Canadians in secret unit hunt al-Qaeda terrorists Post reporter given rare access to sortie

A HILLTOP NEAR KABUL - Sitting in their unlit house, behind six-metre-high mud brick walls in the heart of a village so hostile to outsiders even heavily armed international troops rarely venture down its narrow roads and lanes, the al-Qaeda militants must have felt safe.

They were wrong. From a barren, windswept hilltop kilometres away, the men of 42-Charlie are watching.

"There you go," exults Corporal Chris Nadon, pointing at the screen in front of him showing a bearded man peering suspiciously out of a window far below. "Close enough to count the hairs in his nostril."

The crew of the Coyote armoured reconnaissance vehicle is part of the Canadian ISTAR company, the hunters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

ISTAR, which stands for Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance, is the eyes and ears of ISAF commanders. Its job is to find the terrorists and extremists who form a constant threat to the multinational force, and pinpoint their locations and activities.

That means tracking down al-Qaeda operatives, Taliban activists, or gun-runners and drug smugglers, and providing some of the information needed for special forces, Afghan police or other ISAF units to surround and capture them.

ISTAR is one of the most secretive operations in the NATO-led force. Even other soldiers are kept in the dark about its high-security work. A group of officers on patrol who stop to ask what 42-Charlie is doing are politely, but firmly, told to mind their own business.

"We're with ISTAR," is all the explanation provided by Sergeant Ken Nykorak, who is in charge of the ISTAR observation post.

The National Post was allowed last week to accompany 42-Charlie, another Coyote and an "EW" (electronic warfare) vehicle on their long, lonely vigil on a sun-baked outpost only on condition all details of the mission, including the time, location and identity of the targets, were left out.

Not that there are many details visible. The village outside Kabul is just a brown smear against a dusty green and mud-coloured landscape -- cars moving fast enough to raise dust clouds look like slow-moving ants and people are little more than fly specks.

But to the sharp and very long-sighted "eyes" of 42-Charlie, part of the Royal Canadian Dragoons reconnaissance squadron, almost every face, car and licence plate is visible, even at night.

"Those walls are like 20 feet high and they're interwoven all around," Sgt. Nykorak says. "It's a pretty secretive little place."

He grins out of his green-lit cubbyhole in the rear of the Canadian-built Coyote. "Not secretive enough, though."

The troopers have been "eyes on" for almost 24 hours, not even a quarter of the way through their four-day mission, patiently watching the small cluster of mud walls and low huts from their rocky outpost, looking for a few faces in particular -- a handful of al-Qaeda members suspected to be hiding out under the protection of a local strongman.

"Thug's more like it," snorts Sgt. Nykorak, who at 36 is a 15-year veteran of the army with four previous overseas tours to his credit. "He's the local crime lord: Been terrorizing the local population, even the army. They all hate him, but they're afraid of him."

So the ISAF sent 42-Charlie to wait out the warlord and his suspected guests, looking and listening for anything out of the ordinary. A convoy of new cars pulling into the village draws long, hard looks from the troopers, for example, as does a crowd pouring out of the nearby religious school.

"Information-gathering: that's what we do," Sgt. Nykorak says, eyes glued to his screen.

Watching far-off villages for terrorist hideouts is not what the Coyote was designed for. It was built for battlefield reconnaissance, finding enemy tanks or infantry formations and relaying the information to commanders.

But in Kabul, radar that can detect vehicles from more than 20 kilometres away and high-tech, all-weather cameras mounted on a periscope-like mast or remote sensors linked to the Coyote by long black cables have given the vehicle a new role.

"Spying out individuals is kind of a new thing for us," Sgt. Nykorak admits, tugging at his bristling moustache and tapping commands into the computer in "the hole" that controls the Coyote's surveillance gear.

"But it seems to be working out OK. It's all information-gathering -- that's what we do."

Major Dyrald Cross, commander of the Canadian ISTAR company, says the unit is something new for the military, a composite group combining the equipment and skills of many different units and trades. Later this year, the first Canadian unmanned aerial vehicles section will be added.

"For this mission [to Afghanistan], all these assets have been grouped together for the first time into one company," he says. "We've done bits and pieces of it before, but this is the first time we've brought it all together."

Maj. Cross says his troops usually operate on their own, relying on their instincts and skills to get the information they have been sent out for. "They have to describe what they see in sufficient detail that they can tell the [ISAF] brigade what it needs to know," he says.

