Presence and Peacekeeping

by John Thompson

10/20/03

We have lost some soldiers again in Afghanistan. For a change, hard questions are being asked as to why they died and was their equipment deficient.

In some ways, it is a relief to hear these questions. We had over 130 men dead (in combat, by accident or their own despairing hands) and injured in the former Yugoslavia in the past 12 years -- without the public or the politicians paying much attention. Moreover, much of their equipment is deficient.

However, the two soldiers who just died in Afghanistan were doing what had to be done, and the Iltis Jeep — flimsy and unreliable as it is — would have been no better at preventing their deaths than most other vehicles might have been. Their vehicle had run over an old Soviet-made anti-tank mine, seemingly planted on a recently cleared route by hostile hands.

Anti-tank mines are powerful explosive devices designed to disable 40 to 70 ton main battle tanks. The explosion will either shatter the tracks, temporarily immobilizing the vehicle, or will blast through the bottom of the vehicle — flinging red-hot and razor sharp fragments inside the crew compartment. The shock from the explosion can sometimes shatter the leg bones of the driver and anyone whose feet are in contact with the hull of the vehicle.

The heaviest tanks can mute this effect somewhat, but the question is moot for Canadian soldiers. We don’t have heavy tanks and our ancient Leopards are largely confined to storage and too light (at 40 tons or so) to shrug off the effects of most anti-tank mines anyway. Besides, neither the Americans nor any other NATO member in Afghanistan sent tanks there… the logistical considerations are immense.

Lesser armoured vehicles and trucks and jeeps fair little better when they encounter anti-tank mines. Only the South Africans (used to encountering lots of mines in their Apartheid-era wars in Namibia, Angola and elsewhere) developed a truly mine resistant light armoured vehicle — but the Casspir is primarily intended as an internal security vehicle and of limited utility in the other roles that light armoured vehicles must fulfill.

The Iltis Jeeps that are causing so many headaches are flimsy and mechanically unreliable (personally, I blame Bombardier, who manufactured the Canadian version of a good German design). However, the mine that killed our troops would have also totaled a Land Rover or Hummer. Wrecked Hummers can be seen on the nightly news from Iraq, where they are meeting the same sorts of weapons that menace our people in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

As to why our soldiers were driving down a remote track outside Kabul, there are several answers. At first, the NATO mission in Afghanistan has been to provide an island of stability around Kabul, in the hope that this might prove a chrysalis for the whole of that unhappy country. Recently, the role has been expanded, asking for NATO troops to sally forth and actively pursue badmashes, bandits and holdover terrorists elsewhere.

One of the fundamental principles of defence is depth — just standing sentry at the gates of a town was okay in the days of crossbows and catapults, but now securing a town means watching over its airport, water reservoirs and approaches, in a perimeter that extends to modern artillery range (about 30 km away). So the Canadian troops in Afghanistan must drive down dusty remote tracks, climb ridges, and talk to villagers well away from Kabul.

Most Canadian soldiers can tell you that "peacekeeping" means getting out and about among the local people if you want to gather intelligence and garner support and cooperation. The British Army in Iraq and the US Marines there have taken next to no losses, compared to the US Army, primarily because they mingle with the Iraqis — showing respect and no fear. One Marine corporal and his squad won the esteem of an entire town of Shi’ia simply by stopping their patrol when a funeral passed by and removing their headgear as a gesture of sympathy.

The Canadian Army is used to doing the same sort of thing in a hundred different ways from Bosnia to Somalia (by our supposedly beastly paratroopers), in Rwanda and in Afghanistan. This approach does risk soldiers to mines on tracks, snipers, and similar minor hazards that claim lives in ones and twos. The alternative is to risk attacks that cause mass casualties like that of the Marine barrack bombing in Beirut in 1983.

We will probably lose more men before the rest of our contingent comes home… If they are lucky and (Ottawa doesn’t interfere too much), we will only lose them in their ones and twos, rather than in their dozens.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca