The best small army in the world

Mercedes Stephenson: The rebirth of Canada’s military

Posted In: Comment

Canada leaves the Kandahar mission with a reputation for having the best small army in the world. Canadian soldiers are respected around the globe for their battle-hardened professionalism, innovative application of counterinsurgency doctrine and holding their nerve in Kandahar, while other NATO allies cowered on heavily fortified bases munching lobster instead of fighting insurgents. The Americans, who lead the mission, have noticed: Jon Vance, a Canadian general, was entrusted to command thousands of American troops when the U.S. surged into Kandahar last summer.

Canadian soldiers now experience the alien sensation of being on the receiving end of allies’ envious glances, coveting Canadian equipment — top of the line, brand new kit bought for the mission. No more making due with duct tape and borrowing from big brother America.

In short: We’ve come a long way, baby. The Canadian Forces are back. The army, especially, is a far cry from what it was when Canada sent troops to war nearly a decade ago.

As Canada entered the war, experts warned the Canadian military was on the brink of collapse. They predicted that ancient equipment, anemic spending and the bleeding of experienced personnel would produce a exponential and nearly irreversible decline. Canadian troops deployed to Afghanistan wearing bright green camouflage poorly suited Kandahar’s ubiquitous brown dust. Ill-equipped soldiers were forced to drive around in open-air Iltis jeeps that most Canadians wouldn’t feel safe in on a major highway, let alone around a war zone. Strategic airlift capability, long written off as an extravagant expense by previous governments, suddenly became an obvious necessity. America, busy fighting on two fronts, couldn’t always spare us the cargo planes we needed to send our own troops or equipment where we wanted them.

The truth was painfully obvious. Canada’s self-respect, international reputation and foreign-policy independence were casualties of what former top soldier Rick Hillier termed the “decade of darkness.” Deep cutbacks during the Chrétien years had left us unable to live up to our international obligations and, worse, the expectations we held as a country convinced it always punched above its weight.

The cost of these cuts — disarmament by neglect — resulted in an increased risk to our soldiers and decreased operational effectiveness on the ground in Kandahar. The lack of medium-lift Chinook helicopters is a prime example.

Canada had Chinooks once upon a time, but a previous Liberal government sold them to the Dutch, who flew them around Afghanistan (frequently with Canadians on board).

As Taliban bomb makers discovered the effectiveness of the cheap and easy improvised explosive device (IED), helicopters offered a new and unanticipated advantage — reduced exposure to the IED threat.

IEDs have been the primary killer of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, responsible for the majority of our casualties. Helicopters offered a surefire way around the IED threat for certain types of missions through reduced reliance on ground transport and exposure on the roads. They also promised to increase operational effectiveness. While infantry patrols would always need to prowl the Panjwaii looking for the enemy, there was no requirement to send slow, lumbering convoys of food and ammunition over perilous roads when they could zoom over Taliban bomb-layer’s heads.

Canadian troops were forced to rely on the kindness of allies until the Manley Commission’s 2008 report made obtaining helicopters a requirement for Canada extending the Afghan mission.

No psychic or strategist could have predicted the success of IEDs against a modern military, but that’s no excuse for failing to maintain something as vital as helicopters. It was symbolic of the cost of letting our military slide.

As the nightly news filled with images of young Canadians dying in Afghanistan, and stories about our great deeds there became known to the public, Canadians stopped debating whether the investments in tanks, choppers and improved armoured vehicles were worth it. Our soldiers needed them, the government provided them. The public approved. Lives were saved as a result.

After generations of declining public interest in the armed forces, a new era finally dawned for Canada, born on the battlefields of Kandahar. Canadians began to understand the contract of unlimited liability between the solider and the state. Soldiers agree to lay their lives down for this country, but expect the government to give them the best tools to do the business of the nation. The realities of war left the public uninterested in false “guns versus butter” arguments. We were at war, and our soldiers needed to fight. Some of the equipment purchases, sole-sourced as urgent operational necessities, were far from the best possible deal for the taxpayer, but the focus wasn’t on saving money, it was where it belonged: saving lives.

As Canada leaves the combat mission in Afghanistan, the military will drop out of the news cycle. Vital lessons of Afghanistan will easily become distant memories. But this will not render our military any less important or relevant.

The world is a dangerous place. The Arab Spring is spreading both democracy and instability. Humanitarian and natural disasters are a constant feature of our world. Canadians don’t know when their military will be called upon next, or what they will be asked to do — so it must be prepared for anything. Granted, this is expensive. But the same planes that were bought to deliver equipment to soldiers in Afghanistan saved civilian lives in Haiti. Being prepared is half the battle.

We can’t forget that, or accept arguments suggesting that the Canadian Forces no longer need the public’s support or continuing modernization. Even in these times of budgetary pressure, the one thing that we truly cannot afford is to forget the lessons learned in Kandahar.

Nickel and diming ourselves into another decade of darkness will exact too high a price: the blood of Canadian soldiers in future conflicts. Putting the military on the back burner means death on the battlefield — a cost no Canadian or Canadian government should be willing to pay.

National Post

Mercedes Stephenson is a freelance journalist specializing in defence and security issues.

We survived the Afghan war, but our veterans are suffering

Matt Gurney: 

We survived the Afghan war, but our veterans are suffering

Posted In: Comment

War is always a brutal business. Soldiers fall in battle, or have their bodies mangled by horrific wounds. But in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, many troops survived injuries that would previously have proved fatal. According to the Canadian Forces Surgeon-General’s report of 2010, a Canadian soldier arriving at the military hospital at Kandahar Air Field with vital signs has a 97% chance of returning home alive — a heartening statistic for troops and their families. But this reality also presents new challenges: specifically, how Canada supports our injured veterans once they come back to our shores.