After almost two days of watching around the clock, 42-Charlie is focusing on two buildings: the home of the village kingpin and an adjoining meeting house.

Just after sunset, the crew gathers around the Coyote's screen to watch blurry images of bearded men in traditional turbans and robes moving in and out of the shadows of a small courtyard.

"There they are," says Corporal Sean Rheaume from Elliott Lake, Ont. "They're keeping inside pretty much, aren't they?'

The videotapes begin rolling, recording comings and goings in the two buildings, while the EW vehicle monitors all the wavelengths coming from the village with its bristling array of antennae. "We'll get 'em," Cpl. Rheaume says confidently.

Past ISTAR operations have helped in the arrests of Taliban supporters, al-Qaeda activists and seizures of arms caches.

"Makes what we're doing here worthwhile," Cpl. Rheaume says. "If we can save a few people from a dumb-ass bomber, that's great."

The only thing wrong with the ISTAR Coyotes is there are not enough of them. Only half the Dragoons' reconnaissance squadron was sent to Kabul, leaving Sgt. Nykorak and his troopers with too many tasks and too little time.

He points out two other smaller hillocks and mountainsides around the village and a distant stand of scrawny trees.

"If we had a full [Coyote] troop, we could've put OPs there and there," he says. "Then you could really cloverleaf the area -- get it from all sides. But we don't have enough Coyotes."

Standing watch on the hot, dusty hilltop is anything but comfortable. The small plateau where 42-Charlie has set up camp is littered with sharp-edged rocks, rusty cannon and rifle casings and an old bombed-out Soviet armoured personnel carrier, which the troopers quickly convert into one side of their lean-to.

There is little shelter from the blistering sun during the day and at night the temperature drops close to freezing in the mountain air. The men sleep in shifts to ensure there is always at least one pair of eyes on the village far below, spending six hours on duty followed by six hours off. They take turns standing sentry, sitting atop the Coyote's turret or squeezing into "the hole" to watch for their target on the glowing green-and-black screen.

Private Nathan Pettigrew, 21, of Guelph, Ont., and 42-Charlie's driver, shrugs off the boredom and discomfort even as he's standing guard over one end of the hilltop outpost in a bitter night-time wind.

"I love being out here," he says cheerfully. "I spent a year training for this.... I'd rather be out here doing this than sitting around a garage in a base somewhere doing maintenance."

The information gathered by 42-Charlie is relayed back to the ISTAR company headquarters, a nondescript olive-drab tent in Camp Julien, home base for most of the 1,900 Canadians in Afghanistan.

"They've come back with information for the [ISAF] brigade commander that's just been outstanding," Maj. Cross says.

But although the mission produced valuable data on the target area, more work is needed to tie the warlord to the suspected terrorists. Another mission is scheduled for later this week.

Corporal Garland Weir, of Brampton, Ont., says it is enough to know the intelligence he is gathering will prove useful in helping forestall attacks on the other nearly 5,000 soldiers in ISAF. And by finding the bad guys and helping Afghan forces put them behind bars, the Coyotes are helping Afghans return to normal and go about the business of rebuilding their society after decades of civil war.

"You get four days of boredom, then 10 seconds of excitement," he says with a shrug. "Sometimes you don't even get that 10 seconds ... [but] even if we don't get that, it all goes up to HQ and they let us know when we got good stuff."

Don't forget this from 2002

From the "National Post"

The United States wants to give two teams of Canadian snipers the Bronze Star, a decoration for bravery, for their work in rooting out Taliban and al-Qaeda holdouts in eastern Afghanistan, but Canadian defence officials put the medals on hold, the National Post has learned.

The five snipers spent 19 days fighting alongside the scout platoon of the United States Army's 187th "Rakkasan" brigade last month, clearing out diehard fighters from the mountains near Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.

The Americans were so impressed by the Canadian snipers that they recommended them for medals after the battle.

Sources told the Post that U.S. General Warren Edwards had already signed the recommendation for five Bronze Stars for the sniper teams, drawn from 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, last month. Gen. Edwards, deputy commanding general of coalition land forces in Afghanistan, had recommended three Canadians for a Bronze Star and two for a Bronze Star with distinction.

The night before the troops were to be awarded the medals, about three weeks ago, Canadian military officials in Ottawa put the decorations on hold, according to a U.S. Army source in Afghanistan.

