Download or read book Canada in Afghanistan written by Peter Pigott and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2007-02-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the war escalates in Afghanistan, Canadians are asking why we are there. This book is an introduction to what is happening and what we can expect through 2009.

Download or read book First Soldiers Down written by Ron Corbett and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2012-04-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many in Canada, the April 18, 2002 tragedy with Alpha Company signaled the true beginning of Canada's lengthy combat mission in Afghanistan. This story recounts what happened that evening through archival material and the recollections of troops.

Download or read book The Politics of War written by Jean-Christophe Boucher and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Canada committed forces to the military mission in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, little did Canadians foresee that they would be involved in a war-riven country for over a decade. The Politics of War explores how and why Canada’s Afghanistan mission became so politicized. Through analysis of the public record and interviews with officials, Boucher and Nossal show how the Canadian government sought to frame the engagement in Afghanistan as a “mission” rather than what it was – a war. This book analyzes the impact of political elites, Parliament, and public opinion on the conflict and demonstrates how much of Canada’s involvement was shaped by the vagaries of domestic politics.

Download or read book Empire s Ally written by Gregory Albo and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Afghanistan has been a major policy commitment and central undertaking of the Canadian state since 2001: Canada has been a leading force in the war, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aid and reconstruction. After a decade of conflict, however, there is considerable debate about the efficacy of the mission, as well as calls to reassess Canada's role in the conflict. An authoritative and strongly analytical work, Empire's Ally provides a much-needed critical investigation into one of the most polarizing events of our time. This collection draws on new primary evidence – including government documents, think tank and NGO reports, international media files, and interviews in Afghanistan – to provide context for Canadian foreign policy, to offer critical perspectives on the war itself, and to link the conflict to broader issues of political economy, international relations, and Canada's role on the world stage. Spanning academic and public debates, Empire's Ally opens a new line of argument on why the mission has entered a stage of crisis.

Download or read book Fighting for Afghanistan written by Sean M Maloney and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fighting For Afghanistan is the third book in the Rogue Historian trilogy, taking Maloney’s story into the conflict in 2006, when the Taliban-led insurgency threatened to overwhelm the U.S.-led coalition in southern Afghanistan. This shift to near-conventional warfare, as opposed to the small-scale guerilla attacks and urban terrorism in Kandahar, caught everybody by surprise and forced a small, under-equipped Canadian battle group, supported by a Canadian-led multinational brigade consisting of American, British, Dutch, forces, into a desperate series of battles to protect the city and to prevent the collapse of British forces in neighboring Helmand province. The author arrived on the ground just as the situation spun out of control and he was able to capture, at all levels from infantry company to battle group to brigade headquarters, exactly what happened. This book explains the difficulties in balancing security and development, the challenges of operating in an austere, alien environment, and the human cost of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan. Fighting For Afghanistan takes the reader through all of the moving parts and planning and then depicts how it played out on the field of battle. During the course of the action, the author became the first Canadian military historian to go into combat since the Korean War. The battles around Kandahar City in 2006 were the turning point in the Afghanistan war and this book is the first to explain events in detail from all three levels. This is the only account that shows the scope of the fighting in the south in this time period. Because of his close proximity to the action, the author was nearly killed on several occasions that summer during the fighting and he brings the intensity of this experience to his writing.

Download or read book Combat Mission Kandahar written by T. Robert Fowler and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2016-08-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infantry, combat engineer, armour, and psychological operations: Seven soldiers represent the breadth of Canada’s longest, most complicated and challenging operation in Kandahar Province.

Download or read book The Patrol written by Ryan Flavelle and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008, Ryan Flavelle, a reservist in the Canadian Army and a student at the University of Calgary, volunteered to serve in Afghanistan. For seven months, twenty-four-year-old Flavelle, a signaller attached to the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, endured the extreme heat, the long hours and the occasional absurdity of life as a Canadian soldier in this new war so far from home. Flavelle spent much of his time at a Canadian Forward Operating Base (FOB), living among his fellow soldiers and occasionally going outside the wire. For one sevenday period, Flavelle went into Taliban country, always walking in the footsteps of the man ahead of him, meeting Afghans and watching behind every mud wall for a sign of an enemy combatant. The Patrol is a gritty, boots-on-the-ground memoir of a soldier’s experience in the Canadian Forces in the 21st century. It is about why we fight, why men and women choose such a dangerous and demanding job, and what their lives are like when they find themselves back in our ordinary world.