At the end of 2010, the Canadian Forces reported that 1,859 soldiers had been wounded in Afghanistan. Those who suffered injuries too severe to treat in the field — severe burns, brain trauma, missing limbs — were transferred from military to civilian care back in Canada. Soldiers living in major cities generally fell into capable hands, in the form of large hospitals with state-of-the-art technology. But many troops come from small, rural towns. For ongoing care or physiotherapy, they now have to travel for hours, several times a week, often with the assistance of friends or family. Some must consider uprooting themselves from their support networks and moving to urban centres, to more easily accessed care, adding emotional freight to their preexisting pain.

Tragically, these veterans also often have limited financial means to cope with their new situations. This is due in part to supposedly well-meaning changes enacted in 2005 by the Liberal government of Paul Martin, with the full support of the Stephen Harper-led Conservative opposition, in the form of the New Veteran’s Charter. Previously, soldiers could have relied on a permanent monthly stipend for life, the amount determined by the severity of their injury. But under the Charter, the monthly payouts were replaced by one-time lump-sum payments, to a maximum of $276,000.

This paltry sum — far less than what many MP pensions pay out over a mere handful of years — was considered sufficient to see a soldier through his or her transition to civilian life. The payout also terminated the government’s responsibility for the wounded soldier; once the cheque was cashed, he or she had no further claim to any support from the government he had fought and bled for — with often tragic results.

Many of the soldiers who have received one-time payouts from the government were emotionally traumatized, suffering from “operational stress injuries,” the bland term the Canadian Forces uses to describe post-traumatic stress disorder. Common complications of operational stress injuries include substance abuse and impulse control issues — both of which would compromise anyone’s ability to manage a lump sum of money. Yet Ottawa saw nothing wrong with making these payouts to wounded vets, and washing its hands of them once they got their cheques.

The Harper government has promised to look into the matter, having recognized that the Charter has left Canada’s wounded warriors worse off than the veterans of prior conflicts. But, troublingly, it also shunted aside former Veteran’s ombudsman Colonel (ret.) Pat Stogran, who accused Veteran’s Affairs of adopting an “insurance company” mentality, which prioritized saving money over caring for wounded veterans.

Veteran’s Affairs has not helped its case by its ham-fisted handling of recent several high profile cases. It is being sued by a group of veterans led by Dennis Manuge over allegedly inappropriate clawbacks of disability payments, and was forced to reach a settlement with Sean Bruyea, a veteran and critic of the department, which leaked his confidential medical records in an effort to discredit him.

The picture for Canada’s wounded veterans is not uniformly bleak, however. The government has worked hard to establish practices and facilities to care for their physical and emotional wounds, and the improved public profile of the Canadian Forces will help pressure Ottawa to do even better. But with the Conservatives looking for $4 billion in budget cuts, and given the track record of the military as a source of easy “savings,” it will be up to the Canadian public to make it clear that veterans’ compensation needs to go up — not down. Our soldiers’ sacrifice in Afghanistan will not be worth the price if they are not cared for with all the resources that a prosperous, grateful nation can provide.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2011, Posted In: Comment

Blood and treasure from the National Post

To see larger please click the link
http://afghanistan.nationalpost.com/graphic-blood-treasure/

The Road Ahead: No walk in the park

The Road Ahead: No walk in the park

Posted In: Features The Road Ahead | Post tags: Brian Hutchinson, Richard Johnson, The Long Road, The Road Ahead

By Brian Hutchinson

A father writes, and then we talk. His son left Edmonton on Wednesday, bound for Kandahar. He’s a sapper with 1 Combat Engineer Regiment. Members of his regiment have been going to Kandahar since 2006. Six have not made it home alive.

“My heart is in my throat,” the father says. He worries for his son, who is heading into danger, and he worries that others might forget: Canada’s war in Afghanistan is not yet over. The final “shooting” tour ended this week but there’s more work to be done, in Kandahar and elsewhere in Afghanistan. His son is going outside the wire, into volatile places such as Panjwaii district, where 1 CER will remove equipment from forward operating bases and other outposts. It will also patrol the villages, clear routes of improvised explosive devices and destroy unwanted ordnance, all things its predecessors did.

At Kandahar Airfield (KAF) meanwhile, weapons, communications devices and vehicles will be sorted, cleaned and packed. Aircraft will be prepared for their hopscotch journeys home. A memorial to Canada’s fallen soldiers will be carefully dismantled and sent in pieces to Ottawa.

One mission winds down. Another begins. Almost 1,000 Canadian soldiers are joining Operation Attention, officially — and vaguely — described as an effort to train and advise senior Afghan police officers and soldiers.

Most of the Canadians are already deploying to Kabul. Others will travel in the autumn to more unfamiliar places: Herat, a province that borders Iran, and Mazar-e-Sharif, a province in the north. They’ll face more challenges, more uncertainties and more threats. That operation is to last three years, and will require several rotations of soldiers.

Work has just begun, too, for young Canadian war veterans, thousands of them, some damaged, some struggling to cope. How many lives were changed forever, at home and in Afghanistan? What were the prices paid? Who benefitted, and who did not? An accounting has started. It will continue for a long, long time. Remember, says the sapper’s father, nothing is really over yet.

