Operation Medusa includes troops from Canada, the United States, Denmark and Holland as well as Afghan security forces, with British support. 14 British soldiers were killed in a plane crash on Saturday.

What about the casualties on the other side?

NATO claims to have killed 200 in the first three days of the Operation. This figure is denied by the Taliban. On Tuesday, NATO claimed another 50 kills.

Canadian forces reported on Tuesday that they had up to 700 Taliban fighters, including between 300 and 400 "hardcore fighters" (I'm guessing that means the other 300-400 are actually civilians) trapped around the village of Pashmul, about 19 miles from Kandahar. In due course, they too will be slaughtered.

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The main civilian hospital in Kandahar reported that a 12-year-old girl was killed and nine other civilians treated for injuries from the fighting in Punjwai. A resident of Punjwai district said by telephone that many local people had been killed or injured.

"Bombings happen day and night," he said. "If one Taleban dies, three civilians also get killed. The joint forces fire upon anyone without making sure if he is a Taleb or not."

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Meanwhile, the Senlis Council issued another report on Tuesday. (Remember their last report in June?) This new report is entitled Afghanistan Five Years Later - The Return of the Taliban and can be read online.

Here's an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

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Five years after their removal from power, the Taliban is back and has strong psychological and de facto military control over half of Afghanistan. Having assumed responsibility for the country in 2001, the United States-led international community has failed to achieve stability and security in Afghanistan. Attacks are perpetrated on a daily basis; several provinces, particularly those of the South, considered safe just weeks ago, are now experiencing regular suicide bombings, murders, and ambushes.

The international military coalitions in Afghanistan – the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – are fuelling resentment and fear among the Afghan population. The distinctions between the two are extremely blurred, with the NATO-led ISAF now constantly engaged in war operations. Afghans see the international military coalitions as taking sides in a civil war situation, and as NATO-ISAF troops retreat to their fortified military compounds in southern Afghanistan, locals perceive that the Taliban-led insurgents are once again defeating global military powers.
...
Five years of internationally lauded democracy-building achievements in Afghanistan mask the growing scepticism with which Afghans view their central government. Increasingly, Afghans perceive that their government is accountable to international donors, and not to the Afghans themselves. In establishing democratic institutions, the international community raised expectations high, yet stood back as the United States and United Kingdom undercut the Afghan government’s ability to deliver on these expectations by forcing the adoption and implementation of militaristic counter-narcotics policies. Failed counter-narcotics policies have undermined the legitimacy of the Afghan government.

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
Time to return Afghanistan to the tender, loving care of the Taliban? Time to return Afghanistan into the hands of those who torture and murder women in the name of Allah?

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Dead is dead .... does it matter to a dead person whether they are killed in the name of Allah, or by accident by a "Warthog"?

Often a doctor will advise against an operation saying the consequences of NOT having the procedure are less than those of having it done.

Today's Globe and Mail carried a story on yesterday's fighting in the Panjwai region. It included the following observation:

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Later in the evening, a plume of fire and smoke could be seen rising several storeys high as the battles apparently destroyed a school building

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Somebody wisely decided to uninvite the A-10 Thunderbolt II jet fighter (nicknamed the Warthog) from the Halifax air show next weekend. This was the plane, you will recall, whose "friendly" pilot killed a Canadian soldier on Monday and wounded about 30 others.

I guess the prospect of parading this death machine before the people of Halifax was considered a bit too "in your face" in the circumstances.

Or maybe they were afraid of another "friendly fire" incident.

The rest of the weapons of mass death and destruction will, of course, continue to be on proud display at the show.

ETA: The air show's website continues to show the picture of the Warthog, with the notation that its attendance is "confirmed".

Interestingly, they are also featuring an appearance by the F-16 Fighting Falcon, similar to the one that killed four Canadian soldiers back in 2002. I guess we've gotten over that one by now, eh?

[ 06 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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NATO claims to have killed 200 in the first three days of the Operation. This figure is denied by the Taliban.

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Well of course, it's likely that in most of the fighting NATO isn't even fighting Taliban. Regional warlords are entering on the side of the Taliban (lets see, support taliban or burn my poppy crops...). NATO won't distinguish between a Taliban soldier and a local warlords fighters (they're all dirty terrorists... errr... sorry I mean cockroaches... anyway). I'm pretty sure American tactics in the region are designed to ensure the strength of the Taliban for many years ^^ Unfortunately our Canadian troops are jumping headlong down the same path. As long as we make it worth while for the warlords to ally with the Taliban, this is a completely unwinnable battle.

[ 06 September 2006: Message edited by: Noise ]

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Politically, the next rotation in six or seven months will be particularly sensitive for the Harper government. For the Royal 22nd Regiment (the Van Doos) will replace the Royal Canadian Regiment – and the coffins will be going back to Valcartier, Ste-Hyacinthe, Victoriaville and Sherbrooke, Que., where opposition to Canada's role in Afghanistan is already much higher than in the rest of Canada.

