In this bulletin:

• Several Rebels Killed And Captured In Afghanistan Battles
• 25 civilians said killed, thousands displaced in Afghan offensive
• Blast at Afghan governor funeral
• US surprised by Taliban strength in Afghanistan
• Nato 'must boost Afghan numbers
• Tribal elders want to mediate in Afghan govt, Taliban
• Afghanistan: Former Taliban Envoy Does Not Regret Protecting Bin Laden
• The View From Kabul
• Porous borders and the Taliban put Canadian troops at risk Harry Sterling
• Canada sending 15 tanks, 120 more troops - Major boost in military capability in Afghanistan
• We have history to thank for low death toll
• Tracing the roots of Canada's role in Afghanistan
• Subject: The NDP is irrelevant

Several Rebels Killed And Captured In Afghanistan Battles

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 

KABUL, September 12, 2006 -- Security forces killed six Taliban rebels and captured 14 others in separate operations in eastern and southern Afghanistan over the past 24 hours.

The interior ministry said the four militants were killed in a battle with Afghan troops in eastern Paktia province's Zurmat district on Monday (September 11). Three other rebels were captured. Officials also said that nine people accused of arranging suicide bombings were detained.

25 civilians said killed, thousands displaced in Afghan offensive

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sept 12, 2006 (AFP) - At least 25 Afghan civilians are believed to have been killed and 7,000 families displaced in a major NATO operation against Taliban rebels, rights and government officials said Tuesday.

The casualties and refugees were from Panjwayi and Zhari districts, alleged Taliban strongholds in southern Kandahar province where Afghan and NATO-led troops launched Operation Medusa on September 2.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) says it has killed more than 500 insurgents and acknowledges there have been some civilian casualties although it says it is investigating how many.

People fleeing the battles and officials from the area had reported that between 30 and 40 civilians had been killed, mainly in bombardments, said human rights official Shamsuddin Tanwir.

Although the government and ISAF had warned them to leave the area before Medusa was launched, many had not had enough time to do so, said Tanwir, from the Kandahar office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

ISAF dropped leaflets over the area informing people of the planned action and used local media and government officials to pass on the message. Tanwir said his office planned to send people there once the operation was over to try to verify the numbers.

Panjwayi and Zhari are about 35 kilometres (19 miles) west of Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan. Haji Agha Lalai Destagiri, a provincial council member from Panjwayi, said around 25 civilians were killed over 10 days.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 families had fled the operation, he said. Most had moved in with relatives and friends. The government's migration chief for Kandahar, Agha Mohammad Nazari, said about 7,200 families had left their homes in Panjwayi and Zhari in the past 20 days and some were still arriving.

The operation was launched against a Taliban group initially believed to have number 700. They were fed by reinforcements from the West during the fighting.

ISAF says it tries to establish the number of casualties it inflicts to a "reasonable degree of accuracy" through the use of intelligence and surveillance. The Taliban says NATO's figures for rebel deaths are grossly inflated.

Blast at Afghan governor funeral - BBC News / Monday, 11 September 2006

At least five people have been killed in a suicide attack at the funeral of an assassinated Afghan provincial governor. Several people were wounded in the blast at the funeral of Paktia Governor Abdul Hakim Taniwal, who was killed in a suicide attack on Sunday.

A number of cabinet ministers were believed to be attending the ceremony. Mr Taniwal is the highest-ranking Afghan official to die in Afghanistan's renewed violence.

The Taleban has claimed responsibility for his death. Police say a suicide bomber blew himself up as the funeral was taking place in the Tani district of Khost, a neighbouring province to Paktia. A hospital doctor told the AFP news agency that the five dead were police officers, and 30 people had been injured.

An Associated Press Television cameraman at the scene said the blast happened as an official delegation from Kabul was leaving the ceremony and heading towards for a helicopter that had flown them in. It is unclear if anyone in the delegation was hurt in the blast.

Abdul Hakim Taniwal was attacked outside his office in the provincial capital Gardez on Sunday. A bodyguard and driver were also killed. A suicide bomber with explosives attached to his body targeted the governor and his entourage as they left in a car.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai described him as "a patriot, a man of both action and academic achievements."

"He was also a personal friend of mine, who returned from abroad to serve his nation," he added in a statement.