---

Fresh new faces appeared at KAF in late April. Men and women, young soldiers and older, bureaucratic types, most of them looking thrilled to be in theatre and part of the ground effort at last. Every tear-down team drilled as if it was heading outside to lay a beating on the Taliban. Soon enough, they all experienced their first rocket attack.

Meanwhile, an Operation Attention advance party landed briefly at the airfield before pressing on to Kabul. “Our mission is not totally defined yet,” confessed a public affairs officer assigned to the group. “We’ll be offering mentorship and guidance to the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]. We’ll be advising Afghan police and army leaders. Other than that…” His voice trailed off.

A few more details emerged later, but there remains a startling lack of clarity around the looming operation. Canadians, meanwhile, seem either unaware or indifferent to it; there’s been no real debate and few questions put to the government that introduced the mission. The same can be said of the bombing campaign over Libya that Canadian Forces have joined. This is surprising, given how divisive the Kandahar combat mission was at home.

Whatever its scope and its purpose, Operation Attention won’t be a walk in the park. Kabul remains one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where the Taliban continue to launch spectacular assaults. Canadian soldiers have died there, as recently as May 2010, when a suicide bomber attacked a military convoy in Kabul, killing 18 people including Colonel Geoff Parker, the highest-ranking Canadian officer to die in Afghanistan.

Most Operation Attention soldiers will be housed and will work at Camp Phoenix, a large, U.S.-led military base adjacent to Kabul’s civilian airport. Camp Phoenix and the airport are common insurgent targets; the most recent attack occurred April 27 when an Afghan air force pilot allegedly recruited by the Taliban went on a shooting rampage at an airport facility. Eight U.S. military trainers and an American contractor were killed in that incident. Three weeks earlier, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the camp gate.

There have been at least six deadly attacks on NATO-member trainers in Afghanistan this year, and several attacks launched against relief workers. In late March, seven foreigners were killed inside their United Nations office in Mazar-e-Sharif city, where approximately 90 Canadians attached to Operation Attention will be stationed. The Taliban denied responsibility for the Mazar-e-Sharif massacre, claiming it was “a pure act of responsible Muslims.”

Herat, the western Afghan province where another 15 Canadian soldiers will operate under Operation Attention, is considered a relatively peaceful place; even so, the Taliban launched an attack on its capital in late May. Four civilians were killed and 38 wounded when an insurgent bomber blew himself up outside an Italian-led provincial reconstruction team headquarters.

If most Canadians seem unaware of the threats their Operation Attention soldiers face, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has at least given notice. “Obviously in every part of Afghanistan, dangers exist,” Mr. Harper told reporters during his last trip to Kandahar, in May. “We’re not kidding Canadians about this…. It is a violent and dangerous country. There can be attacks that come to the base and from within the base. Obviously we expect these things to be of significantly lower risk than that we’ve experienced in the past.”

Operation Attention is scheduled to end in March 2014, when American and other foreign troops are to begin a complete drawback from Afghanistan. By then, it is hoped, the ANSF will have the manpower, training and equipment to protect Afghanistan from insurgent threats, and its other national institutions will be able to hold together the country and avoid a civil war. Right now, that seems a long shot.

By then, Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan will have cost far more than the $11.3-billion that Ottawa estimates it spent from 2001 to the present. The figure includes all Department of National Defence spending in Afghanistan ($8.8-billion), plus $1.64-billion for the Canadian International Development Agency, $466-million for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and $250-million for Veterans Affairs Canada.

Others have said the real costs are much higher. In a report released three years ago, Canada’s parliamentary budget office suggested the government was understating expenditures in Afghanistan. The report, titled Fiscal Impact of the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan, indicated the final tally, were troop strength to remain at 2,500 through 2011, would approach $18-billion.

The report’s authors also described a number of “challenges” that complicated the job of estimating mission costs. “There are no Afghanistan mission-specific appropriations by the Parliament for the various departments,” they noted. “This makes it impossible to isolate the total amounts of money appropriated by the Parliament, specifically for the Afghanistan mission…. There is a significant lack of fiscal transparency due to the current system of financial reporting…. Although costs are reported by the departments in a few cases, they are not justified with sufficient methodology or explanation, making their utility very subjective and of limited value.”

Veterans Affairs was used as an example. The authors had trouble finding relevant data to assist them in formulating a reliable estimate of the cost of caring for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. The costs accrue from the time the soldiers require care and into the future. “VAC does not report basic financial data specific to the Afghanistan mission, although Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan mission is a major project and the resulting death, disability, medical and stress-related payments are fiscally material,” the authors noted.

The care afforded to our returning soldiers ­— our new, young veterans — is everyone’s concern. Anecdotal and documented evidence is not encouraging. There are confirmed reports of Afghan veterans wandering homeless in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. VAC has launched ad hoc programs to assist them, offering the soldiers a drop-in space where they can pick up food vouchers, for example.

Last year, the department acknowledged that approximately 6,300 Canadian Forces members who have served in Afghanistan were receiving physical or psychiatric disability benefits. However, 4,100 of those veterans received benefits “not necessarily related to the Afghanistan mission,” the department told the Hill Times newspaper in Ottawa.

According to current estimates, almost 2,800 Canadian soldiers have been wounded in Afghanistan or have suffered non-battle injuries there since 2002; the figure includes those veterans diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. Most veterans of the Afghan mission who have qualified for disability payments receive a lump sum, rather than the sort of monthly pension payments allocated previously. Veterans and their advocates have complained that the new lump-sum payments are insufficient.