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"We cannot eliminate the Taliban, not militarily anyway," O'Connor told Reuters in an interview. "We've got to get them back to some kind of acceptable level, so they don't threaten other areas."

Fighting in Afghanistan is at its worst since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

The bloodiest violence is in the Taliban's spiritual heartland in Kandahar province in the south, where NATO forces launched their biggest offensive, Operation Medusa, against the resurgent guerrillas on Saturday.

Canada provides the backbone of the NATO operation in Kandahar, where it has has a battle group of about 970 soldiers.

At least 16 Canadian soldiers have died in combat in the past three months in the lead-up to and after NATO's July 31 takeover of southern Afghanistan from U.S. forces. A total 28 Canadian soldiers have now died in Afghanistan.
.....
At least five Canadian soldiers have died in Operation Medusa and 14 British troops were killed when their plane crashed early in the offensive.
.....
In Belgium, NATO's top commander of operations, General James Jones, said on Thursday the alliance had been taken by surprise by the extent of the violence in southern Afghanistan and urged allies to provide modest reinforcements.

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"We cannot eliminate the Taliban, not militarily anyway," O'Connor told Reuters in an interview. "We've got to get them back to some kind of acceptable level, so they don't threaten other areas

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In other words, we get the Taleban to withdraw into Pakistan until the day after Canadian troops leave.

Then they come back in full force.

This is just a public relations strategy which will sacrifice Canadian soldiers for a two or three year period. After a decent interval, Afghanistan will collapse into factions, just as it has when other imperial powers pulled out.

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
Time to return Afghanistan to the tender, loving care of the Taliban? Time to return Afghanistan into the hands of those who torture and murder women in the name of Allah?

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In the name of Allah? Good gracious no! We want to kill them ourselves, in the name of... whatever it is that we stand for.

[ 07 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Interestingly, they are also featuring an appearance by the F-16 Fighting Falcon, similar to the one that killed four Canadian soldiers back in 2002.

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Did the plane do the killing? Or was it the bomb?

Perhaps the pilot?

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Originally posted by dackle:

Lefties really do have difficulty with the concept that inanimate hunks of metal need a human operator before they "do" anything.

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Originally posted by dackle:
Actually I think the wings are structured unevenly. Especially the right one, thus giving the aircraft a right-wing bias.

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The small titanium cord holds things in place until the tail starts out of alignment.

Latest word from the print edition of the Globe and Mail is that Operation Medusa is having a real impact – on the infrastructure and environment of the Panjwai region:

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Engineers used an armoured bulldozer to carve a new road across a dry canal and smash a gap through a mud wall, allowing the Canadians' armoured vehicles to rumble out of the dusty scrub and break into the farmland where growing numbers of Taliban fighters are believed to be gathering.

As night fell, the Canadians were doing something that foreign soldiers rarely attempt in this volatile region, southwest of Kandahar city: They were digging into their new positions, hacking at mud walls with pickaxes to open firing holes and cutting down trees with chainsaws to clear their gunners' view of the terrain.
….
"This is great," said Captain Piers Pappin, commander of a Royal Canadian Regiment platoon nicknamed the Nomads.

"We're the first ones doing this. The Patricias came through here before, but they never stayed," Capt. Pappin said, referring to the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, which fought for months in Panjwai before handing over the task to the next rotation of soldiers in early August.
....
By occupying a handful of mud-walled compounds and fortifying them against attack, the Canadians are applying, in miniature, the NATO theory that success against insurgents can only be achieved by establishing so-called "ink spots" of stability. Just hours after the Canadians established control over a tiny patch of the dangerous area yesterday, soldiers reported seeing local farmers returning to their abandoned fields, to tend their crops of beans, cucumbers, melons, squash and marijuana.

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Toward sunset, Major Geoff Abthorpe, commander of Bravo Company, walked the length of his new front line and inspected the Canadians' improvised defences.

"What we need from you is domination, beautiful dominating arcs of fire," he told Capt. Pappin, gesturing at the belt of green farmland from the roof of a barn.

"We can dominate all this," the captain replied.

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Of course, he doesn't actually like to kill the scumbags, just to take them out of the equation.

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Over 280 Taliban militants have been killed and at least 80 were captured in the operation, according to ISAF.

However, a senior Taliban commander has rejected [this], claiming only about 10 militants have lost their lives. Source

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At least 14 civilians have died in bombings of suspected Taliban compounds as part of the Canadian-led offensive against insurgents in the notorious district of Panjwai, according to local officials and villagers.

The military has touted the extra precautions that went into the month-long planning of Operation Medusa, which was designed to avoid such incidents. Strategists even sacrificed the element of surprise, warning people to leave the district in the days before the foreign troops advanced.

