EvanL
09-13-2005, 08:17 PM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A dozen heavily armed Edmonton soldiers are strolling through a crowded Kandahar marketplace, doing what Canadians do best -- making nice.
"Do any of you know candidates in the election?" Maj. Andrew Lutes of the Edmonton-based 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry asks an Afghan man.
The man has plenty to say. It's election time, and like any voter he wants candidates who can deliver jobs and security, a big order in a country recovering from 25 years of war.
"How's business?" Lutes asks the minder of a food stall filled with bins of roasted peanuts and chickpeas. "What do you think of the central government?" he asks a man in a tiny curbside watch-and-clock store.
Lutes speaks through an interpreter. By his side, joining in the banter, is Col. Manoum Jomakhan, commander of the local Afghan National Police station.
The mood surrounding this exchange on Friday appears upbeat and lighthearted, but a cordon of Canadian soldiers surrounds the two men.
Those soldiers pay no attention to the conversation. Instead, they scan the crowd and surrounding rooftops for snipers, suicide bombers and potential Taliban spies setting up another political assassination.
Two and a half months ago a suicide bomber killed Kandahar's police chief and two dozen other people in a city mosque during the funeral of a murdered anti-Taliban cleric.
This is an ongoing insurrection and Lutes is no neutral peacekeeper; Canada is on the central government's side. Lutes is an officer with the 250-person Provincial Reconstruction Team based in a former fruit-canning factory on the northern edge of Kandahar, the political heartland of the Taliban.
"Making nice" is an essential tactic for this team, which has about 220 members of the 3rd Battalion PPCLI.
That battalion last visited this area in the spring of 2002 when it joined in the battle against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Tora Bora Mountains.
That battle is flaring again as radical Islamic mullahs across the border in Pakistan encourage students in their religious schools to make war on the infidels and their Afghan allies.
To restore peace and security to the Kandahar area, the allies must be seen to be working with the central Afghan government, not dominating it, their commander explains.
That's why Lutes walks alongside Jomakhan down a street where any man's clothes might conceal a bomb.
"This isn't about winning hearts and minds," Col. Steve Bowes says.
"That expression is a leftover from the Vietnam War. That's not what we're doing here.
BUILDING CONFIDENCE
"We are building trust and confidence -- trust in us, confidence in the central government.
"That's why we put an Afghan face on every solution and put an Afghan between us and every problem."
But there's still danger. A rocket aimed at the Canadian compound fell short early Saturday and plunged into a nearby neighbourhood, narrowly missing an Afghan family.
The rocket didn't explode, and nobody in the extended family of 28 people was injured.
It was the first attack on the PRT compound since Canadians took it over from an American team in late July.
Around the same time, a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a street in an adjacent neighbourhood. Again, no one was injured. Canadians weren't sure if the two incidents were connected.
And in a third incident on Saturday, gunmen tried to assassinate Afghan Defence Minister Rahim Wardak by shooting at his convoy at Kabul's main airport, but he already had left his vehicle and was unhurt, a Defence Ministry spokesman said.
Nine Afghan soldiers were arrested in connection with the shooting, said spokesman Gen. Mohammed Saher Azimi.
With nine days until Afghanistan's parliamentary and regional elections, there is no escaping the possibility of violence from people who want to kill coalition soldiers and Afghan officials, Bowes says.
"People are watching us from the bazaar. It is not a safe place," Jomakhan says.
"There is no security."
After making a list of much-needed equipment that includes boots for Jomakhan's officers, Lutes takes the colonel for a walk through the bazaar.
People seem eager to talk to Lutes. Many children give the Canadians thumbs-ups. Making nice in the midst of an Afghan throng seems to work.
The cordon of soldiers is under the command of Sgt. Chris Thombs, a veteran of the Tora Bora fighting.