US surprised by Taliban strength in Afghanistan: Rice - Sep 11

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has acknowledged that the United States was surprised by the strength of Afghanistan's Taliban militia five years after its ouster from power in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

But Rice told Fox News Sunday that NATO forces were inflicting heavy losses on the Taliban and that the rebels posed no "strategic threat" to the embattled government of President Hamid Karzai.

In one of a series of interviews on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 Al-Qaeda attacks, Rice said it had been expected that the Taliban would attempt to regain power after being ousted by US-led forces in late 2001 for providing a safe haven to Al-Qaeda leaders.

"Of course they're going to fight back, even if they're on the ropes, they're going to fight back," she said on Sunday.

But she went on to admit that "they came back somewhat more organized and somewhat more capable than would have expected," she said.

Rice was speaking two days after the top British commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, said the fighting between NATO forces and the Taliban in recent weeks had been "extraordinarily intense".

"The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," he said.

But Rice said the NATO forces were making significant progress against the Taliban since they replaced US-led troops in the volatile south of the country six weeks ago.

"They're learning a very brutal lesson as they encounter NATO forces that are destroying them in very large numbers," she said. "The Taliban is taking a beating in this. "The notion that somehow this is a strategic threat to the Karzai government, I think this is not the case."

The NATO-led force took over military command of southern Afghanistan on July 31 from the US-led coalition that toppled the fundamentalist Taliban government in late 2001.

The force -- which has around 10,000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops in the south -- has come under regular attack, particularly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. At the same time attacks against government and US coalition forces elsewhere in the country have continued.

On Sunday, a respected provincial governor in eastern Afghanistan was killed along with his nephew and bodyguard by a suicide bomber. And on Friday a suicide bombing in Kabul killed 16 people, including two US soldiers.

Nato 'must boost Afghan numbers' - BBC News / Tuesday, 12 September 2006

The Nato Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has asked the 26 members of the alliance to heed calls for more international troops for Afghanistan.

He told the BBC some Nato members were carrying more of the burden than others in the fight against the Taleban. Nato leaders have asked members to pledge some 2,500 extra troops.

Nato leads the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan, which currently includes at least 18,500 personnel. Some 37 nations have committed troops to the Isaf deployment.

Conflict between international troops and Taleban fighters has grown in intensity this year, especially in the southern regions of Kandahar and Helmand.

The militants, who were ousted from government in 2001 by Nato-backed forces, have proved to be a far more determined enemy than anticipated, says the BBC's Alastair Leithead in the capital Kabul.

Speaking to the BBC a day after meeting alliance ambassadors, Mr de Hoop Scheffer said he was working continuously in an effort to boost Nato numbers in Afghanistan.

"We are working on getting nations to do what they promised. The question here is that nations should live up to what they promised," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"A 26-nation alliance should show this solidarity, so I'm working hard as we speak on getting the extra forces.

"I don't deny that I have to do my very best but I'm sure that at the end of the day we'll have the forces because we should, because Nato can't do anything else than that."

Nato officials are to hold a "force generation conference" on the troop appeal in Belgium on Wednesday.

The secretary general's call was backed by the international commander in Afghanistan, Lt Gen David Richards. Gen Richards said Nato states had failed for more than a year to heed a request for extra troops.

He told the Financial Times the 26-nation alliance had been seeking a reserve force of 1,000 troops for the past 18 months.

He said Nato members knew 18 months ago that commanders in Afghanistan wanted that force, plus 1,500 air support troops which the alliance's supreme commander called for last week.

"That requirement has never been met by nations. The bit it lacked was a hard-hitting reserve of about 1,000 people that I can use wherever I need to use it throughout Afghanistan, although obviously its focus would be the south."

Despite taking regular casualties, Gen Richards insisted international forces were establishing "psychological ascendancy" over the Taleban.

Nevertheless, some commanders apparently remain concerned about the dangers of committing troops to southern Afghanistan.

In some cases, our correspondent says, they are unwilling even to change rules of engagement to allow the movement of soldiers from quieter and safer parts of the country to fight in the south.

There is a serious concern on the ground that the extra troops just will not be found and Isaf will have to make do with what it has got, under-resourced or not, he adds.

Tribal elders want to mediate in Afghan govt, Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Sep 10 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Elders of jirga have offered to play a mediatory role in Taliban and Afghanistan government like they did between militants and Pakistani authorities in North Waziristan.