And yet villagers in at least three parts of the battlefield reported that a number of civilians have been killed in almost a week of relentless bombing, artillery barrages and strafing runs.

The clearest information comes from witnesses and local officials in Ghaljain, a tiny cluster of mud-walled compounds near the village of Zangabad, roughly 35 kilometres southwest of Kandahar.

Haji Agha Lalai, a provincial council member closely allied with the foreign troops in Kandahar, said a jet fighter bombed three compounds in that area at 4 p.m. Sunday. The blasts killed seven Taliban fighters, he said, but also killed an elderly man plus 13 women and children.

In response to questions from a journalist, [ISAF]announced an investigation into the Zangabad bombing yesterday....

"We helped to drag the bodies out of the mud," a villager said in a telephone interview earlier this week. "But then more bombs landed, and those people were killed. Now nobody wants to recover the bodies, because we are afraid."

The bombing added to the flood of villagers fleeing the war-torn district, where tribal elders estimate about 1,500 families have been displaced....

Five days into the operation, neither NATO nor the Canadian contingent in Kandahar has issued any update on the overall number of civilian casualties.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Five Canadians (not six, as erroneously reported elesewhere) have died so far in Operation Medusa, which began last Saturday: Four on Sunday and one on Monday.
It's time to cut and run.

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Stop being so misleading mspector, in your efforts to try and erroneously discredit me, yet again. The 4 soldier died on Sept 3, which was Sept 2 our time and date. Yes, it commenced Sept 3rd, their time and date not ours.

For example, it is Sept 9 there just a bit before 1.

But I do agree we need to get the hell out!

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: remind ]

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Over 280 Taliban militants have been killed and at least 80 were captured in the operation, according to ISAF.

However, a senior Taliban commander has rejected [this], claiming only about 10 militants have lost their lives.

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Heh, by the view used, both sides are completely correct with this comment.

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Originally posted by remind:
Stop being so misleading mspector, in your efforts to try and erroneously discredit me, yet again. The 4 soldier died on Sept 3, which was Sept 2 our time and date. Yes, it commenced Sept 3rd, their time and date not ours.

For example, it is Sept 9 there just a bit before 1.

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Yes, I know all about time zones. But if you do the math a little more precisely, it proves that your report of casualties on Saturday was entirely fictitious.

Kabul, Afghanistan is 8.5 hours ahead of Toronto and 11.5 hours ahead of Vancouver.

Four Canadians were killed just before 9 a.m. Sunday, which is just after midnight Toronto time, and just after 9 p.m. Saturday night in Vancouver.

Your fictitious report of six Canadian deaths (not four) was posted on Babble at 4:17 p.m. Vancouver time on Saturday - some 5 hours before anybody was in fact killed in Operation Medusa, which began on Saturday.

This was pointed out to you repeatedly. You could have checked the news sources on the web, as I did, and you would have seen that there was no mention by anybody of Canadian casualties at any time on Saturday evening (Canadian). But instead of correcting the false information, you made up some story about how the local CTV station in Edmonton had a secret pipeline to news from Afghanistan about things that hadn't even happened yet, and didn't even share their "inside information" with their own CTV network, which said nothing about the casualties, either on TV or the CTV website, until after they (or at least four of them) had actually happened.

...No, of course you have no evidence. Any evidence in support of your position would have to violate the laws of thermodynamics as well as everything known to science about the nature of space-time.

[ 09 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

The Associated Press is reporting a lower figure of "at least 320" suspected militants.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
The carnage will continue as hundreds more are surrounded by NATO, which intends to kill them all. How many of them are "Taliban" is a matter of speculation.

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At the risk of you telling me what I didn't hear, I will say this:

Last night, again on CTV out of Edmonton, they had a comment on by a Canadian Colonel who is over there, who said what our troops are going through right now is worse than what the USA forces have been going through in Iraq.

If that is the case, then the poor Afghanis peoples are suffering worse than the Iraqis peoples are.

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Camouflage clothing is expected to be all the rage this fall — and it will be on full display this weekend at Camp Canada.

About 160 members of the regular and reserve forces will be decked out in their finest camouflage gear at the army’s interactive demonstration camp today and Sunday at the Nova Scotia International Air Show.

The camp, in the shadow of the Halifax International Airport control tower, is complete with observation posts, medical triage centres and weapon displays.

The Armed Forces use air shows across the country as an opportunity to interact with the public, 2nd Lieut. Jeremy Remillard, 32, said Friday.

"We get to show them what the army’s about, show them the coolest stuff, and hopefully we get to show them that we’re not something to be afraid of," he said.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
More about the Halifax air show... Camouflage clothing is expected to be all the rage this fall — and it will be on full display this weekend at Camp Canada.