If there is some solace to be found, some encouragement, it’s how the public treats returning soldiers; witness the crowds gathered at ceremonies honouring their work in Afghanistan and at recent Remembrance Day events, and the outpouring of sympathy for fallen soldiers and their families. And on many minds, a question, the same question: Was it worth it?

It is constantly being asked. Yes, and no, and yes. What are lives worth, and freedom? What has been the real cost? There aren’t any answers, and the mission isn’t over, yet. More Canadians arrived in Afghanistan today. Was it worth it? There’s a better question, etched on a local cenotaph, and it’s meant for every one of us.

“Is it nothing to you?”

National Post
bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

PHOTO: Brian Hutchinson

All illustrations by Richard Johnson, National Post.
Contact the illustrator: rjohnson@nationalpost.com
www.newsillustrator.com

Story of my buddy Shaun

Haunted by the ghosts of war

Posted In: Features

By John Ivison

CFP PETAWAWA — Corporal Shaun Arntsen and his buddy Richard Green were playing cards near Kandahar in April 2002, when they were forced to abandon their game and head to the anti-armour range for night training. Both were members of Third Battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Before dawn broke the next day, Private Green and three other members of the Princess Pats — Sergeant Marc Leger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer and Pte. Nathan Lloyd Smith — were dead, killed in the Tarnak Farm friendly fire incident by an American F-16 fighter jet that dropped a laser-guided bomb on the Canadians by mistake.

Cpl. Arntsen found the body of one of his friends before heading back to base. “My last memory of Rick Green is putting our cards inside a box because we didn’t finish the game. That’s what I came back to — an unfinished cribbage game. I talked to Marc Leger six minutes before he died. It was a pretty tough day,” he said in an interview.

Shaun Arntsen escaped physical harm but he was injured nonetheless. The consequences for the then-married father of one daughter and two stepchildren have become all too familiar — post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted in the end of his military career, court-martial, marital break-up and drink and drug dependency.

With the end of the combat mission in Afghanistan, the Department of National Defence anticipates a gathering storm of PTSD and operational stress injury (OSI) victims, with some estimates suggesting one in four returning veterans may develop mental health problems. One parliamentary committee heard that, of 27,000 deployed CF personnel, 1,200 may be affected by post-traumatic stress disorder and a further 3,600 could face other mental health concerns.

Cpl. Arntsen said when he got back to base in Edmonton he found he couldn’t sleep, became obsessive about working out in the gym and developed agoraphobia. “My ex-wife went through hell. I was short-tempered and became abusive and physically violent. My daughter would look at me and wonder why going to the water park or the mall was such a big deal,” he said. A doctor diagnosed him with PTSD and he started drinking and using cocaine to dull the pain. “I don’t remember my last year in the military,” he said.

In 2004, he was court-martialled for being absent without leave and spent 17 days in pre-trial custody. On the day of the trial, the first question the judge asked was why Cpl. Arnsten was in his court, when a doctor had already said he shouldn’t even have been at work. He was eventually given a medical release, although he says the military fought to give him an administrative release, which he likened to “a dishonourable discharge.” The future looked bleak for the then-30-year-old, still haunted by his “old ghosts.”

Other veterans have found themselves unable to come to terms with their experiences and turned to suicide. In late June, Corporal James McMullin from Glace Bay, Cape Breton, was found dead at CFB Gagetown. His father, Darrell, told the Post’s Joe O’Connor that he was a different person when he came home from Afghanistan. “I spoke to three other soldiers at his memorial that had been caught in their garages with a rope over the rafters,” he said.

Jim Lowther, a veteran of tours in Bosnia and Afghanistan, experienced an operation stress injury five years after being in a combat situation. “It’s not just the combat, it’s the death and smell and the bodies and being shot at; it’s picking up your buddy’s leg, seeing dead kids and genocide; it’s wondering why they’re lining people up and shooting them. Eventually, it will come out,” he said.

The sheer number of Canadian troops who have been to Afghanistan helps explain the anticipated wave of PTSD and OSI cases. The Department of Veterans Affairs notes it has seen OSI cases rise to 13,000 men and women from 2,000 a decade ago. National Defence admits it has no idea how many cases it has treated in the 10 years and it has been criticized by the Canadian Forces Ombudsman for having no database by which to gauge the extent of the problem.

Stung by criticism in a 2009 report by the Ombudsman that the government was showing “lukewarm leadership and commitment at the national level” toward PTSD, both National Defence and Veterans Affairs have been gearing up with new clinics, peer support groups and personnel centres.

Veterans Affairs now has 10 OSI clinics, DND has five, in addition to a network of 24 Integrated Personnel Support Centres, one-stop shops for ill and injured servicemen and women. There is also a peer-support program — the Operational Stress Injury Social Support Program (OSISS) — that National Defence claims has helped 5,500 CF members and veterans since 2001.

Colonel Simon Hetherington, commander of 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade, based at CFB Petawawa, 170 km west of Ottawa, said experience from previous Afghan tours suggests that the reaction to combat-induced stress is delayed. “We’ve got some work ahead of us. We’re not kidding ourselves, there are going to be some very difficult times ahead,” he said. A task-force of almost 2,000 troops has recently returned to base.

Major Janice Magar, a military psychiatrist at the recently opened Operational Trauma and Stress Support Centre at Petawawa, said demand has been steady, in part because soldiers are more open and willing to be seen. “I joined the military in the early 1990s and there is a huge difference in terms of the stigma attached to OSI. Everyone has been there [to Afghanistan] and knows what to expect. We now have better treatments and better facilities.”