After six weeks strenuous efforts, a jirga compromising tribal elders, religious scholars, and local leaders succeeded in inking an agreement between Pakistani government and local Taliban. On behalf of government Political Agent Dr Fakhr-i-Alam and a Taliban representative Sadiq Noor signed the agreement.

In an inclusive interview with Pajhwok Afghan News, a member of national assembly from North Waziristan and member of the jirga Maulana Mirajudin said he was ready to play a mediatory role in between Taliban and Afghan government.

He said people living in Pakistan and Afghanistan had same religion, culture and tradition and resolving problem through jirga was a common practice. He said: "Killing will never cease in Afghanistan until both the parties come to negotiating table."

He said if Afghan government was agreed they were ready to persuade Taliban for talks with Afghan administration. He said all possibility was there that America would oppose such dialogue in between Taliban and the government.

He said: "In case of reconciliation in between militants and Afghan authorities there would be no excuse for America to remain in the war-battered country."

However, Taliban in this war-torn country have declined peace talks with the government. They said they would stick to fight until the expulsion of foreign forces of the country.

Yousuf Qari Ahmadi, purported spokesman for Taliban, told this news agency via telephone that their fight was not for attaining the power. He said that they could never talk with Afghanistan rulers in presence of thousands of foreign forces.

Ahmadi said:" We can talk only with an independent government, but Karzai rule is just puppet and its control is in the hands of foreign forces, ergo we are not ready to talk to such administration." Despite many efforts none was available in the foreign ministry for comment on the reconciliation issue.

Afghanistan: Former Taliban Envoy Does Not Regret Protecting Bin Laden

By Golnaz Esfandiari - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, RFE/RL spoke to the man who became the international face of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Salem Zaeef, who at the time of the attacks was the Taliban's envoy to Pakistan. Mullah Zaeef says he doesn't regret that the Taliban did not hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to the United States five years ago. He also spoke about his time in prison at Guantanamo Bay and his views on the current situation in Afghanistan.

PRAGUE, September 11, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- You probably remember his face: glasses, dark eyes, and a long thick black beard. He wore a black turban and was often accompanied by a one-eyed translator.

Five years ago he was one of the people that appeared on international television networks on an almost daily basis. Mullah Abdul Salem Zaeef was the face of the then mysterious Taliban regime.

He was their mouthpiece, the man who repeatedly rejected U.S. demands to extradite Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. He ended up being one of the only senior Taliban members who spent more than three years in the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

Yet he does not regret that the Taliban did not hand over the Saudi-born millionaire -- who is believed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- over to Washington.

"No [I have no regrets]; we were defending [the dignity] of Islam and the rights of Afghanistan," he said. "We condemned the attacks in the United States. We said that there should be an investigation to find the culprits. But handing over Osama without proof to the United States was not a rational thing to do. Islam is the religion of rationality and justice."

The Taliban had, among other things, banned television in Afghanistan. But Mullah Zaeef, who was residing in Islamabad in 2001 and had seen the images of destruction and death of the 9/11 attacks on television. He said it was sad to see but still not enough to convince the Taliban to give up the man they considered their guest.

So Zaeef continued making defiant statements and lambasting the United States while at the same time trying to avert a war he knew was coming.

"I talked with the U.S., I was in touch with the United Nations, Islamic countries, and diplomats from other countries," he said. "I wanted to resolve the issue through understanding and talks, not through war. I believe and still believe that war creates enmity among nations and it never solves anything."

The United States and its allies attacked Afghanistan in October 2001. While bombs were falling on his country Zaeef remained in Islamabad and kept giving regular press briefings in which he accused U.S.-led forces of killing Afghan civilians.

The sustained air strikes along with a ground offensive by the Northern Alliance led to the fall of the Taliban.

About two months later, Pakistan arrested Zaeef and deported him to Afghanistan where he was taken into custody by U.S. forces.

The 38-year-old Zaeef is still bitter about the way Pakistan treated him and says the move was "illegal." It landed him in several U.S. detention centers, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was for three years and five months.

He says he was questioned about the whereabouts of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and also bin Laden, a man he says he has never met.

Zaeef recently published a book about his time in Guantanamo titled "A Picture Of Guantanamo." He claims in the book that detainees were mistreated and humiliated.

