WASHINGTON—American reluctance to confront Canada over its weak military hold in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar province was among the costlier blunders of the war in Afghanistan, a new book alleges.

Excerpts published Friday by The Washington Post describe the rising concerns of a team of U.S. military advisers who were stunned in 2009 when an unnamed senior Canadian intelligence official in Kandahar told them, “I have no idea what’s going on inside the city.”

The sheer thinness of Canadian boots in Kandahar — only 2,830 soldiers, mostly assigned to headquarters and support roles, with fewer than 600 going on patrol — contrasted against more than 9,000 British soldiers deployed in the less populated and less strategically important neighbouring province of Helmand, Washington Post senior correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes in Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan.

But when the U.S. reassessment team returned to Kabul to learn why more Canadians had not been deployed, they were told by the U.S. Maj.-Gen. Michael Tucker, then the director of operations for all NATO troops, “It is wrong to tell a (Canadian) commander, from this level, to put troops in Kandahar city.”

Sitting next to Tucker in that Kabul meeting was Andrew Exum, an influential counterinsurgency strategist and former Army Ranger platoon leader, battle-hardened by earlier deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Exum’s notes from that Kabul encounter are excoriating. “This guy is a jackass,” Exum wrote of Tucker’s hesitance to direct the Canadians. “Kandahar — not Helmand — is the single point of failure in Afghanistan.”

When Exum and his reassessment team investigated further, the book alleges, they were told by U.S. Army Brig.-Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson, that the Americans were reluctant to ruffle feathers in Ottawa.

“(Nicholson) emphasized that the Kandahar mission was Canada’s largest overseas deployment since the Korean War. Military leaders in Ottawa were reluctant to ask for more help — some were convinced that security in Kandahar was improving, others didn’t want to risk the embarrassment,” writes Chandrasekaran.

“To Exum and others on the team, however, it seemed that U.S. commanders thought that managing the NATO alliance was more important than winning the war.”

Exum, a fellow with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, was brought on as part of a group of outside advisers convened by Gen. Stanley McChrystal when he was appointed the top commander in Afghanistan in 2009.

But the Americans had their own reasons for wanting to avoid Kandahar at the outset of the Obama administration, Chandrasekaran writes in Little America, which is based on more than 70 interviews with U.S. government and military officials directly involved in Afghan war policy.

Foremost among them was the Pentagon’s own struggles in locating senior troop commanders willing to dispatch thousands of additional forces to Afghanistan after so many years of rolling deployment to the region.

One of the few with a “zeal for Afghanistan” was Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway. But Conway “drove a hard bargain” with his Pentagon counterparts, insisting that any fresh Marine deployment must involve “a contiguous area” where the U.S. Marines would wield total control, including support from Marine helicopters and supply convoys.

“These stipulations effectively excluded Kandahar,” writes Chandrasekaran. “The geography of the province, and the Canadians’ desire to hold on to the key districts around Kandahar city, made it nearly impossible to carve out a Marine-only area there.

“Helmand was the next best option, even if it was less vital.”

By that time, the Canadian military had already asked for help in Kandahar province, although the number of reinforcements requested was still small compared to the presence in Helmand province.

In January 2008, an independent panel led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley issued a report recommending that Canada extend its mission in Afghanistan beyond February 2009, on the condition that NATO deploy a battle group of about 1,000 additional soldiers to back up Canadian troops in Kandahar.

The report also called on the Canadian government to provide troops with surveillance drones and large helicopters as another condition for extending the mission.

Canada managed to secure those extra troops – and thereby meets its conditions for extending the mission to 2011 – when the United States committed to sending 1,000 soldiers to the southern province after France decided to join the war efforts.

The Americans took control of Kandahar City in 2010 following a decision by U.S. President Barack Obama to flood southern Afghanistan with troops.

Canadians troops were left in charge of Panjawai, Dand and Daman districts until Canada ended its combat mission there in July 2011.

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A spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay responded to the allegations by praising the work of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

“Canada has played a leadership role in the UN-mandated, NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, both through the previous combat mission in Kandahar and our current training mission centred in Kabul. Working alongside our international partners, our Canadian Forces personnel have made tangible strides to improve the lives of the Afghan people, and have made great progress in helping them to increase their nation’s safety and security,” MacKay’s press secretary, Joshua Zanin, wrote in an emailed statement on Friday.

With files from Joanna Smith

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