The Canadian military told their U.S. counterparts to wait before awarding the medals for reasons of "Canadian protocol."

Spokesmen for the Department of National Defence would not comment on the award last night, but a source within the department said the medals are on hold while the military decides whether or not to award the men a similar Canadian decoration.

However, Dr. David Bercuson, director of the Centre of Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, said the real reason for the delay was likely official squeamishness.

"Canadians don't kill -- they don't even use the word kill; that's the problem," he said. "I think the military is not sure that the government is prepared to accept the fact, let alone celebrate the fact ... that Canadian soldiers do sometimes end up killing people."

Many of the U.S. scouts who worked directly with the Canadian snipers were incensed that the Canadians did not get the Bronze Star, the medal for bravery the U.S. military usually gives foreign soldiers serving alongside its troops.

The snipers themselves, all of whom spoke on condition their names not be printed, have said they would prefer to receive a medal from their peers in the field rather than from National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

Dr. Bercuson said there should be no objection to Canadians receiving a U.S. decoration: As recently as the Gulf War, two Canadian CF-18 pilots were given the Bronze Star.

He said the medals would be a badly needed boost to the morale of the almost 900 Canadian soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, especially after four of their comrades were killed and eight others wounded in last week's friendly fire incident.

"Absolutely they should get it," Dr. Bercuson said. "It would be good for the morale of the guys and good for the morale of the whole unit, and they need a morale boost right now."

Canadian snipers were reportedly outstanding in the fighting around the mountainous al-Qaeda bastion east of Gardez, code-named Operation Anaconda.

The battle pitted the two Canadian sniper teams against an enemy that showered the assaulting coalition troops with mortars and machine-gun fire as soon as they jumped from their helicopters.

One member of the team, a corporal from Newfoundland, said on his first night in combat he and his partner got an al-Qaeda machine gun in their sights as it was hailing bullets down on U.S. troops below.

Crawling up into a good position, they set up their .50-calibre rifle -- the MacMillan Tac-50, a weapon the corporal compares to having superhuman power in your hands. "Firing it feels like someone slashing you on the back of your hockey helmet with a hockey stick."

When he hit his first target, an enemy gunman at a distance of 1,700 metres, he said all that ran through his mind was locating his next target.

"All I thought of was Sept. 11th and all those people who didn't have a chance and the American reporter who was taken hostage, murdered and his wife getting the videotape of the execution; that is my justification."

A master corporal from Ontario, the lead sniper of his three-man team, said when they first landed in the combat zone "our spider senses were tingling.... It was night and we didn't know what to expect."

By daylight, after coming under enemy machine-gun fire, he managed to ease his rifle barrel between two rocks and quickly located an enemy sniper hiding behind a small piece of corrugated steel between two trees. He guessed the distance at 1,700 metres and fired one shot through the metal, killing the man instantly.

He said afterward he remembered thinking: "That's one less bullet that's gonna be coming at us, one less person we have to think about."

During the next four days of fighting, the Newfoundland corporal set what is believed to be a record for a long-distance shot under combat conditions, hitting an enemy gunman at a distance of 2,430 metres.

The days of crawling, shooting and long hours waiting in cover left the Canadian snipers exhausted. "You don't realize what you've done to your body and how tired you are till it's all done. I think we slept 14 or 15 hours when we got back," the master corporal said.

Three of them, along with U.S. special forces soldiers, also rescued a company of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division that was pinned down by enemy fire on the first day of Operation Anaconda.

They also participated in Operation Harpoon, with Canadian troops on "the whale," a mountain overlooking the Shah-e-Kot valley where al-Qaeda fighters were putting up stiff resistance.

Operation Harpoon, carried out in conjunction with Operation Anaconda, consisted of 500 Canadian and 100 U.S. troops under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Stogran, who leads Canadian Forces in Afghanistan in the biggest ground offensive since the Korean War.

Lieutenant Justin Overbaugh, of the American scout platoon to which the Canadian snipers were attached, said it was a pleasure to work with the Canadian troops.

Their professionalism was amazing,Lieut. Overbaugh said. The Canadians were a very large asset to the mission. I would have loved to have 12 Canadian sniper teams out there. I'd have no problems fighting alongside of them again.

He said the Canadian snipers had equipment far superior to theirs. Their rifles had longer range than the U.S. weapons and better high-tech sights. Lieut. Overbaugh said if another mission comes up, he will request the Canadian sniper teams be sent with his unit.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.