"Human rights and religious principles were never respected in [Guantanamo Bay]," he said. "I have written about this in some 156 pages and I have described the situation there and how I and other prisoners were treated. But I would like to point out two things; there was no law and the rights of [detainees] were not being observed." Zaeef was released from Guantanamo after he accepted certain conditions.

"The conditions were that I should remain in Afghanistan and I should not participate in attacks against the United States, its allies, and the Afghan government," he said. "I should also not join the Taliban."

Mullah Zaeef says he doesn't want to join those Taliban who are waging a war against coalition and Afghan forces. He says, however, that he will always remain a talib, which means a "student of truth and knowledge."

Zaeef says he is watching with great concern the increasing violence in his homeland.

"You have to wonder why there are suicide attacks," Zaeef said. "Why does someone kill himself and others? They searched people's houses, they searched women, and they sent people to Guantanamo. The prisons in Kandahar...[and] Baghram have been filled with people. Mistakes have been made but nothing is being done to correct them."

He doesn't want to go back to his hometown and former Taliban stronghold Kandahar, where he says there is no security.

"I am in Kabul now, I live my life with my children," he said. "I am in my house, I help with preparing food. The government had told me that for one year you should stay in Kabul and be under control. The one year ended [a few years ago] and until now I have not decided what I will do in the future."

The former Taliban envoy says all he wants now is a normal life with his nine children.

The View From Kabul - Ahmed Rashid - Al-Hayat - 11/09/06

The British dead lie in neat rows, shaded from the fierce summer sun by gnarled, low-hanging trees. Their gravestones have been stripped from the earth and are now lined up along a whitewashed wall, to preserve them. This is the Imperial British graveyard in Kabul, where British soldiers who fought the Afghans in three 19th- and early 20th- century wars are buried.

The graves speak of victories but also of major defeats and disasters. Now the wall is filling up with more recent plaques - commemorating soldiers from Spain, Germany, Lithuania and other European countries: the peacekeepers of Kabul's International Security Assistance Force and now NATO, who have died trying to secure this troubled land.

 Under NATO auspices, British soldiers are back, some 4,300 battling a resurgent Taliban in the southern province of Helmand. Ten British soldiers have been killed in the past two months. Americans, Canadians, Italian and Spanish troops have also been killed in recent weeks.

 Five years after 9/11, Western troops could be on the verge of another defeat in Afghanistan and the Afghans could face another prolonged disaster. An unending series of plaques may be needed in the graveyard.

 Five years after President George W. Bush and world leaders vowed never to abandon Afghanistan again and to rebuild it as a bastion of democracy and modernity in the heart of the Muslim world, their promises lie broken and soiled.

 Ten thousand British, Canadian and American troops are fighting Taliban who now virtually control five provinces in the south. More than 2,000 Afghans have been killed this year, the majority Afghan civilians and professionals such as teachers and aid workers targeted by the Taliban.

 In the overcrowded cities there have been few jobs or amenities for the millions of returning refugees and the restless young - with 45 percent of the population under age 18.

 In May, after a traffic accident, rioters swept through Kabul burning down the offices of Western aid agencies and were on the verge of attacking the palace of President Hamid Karzai before being pushed back by troops. Twenty people were killed.

 Everything that has happened since 9/11 - the war in Iraq, the crisis with Iran, the Middle East - has dragged money, resources, attention and Western troops away from Afghanistan. Without adequate U.S. leadership, the rest of the world has also lost focus on the country.

 Yet the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region is still the ideological center of global jihadism. Al-Qaida lives and flourishes there, and like the beast in the movie "Alien," is constantly spawning new groups around the world. Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, threatening Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.

 To win the war against terrorism, U.S. forces need to provide security to the Afghans and to aid agencies to rebuild the country. Instead, the U.S. military presence has been too small and too fixated on the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

For the first three years after the 2001 war, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, never much interested in Afghanistan, didn't allow European peacekeeping troops to spread out to other cities.

 Washington's lack of attention has allowed its wily ally, Pakistan's President Pervaiz Musharraf, to play a double game, pledging support in the anti-terror war yet allowing the Taliban to flourish in the border area as a way to maintain pressure on Karzai.

 Western forces under NATO command are only now - five years too late - being deployed to the Taliban heartland in the south. Since their defeat in 2001 the Taliban have been free to reorganize, fill the political and military vacuum and slowly work on people's frustration with the lack of reconstruction.

