OTTAWA - This summer's fighting season in Afghanistan's Kandahar Province could be a tipping point for success, says one of Canada's top military officials there.
This summer will also be Canada's last with a military presence in Kandahar with troops scheduled to be withdrawn a year from now.
Brigadier General Dan Menard, Commander of Afghanistan's Joint Task Force, said Friday - the same day a vicious insurgent attack in Kabul reportedly killed 17 people - success in Afghanistan rests with the local people who must themselves marginalize the insurgents and Taliban by reporting their whereabouts and rejecting their presence.
This summer, typically a season when insurgent and Taliban attacks increase, Menard is hopeful the force's "ring of stability" around the city of Kandahar will allow day-to-day life there to continue unhindered by violence.
"If we do this during the summer of 2010, I think that this is when we'll be able to break their back," Menard said, adding security forces are hoping to do most of their battling with the Taliban and insurgents in the countryside away from the urban areas.
"Insurgents will have to adapt to us (when outside the urban areas), and we are a lot more flexible than they are," Menard added.
Also, the influx of 30,000 American troops, announced in December, many of whom are being stationed in the embattled Kandahar Province - which is home to about 80% of the Afghan population - has bolstered the security force's permanent presence in many of the larger villages and towns, which Menard said makes it easier for the locals to side with them and reject the Taliban.
"People are working, people are happy, and in some cases they are rejecting the insurgents when they come to their town. That's what I'm after," he said. "The big change is not focusing anymore on the enemy, because if you have the population on board, then the enemy become completely irrelevant.
"That is what we are after, it's marginalizing insurgents in order to capitalize on offering to the population something different, as in a different way of living," Menard added. "I truly believe that this is just like a snowball, and as soon as we start convincing the people, the snowball will start from the top of the mountain and grow exponentially."
Menard said another factor working in the security force's favour is that the Taliban and insurgents are finding it harder and harder to get good help.
Less experienced fighters, he said, are making more and more costly mistakes - such as injuring or killing themselves while trying to place Improvised Explosive Devices - which not only help in battle, but also help to erode the locals confidence in the Taliban and insurgents as a viable alternative.
bryn.weese@sunmedia.ca
