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Kabul heats up as Canada to deploy
Bomb kills four Germans
Michael Friscolanti
National Post, with files from news services
Monday, June 09, 2003
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A weekend suicide bombing that killed four German peacekeepers in Afghanistan is a chilling sign of things to come for Canadian soldiers deploying to the region this summer, according to military experts who fear Canadian casualties are all but inevitable.
Defence analysts believe the upcoming deployment, like many peacekeeping missions, will be hampered by strict rules of engagement that essentially force soldiers to sit back and wait to be attacked.
"The only way you can stop this sort of thing is if you go out there and get the bad guys," said David Bercuson, the director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
"But if you don‘t have the rules of engagement to be able to do it, then you cannot stop them from coming. I hope people are prepared for, unfortunately, what is going to happen."
What is likely to happen, he said, is a scenario similar to what happened on Saturday, when a suicide bomber in Kabul drove a taxi laden with explosives into the side of a bus carrying German soldiers. The troops, who had spent months patrolling the capital, were en route to the airport for a flight home.
"You‘re a sitting duck," Dr. Bercuson said.
The attack, quickly blamed on Osama bin Laden‘s al-Qaeda network, killed four soldiers, one Afghan civilian and the taxi driver.
"We found several pieces of a body and one hand still attached to the steering wheel," said General Abdul Raouf Taj, a district police commander.
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Lobbering, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said the unit received daily threats that a suicide bomber may strike, but preventing such attacks is almost impossible.
"Although we have warnings, and in this particular case we had that beforehand, that something might happen at a certain time, at a certain place, it is always impossible to predict," he said.
ISAF, an international effort to bring peace and security to the Afghan capital, boosted security measures following the bombing, including halting all transport buses, but Lt.-Col. Lobbering said more attacks were expected.
"The type of terrorist attacks and the amount of terrorist attacks is in line with what we have been expecting, and what we still expect, I am sorry to say, for the upcoming future," he said.
Yesterday, military experts accused the federal government of grossly underestimating the looming danger facing the 1,800 Canadian soldiers scheduled to join ISAF this summer as part of Operation Athena.
Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, said he is well aware that risk is an inherent part of military operations. However, he fears the government is not giving the troops enough leeway to protect themselves in an environment that many people misinterpret as being safe.
"This magic term ‘peacekeeping‘ is interpreted by the vast majority of the Canadian population as helping little old ladies across the street," he said. "That‘s wrong."
Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said he hopes Canadian commanders in Kabul give their troops the freedom to sway from the rules if it means protecting themselves and their fellow soldiers.
"You don‘t put your soldiers at risk without giving them the option to use their initiative," he said.
"We‘ll sort out the court martials and all that later."
Saturday‘s suicide bombing added yet another level of complexity to an upcoming mission already plagued by equipment shortages and bureaucratic red tape.
The Canadian Forces is scrambling to acquire equipment for its mission in Afghanistan, including badly needed night-vision goggles, laser rifle sights and unmanned aerial vehicles. Last week, the government acknowledged the cost of the mission would exceed the $200-million set aside for the deployment.
On a political level, critics have charged that the Liberal government only agreed to join the mission so it could avoid having to send troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
"It was a very political decision and it had not been properly considered before it was made," said Leon Benoit, the defence critic for the Canadian Alliance. "So I am concerned. We‘ve seen that before with especially UN missions, where the rules of engagement simply don‘t allow for proper protection."
Lieutenant Hollie Ryan, a spokeswoman for the Department of National Defence, would not comment specifically on Saturday‘s bombing, but she said Canadian troops are not going into Afghanistan "with their eyes closed."
"We recognize that we‘re going into an area [where] there are still threats to our security," she said.
"It‘s still a dangerous area. The Canadian Forces members are fully prepared for whatever scenarios they might face over there."
mfriscolanti@nationalpost.com
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