 The international community's most critical mistake has been the failure to rebuild the country's destroyed infrastructure fast enough. Roads, power, housing and water were the essentials. Instead, five years on, only one section of the all-important ring road around the country has been rebuilt.

According to the U.N. Development Program, only 23 percent of Afghans have access to clean drinking water. Major canal systems and dams built in the 1960s for irrigation still await repair. The shortage of water systems and the total absence of investment in agriculture has led to an explosion of poppy production - which requires little water. Afghanistan is the world's largest supplier of heroin, a derivative from the poppy seed.

 Only 10 percent of Afghans receive regular electricity. One-third of Kabul's 3 million residents receive power - and only for a few hours, every third night.
 The shortage is getting worse. The government bought huge diesel generators to fill the power gap in Kabul and received a $70 million subsidy from the U.S. Agency for International Development to buy fuel. Without explanation, USAID has cut that subsidy to $20 million. The result is that this winter will be even harder without heat or light. And reconstruction without electricity is impossible.

 Karzai and his cabinet of ministers have provided minimal leadership and vision. Many of them have been caught in a web of infighting, corruption and drug trafficking. A frustrated Karzai has reverted to traditional Afghan methods of governance, bringing back the warlords and their militias and revoking the modernization agenda set out after 2001.
 In the past six months there has been a vicious blame game in Kabul, with the international community and Afghan leaders blaming one another for these failures - and for the rise of the Taliban. One hopeful sign is the creation of a joint Security and Development Policy Action Group, which includes all the major Western ambassadors and generals and Karzai and his key security officials.

This group has to set a common strategy, allocate sufficient resources to that strategy and restore the credibility of the government and the international community even while fighting the Taliban. The United States and its Western allies are now playing catch-up in Afghanistan, trying to rectify the neglect and mistakes of the past five years. There is no room for complacency even as many Afghans ask if the effort is too little, too late.
 
 (Ahmed Rashid, based in Lahore, Pakistan, is the author of "Taliban" and, most recently, "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Asia.")

Porous borders and the Taliban put Canadian troops at risk Harry Sterling

8 September 2006 Vancouver Sun

While Canadian troops are being killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan's leader, President Pervez Musharraf, has just concluded a so-called peace deal with his own local Taliban. That accord could have far-reaching consequences for the Canadians engaged in a showdown with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan.

The deal in Pakistan was the culmination of weeks of negotiations with tribal elders in the pro-Taliban North Waziristan region adjacent to the Afghan border.

According to the agreement, pro-Taliban militants, who escalated attacks against Pakistani military units since last year, have reportedly agreed to no longer offer sanctuary to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida forces and to stop cross-border attacks in Afghanistan as well as assaults against the Pakistani army.

In exchange, the central government will reduce its military presence in certain areas and supposedly end large-scale operations in the general region. The Pakistani military would continue to man border checkpoints with Afghanistan.

The agreement does not come as a complete surprise. Musharraf has found himself in an increasingly vulnerable position over the past year. In addition to an escalation of attacks against his military in both North and South Waziristan by ethnic Pashtuns, aligning themselves with fellow Pashtuns across the porous border in southern Afghanistan, Musharraf also had to contend with a rebel movement in mineral-rich Balochistan.

The fighting there last week resulted in the killing of the longstanding rebel leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti, by Pakistani forces. The 79-year-old Bugti, who'd been fighting since the 1950s for greater autonomy and for access to the province's mineral resources, perished when his mountain hideout was attacked by Pakistani helicopter gunships.

While events in Balochistan and North and South Waziristan might seem of limited relevance for those far removed from Pakistan, the reality is otherwise. What happens in Pakistan has direct implications for Canadian troops in Kandahar province.

The Taliban in Afghanistan would never have been able to mount the quasi-conventional military attacks of this year -- costing the lives of almost three dozen Canadians -- without sanctuaries and staging areas in Pakistan.

The fact that both Mullah Omar's Taliban and al-Qaida forces could count on such sanctuaries to provide recruits, sophisticated weapons and other essential supplies is a growing irritant between President Hamid Karzai of Afghansitan and President Musharraf in Islamabad. Both Karzai and his foreign minister have publicly called upon Pakistan to move more forcefully against the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters operating from Pakistan's North West Frontier province.

