Canada takes control of new district in Afghanistan

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Canadian military commanders are taking control of a restive district northwest of Kandahar as NATO tinkers with the country's area of responsibility in Afghanistan.

A U.S. batallion under Canadian command will arrive in the agricultural region within three weeks, according to U.S. Brig-Gen Frederick Hodges, director of operations for International Security Assistance Force's southern command.

The move comes on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama's much-anticipated troop announcement, in which he will announce an additional 30,000 American soldiers to secure the outskirts of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city and an area that has come under increasing Taliban control since Canadian Forces took responsibility in 2006.

Canadian Forces were in charge of Arghandab until July, when control was handed over to an American Stryker battalion.

"The Canadians were just stretched too far up there," Gen. Hodges said.

Canada has roughly 2,800 soldiers in Afghanistan, most based around Kandahar. Until recently, Canadian troops roamed the entire region surrounding the violent city, an area encompassing between 800,000 and 1.3 million people.

"For the longest time you had very, very brave Canadians in very small numbers in a city," Gen. Hodges said. "In effect you had just three or four companies out there in a major metropolitan area trying to provide security and train Afghan security forces. This is not about courage or capability, this is about math."

Since spring, Canada's area of responsibility has shrunk by two-thirds and three U.S. battalions have been placed under Canadian commander Brig-Gen Dan Menard's authority -- part of a summer U.S. troop surge that brought some 20,000 new soldiers to the troubled southern portion of the country.

With American forces under Canadian command taking over several regions north and west of Kandahar City, Canadian troops will have a much smaller zone of focus, just one-tenth of what it was in March, according to Gen. Hodges.

That corresponds with Gen. Stanley McChrystal's counter-insurgency strategy that urges coalition troops to focus on small areas of high population density.

Under the new strategy, international troops will remain outside the city centre to block insurgents from travelling in or out, allowing Afghan army and police personnel to wrest control of the violent city.

"We believe that most of the insurgents are those areas outside the city, in Zari, Panjwaii, Arghandab, so that's why we focused our attention there," Gen. Hodges said. "The last thing we need is MRAPs (mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles) and tanks and combat vehicles in downtown Kandahar. We believe that the city needs to be an Afghan solution -- the Afghan police backed by the Afghan army."

News of the realignment first slipped on Nov. 19, during a handover ceremony that transferred Canadian troop authority in Afghanistan from Brig-Gen Jonathan Vance to Mr. Menard.

Even with the help of new U.S. batallions, the commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, Mr. Menard, will face a tough battle. The Taliban have captured much of Arghandab since the district's powerful leader, Mullah Naqib, died of a heart attack in October, 2007.

"I'm a realist, but this plan is not airtight," Gen. Hodges said. "There are not enough soldiers in all of Europe to make this airtight."