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Canadians training Afghan Special Forces

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  • Canadians training Afghan Special Forces

    A team from CANSOF is mentoring the ANA Commandos and SF:

    Kandahar Journal

    These aren’t men you’d describe as approachable. Something about their mix of self-assurance, muscular build, facial hair and abundant tattoos keeps you at bay. Something around their eyes warns you off — the dull clarity in their unflinching gaze, hinting at knowledge of things best left unknown. There’s something in their movements, something calculating, something constantly measuring, something pent up, leashed, held in check. These are not men you’d like the look of, but these are the quiet professionals of Canada’s Special Operations Regiment (CSOR).

    Officially CSOR is a high-readiness Special Operations Force (SOF) capable of conducting independent operations … on behalf of the Government of Canada. These were the men that we sent to Libya to secure the safety of our embassy staff there in Tripoli, in 2011. These same men have been conducting operations against the Taliban since 2006, interdicting, capturing or eliminating threats to our regular forces in theatre. These men are a big part of the reason that our losses here have not been higher.

    ...

    The mission of CSOR in Afghanistan has, since 2008 included mentoring commandos in the Afghan National Army. But when the active mission changed for our regular army in Afghanistan, the mission grew for CSOR. Their task now is to continue to mentor the training of the Afghan Commandos, but also to help create a further level of expertise in the form of an Afghan National Army Special Forces (ANA SF).

    At first blush, this group of Canadian SOF operators would seem a strange fit for what is by most accounts a teaching job — and yet these men are not their stereotype. Or at least are much more than their stereotype. As well as being experts in their own field, the nature of the small SOF units in Canada has them become experts in one another’s fields as well. Many of them hold university degrees in sociology or history or political science, and even the most edgy-looking, spends his down time playing 18 games of chess online at the same time. Add to this the group intellect – their five years of experience garnered while working shoulder-to-shoulder in actual warfare and you have a knowledge base that most military schools would garrote someone for.

    ...

    Afghan Commando Sgt Abdul Baseer Esmatullah was originally a graduate in the first Commando graduation in 2007. He has fought with the ANA in Kandahar and in here and possibly in the wider war across Afghanistan if they graduate. He has learned from his Canadian mentors the importance of trust. He is now a mentor on the ANA SF course. He hopes one day to move to America.

    “I have a lot of experience now … and not just fighting. I also learned a lot about how to deal with the local people, which was the most successful thing for me. We learned how to gain the people’s trust, and let them know that we are the same … that we are from the same country, and that we have the same nation,” said Sgt Esmatullah.
    More at link
    "On the plains of hesitation, bleach the bones of countless millions, who on the very dawn of victory, laid down to rest, and in resting died.

    Never give up!!"

  • #2
    MOD EDIT: Trolling .
    Last edited by apod; 28 September 2012, 23:09.

    Comment


    • #3
      timhorgan
      Banned User
      Thanks...

      I left Wainwright (Alberta) yesterday at the end of a month-long ex... I'm now sitting at 4 Wing Cold Lake waiting for a C-130J to pick us up and fly us east...
      "On the plains of hesitation, bleach the bones of countless millions, who on the very dawn of victory, laid down to rest, and in resting died.

      Never give up!!"

      Comment


      • #4
        their mix of self-assurance, muscular build, facial hair and abundant tattoos
        I have to ask, Jungle, is this an accurate pen-picture of you?
        'He died who loved to live,' they'll say,
        'Unselfishly so we might have today!'
        Like hell! He fought because he had to fight;
        He died that's all. It was his unlucky night.
        http://www.salamanderoasis.org/poems...nnis/luck.html

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Flamingo View Post
          I have to ask, Jungle, is this an accurate pen-picture of you?
          Not entirely... I shave now.
          "On the plains of hesitation, bleach the bones of countless millions, who on the very dawn of victory, laid down to rest, and in resting died.

          Never give up!!"

          Comment

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