Download or read book Canada in Afghanistan written by Owen Schalk and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why Canada went to war in Afghanistan, what Canadians were doing on the ground, and why the effort failed to achieve any of its aims – military, humanitarian, or diplomatic Canadian leaders then and now claim great success for Canada’s role in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2014 and beyond. Though 151 Canadians were killed in combat, the Canadian military played a key role in fighting the Taliban. Canada built schools, restored a major dam, and advised a government on elections and economic development. Yet within hours of the final withdrawal by US troops in 2021, the government collapsed. The Taliban returned to power. Why did Canada send our military to fight the Taliban and occupy Afghanistan? Why was the mission a failure? And why have Canadian governments failed to analyze the reasons for this failure? In this book, independent scholar Owen Schalk offers a history of Canada’s role in Afghanistan. He discusses why Canada’s efforts, and those of the US and others, failed. And he shows how the Canadian media did not report accurately on the war and misinformed the public during the war and afterwards. Owen Schalk provides an incisive, illuminating account of Canadian involvement in a war that cost lives and many billions.It’s a story that Canadian officials would prefer not be told.

Download or read book Kandahar Tour written by Lee Windsor and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-03-23 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Our Mission was the people of Kandahar and keeping the Taliban from interfering with rebuilding. When we did use force, we had to be discriminate Killing innocent civilians would be mission failure. I had the A-Team ad could not make it work with lesser men and women." - Lieutenant-Colonel rob Walker, Commanding Officer, 2RCR Battlegroup "Our job is to create a functional government that earns the respect of its population. The people of Kandahar are not asking for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They want Canada's peace, order, and good government. We're getting there. But it takes time, Thankfully Afghans are more patient than people back home." - Gavin Buchan, Director, Foreign Affairs, Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, 2006-07 "My soliders got to know every inch of Zharey District and its people. It was our back-yard. We knew it better than the Taliban, especially the foreign fighters. People learned to trust us and started staying in their homes while we rant he enemy out of town." - Major David Quick, India Company

Download or read book The Unexpected War written by Janice Gross Stein and published by Viking. This book was released on 2007 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals tough realities about how public servants and politicians dither and avoid hard decisions in Ottawa and about how our senior public service needs a deep shake-up.

Download or read book Outside the Wire written by Kevin Patterson and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. Visceral, intimate and captivating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat, and an introductory reflection by Roméo Dallaire. Collected here are stories of battle and the more subtle engagements of this little-understood war: the tearful farewells; the shock of immersion into a culture that has been at war for thirty years; looking a suicide bomber in the eye the moment before he strikes; grappling with mortality in the Kandahar Field Hospital; and the unexpected humour that leavens life in a warzone. Throughout each piece the passion of those engaged in rebuilding this shattered country shines through, a glimmer of optimism and determination so rare in multinational military actions–and so particularly Canadian. In Outside the Wire, award-winning author Kevin Patterson and co-editor Jane Warren have rediscovered the valour and horror of sacrifice in this, the definitive account of the modern Canadian experience of war.

Download or read book Operation Medusa written by Major General David Fraser and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Canadian in charge of the joint military command in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan, this is the real on-the-ground story of one of NATO's bloodiest, most decisive and misunderstood operations: The battle of Panjwayi, the defining moment of "Operation Medusa." In the summer of 2006, David Fraser was the Canadian general in charge of NATO's Regional Command South, a territory spanning six Afghan provinces surrounding the Arghandab Valley. Birthplace of the Taliban decades earlier, this fertile region had since become Afghanistan's most deadly turf. It would soon turn deadlier still. Advised in the night by his intelligence officers that the Taliban had secretly amassed for a full-scale military assault, Fraser knew it would fall to him, his Canadians and their allies to avoid the wholesale slaughter of NATO troops, keep the Taliban from laying siege to Kandahar and restore control of the south of the country to a newly formed, democratic Afghan government. The odds were solidy against Fraser's forces. The Taliban knew every millimetre of their own terrain. During the months of secret manoeuvres they had stocked every farmhouse, school, grape hut and tunnel with weapons and ammunition. They had drilled Soviet-era landmines into all of the marijuana and poppy fields, and dug IEDs into every roadway. Protected from detection by corrupt officials, their sophisticated warfare schools had successfully readied an army of zealous fighters to attack and fight to the death. And now their top commanders were poised to launch decisive military operations against freshly arrived troops who had never seen combat. The bloodiest battle in NATO's history was about to begin.

