Canadian Soldiers Help to Capture Terrorism Suspect

KABUL -- A high-ranking terrorism suspect has been captured in a late-night raid by a heavily armed joint Afghan-Canadian team, North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials said yesterday in Kabul.

"The arrested person was a suspected senior member of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin" and "posed an imminent threat to NATO," said Commander Chris Henderson, a spokesman for the 6,000-strong NATO force deployed in and around Kabul. He would not name the suspect.

More than 100 heavily armed Canadian soldiers in armoured vehicles supported Afghan police in the raid on a rural compound in Charar Asiab, west of the city, but orders from Canada's top general in Afghanistan prevented Canadian journalists from observing.

The Hezb-e-Islami group is headed by Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, a former Afghan prime minister who spent years in exile in Iran and is now allied with Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants who are trying to drive foreign forces out of the country.

The group has been blamed for several attacks on North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Kabul, including the antitank mines that killed two Canadian soldiers last fall and the suicide bombers who killed a British and Canadian soldier in January.

The raid against Mr. Gulbuddin's followers is among the most aggressive and dangerous Afghan operations by Canadian soldiers since the Taliban was overthrown in late 2001. It resulted in six people being taken into custody, Cdr. Henderson said. They are being interrogated by Afghan authorities.

Canadian Lieutenant-General Rick Hillier, commander of the International Security Assistance Force, banned "embedded journalists" from all such operations shortly after he took over command of all NATO forces in Afghanistan in February. At the time, officials said the reason was protecting operational security.

But Gen. Hillier has since told journalists that his main concern was that embedded reporting, in which journalists are assigned to, and remain with, a specific military unit, had failed to give sufficient credit to the leading role played by Afghan police.

NATO is sensitive to any suggestion that it takes a leading or even independent role in security operations in Kabul. Although the city police and the National Security Directorate lack the firepower or the training of NATO troops, all such operations are led by Afghans, with foreign soldiers playing backup roles.

As long as raids such as Monday's encounter no resistance, this support role remains a reality. But if one develops into a firefight, then the array of military power assembled by the Canadian contingent for the latest operation will come to the forefront.

"Canadians don't realize how great their soldiers are," Gen. Hillier said in an interview. "They can find the bad guys and take them out, and they can find the good guys and support them," he said.

It was more than a year ago that Ottawa decided to follow the Pentagon's example and give Canadians a better understanding of what their soldiers faced in the field by "embedding" journalists in deployed units and including them on operations.

Although Gen. Hillier has agreed to review the Canadian policies, the current configuration of the rules in effect means that journalists are welcome only on routine patrols.

2 September 1998
Canadian Military to pay for soldiers' sex changes
by David Pugliese

Defence Department to fund some costly 'gender reassignment' surgery

The Department of National Defence has decided to pay in certain cases for the "gender reassignment" operations of soldiers who want to undergo sex changes.

Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire approved the policy change in July. Previously, the Canadian Forces had refused to fund sex-change operations, which can cost from $10,000 to $20,000.

"We have made the decision that in certain cases we will fund the surgery," Col. Scott Cameron, director of medical services at National Defence Medical Centre, said yesterday.

The issue surfaced in June after news leaked out that the military was considering paying for a sex-change operation for a soldier who works at the Tunney's Pasture government complex. The soldier had made a formal request for "gender reassignment" surgery.

Col. Cameron said that because of privacy issues he cannot discuss whether that particular soldier has been approved for a sex-change operation but only that there has been a change in Canadian Forces policy. The soldier is currently the only one who has requested such surgery. The military has declined to identify him.

Col. Cameron said the policy was changed because more is known about what has been called a "gender-identity disorder."

"There's more known about how effective the surgery is in returning people to a level of functioning consistent with military service," he added.

The military had not gone public with the policy change but the news was leaked to Reform deputy defence critic Leon Benoit and Esprit de Corps magazine yesterday.

Mr. Benoit said with all the financial problems being faced by soldiers and their families it is astonishing that the Defence Department would pay for the sex-change operation.

"This is complete insanity," said Mr. Benoit. "You have military families still having to go to food banks and soldiers going without basic necessities such as boots and uniforms. I just don't see a sex-change operation as a basic necessity."

Mr. Benoit said he has been trying to get help, so far unsuccessfully from the Defence Department, for one family of a soldier injured in a parachute accident.

That family has asked for $500 to help cover child-care and some travel costs while the wife accompanies her injured husband for regular medical treatment, he added.

"They can pay for a sex-change operation but have trouble trying to come up with $500 for them," Mr. Benoit said.

In other cases, wounded soldiers have had to fight military bureaucracy for everything from wheelchairs to artificial limbs. Sex-change operations are covered by medicare in Ontario, although the procedure is not performed in the province.

In the past six years, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan has paid for 46 sex-change operations at a cost of about $120,000 a year.

But military personnel aren't covered under provincial health plans. Instead, the Canadian Forces administers medical services to them.

Col. Cameron said sex-change operations, however, are only done in a few civilian centres.

He also denied that the policy of paying for sex-change operations comes at the expense of other medical care for soldiers.

"We have never not paid for required therapy on the grounds of economics," he said. "The suggestion we're going to pay for this therapy and not pay for some other required medical service is just not true."

Copyright © 1998 The Ottawa Citizen
http://www.pfc.org.uk/news/1998/ca-mil.htm

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