Canadian Brig.-Gen. Daniel Ménard, shown last week, on Thursday announced a bold new ground strategy in Afghanistan.Colin Perkel/Canadian PressColin Perkel/The Canadian Press
Brigadier-General Daniel Ménard, the country's top commander in Afghanistan, is poised to launch a new offensive ahead of this spring's fighting season that will see Canadian and American combat troops under his command push out from platoon houses around Kandahar city to "break the back" of the Taliban in the surrounding countryside.
Brig.-Gen. Ménard warned the renewed fight in Kandahar province would be bloody, with the death toll of NATO forces likely to spike as they seek to extend their reach before the situation improves.
He believes, however, that the offensive, coupled with parallel political efforts to reintegrate low-level Taliban fighters, will create lasting security in Kandahar's most populated areas, so that when the Canadian combat mission ends in 2011, Afghans will be able to live "normal lives."
"Here - where there's almost nobody living - this is where I'm going to fight the insurgency," Brig.-Gen. Ménard said, tracing his battle plan on a map marked "May 10" during a wide-ranging interview in his office on Kandahar Airfield Thursday. "This summer, during fighting season. And I'm going to fight them with thousands of troops," he vowed.
His new strategy coincides with a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops that has already begun. Some of those soldiers are being deployed to neighbouring Helmand province to bolster British forces. But Brig.-Gen. Ménard will also receive additional troops in the form of a U.S. battalion due to arrive in March.
"It's a huge change," he said of the shift in strategy and additional troops.
"Where my predecessor had maybe 50 people in a district, I can have up to 1,200," he explained.
His new plan is the latest evolution of Canada's mission in Afghanistan, part of U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy, which now appears aimed at undermining the Taliban rather than defeating it altogether, setting the stage for a political compromise with certain elements of the movement's leadership.
Since the fall, hundreds of Canadian soldiers have sought to create a "ring of stability" around Kandahar city, leaving isolated forward operating bases in outlying districts to live in "platoon houses" situated in the suburbs.
"They're all in mud compounds living like Afghans, with Afghans," Brig.-Gen. Ménard said.
The effort, which echoes counterinsurgency tactics employed in Iraq, is meant to gain the trust of local Afghans as much as it is intended to protect them.
The platoon houses represent a dramatic shift away from the first phase of Canada's four-year mission in Kandahar, which saw overstretched troops act like "fire brigades" struggling to contain a swelling insurgency.
The fight, Brig.-Gen. Ménard said, is no longer about killing insurgents, it's about enlisting the support of local Afghans: "This is where and this is when the insurgency will disappear, because we don't need to kill every single insurgent. It doesn't matter - the number. It doesn't. We could kill one thousand a day and it will not change anything here," he said.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, he said, have made significant gains, persuading Afghans to surrender information about insurgent activity, cementing loyalties with the promise of jobs and development projects.
The Taliban, however, is also claiming victory - the death toll of U.S. troops doubled in 2009 from the previous year - just one indication of the strength of the insurgency.
The Taliban are also stepping up their propaganda campaign, seeking to soften their image to curry favour with local Afghans. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the spiritual head of the Taliban, recently ordered his fighters to minimize civilian casualties in their operations.
The Taliban have also installed a "shadow government" in most Afghan provinces, offering Afghans an alternative to the corruption and incompetence of official government and courts.
For Canadian soldiers, moving out from the platoon houses represents a risk. Violence in Afghanistan typically increases over the summer months, and all signs indicate this year will be no exception.
"Because we have more troops … we are now a lot more vulnerable," Brig.-Gen. Ménard said. "… So because of the density, we'll have more casualties, probably."
However, the general said by extending the umbrella of security, he hopes to provide Afghans in the area in and around Kandahar city a respite from the fighting season. That, in turn, will win hearts and minds, he argues.
"When people here will live through one fighting season with limited impact on their daily life, they will not be interested in going through the same nausea of previous years. So they will hold the ground and they will fight even more to keep [the security]they have," Brig.-Gen. Ménard predicted.
"I believe that in 2010 we will be able to break the back of the insurgency in a big way. Not because we will go after them, but because we will be in a better position to have the population decide they've had enough," he said.
When he transfers command next fall, he said he hoped his legacy "will be to have the large populated area of Kandahar province living normally."
"I am sure we can achieve this," he added.