Download or read book The Savage War written by Murray Brewster and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-12-12 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the tenth anniversary of Canada's involvement, a leading journalist offers a fascinating assessment of Canada's past and present role in the Afghan war Of the 33,000 troops under NATO command in Afghanistan in October 2006, 12,000 were Americans and 2,500 were Canadians. Deployed to southern Afghanistan, the Canadian forces were charged with ending the violent insurgency in Kandahar Province. The Savage War offers a compelling look at how the war has been conducted by Canada and its allies on the ground and at the highest echelons. With unprecedented access to classified documents and the exceptional storytelling skills that have made him an award-winning reporter, Murray Brewster offers a powerful new perspective on the war. Told in the first person by a journalist who's spent more time in the trenches than any of his peers, The Savage War provides a candid look at the war's principal figures captured in off-camera moments and the daily, gritty reality of ordinary soldiers and Afghans. And as Canada prepares to take on a new mission in Afghanistan, this is the first comprehensive account of the five most significant years of the war and the key moments in it that shaped history. Murray Brewster provides tough-minded analysis and a critique of bureaucracy as well as revelations about corruption—sure to incite commentary and stir controversy Includes eyewitness accounts, exclusive interviews, and access to classified documents An unflinching, unvarnished analysis of Canada's role in the war, told in first-person by a journalist who has sat in trenches with soldiers, and also in the living room of 24 Sussex Drive with the prime minister Taking readers beyond punditry and political spin, The Savage War is the first comprehensive account of the key moments in the Afghan war that have shaped history. Many have asked what went wrong. The Savage War tackles this question head on.

Download or read book FOB Doc written by Ray Wiss and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military doctors serving in Afghanistan usually spend their entire tour in the relatively safe confines of the main base. FOB Doc is the story of one Canadian doctor who spent nearly his entire tour in combat. Captain Ray Wiss was stationed at Forward Operating Bases — FOBs — in Khandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban and the most intense zone combat in Afghanistan. He shares the 'terror and boredom' of the front-line soldier's life in this candid personal diary. One day, he might be participating in combat operations, treating severe and bloody injuries and coping with the deaths of fellow soldiers, both Afghans and NATO allies; another day, he might be writing about the challenges of going to the latrine in sub-zero weather. FOB Doc is heartbreaking and hilarious, often on the same page.

Download or read book No Lack of Courage written by Bernd Horn and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Lack of Courage is the story of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's first battle. It is a revealing account of Operation Medusa, the largely Canadian action from 1 to 17 September 2006, to dislodge a heavily entrenched Taliban force in the Pashmul district of Afghanistan's Kandahar Province. At stake, according to senior Afghan politicians and NATO military commanders, was nothing less than the very existence of the reconstituted state of Afghanistan, as well as the NATO alliance itself. In a bitterly fought conflict that lasted more than two weeks, Canadian, Afghan, and Coalition troops defeated the dug-in enemy forces and chased them from the Pashmul area. In the end, the brunt of the fighting fell on the Canadians, and the operation that saved Afghanistan exacted a great cost. However, the battle also demonstrated that Canada had shed its peacekeeping mythology and was once more ready to commit troops deliberately to combat. Moreover, it revealed yet again that Canadian soldiers have no lack of courage.

Download or read book Little America written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City (winner of the 2007 Samuel Johnson Prize) now gives us the startling, behind-the-scenes story of the struggle between President Obama and the US military to remake Afghanistan.

Download or read book Afghanistan and Canada written by Lucia Kowaluk and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan in the hope of finding an alternative to continuing war.