She said around 6% of cases are clinically diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, a very precisely defined anxiety disorder with specific symptoms like nightmares, flashbacks, irritability and avoidance of people and places who remind the patient of their experience.

One criticism is that, while DND boasts it has 350 mental health workers, only a very small proportion are psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. At Petawawa, of 14 staff, four are psychiatrists and three psychologists. “It’s a bit of a work in progress,” Maj. Magar admitted. But she defended a military system some critics have accused of being slow and poorly resourced.

“Sometimes we do encounter military members complaining about wait times or access to services. I just wish they could have the opportunity to see the civilian world for a little while, where you don’t get your medication or therapy paid for and you wait six months to a year to see a psychiatrist. It’s quite a different world out there,” she said.

For current members of the Canadian Forces, then, a safety net seems to have been put in place, even if some tragic cases slip through — Cpl. McMullin, for example, was seeing military and civilian counsellors. The system might not be there for all of the people, all of the time. Military budget cuts have already led to whispers that more and more CF members off work for extended periods with operational stress injuries will find themselves released.

But, as Maj. Magar pointed out, CF soldiers have access to better and more immediate services than others whose lives have also been turned upside down by Afghanistan and other Canadian military engagements — namely, family members, veterans and civilians who have served overseas.

Bases such as Petawawa do provide family members with some initial services — for example, couples counselling is covered — and they have access to support programs like military family resource centres. But spouses and children are not eligible for ongoing treatment — a situation that angers critics of the status quo like Senator Roméo Dallaire, who believes the Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs should take family members under their wing.

Pierre Daigle, the Ombudsman for National Defence, said the Canadian Forces has made progress since his office’s critical 2009 report — for example, Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk himself launched Mental Health Awareness Week — but “there’s still a lot to be done,” particularly when it comes to caring for military families. “When I go around the country, I tell families they are an entity — you can’t separate the military spouse from the member,” he said.

Another group that appears vulnerable to slipping through the safety net are those who have developed problems after leaving the Forces, which often means they have no military pension.

Jim Lowther founded the Veterans Emergency Transition Services outreach group after running into a veteran he served with while volunteering at a soup kitchen in Halifax. “He said he was homeless. I couldn’t believe it. Then he picked out three other homeless veterans just sitting there,” he said.

The problem is not limited to Halifax, one outreach project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside found 33 homeless veterans, most in their mid-30s.

Mr. Lowther is very critical of the OSI clinics and personnel support centres set up by National Defence and Veterans Affairs. “We’re downtown on patrol, working with the Salvation Army. What are they doing? Nothing. It’s just smoke and mirrors. It’s not working at all. They’re all military officers put in cozy positions and they don’t care. If they did, we wouldn’t need to be around.”

He said he has seen two recent cases where suicidal veterans were turned away by emergency room psychiatrists in Halifax. “The problem right across the country is going to get massive. When these guys call the suicide hotline, it sends them back to the ER. We have a lot of veterans on the streets and no place to take them.”

Veterans Affairs claims to have launched a number of pilot projects aimed at helping homeless vets but the office of new minister, Steven Blaney, did not make him available to discuss the issue.

Canadian Forces Ombudsman Pierre Daigle said there needs to be rationalization and reform of the various clinics and support centres designed to help service personnel. “They are all trying to help but I sense the coordination is not there,” he said.

A further group whose mental health needs are ignored by the existing system are the civilians who have served overseas with the Canadian International Development Agency and Foreign Affairs. Afghanistan is unique in recent engagements in the strong civilian contingent that served alongside the military as part of Canada’s 3D strategy — defence, diplomacy and development.

According to Ron Cochrane, executive director of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, there has been little recognition that CIDA and Foreign Affairs workers were even in a war, despite the death of diplomat Glyn Berry and the injuries suffered by Bushra Saeed, a diplomatic officer who lost a leg in the roadside bombing that killed journalist Michelle Lang and four soldiers. “She was well-treated in Afghanistan and in Germany by the military, but in Canada she was transferred from being treated like a female soldier on to Workers’ Compensation, as if she’d been in a traffic accident. It’s ridiculous and a double standard,” he said.

The provision for mental health services is even more lacking. When it comes to operational stress injuries, CIDA and Foreign Affairs seem roughly where the military was a decade ago. Civilian Afghan vets have to pay for their own PTSD therapy and there are concerns that it will take a suicide before the system is reformed.

Perhaps the only good news in this disturbing saga is that, as with other injuries, recovery is possible. Major Magar said that statistically, one third of patients make a full recovery and the vast majority show significant improvement with therapy. “This is not a career-ending diagnosis,” she said.

Shaun Arntsen is living proof that the road to recovery, while long and winding, is navigable. In 2006, he moved to Canmore, Alta., and began to work as a ski instructor. He still feels agoraphobic but said he’s rid himself of many of his ghosts, largely by talking about his experiences with other veterans. He currently works as a ski racing coach and professional driver. “When I first got out, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t get up in the morning. I felt like I’d been shunned, labelled a bad soldier and I fell into depression. But now I’m highly motivated and I’ve got my work ethic going. I’m back to who I was before I went overseas in ’02.”

• Email: jivison@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @IvisonJ

US Army Cultural Support Team (CST)

Cultural Support Teams are all-female Soldier teams who serve as enablers supporting Army Special Operations combat forces in, and around secured objective areas.

