Canadian Troops In Afghanistan Welcome New ROE

Recent changes to the rules of engagement are making it easier for Canadian and other NATO troops in Afghanistan to carry the fight to Taliban insurgents.

A pair of Canadian helicopters circled low over a vineyard, watching two insurgents try to slip away, waiting for permission to shoot. The chopper crew and soldiers on the ground were confident they had a good kill in their sights, with little risk of harming innocent bystanders if the Griffon’s door gunner pulled the trigger. But the crew needed permission from high up the chain of command, an often frustrating hierarchy that soldiers call “the kill chain.”

For months now, Canadian and other NATO troops fighting in southern Afghanistan have complained that restrictive rules of engagement, written to win Afghans away from insurgents by limiting civilian casualties, have handed the momentum to the enemy.

Not this time.

The insurgents were holed up in a small building the size of a shack, with thick, mud brick walls, where farmers normally dry grapes. When they tried to escape, and commanders had no doubt the men were combatants, their war was over. The grinding noise of a chopper’s motorized machine gun, capable of mincing a target with at least 2,000 bullets a minute, echoed across the desert plain. It sounded like a wood chipper dicing up tree limbs.

“Oh ya, baby!” one soldier shouted up at the sky as the airborne gatling gun spewed repeated bursts. Whoops and cheers rippled across the dust-blown camp.

Since Brigadier-General Jon Vance returned to take command in early June, the kill chain has been cut shorter, and Canadian troops on the battlefields of eastern Panjwai district say it’s getting easier to take the fight to the insurgents.

Major Steve Brown, commander of Oscar Company, in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment battle group, called Vance “a no-nonsense kind of guy” whose personality has helped reshape battlefield operations. The increased intensity of armed engagements with insurgents also forced change, Brown added.

Scandal, not a change of military strategy, brought Vance and the new NATO commander, U.S. General David Petraeus, to the battlefield at a critical turning point in the almost nine-year Afghan war.

Vance replaced Brigadier-General Daniel Menard, whom the Canadian forces charged with four counts Monday, including obstruction of justice, stemming from an alleged sexual affair here with Master Corporal Bianka Langlois, a clerk. Petraeus took over from McChrystal, who was forced to quit after he and his staff ridiculed President Barack Obama and key national security aides in front of a Rolling Stone magazine reporter, who wrote an embarrassing profile. The Canadian and U.S. commanders’ blunders may prove a boon to troops risking their lives in a conflict that seems a lost cause to many back home.

Reports from Washington say Petraeus wants to make the procedures less cumbersome so that troops and commanders can properly weigh the right to self-defence against the risk of hurting innocents, without giving insurgents extra time for an easy escape.

By: Shelldrake