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Posted on 10/10/2003 5:59:58 AM PDT by Clive
KABUL (CP) - The commanding officer of the Canadian battle group in Afghanistan says he doesn't have enough armoured vehicles to address the changing threat in his area of operations.
But a week after two of his soldiers were killed when their light jeep hit at least one anti-tank mine, Lt.-Col. Don Denne said he's taking steps to get more appropriate vehicles.
"I don't have them," Denne said in an interview Thursday. "I've got one company's worth of armoured vehicles; I've got three companies' worth of sector.
"You can do the math."
Denne is meeting his immediate boss Friday, Brig.-Gen. Peter Devlin - of the armoured corps - to discuss how the 650 front-line troops patrolling everything from city streets to creekbeds will tackle their jobs.
Among Denne's proposals is redistributing existing armoured vehicles from other tasks, including from Devlin's own Kabul Multinational Brigade headquarters, and shipping more from Canada.
He has already halted some jeep patrols in high-risk areas and is formulating a plan to shift his existing equipment.
Investigators have all but determined that last week's blast was caused by at least one - and possibly three - anti-tank mines that may have been planted within just 2 1/2 hours before the explosion.
Sgt. Robert Short and Cpl. Robbie Beerenfenger were killed; three other Canadian paratroopers were wounded. They were the first Kabul casualties among the international protective forces since four Germans were killed and 29 wounded in a bus attack last June.
Denne also revealed there was a second, almost simultaneous, blast last Thursday along the road from Gardez, just north of the Canadian sector.
Three explosive devices were used against a multinational engineering unit, he told The Canadian Press. They were remotely detonated at 1:15 p.m. The incident involving the Canadians occurred at 1:25 p.m. No one was injured in the other attack.
Investigators from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, have been unable to find any link between the two incidents. But Abu Bakr, Kabul's top commander of the terrorist group Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, or HIG, was arrested Tuesday.
With 1,950 troops deployed, or 40 per cent of ISAF's total, the Canadian contingent has drawn by far the largest sector of any of the 32 countries helping keep the peace in and around Afghanistan's capital.
The sprawling area of 800,000-plus people includes city streets choked with traffic, crowded village markets, narrow back alleys, wide-open desert, goat tracks and high mountain passes. About 60 per cent of the Canadian sector is rural.
"I don't have enough armoured vehicles to do what I need to do throughout all parts of the area of operations," Denne said. "I need vehicles that are going to withstand mine strikes."
Defence Minister John McCallum, speaking from Colorado Springs where he was attending a NATO ministerial conference, said a reassessment of equipment needs was taking place over the past 24 hours.
"We will spare neither effort nor money make sure the mission has the equipment that it needs."
He said as soon as the recommendation is ready, he will take action to provide those additional vehicles that are requested, as quickly as possible.
"The circumstances are evolving. There may be new requirements."
McCallum could not give an estimate how long it might take to get the vehicles to Afghanistan, nor whether they would be shipped by air or sea.
Denne, who did at least two reconnaissance trips to Kabul before his troops were deployed, was asked if he got everything he asked defence headquarters for before he came.
"Boy, that's a road I don't really want to go down," he replied.
But the top Canadian soldier in Afghanistan and the deputy commander of ISAF, Maj.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, has said repeatedly that the Canadian contingent has lacked nothing, that it got everything it asked for.
Between 20 and 25 armoured vehicles - Coyotes, LAV-3s and Bisons - constitute an armoured company.
Denne also has two companies of so-called dismounted, light-infantry troops who have until now relied primarily on the Canadian-made Iltis jeep, an open, unarmoured vehicle that is about as heavy as a mid-sized car.
Sources say that based on Canada's early mission outlines from ISAF, Denne initially asked for three or four companies of light-infantry soldiers.
The mission was changed several times, however - it was a "moving target," said one source - and Denne ultimately settled on the existing two companies of dismounted light infantry and one company of armoured vehicles.
But the mission outline continued to change, including Canada's operations area. The area of interest was more than doubled Aug. 20, the night before the Canadians took over the city's southwest sector from the Germans.
Leslie has said there was a mine planted on a French patrol route about two weeks ago, as well as a couple of remotely detonated devices found last week in the German area of operations, and another in the French area.
Denne said last week's mine strike on the Canadians changed a lot of things.
"The threat - or our perception of the threat, or our knowledge of the threat - has changed," he said. "There is no question about that.
"When we were doing our reconnaissance, the Germans were patrolling the same areas with the Wolf, a vehicle almost identical to the Iltis."
Dutch troops were patrolling the area's southern extensions with similarly light patrol vehicles, he noted.
"It's not like the Canadians were doing something that is totally against all the principles."
Honour the threat.
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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER and say THANKS to Jim Robinson! |
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