Their primary task is to engage female populations in objective areas when such contact may be deemed culturally inappropriate if performed by a male service member.

CSTs directly support activities ranging from medical civic action programs, searches and seizures, humanitarian assistance, and civil-military operations.

Primarily, CST training will focus on basic human behavior, Islamic and Afghan cultures, women and their role in Afghanistan, and tribalism. 

Training is conducted on Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C.

A US Army Cultural Support Team (CST) member from Special Operations Task Force - East shakes the hand of a young Afghan while on a presence patrol. The purpose of the patrol was to gain atmospherics from local villagers, and for the CST to interact with Afghan women, Kunar District, May 24, 2011. US Army photo by Specialist Patricia Caputo/Released.

Christian Lowe reports on the deployment of Cultural Support Teams attached to Special Forces and Ranger units in Afghanistan at Military.com.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/photos/#ixzz1Vsrscsl4

The Taliban, Haqqani and the Pakistan secret service (the ISI) are the enemy... Lt. Col Nasrat Afghan Army

Interesting article on who the Afghan Army feels is the enemy and some of the many challenges that the ANA still face in trying to secure their own country.

Lieutenant Colonel Nasratullah Nasrat, the commanding officer of the 3rd Kandak (Battalion) of the 1st Brigade of the 203rd Afghan Army, meets with Captain Aaron Tapalman, commander of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry.  Photo by Bill Ardolino/LWJ.

COMBAT OUTPOST SABARI, AFGHANISTAN: To maintain the fight against the insurgency as US forces begin to depart Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force is banking on a strategy of accelerating the development of indigenous security forces. Many functions hitherto executed by US troops have been passed to the Afghan army and police, and most American operations in the country now take place in partnership with Afghan forces.

In Paktia and Khost provinces, the area of operations (AO) for ISAF's "Task Force Duke," the number of partnered missions is estimated at "about 80 to 85 percent of all operations," according to its commander, US Army Colonel Chris Toner. Having also held a command in the area five years ago, Toner sees great improvement among the security forces, particularly the Afghan Uniform Police, and to a lesser extent, the Afghan National Army (ANA). His assessments of progress in those entities are lent credibility by his dour take on the Afghan Border Police, whom he describes as "just as bad as they were five years ago."

But within the Sabari district of Khost province, a historic center of operations for insurgent groups and one of the most troublesome areas in Task Force Duke's AO, US advisers offer mixed, though ultimately negative assessments of their local partners. American officers have some praise for the Afghan Uniform Police, and single out their new police chief as an enthusiastic leader. But that force is small; fewer than 60 officers police the district. Thus, the main local security responsibility in Sabari resides with about two companies of Afghan National Army (ANA).

Americans who work with the ANA in the district on a daily basis are cynical about their partners. US soldiers grant that their Afghan counterparts conduct some operations effectively, communicate with the population infinitely better than they can, and are generally willing to fight (or at least "willing to shoot," according to one soldier). But the Americans offer scathing reviews of the ANA's tactics, initiative, supply and administrative capability, and general ability to do anything without direct US support. Some bright spots exist: Americans dub certain Afghan non-commissioned officers and junior officers as "superstars" who "get after it." But because advancement in Afghan society is often reliant on ethnicity and tribal ties rather than merit, these competent individuals are frequently supervised and held back by less qualified or energetic officers from different social strata.

The events during a recent patrol reported by The Long War Journal highlight some good and bad characteristics of the Afghan Army in Sabari. The negatives are significant: the ANA were tactically inferior (something this reporter has thus far witnessed to varying degrees on patrols with different Afghan units in Khost), and they deserted their American partners when the patrol took contact. On the positive side, the ANA do regularly patrol, they suppressed the above attack effectively before retreating, and the soldiers' rapport with the population is good. While many civilians held the Americans at arm's length, the ANA were greeted with ease and even friendliness by many of the locals. This augurs the possibility that Afghan security forces could represent a viable face of government authority in place of the traditional insurgent power brokers in the area, if they can hold their own against rebels after US forces diminish.

The events of the patrol mentioned above require context: the Afghan contingent was led by a platoon leader deemed among the worst by his American partners. In an incident last month, the lieutenant, who is believed to frequently smoke hash, began to abusively question a four-year-old boy in a nearby village. When an American stepped in to intercede, laying a hand on the lieutenant, members of the ANA platoon cocked their weapons and "drew down" on the US soldier before the situation was defused. In contrast, other platoons are better led, and even some of the soldiers working for the troublesome officer show skill at counterinsurgency. But the Americans' inability to instigate the removal of such an incompetent leader, due to suspected tribal and family ties, highlights the inherent challenge of building a viable force that can stand up to the Taliban after 2014.

This reporter recently sat down to interview Lieutenant Colonel Nasratullah Nasrat, the commanding officer of the 3rd Kandak (Battalion) of the 1st Brigade of the 203rd Afghan Army. An ethnic Pashtun with 25 years of experience in the Afghan Army, Nasrat has spent his entire career stationed in Paktia and Khost provinces. Two things seemed especially notable about his answers: Nasrat's disbelief that the US will really withdraw by 2014, and his blunt assessment of Pakistan's role in the Afghan insurgency. It has been this reporter's repeated experience interviewing leaders of indigenous security forces that there is a strong cultural bias toward pinning responsibility for the violence on foreigners, while absolving locals of blame. But in the case of this interview, Nasrat's assessment of Pakistan's role in destabilizing Afghanistan actually mirrors assessments by multiple US officers and intelligence officials, with the difference that it is on the record.

