CREDIT: Jim Farrell Brigadier-General David Fraser: "I am confident we will make a positive impact for Afghans."
Posted on 11/15/2005 5:48:01 AM PST by NorthOf45
General readies his 'a-team' for harshest test since Korea
Southern Afghanistan
Chris Wattie
National Post
November 15, 2005
CREDIT: Jim Farrell Brigadier-General David Fraser: "I am confident we will make a positive impact for Afghans."
The general who is to lead more than 2,000 Canadian soldiers into their biggest combat mission since the Korean War has shaken up his command, saying he is taking only his "A Team" into the dangerous region of southern Afghanistan to hunt the Taliban.
Brigadier-General David Fraser has fired some of his most senior officers and reassigned several others just before the mission begins in a few weeks amid renewed truculence by Taliban warlords.
"I make no bones about it," Brig.-Gen. Fraser told the National Post, shortly after returning from a two-week reconnaissance trip to the region. "This is going to be dangerous and I'm going to make sure I have the A Team with me to do what is necessary ... and to make sure that we are successful."
Yesterday, the Taliban rejected President Hamid Karzai's plea to halt attacks and join Afghanistan's process of national reconciliation.
Its fighters killed a German peacekeeper and two civilians in two suicide car bomb attacks in Kabul. In each attack, insurgents rammed a car into a vehicle belonging to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
"We have plans for more of the same," Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah told Reuters via satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
Brig.-Gen. Fraser will take command in January of all coalition forces in the rugged mountains and deserts of southern Afghanistan, replacing an American general based in the southern city of Kandahar. He will have more than 2,000 Canadian troops under his control along with another 4,000 U.S., British, Dutch and Australian troops and squadrons of coalition fighter-bombers and helicopters.
He says the mission is perhaps the most important the Canadian military has undertaken in decades.
"I believe it is significant -- it shows a lot of trust that the United States has for Canada in allowing us to take on such a significant leadership role," Brig.-Gen. Fraser said.
"It is a big step. We are a key member in fighting the global war on terrorism. We're going into the heartland of the Taliban and taking the fight to them."
And while training the fledgling Afghan National Army and local police will be an important part of the brigade's mission, he says in no uncertain terms that his troops are not going to Kandahar for peacekeeping.
"We will be conducting operations against the Taliban and the warlords and their militias," he said bluntly. "We'll be conducting combat operations."
Bill Graham, Canada's Defence Minister, and General Rick Hillier, the head of the Canadian Forces, have both publicly warned of the inherent danger in next year's mission and the possibility of Canadian casualties.
Brig.-Gen. Fraser acknowledged the risk and said that while his soldiers are prepared to deal with the danger, their families are growing increasingly worried.
"My wife's not happy," he said, a touch ruefully.
"She's concerned, as she should be. But this is not my first mission ... this will be my sixth mission going overseas so she understands what I'm going through. But she's a great trooper and she's supporting me because she knows that this is important. We're helping out people less fortunate than us."
But Senator Colin Kenny, chairman of the Senate defence committee, wonders whether the Canadian public is as tough as Ms. Fraser.
"There hasn't been a national debate about this," he said. "I don't see the kind of national commitment that says, 'Yes, this is worth sending our guys over there ... that this is worth our neighbour's kid dying over there.' "
"I don't think they [the government] have made their case to the public for that."
For the past six months, Brig.-Gen. Fraser has been putting the officers and men of his headquarters and battlegroup, based on 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton, through a series of gruelling training exercises.
To prepare for search and destroy missions in the mountains around Kandahar, they have been put through special high-altitude training in the Rockies and have just completed a month of intensive "war-fighting training" at CFB Wainwright, Alta.
Brig.-Gen. Fraser says his soldiers will form a fast-moving, hard-hitting force to go after bandits, local warlords' private armies and Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters who are still roaming a region larger than Ontario.
"It is the birthplace of the Taliban, they have a lot of safe havens there, but I am confident that we will go in there and make a positive impact for Afghans and degrade and defeat the ability of the Taliban to do what they're doing," he said.
"We have a very detailed list of things that we are looking at doing ... to achieve these things. But I'm not going to get into the details here."
As a side note, Sen. Kenny is a liberal ... go figure.
Canadian Military Ping
A Canadian BTTT !
Canadian Military Ping
Please FReepmail me to get on or off this Canada ping list.
It's great to see our troops doing more than "peacekeeping", and it's great to see there are still some real men in Canada. I hope they all come back, but Canadians need to understand that there are things worth dying for -- and it's not socialized health care.
This guy is a great patriot and understands the war on terror like most liberals fail to do. Senators in Canada are just stooges of the Liberal Cabinet.
A thanks to Canada and her military.
Trust me--the Candian Forces, despite being constantly betrayed by the liberal scum in the Canadian Govt, are FIRST CLASS. Like Australia and New Zealand, they have the "Small Army Syndrome" (this is NOT a slight). They are small, so they HAVE to be good. And they are.
God Bless these troops in their battle against evil.
Training and troop quality has never been Canada's problem. In WWI, and in the WWII theatres where they fought (especially Italy and Operation Market Garden), they were known as the most brutal, effective troops amongst the Allies. No fooling. They were the Allied stormtroopers, especially in WWI (the Entente's stormtroopers I should say).
But the Liberal government has consistently denied them the funds they need for doing their job. So there's a culture of robbing Peter to pay Paul to equip any outgoing missions. Terrible, eh? It's tried to make the public forget them. It also seems like they want the military to disappear, making recruiting a very low priority.
I think we can give partial credit to the CPC for getting the public's attention on the military funding problem. We spend 600 million on Indian Affairs and can't equip our trops.
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