In Taliban heartland, coalition's made little headway after 8 yearsMcClatchy: The Canadians who have been here for the past three years are openly skeptical that their US brethren, with huge eight-wheeled Stryker armored fighting vehicles in the lush waist-high grape vines, will have any better luck subduing the Taliban than they did...
For three years, a Canadian force of a few hundred has faced as many as 15,000 Taliban here. In those three years, however, the Canadians acknowledge that they've had little more than a 'finger in the dike strategy' aimed at preventing Taliban forces from capturing Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, 20 miles to the east. With few resources, stalemate was the Canadians' strategy.
America's allies have no territorial gains to show for the effort. The schools they built were destroyed after the Taliban took them over and used them to stage ambushes. The small outposts they established, including the one in Sangsar, were abandoned in 2007 under constant Taliban attack...
The Canadians are bitter about their role. They've lost 125 soldiers -- the highest proportionally of any coalition partner -- and have killed thousands of Taliban fighters and hundreds more civilians in short bursts of operations, usually lasting a few days...
The local population has lost hope that the coalition can wrest control from the Taliban fighters who hide in their fields and take over their homes. Afghans resent the Canadians for making their lives more difficult. They've seen civilians killed. Their districts aren't safe. Canadian soldiers often have driven off the roads and destroyed farmers' 100-year-old grapevines in an effort to dodge the explosives that are waiting for them.
