Interesting site I ran across recently

Points out that a problem is that there's only 3K coalition soldiers in the south; those would be the Canadians in Kandahar.

Insurgents have infiltrated large tracts of the rural south, although hundreds of Taliban have been killed over the last few weeks, due mainly to air strikes by U.S.-led coalition forces or encounters with large groups of fighters.

Going just a few kilometers outside the region's main city, Kandahar, is regarded as risky, even on the main highway leading northeast to Kabul, or west to Herat. That the coalition only has 3,000 troops in the south is part of the problem. The limitations of the Afghan National Army and the police are other factors.

This more or less falls in with what I've read up here (needless to say, with Afghanistan the largest deployment into combat by the Canadian Armed Forces since Korea, the coverage is daily up here). The air strike (there was only one that I've heard about) killed a few dozen Taliban, though there've been some repercussions as it killed a fair number of civilians too. The rest have been seen off by the CAF in a number of recent firefights in the region. There's a new push coming soon into the south in an attempt to move more into the mountains and into the Taliban strongholds in the region as well.

One recent article I've seen here in the G&M is about the risks being taken by the Afghanis who've been working as translators for the CAF. They become targets for assassination by the Taliban. However, it seems that they haven't had huge problems finding translators; while it's true that the Taliban hate the West, there are lots of Afghanis who are happy to work with us against the Taliban.

The last thing that I found interesting was this: I went and poked around for international (ie- not Canadian) coverage of events in Kandahar province, and its really remarkable; they all seem to think it's the US operating in there.

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