Notwithstanding such complaints, Musharraf's freedom of action has always been constrained by a number of considerations. The Pakistan government's control over the region has traditionally been weak. Since the majority of the inhabitants are Pashtuns, they have a natural affinity for fellow Pashtuns across the border. Many regard the central authorities as outsiders, the Pakistan military as akin to an army of occupation.

They also are violently anti-American and oppose Musharraf's cooperation with Washington. Several religious leaders have denounced Musharraf for his pro-American policies and have issued fatwas against him. A key leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Haji Omar, who fought for Mullah Omar before the Taliban's overthrow in late 2001 by the U.S., vowed to fight anyone supporting the "infidel" occupation of Afghanistan.

This week's accord raises serious questions concerning what will happen to sanctuaries in Pakistan presently used by the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida forces.

If the agreement holds, Pakistani militants are obliged to expel al-Qaida fighters and supposedly end cooperation with foreign jihadists. Islamabad tried unsuccessfully to obtain the same understanding earlier this year, so it's unclear what has changed since then or whether those who brokered the deal at a grand council of tribal elders in fact speak for all militants in the region.

But what will be the relationship of Pakistani militants with the Afghan Taliban fighters?

And what exactly will be the role of Pakistan's 80,000 troops in the region? Will they be redeployed closer to the border to fight the Afghan Taliban?

Karzai obviously will want answers to such questions himself.

So will Canada's own military as it continues to pay a heavy price in the battle against the Taliban infiltrating from Pakistan.

Harry Sterling is a former Canadian diplomat based in Ottawa.

Canada sending 15 tanks, 120 more troops - Major boost in military capability in Afghanistan

CAMPBELL CLARK From Monday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — The Canadian Forces' main tank unit is racing to prepare 120 troops and 15 Leopard tanks to send to Afghanistan as early as next week, in what would be a major boost in Canadian military capability there, according to a military expert who observed them.

The Lord Strathcona's Horse unit has been asked to ready a tank squadron so they could be shipped out by Sept. 19, the end of a current training exercise, and possibly sooner, said Bob Bergen, a military expert with the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

Mr. Bergen, a former journalist, observed the Lord Strathconas' preparations over two days at CFB Wainright, north of Edmonton, including attending operations meetings on Saturday.

The unit has not been given a formal "warning order," that sets a date for deployment. That would come after Ottawa makes the final decision to deploy the tanks but appears to be contingent on Canada's ability to arrange transport for the 42-tonne tanks, probably from the United States, because Canada does not have the planes to carry them.

"The folks in Wainright think that the government's announcement will hinge on the availability of getting those planes," Mr. Bergen said. "So it could come sooner than the 18th or the 19th if the Americans say, 'Yes, we can get you that airlift.' "

The preparations come as NATO defence chiefs, meeting in Poland, called on member nations to provide more troops and equipment to tackle Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan who have proven to be more tenacious than expected. Canada has said it hoped other countries would volunteer.

"Clearly there are other countries, not Canada, but other countries, who can do more," Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay said yesterday in an interview on the CTV television program Question Period.

"I think the expectation is other countries would have to step up, as Canada has."

The heavily armoured Leopards are less vulnerable to attacks from rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs than the light-armoured LAV-III vehicles now used by infantry troops. Instead of firing bullets, the Leopards carry huge 105-millimetre guns that can pound targets with explosive shells from a distance.

The Taliban in southwestern Afghanistan appear to be concentrating forces and digging in defences -- moving to what Canadian deputy commander Colonel Fred Lewis called "semi-conventional" combat, compared to guerrilla-style tactics employed before. The tanks would provide well-protected firepower to blast away and plow over such defences, experts say.

"It would be a significant increase in our capability," said retired Major-General Lewis Mackenzie, a former commander of UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. "There's not a lot more boots on the ground at 120 [troops], but there's a lot more combat power because of the 105-millimetre gun and the armoured protection they provide."

"When the infantry, for example, come up against a couple of houses where they would suffer casualties going in and clearing that house of the enemy, even though they would win, it's sort of nice to be able to stand back and turn to the tanker and say, 'Take that house out.' "

He said the Taliban are concentrating their forces and setting up defensive positions, rather than striking and "disappearing into the night." Tanks are a slow-moving weapon to use against fast-moving guerrilla strikes, but useful against the current tactics, he said.

A Department of National Defence spokesman, Ryan Holbein, said yesterday that the tank squadron preparations are part of "prudent contingency planning."