The Long War Journal: How have Paktia and Khost changed in the past year? Has security in the area gotten better, gotten worse?

Lieutenant Colonel Nasratullah Nasrat: I've been serving in Khost mostly. As far as Khost, it has improved, especially the road that we're trying to emphasize, the KG Pass. It's one of the main roads that leads from Khost to Gardez, which is in Paktia [province].


LWJ: What type of operations are your men doing to improve security?

LTC Nasrat: I control five districts: Sabari, Bak, Jaji Maidan, Khalander, and Musa Khel. Sabari and Bak district are where we engage with Coalition forces and work on missions together.

LWJ: How is that working out?

LTC Nasrat: It's really good, it's been improving. We take security patrols every day, sometimes it's less or more, depending on the situations. In the other three districts where we don't engage with Coalition forces, we take control ourselves as the ANA. We go on patrol ourselves and take charge.

LWJ: How many troops do you have in Sabari?

LTC Nasrat: We have two companies in Sabari.

LWJ: Describe who the enemy is; who are the people who are fighting your forces and American forces?

LTC Nasrat: They go by the name Talib, but we know they come from ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate).

LWJ: Can you elaborate? Why do you believe the insurgents are products of the ISI?

LTC Nasrat: Then where do they come from, the sky?

LWJ: But what specifically indicates the relationship? What clues do you have that ties the insurgents back to Pakistan?

LTC Nasrat: Well, historically, it's Pakistan's fight more than it is ours. They're the ones who have the resources, and we lack the resources coming from Pakistan's ISI. So where are the Afghan Taliban getting the resources from? The Taliban in Pakistan have been under pressure. They are pressured to come here and fight, and the ones that do come here, the majority are Pakistani.

LWJ: Explain to me what type of support you believe the ISI give to insurgents here.

LTC Nasrat: Qazi Hussein Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman, they are Pakistani Taliban [leaders], they work for the ISI. The ISI provides them with resources and of course money. And they're the ones who are fighting in the name of religion in the worst possible ways. And they're the ones who are looking for other people to provide them resources - whether it's weapons, money, anything - besides the resources they get from the ISI. They are the ones who hire poor people who need money, leading them to [attack Afghan and Coalition forces]. They just want to keep the war going in Afghanistan, they just don't want to let it go.

[Note: Nasrat clarified that the two individuals he named, as well as many of the individuals he refers to as "Taliban," are those associated with Hizb-i-Islami.This was likely a translation error related to "Islamic Party," however. The two men are associated with the organizations Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami Fazlur Rahman (JUI-F), both of which use radical madrasas to recruit fighters for the Taliban, as well as maintain ties to the Pakistani security forces.]

LTC Nasrat: Those two men are the leaders, they are like Haqqani Network leaders, but they are not Haqqani. ISI gives those men money, and they distribute money to the insurgent organizations to keep the fight going in Afghanistan.


LWJ: And some of these organizations are local?

LTC Nasrat: They are in Pakistan. But everything comes from the top, which is ISI. They convince the people to fight in the name of Islam for the wrong reasons and have them fight here. Khost is only a popular focus because of the Haqqani Network.

LWJ: But it is my understanding that even though Haqqani is currently based in Miramshah in Pakistan, they are originally from Afghanistan, and they have many Afghan operatives.

LTC Nasrat: Yes, Haqqani is Afghan, but the other two I mentioned are from Pakistan.

LWJ: But aside from those two and the insurgent cells they fund, it is my understanding that Haqqani is fighting here too.

LTC Nasrat: Yes, and they are also linked with the ISI. Yes. And I've even heard he [Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani Network] has kind of a rank within the ISI as well, though it is a rumor.

LWJ: So Haqqani, Hizb-i-Islami, other Taliban, they are all fighting within Sabari?

LTC Nasrat: The Taliban has two groups. One is the local Taliban. The local Talibs are not strong at all. The other group [outside Taliban] is linked to Haqqani and ISI. Those are the most dangerous insurgents, they care about nothing and are afraid of no one. And the third group are those who are linked to [Qazi Hussein Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman]. It's a mixture of all of these groups, who include local people who are poor and get involved for money.

LWJ: It's my understanding that the Americans have taken as many as over 500 mortars and rocket attacks in past years, and this year it's only been a little more than 50 thus far; it's also my understanding that Haqqani and Hizb-i-Islami were hit pretty hard by US and Afghan special forces. Do you think this lull in the fighting is because the insurgents are weak, or because they are waiting until the Americans leave?

LTC Nasrat: The enemy has many faces. They may emphasize on one area [for a time], but they never stay in one place. So, as far as security, yes, it has gotten better, but for the most part the insurgents get pressured in one place so they move and start up in a new location. Recently [insurgents] have been active in Musa Khel (a district immediately west of Sabari), now it has quieted and the insurgents are constantly moving around. Especially the night raids conducted by US Special Forces and Afghan commandos have scared them out of the area because that's when it's best to capture the enemy. They don't quite know what kind of missions we have, but they have realized [it is hurting them] and have been pressured [to move].

LWJ: What other places are they operating from now?

LTC Nasrat: They are looking for a weak place. And when they find a weak place, where there are less Coalition forces, they target it.

LWJ: Do you believe the insurgents are licking their wounds, gathering their strength and waiting for the Americans to leave, at which point they'll renew attacks in Sabari?

