Once Again, Into The Maelstrom

Escaping battle and improvised explosive devices in Kandahar, which has already killed 155 Canadian soldiers, a Canadian news reporter and a diplomat, the Canadian military is preparing to send into the relatively safer precincts of Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif a select group of Canadian soldiers to train Afghanistan soldiers in the finer points of Western-style battle techniques.

In the treacherous atmosphere of a country riven by tribal antipathies, sectarian violence and the Islamist political ideologies of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, regrouping and gaining strength even as the clock ticks down to NATO member-countries planning to send their troops back home, the plan is to ensure that the Afghan police and Afghanistan's military become capable of defending their own.

Language difficulties, endemic corruption, security breached by suicide bombers, illiteracy - all conspire to make the job very difficult indeed. But NATO requires military trainers around that large geography bordering on Pakistan - where in the lawless tribal mountainous areas both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban have safe haven - be available to teach military techniques of prime value to Afghan recruits.

There, where the foreign military trainers are stationed in various provinces of Afghanistan, the areas are more secure, less likely to be hosting IEDs. Rather, there is the potential of infiltration among the recruits by Taliban and al-Qaeda, posing as military recruits, and mounting attacks on their trainers when situations permit.

Risks are reduced considerably in the new initiatives to train before departing. But no military personnel sent out to do their duty on behalf of NATO can be entirely assured that they are in safe territory in Afghanistan. Any time a crazed or blistering angry Christian decides to burn a Koran in emulation of Muslims trashing and burning churches, the local populace feels entitled to rampage and target Western Christians for abusing Islam.

That aside, it is the Afghan soldiers on their own recognizance, or those mujahadeen posing as Afghan soldiers, deciding to obey their Islamist-jihad conscience rather than their Muslim leaders' dictates, deciding to kill foreigners, including those humanitarians working out of United Nations posts, the Canadian military has got to be aware of.