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The story has only appeared in three related Irish newspaper sites and one in Wales. In the absence of confirmation or corroboration in the past 15 hours, it should be regarded as spurious.

Here's a link.

UPDATE: A Sunday Times article now mentions the death of a "NATO" soldier on Saturday.

[ 09 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

And the "Taliban" death toll is now up to 430 in the past week.

Further update: the two NATO soldiers killed turned out to be USians.

[ 14 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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NATO forces claim to have killed at least 517 militants in both districts [Panjwai and Zhari] since launching a large-scale campaign on Sept. 2 dubbed Operation Medusa.

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"Uh, hello? Folks? Anybody here? Yoo hoo!

"We'll give you food and money to rebuild your destroyed buildings. Hellooo?"

Seems the good people of Panjwai aren't in any hurry to come back from wherever they have fled to (mostly makeshift refugee camps where they plan to spend the winter in tents).

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Less than 10 per cent of civilians who fled a massive battle in Panjwai district earlier this month have returned to their homes, the Canadian military says, as villagers continue to fear a resumption of fighting between foreign troops and insurgents.
....
"We are afraid we will get bombed if we go home, because the soldiers won't know whether we are Taliban or not," said Lal Mohammed, 60, a Panjwai farmer, sitting in the rubble-strewn yard of a friend's home in western Kandahar. His family have pitched tents on a barren hillside on the outskirts of the city and are making preparations to stay the winter.

"The fighting will happen again," Mr. Mohammed said.
....
"Our guys are out there, saying, 'Where is everybody?'" Col. Hetherington said.

General James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander, said recently that 20,000 people have been displaced from Panjwai. That number may be low; the World Food Program is now distributing 30-day supplies of food to 5,000 families in a region where families usually consist of six or seven people. The local government is surveying 18,000 households to determine their needs.

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[ 28 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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I'm starting to think that we (Americans) just don't have the patience and focus to do CI (Counter Insurgency) warfare.

The craziest Taliban rules, like demanding every man have a beard that was at least ZZ Top length, aren't Mohammed's rules; they're just Pushtun tribal ways.

It's like if the Baptists took over in Fresno, they'd make it God's rule that every guy had to have an extended cab on his pickup, and if you asked where in Scripture it says that, they'd shoot you.

. . . "peace" came to their town on tanks and APCs driven by their old enemies the Tajiks and Uzbeks.

Worse yet, right behind those tanks came American do-gooders whose idea of pacifying the Pushtun was doing incredibly naive stuff like starting a TV news show with female anchorpersons or whatever you call them. I'm not making this up. First thing the US occupation officials did in Kabul was start a news station with some 19-year-old Pushtun girl as anchor. That was our idea of winning hearts and minds. That's what was going to calm down those bearded angry dudes: seeing a perfectly saleable daughter telling them the news, as if she was the one laying down the law.

I can tell you what the old 19th c. Brits would've done. Problem: huge, restless tribe (Pushtun) smarting from recent defeat and totally uninterested in "peace." Solution: ship every Pushtun of military age to Sunni Triangle as honored guests of the British Empire and give them enough ammo to make the place as quiet and boring as Mary Poppins's bedroom.

The Pushtun would be happy as the Seven Dwarves, whistling while they worked on quieting down the Sunni; the Sunni would be...well, maybe not happy but definitely quiet -- "quiet as the grave," as the saying goes. And the Brits would step back into the shadows and let them fight it out till the end of time. A great system, worked for centuries.

Of course nobody we sent up there was cold-blooded enough to do anything like that.

I just saw a movie that showed we weren't even paying attention in Iraq. It's called Gunner Palace . . . There's a voice-over about how this unit of typical American young men copes with the dark and violent chaos of Iraq, bla bla bla, but that's not what the movie shows. What it shows is hams. Showoffs. A bunch of dudes who don't know where they are, don't care, don't speak a word of the language and don't want to learn it.

I don't think it's pork that the Muslims hate so much, it's all the hams we've imported into their land.

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Walt Gaffney explains the complexities of sorting out who initiates much of the violence in Afghanistan.

There is a reason that we, in theater, call these incidents, "AGE", anti-government elements because it is damn hard determining who is whom, even after you've been in an engagement with them. There are so many competing and conflicting elements here that it is sometimes impossible to figure it out. Afghan politics makes the Italian parliament look like a cohesive group. Hig in the east/north east, Khan in the west, Atta/Dostum in the north, Talibs in the south/south east, different tribal interests across the entire country, blood feuds, Hajiks, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pashtuns (different in different parts of the country), Iranian influence, Pakistani influence, Indian influence, American/Coalition...it goes on and on.

Media reports are often quick to credit the Taliban for attacks they may have played no part in and the Taliban gladly will take credit for these attacks. This nicely augments the Taliban's media campaign as it builds their stature in the eyes of the international community.

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