KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Canada's top soldier has dismissed the growing violence in Kandahar as “insignificant,” contradicting all public data and highlighting the growing gap between Canada's upbeat view of the war and the sober analysis from other NATO countries.
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A comparison of the past two months against the same period in the previous year shows that insurgent attacks have more than doubled in the current fighting season, from 134 in 2007 to 289 in 2008.
For the year to date, VSSA counted 532 insurgent attacks as of July 6, up 77 per cent from 300 last year.
Canadian military officials have argued that the shifting nature of the Taliban's attacks shows that the insurgents are growing weaker, because they are increasingly relying on bombs, or improvised explosive devices, instead of confronting their enemy in direct combat.
In fact, the statistics for Kandahar don't show a clear trend toward bombs as the weapon of choice for the insurgents. While IEDs were the most common type of attack last year, the number of successful IED strikes was slightly smaller this year than the number of so-called complex attacks – ambushes using more than one type of weapon. Such multi-layered attacks have increased this year by 116 per cent, to 123, according the VSSA numbers.
Growing violence in Kandahar 'insignificant,' Canada's top soldier says
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