"The army is conducting staff checks to determine what additional personnel and equipment could be made available to augment the ongoing mission in Afghanistan," he said. "They're preparing so they're ready to go when the government of Canada provides direction."

But Mr. Bergen said the preparations have reached a hectic pace, including a scramble to centralize all of Canada's tanks at CFB Wainright, so that future rotations of the tank squadron could be trained there. Canadian troops are sent abroad for six-month rotations and return home for at least a year before they are sent again.

The squadron being prepared at CFB Wainright includes three tank troops of four Leopards each, plus a command group of three Leopards that would be led by the squadron commander, Mr. Bergen said.

"They have committed resources to this that Canadians haven't seen," he said. "They have been given warning to train for this level for deployment, but they have not been given a warning order to go."

The Lord Strathconas are essentially Canada's major tank unit. But it has only 330 soldiers, enough for two rotations, but not three. Canada has agreed to keep troops in Afghanistan until 2009.

The Canadian Forces have about 66 Leopards, 28 of which are based at CFB Wainright. The tanks have been upgraded since they were acquired in the 1980s, but the military is in the midst of trimming the fleet to about 44 vehicles, judging them costly and less useful than in the Cold War era, when planning revolved more around conventional combat.

The Leopard C2 is a heavily armoured tank with a large-calibre, 105-mm gun that can fire explosive shells at an enemy position and two mounted machine guns. The C2s are updated Leopard 1A5s, acquired in the 1980s and upgraded with a targeting system that allows the gun to be fired accurately at night. It is operated by a crew of four.

It is a slower-moving vehicle than the LAV III transports that infantry in Afghanistan currently use to find and attack Taliban fighters, but it is better protected, and carries more firepower. Although it is less useful for quickly reaching a quick-moving hit-and-run team, it would also be less vulnerable to attacks by Taliban using rocket-propelled grenade launchers and roadside bombs. It is also more able to knock away enemy defences and obstacles, because its gun can pummel buildings and the vehicle can roll through mud walls.

We have history to thank for low death toll

By SCOTT TAYLOR On Target

WE ARE NOW five years into the war against terror, and if truth was indeed the first casualty, you can rest assured that by now it has been beaten completely to death.

Nevertheless, the spin doctors and jingoists are still running amok and as the violence continues unabated in both Iraq and Afghanistan, fewer and fewer people seem to even recall the original objective of the U.S. military campaign: to bring the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks to justice.

As part of the NATO force in southern Afghanistan, Canadian troops are battling the Taliban forces around Kandahar. In the wake of 9-11 it was the Taliban regime that was given the ultimatum of handing over Osama bin Laden to the U.S. authorities or else the American military would invade Afghanistan and apprehend the al-Qaida ringleader themselves.

If the Taliban was able or willing to comply with their demand, the U.S. would again turn a blind eye to this failed state and the Taliban oppression of human rights in the name of fundamentalist Islamic beliefs.

However, after half a decade of U.S. occupation Osama remains at large and the over-stretched American military needs to divert forces out of Afghanistan into Iraq. The resurgent Taliban has replaced al-Qaida as the focus of combat operations, and the U.S. has handed the mess to NATO.

Last weekend NATO forces in Kandahar launched their first major offensive, the scale of combat shocked the Canadian public. With five killed and 41 wounded in just over 24 hours, the Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group was certainly shaken up by the volume of casualties.

Sensing a shift in support for the Afghanistan mission, opposition parties began demanding a clear exit strategy. NDP Leader Jack Layton praised the efforts of the soldiers but called upon the Conservative government to cut off the deployment after next February. Echoing those sentiments was Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe, who understands how unpopular the Afghan mission is in La Belle Province and knows that opposition will skyrocket once the Valcartier-based Royal 22nd Regiment deploys to Kandahar next February.

To silence the critics and shore up public support, the Defence Department tapped into its pool of willing media cheerleaders and rousted out its collection of government-subsidized historians to enter the debate.

"Five killed in 24 hours? That’s nothing when you put it into historical context," the history profs wheezed. "The British Army lost 60,000 casualties on July 1, 1916, on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, and no one talked of pulling out of the war!" In 1914, when the world went to war, the Canadian government put up posters that read "Britons, your country needs you!" and within two weeks, 30,000 recruits were enlisted and encamped outside Valcartier, Que. No one had to explain that an archduke had been assassinated by a Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo, which led to a complex series of ultimatums and mobilizations by European imperial armies. All they had to say was "It’s war," and the young men rushed to join.

