country's normal chain of command." Operational Command, MacKenzie explained, is not on the table for this mission. "If we gave them command rather than control, it would be saying `Do with them as you wish.� Some people may be confused by this important distinction, but the military is not. NATO has operated this way for a long time, and it works seamlessly." But just how Canada's marching orders � including a call to help hunt down and destroy pockets of Taliban and Al Qaeda resistance � will translate on the ground of Kandahar is anyone's guess. Barely a month ago, the ancient Afghan city of 300,000 ethnic Pashtuns on the south-central desert plain was the last bastion of the nearly routed Taliban and its one-eyed leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Today, Kandahar is still very much a city of men with guns, but now the toting happens under the fragile governorship of tribal warlord Gul Agha Sherzai, whose own reign of terror during the Afghan civil war of the early 1990s helped pave the way for the Taliban revolution to follow. Gul Agha wasted little time in ordering media from the city upon first taking control. Omar, meanwhile, is somewhere just over the horizon, laying low in any of three central Afghan provinces or Peshawar, Pakistan, depending on whom you believe. Unlike the giddy liberation of Kabul, Kandahar fell in relative silence. It slipped from the hands of one Pashtun leader to another in what Guardian correspondent Peter Beaumont called "the most Afghan of fashions. Not with the predicted bloodbath, but with the quiet evaporation of the Taliban's most senior commanders and a change of allegiance among the rank and file, many of whom had been press-ganged from the countryside." Doling out envelopes of Pakistani rupees to ensure the loyalty of competing commanders, Gul Agha appears as firmly in control of his corner of Afghanistan as can be thought possible. Reports this week from Kandahar describe a nervous return to pre-Taliban norms: weekly dogfights, once banned because of the gambling involved, again thrill the populace; the flying of kites, another Taliban taboo, dance each Friday over the city's skies. Yet Kandahar remains very much a city of men with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers, handheld weaponry is as ubiquitous as cellphones in downtown Toronto. And though banditry on the roads linking Kandahar with Kabul and Herat remains a threat, a trickle of refugees with nothing left to lose has begun to make its way back from the border middens of neighbouring Pakistan. But perhaps most noteworthy is what hasn't happened: with the devil they knew toppled by the devil they knew before him, battle-scarred Kandahar residents have largely welcomed the patrols of U.S. Marines and Special Forces with benign hope. Though as many as 300 Al Qaeda fighters are said to remain in the region, the Americans have yet to encounter the hostile guerrilla attacks so many predicted. That, then, is the best hope for the 750-strong Canadian battle group soon to take up residence in Kandahar for what might well be a very long stay. The Edmonton-based contingent � two companies of the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and a reconnaissance squadron from Lord Strathcona's Horse � are expected to comprise one-third of a combined force dominated by incoming reinforcements from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne, itself based in Fort Campbell, Ky. Though the combined forces' duties will include safeguarding aid shipments, roadways and key infrastructure, the relative intensity of a forewarned combat role in the hunting down of Taliban and Al Qaeda resistance is not yet known. "Any time you deploy people you do it with a situational awareness that's ongoing. That means briefings on the broad lay of the land, including culture, language, everything," Canadian spokesman Maj. Jamie Robertson said yesterday from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. "But details of those questions aren't likely to be made available. In any event, we can't speak to those issues as yet because the troops in Edmonton don't come under our operational control until they actually deploy." Unlike the fast-deploying Marines who established the American foothold in Kandahar, their replacements with the 101st Airborne are trained to hold territory for several months, or even years. That suggests Kandahar airport, where the 101st and their Canadian compatriots will be based, is likely to become a semi-permanent tent city known as a force provider or, more colloquially, a "city in a box," according to a New York Times report. These portable units include sturdy, pop-up canvas structures to house and feed hundreds of troops. Latrines, water-purifying systems and work facilities are included. MacKenzie, however, disputes the notion the incoming forces are about to dig themselves in with heavy installations. "Our Princess Patricia's 3rd Battalion will marry in very easily with the U.S. 101st Airborne, because both are very light and fast as things go," he said. "Both are considered rapid reaction because they can go `bare ass,� which means you leave with nothing but what�s in your rucksack and you do it now. "What I would anticipate the biggest job initially will be clearing the way for and safeguarding aid convoys through the riskier areas of the countryside. And probably coming back to Kandahar airport every week or so because it's a good home base and heading out again. "As for offensive missions, nobody can know how much fight will be left in that area a month from now, when the deployment is complete. If the last of the pockets of resistance have yet to capitulate, it's high on the list of probabilities that Canadians will participate in going after them." Coming from their base in Alberta, the Canadian troops aren't likely to struggle with the weather in this particular strip of southern Afghanistan. At 900 metres above sea level, Kandahar receives typical daytime temperature averages in the 4 to 10 Celsius range. Overnight lows can drop to minus 9 Celsius. Should the Canadians be called upon to venture beyond the desert plains of Kandahar into the surrounding foothills, however, the weather equation would change. Such a scenario is far from certain, particularly in the wake of the mounting wild goose chases for Osama bin Laden and Omar in the areas of Tora Bora and Kandahar's neighbouring provinces. New York Times correspondent Thom Shanker, who was allowed to spend the past week with a Special Forces team in Kandahar, reported the U.S. campaign is quickly changing from offensive to defensive in nature. "Since late October their (Special Forces) job was to infiltrate Afghanistan, organize feuding militias of Taliban opponents and, under a withering air campaign, take the offensive on the ground," Shanker wrote. "These days they are more likely to be found disarming unexploded bombs, trying to coax local warriors to turn in Stinger missiles for cash, and helping the fledgling government go about the job of rebuilding." But Shanker indicated the shift comes with extreme caution amid reports Kandahar may yet see violence against U.S. targets. "The commander of Special Forces for the Kandahar region, a lieutenant-colonel named Dave, said he had received reports of enemy plans for a retaliatory strike, more terrorist-style than a military assault, perhaps in the next week." The American units remain on high alert. Don't expect the Canadians to be any less so. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/ ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
