A Canadian soldier recently posted an intriguing e-mail - widely circulated in the blogosphere - entitled "The Battle of Panjawai" – a battle Canadian troops fought in Afghanistan from July 7 to July 21. The unnamed officer describes the battle in great detail. He mentions that Canadian soldiers outshone their British and Afghan counterparts in defeating the Taliban and decries the fact that Canadians are unaware of the battle. "...the media can't find the time and effort to report what we are doing..." he writes.

The bitterness of these comments struck me. All too often this summer, Canadians have heard of soldiers' deaths - the "ramp ceremony", the arrivals of bodies to Canada, and of funerals. But we have been kept in the dark about what our troops have actually been doing. Buried in news articles is only a brief statement that a given soldier "...died in action west of Kandihar", and so forth. The actual combat event doesn't appear as a self-contained story.

The Department of National Defence itself is guilty of neglecting to report this news. Press releases issued by the department and posted on their web site’s "media room" consist only of notifications of soldier's deaths and minor announcements of DND activities elsewhere. There is no mention of the actual battles involved, forcing Canadians to obtain their news elsewhere. For example, on August 20 Canadian troops fought - and won - a major action near the Afghan village of Panjawai. 70 Taliban were killed. Yet DND's media room did not report on the battle. Canadians, the media included, learned of the battle from the web site of NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

Some might argue DND censor's battlefield events for security reasons. Yet other nations at least report battles after-the-fact. More likely DND censors battle reporting because it wants the public to see its troops as traditional "peacekeepers". In 1993, Canadian soldiers fought - and won - the Battle of Medak Pocket in Croatia Yet DND refused to report the battle. Canadian soldiers came home disillusioned, given that Canadians did not treat them as heroes. (See Carol Off's book, The Ghosts of Medak Pocket).

As for Afghanistan, the media distortion is clear to see. The CBC's web site, for instance, has a box entitled "In depth: Afghanistan – Canada's Casualties" that lists our killed but fails to include any in depth discussion of the mission. CTV's web site is even more misleading. This news agency compiles a "List of Critical Canadian Incidents in Afghanistan", which purportedly "includes incidents where they (the soldiers) died, were injured, where they engaged insurgents, or where they have inadvertently injured or killed Afghan civilians" (italics mine). Yet the two Battles of Panjawai (July and August 20) do not appear on the list. The DND censorship leads to bias in the CBC case, and factually incorrect reporting in the CTV case.

There is good reporting in Afghanistan. Chistie Blatchford of the Globe and Mail, on July 24, wrote that Canadian troop "inflicted 100 Taliban casualties and destroyed more than nine ammunition caches...", yet her comments were buried deep within a lengthy article on the inside pages. Matthew Fisher has also done good reporting for the CanWest News Service. But two good journalists cannot compensate for poor DND communications and misleading editing throughout Canada's media.

What we are witnessing is a bizarre reversal of propaganda techniques standard in totalitarian countries in time of war, where the government hides military casualties and broadcasts false stories of victory in order to maintain the support of their servile population for the war effort. Here in Canada, DND announces only combat deaths, and censors successful combat operations in order to maintain an illusion so convoluted that even its protagonists cannot penetrate its meaning or purpose.

Is it any wonder support for our Afghanistan mission is declining?