Furthermore, the massive expenditure of manpower in the Second World War did not go unchallenged. The French army mutinied in the trenches and the Canadians used both corporal and capital punishment to keep soldiers at their front-line posts.

When the combat veterans returned home, the pre-war society was stood on its head. The class system was dismantled, women’s rights were recognized, an educated middle class emerged and an independent free press allowed the public to scrutinize and criticize government policy.

The reason we now question the relatively low death toll is because our forefathers fought and died in droves to allow us that privilege. To forsake that right is to forget our history — not the other way around.

Tracing the roots of Canada's role in Afghanistan

NORMAN SPECTOR The Globe and Mail 9/11/06

It's no surprise that the resolution that provoked the most controversy in the lead-up to the NDP convention over the weekend was submitted by a British Columbia constituency association. Along with traditionally pacifist Quebec, pollsters say we're the least supportive of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. Still, you have to wonder what was in the minds of the Nanaimo-Cowichan NDPers who prefaced their call for withdrawal with a warning that Canadian troops will be "acting like terrorists."

NDP Leader Jack Layton's office initially tried to play down the resolution and refused comment. However, the phone lines must have been burning up because, within hours, the riding association had dropped the controversial wording.

On the other hand, a resolution affirming that Canada was "participating in the occupation of Afghanistan" was duly debated and eventually adopted by youth delegates. No matter. Notwithstanding the rhetoric, it's healthy in a democracy to be discussing these issues.

With grim news nearly daily from Afghanistan, it's understandable that many Canadians are asking themselves why our soldiers are fighting and dying in that far-off country. In light of Canada's refusal to send troops to Iraq, they're finding it especially difficult to understand how it came to pass that our country suddenly appears to have enlisted in U.S. President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. Today -- the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks -- is a good day to look back at how all this came about.

It's not, as Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has said, and as I suspect the Prime Minister will repeat in his televised address this evening, that 24 Canadians died in the attack on the World Trade Center. Those deaths were regrettable, but Osama bin Laden was not targeting Canada. Although our government has a responsibility to help Canadians in difficulty abroad, it has no obligation to go to war because some of us were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Let's be clear, however: Canada did go to war after 9/11. Immediately after the attacks, Canadian representatives participated in the decision to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter, declaring that the attack on the U.S. was an attack on all members of the alliance.

A month later, then prime minister Jean Chrétien announced that we would send troops to Afghanistan. And Canada's elite troops, J2F2, did in fact help the U.S.-led coalition depose the Taliban government that had harboured Mr. bin Laden.

In contrast to the Iraq war, these troops were operating under a United Nations mandate. Unfortunately, in light of subsequent events, neither we nor other NATO partners committed sufficient resources to complete the job. Rather than defeating them decisively, the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies simply retreated tactically and waited for a better day.

In fairness, the NDP opposed Mr. Chrétien's decision to go to war in 2001, and the party is now being consistent with its principles, if not with Canada's international obligations. Wavering Liberals, on the other hand, are not being consistent with either. From the minute that Canada joined the coalition to depose the Afghanistan government, it became our obligation -- morally and under the laws of war -- to restore stability and try to set the country on a path to self-sustaining prosperity.

Toward that end, Mr. Chrétien deployed aid workers to Kabul. He also sent troops in an effort which, according to former minister Sheila Copps, was designed in part to stave off any request from the U.S. that we participate in the Iraq war.

Be that as it may, in 2005, then prime minister Paul Martin -- encouraged by the Canadian military -- decided to beef up our operation. Jack Layton was among those who cheered when the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Rick Hillier, said that the mission of our troops was to target the "detestable murderers and scumbags" behind the rise in international terrorism. In November of that year, the base in Kabul was shut down and our forces relocated to Kandahar in the dangerous southern region of Afghanistan.

Mr. Martin could have opted, as have the Germans and the French, for a less robust role, which would have been more appropriate to Canada's size and the size of our military. His aides are now saying that he never saw Afghanistan as "a natural fit for Canada," but viewed it as an "obligation" from the Chrétien era.

In supporting the extension of the mission, Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff stated that it had not changed under the Harper government. The fact that the dangers have increased beyond all anticipation does not in any measure diminish the obligations Canada assumed under successive Liberal governments.

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]