I've made some calculations to compare troop levels in Afghanistan's Helmand and Kandahar provinces. I'm trying to better understand what an additional 1,000 troops would do for the Kandahar mission.
Helmand province is 58,500 km2 in size, has a population of about 700,000 -- and about 5,800 British troops.*
* I believe there's 7,800 in Afghanistan as a whole. Bear in mind the 5,800 number, while close, might not be perfect. But I'm having trouble finding the exact number. It's conceivable all 7,800 are in Helmand, which would make the ratios that follow even worse. I've e-mailed the British military to try and get that number confirmed. Those ratios don't take into account any Afghan National Army personnel, or any short-term help from the U.S. or other ISAF partners.
That's about 100 troops per 1,000 km2, or about 83 soldiers per 10,000 population (131 per 1,000 km2 and 110 per 10,000 pop. for the 7,800 figure).
Kandahar province is about 54,000 km2 in size, has a population of about 1 million -- and about 2,500 Canadian troops.
That's about 46 troops per 1,000 km2, or about 25 per 10,000 population.
As I understand it, the Brits are also having a tough time of it in Helmand (they retook Musa Qala in December; the Taliban had held it since February. Problems remain- see this and this).
For their trouble, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused the Brits, along with the Americans, of making the security situation worse in the country's south (see this BBC story for background).
Yet the Brits have twice the troops on an area basis, and more than triple the count on a population basis (for the 5,800 figure).
Let's recalculate with 3,500 troops in Kandahar.
We then have 64 troops per 1,000 km2, and 35 per 10,000 population. Is that really a big change?
Kandahar seems to be a deadlier place to work. Canada has lost 78 soldiers in Afghanistan, compared to 87 for Britain, which has a much higher number of soldiers. The National Post reported the following on Jan. 4, based on a DND analysis obtained through access to information legislation:
"Canadian soldiers died at a rate 2.6 to four times higher than the British and Americans in Afghanistan and two to 2.6 times higher than U.S. forces in Iraq, according to the April, 2007, number-crunching by Barbara Strauss, an official with the Forces' health services group.
"The proportion of Canadian soldiers killed by enemy action is higher even than it was in all but one year of World War Two, the government document indicates."
That has me thinking you would need far more soldiers in Kandahar than Helmand province.
Question: Is an additional 1,000 troops -- plus some new toys like medium-lift helicopters and drones -- really going to make much difference to the military success of the Canadian mission?
The Guardian reports that the UN estimates there are 3,000 active Taliban fighters and 7,000 part-timers. There are more than 43,000 NATO troops. According to the U.S. Army's rule of thumb from the Vietnam era, one should have about 10 soldiers for every insurgent.
My understanding is that Pakistan has at least 80,000 troops just in the tribal regions of Pakistan, almost twice the number of NATO forces in Afghanistan in a much smaller geographic area, and yet the area is considered a Taliban mini-state and al Qaeda safe haven.
Our goal is to make Afghanistan to strong enough to ensure it will never again be a breeding ground for terror, yet it appears its neighbour Pakistan -- with an established army and high levels of military aid from the U.S. -- cannot achieve that goal.