LTC Nasrat: Yes. I think they are waiting for that, and they assume, hope for, that the Americans will one day leave. But I can't confirm it.

LWJ: And when that day comes, when the Americans leave, do you believe you are equipped to handle the insurgents?

LTC Nasrat: Of course. My men are ready to fight if they are provided the right resources, like weapons.

LWJ: Explain to me the strengths and weaknesses of your Afghan Army. You say they are ready to fight, but what are the resource issues?

LTC Nasrat: Their strength is pride and ego. They don't back down when they have a duty to do, they will stand and fight, even if they have nothing to fight with. They have a lot of pride, courage, and enthusiasm in them. But their weakness is, they don't have the right weapons.

LWJ: You say weapons, but what about other resources: equipment, food ....

LTC Nasrat: Food-wise we are good to go, equipment-wise we are good to go.

LWJ: But from speaking with various Americans throughout Afghanistan who advise the Afghan Army, I tend to hear that while Afghan soldiers may fight, that the army has trouble with logistics. For example, obtaining and maintaining fuel, food, equipment, and other more mundane administrative areas, without American support. To what extent do you have these issues and how do you plan to address them?

LTC Nasrat: Yes, with logistics we can be a little weak and that's just a military thing. The military is a little weak in providing us things like, for instance, fuel. That is something I have to find a way to get on my own. So we do get help from Coalition forces as far as fuel, as well as air support, but as far as everything else, even our military, from the top [echelons], there are certain things they can't provide because maybe they don't have the resources.

LWJ: So as the Americans pull out, how do you plan to fill that gap [in logistics]?

LTC Nasrat: I can't really answer that, it's really not up to me. It's up to the [Afghan] government. I don't know what will happen.

LWJ: How does the everyday citizen in Sabari district - the farmer, the shopkeeper - view the Americans, the Afghan forces, and the insurgents?

LTC Nasrat: There are two kinds of people in the district. One group includes those who want to work with us but they fear the Talibs and can't do much. And the second group works with the Talibs and they don't really like us. The percentage is high for the first group, but I can't give you an accurate number.

LWJ: I've heard that the district government here in Sabari is weak, that it has very few hired officials, and I've also heard that the tribal structure is very fractured and also very weak. Given those conditions, what is the durable alternative to the insurgent groups? What will be a stable force that average citizens can look to besides the insurgents?

LTC Nasrat: I agree, [the government] is weak. We have men's shuras [tribal meetings]. And if the government is weak and they can't look to the Coalition forces or the Afghan Army, we have male shuras where the citizens can talk about problems and how they can fix them.

LWJ: I've heard that the tribes are weak and the tribal system is fractured here, though. Some of the tribes don't get along with each other, and some of the tribes don't have as much authority as they have in the past. Elders bemoan that "Pashtunwali [traditional tribal code] is dead." Do you see that changing?

LTC Nasrat: There is a person in the area who has authority, his name is Khan Zorman [an elder with the Zambar subtribe of the Sabari tribal confederation], he is the tribal leader.

LWJ: You think he has enough authority to bring the disparate tribes together?

LTC Nasrat: Yes, he is the tribal leader. He will do it through tribal shuras.

[Note: Sabari has a weakened tribal system in comparison with other areas of Afghanistan. When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan, many members of the large Sabari tribal confederation fled to Pakistan. In their absence, other tribes and Kuchian (nomads) moved into the district after their departure. The lingering effect is a diminution of central tribal authority and a fair amount of infighting between the members of the Sabari tribe, who returned to vie with each other and the newcomers. This presents challenges to ISAF and Afghan government efforts to engage the tribes as a cohesive counterweight to powerful insurgent groups. Zorman is considered the most respected tribal leader in Sabari, but even his power is finite relative to Coalition goals. He is also believed to play both sides of the fence.]

LTC Nasrat: In the shura there are also some members of the Taliban who are part of it. And when Zorman is in the district, he doesn't even need to ask the government for anything, because he handles all issues.

LWJ: Some of the Taliban participate with the shuras?

LTC Nasrat: The local Taliban; they don't come to the shura, but they have a say in the shura, and they want to find out what is going on in the shura.

LWJ: What do you think is the long-term security solution here? What is going to stabilize Sabari, especially after US forces leave?

LTC Nasrat: That's not going to happen as long as Pakistan is involved. As long as Pakistan is there, there will never be security, because they don't want that.

LWJ: So how do you personally deal with that, as a man who has fought for years?

LTC Nasrat: That's a very hard question, it would take me an entire day to answer it. We don't accept the border with Pakistan; parts of Pakistan belong to Afghanistan.

LWJ: Yes, but how are you personally going to deal with this fact: when the Americans pull back, and Pakistan is still supporting these insurgents fighting in Afghanistan, are you resigned to the possibility of fighting a war for the rest of your life, or is there a solution?

LTC Nasrat: Even if I have to die, I will protect and provide security for Afghanistan. It is my duty and what I signed up for.

LWJ: What do you think of the looming American withdrawal [ostensibly by 2014]?

LTC Nasrat: Of course security will go bad. I don't think just here [in Sabari], I think international security will worsen. In my opinion, I don't think the US will really withdraw anytime soon.

LWJ: Do you read or watch the news [about withdrawal]?

LTC Nasrat: Not so much, I usually don't. I know a few are going to withdraw, but I don't think that all the Coalition forces will be leaving. There will be some sort of security here.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/08/an_interview_with_31.php#ixzz1VsmPJwvj