Innocent Afghan bystanders serve as a form of protection, he says, because a suicide bomber who killed them while targeting a small group of foreign soldiers would lose a political battle.
jfarrell@thejournal.canwest.com
© The Edmonton Journal 2005
"Do any of you know candidates in the election?" Maj. Andrew Lutes of the Edmonton-based 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry asks an Afghan man.
The man has plenty to say. It's election time, and like any voter he wants candidates who can deliver jobs and security, a big order in a country recovering from 25 years of war.
"How's business?" Lutes asks the minder of a food stall filled with bins of roasted peanuts and chickpeas. "What do you think of the central government?" he asks a man in a tiny curbside watch-and-clock store.
Lutes speaks through an interpreter. By his side, joining in the banter, is Col. Manoum Jomakhan, commander of the local Afghan National Police station.
The mood surrounding this exchange on Friday appears upbeat and lighthearted, but a cordon of Canadian soldiers surrounds the two men.
Those soldiers pay no attention to the conversation. Instead, they scan the crowd and surrounding rooftops for snipers, suicide bombers and potential Taliban spies setting up another political assassination.
Two and a half months ago a suicide bomber killed Kandahar's police chief and two dozen other people in a city mosque during the funeral of a murdered anti-Taliban cleric.
This is an ongoing insurrection and Lutes is no neutral peacekeeper; Canada is on the central government's side. Lutes is an officer with the 250-person Provincial Reconstruction Team based in a former fruit-canning factory on the northern edge of Kandahar, the political heartland of the Taliban.
"Making nice" is an essential tactic for this team, which has about 220 members of the 3rd Battalion PPCLI.
That battalion last visited this area in the spring of 2002 when it joined in the battle against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Tora Bora Mountains.
That battle is flaring again as radical Islamic mullahs across the border in Pakistan encourage students in their religious schools to make war on the infidels and their Afghan allies.
To restore peace and security to the Kandahar area, the allies must be seen to be working with the central Afghan government, not dominating it, their commander explains.
That's why Lutes walks alongside Jomakhan down a street where any man's clothes might conceal a bomb.
"This isn't about winning hearts and minds," Col. Steve Bowes says.
"That expression is a leftover from the Vietnam War. That's not what we're doing here.
BUILDING CONFIDENCE
"We are building trust and confidence -- trust in us, confidence in the central government.
"That's why we put an Afghan face on every solution and put an Afghan between us and every problem."
But there's still danger. A rocket aimed at the Canadian compound fell short early Saturday and plunged into a nearby neighbourhood, narrowly missing an Afghan family.
The rocket didn't explode, and nobody in the extended family of 28 people was injured.
It was the first attack on the PRT compound since Canadians took it over from an American team in late July.
Around the same time, a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a street in an adjacent neighbourhood. Again, no one was injured. Canadians weren't sure if the two incidents were connected.
And in a third incident on Saturday, gunmen tried to assassinate Afghan Defence Minister Rahim Wardak by shooting at his convoy at Kabul's main airport, but he already had left his vehicle and was unhurt, a Defence Ministry spokesman said.
Nine Afghan soldiers were arrested in connection with the shooting, said spokesman Gen. Mohammed Saher Azimi.
With nine days until Afghanistan's parliamentary and regional elections, there is no escaping the possibility of violence from people who want to kill coalition soldiers and Afghan officials, Bowes says.
"People are watching us from the bazaar. It is not a safe place," Jomakhan says.
"There is no security."
After making a list of much-needed equipment that includes boots for Jomakhan's officers, Lutes takes the colonel for a walk through the bazaar.
People seem eager to talk to Lutes. Many children give the Canadians thumbs-ups. Making nice in the midst of an Afghan throng seems to work.
The cordon of soldiers is under the command of Sgt. Chris Thombs, a veteran of the Tora Bora fighting.
Innocent Afghan bystanders serve as a form of protection, he says, because a suicide bomber who killed them while targeting a small group of foreign soldiers would lose a political battle.
jfarrell@thejournal.canwest.com
© The Edmonton Journal 2005