EvanL
04-04-2004, 02:08 PM
Vancouver Sun reporter Frances Bula is spending two months following Canada's troops in Afghanistan and filing dispatches for CanWest News Service.
CAMP JULIEN, Afghanistan — Lt.-Col. Wally Mohammed and Maj. Sylvain Rheaume come from different military planets.
Mohammed, an imposing man who looks like Sean Connery with coffeecoloured skin, spent 25 years fighting with Afghan mujahedeen and warlords like Ahmed Shah Massoud. He was a warrior, best known for being able to break the front line of any garrison his men attacked.
Rheaume comes from a military generation that has never had to go to war, but has honed tactics, planning and organization to a fine art during complex peacekeeping missions.
Now the warrior is learning from the strategist, as a small group of Canadian soldiers under Rheaume’s command takes on the job of helping train the fledgling Afghan National Army.
This is the army that everyone is hoping can one day take over the job that 20,000 international troops are now doing, tackling everything from al-Qaida to drug traffickers to warlords to providing security for elections.
It’s a daunting job.
“We have to start from zero with all of them,” says Rheaume. “Most of them have a lot of experience fighting, but they don’t have any military concepts, structure, planning process. It’s very difficult for them to plan for more than a day.”
That’s where Rheaume’s 14 embedded trainers come in.
Everyone in the Afghan army goes through basic training at the Kabul Military Training College, with instruction by American, French and British soldiers.
But then those graduates get out and actually have to act like an army. In the North American and European military, that means a highly organized structure, where officers at the top do the planning, while non-commissioned officers — like middle managers — ensure all the detail work gets done to make those plans a reality.
It also means having units with different specializations: Reconnaissance, engineering, communications.
So Rheaume and his men are spending the next several months coaching one combat-support kandak (the equivalent of a battalion) in the 1st Brigade to get them from zero to functional.
Working with the Oklahoma National Guard, which is overseeing much of the training of the Afghan army, they spend their days tackling everything from literacy to hygiene to hand-tohand combat to first aid.
Rheaume has started out with his group simply trying to get them to understand the role of different kinds of officers.
Flip-chart lists decorate the commanding officer’s conference room. The logistics officer, the list says in English and Dari, is supposed to “Have an inventory of all supplies and equipment; co-ordinate the distribute; keep records of everything; order supplies.”
Elsewhere, Sgt. Dominic April is standing under a tree with a dry-erase board while 10 soldiers sit on the grass in front of him as he teaches his beginning lesson on reconnaissance by explaining what reconnaissance is: Not fighting the enemy directly, but getting information without being seen, acting as the eyes and ears of the commander.
For everyone involved, the job so far is proving almost unbearably frustrating and yet oddly rewarding.
The frustrating part is how far there is to go.
Not only are the Afghans perplexed by the simplest ideas of military organization, but they are often stymied by a lack of basic supplies.
Rheaume brought two ledger books of his own so the kandak has a way of keeping track of who is where in the battalion. At the moment, about twothirds of the men are on leave, but no
SANA SAFI/SPECIAL TO THE VANCOUVER SUN
Canadian Forces Maj. Sylvain Rheaume confers with Maj. Mohammad Isaq, the second in command of the 4th Kandak, 1st Brigade, as Canadians help train the Afghan army. Rheaume is the team leader of a group of 14 working with this group for the next several months.
their $100-a-month salary by harvesting poppy crops.
The rewarding part, says everyone, is the desperate eagerness of the Afghans to learn and be successful.
They’re sick of war, they tell their American and Canadian mentors repeatedly.
And they want to be part of something that helps Afghanistan overcome the ethnic fighting that has destroyed the country.
Sgt. Noor Arqa, one of those learning reconnaissance from April, says he joined the army because he wants to help his country. And Arqa, a Pashtoon from Kabul, likes the fact that all ethnic groups are together in the army fighting together for the country.
“We want to make our country beautiful again.”
He is hoping the Canadians and Americans will help them do that.
He spent five years fighting with the Northern Alliance.
“In those days, it was very bad, disorganized fighting,” he says. “I like this because it’s organized.” one has a list of which ones are gone.
While April was trying to talk about the role of leadership in reconnaissance, soldiers repeatedly interrupted to tell him they have no equipment except for the ubiquitous Kalashnikovs that everyone carries here — something April has no control over.
The army has also been plagued by desertions, as soldiers are pressured to leave by factions or religious leaders who tell them they’re working for the Americans; or they’re enticed to leave because they can earn more than
CAMP JULIEN, Afghanistan — Lt.-Col. Wally Mohammed and Maj. Sylvain Rheaume come from different military planets.
Mohammed, an imposing man who looks like Sean Connery with coffeecoloured skin, spent 25 years fighting with Afghan mujahedeen and warlords like Ahmed Shah Massoud. He was a warrior, best known for being able to break the front line of any garrison his men attacked.
Rheaume comes from a military generation that has never had to go to war, but has honed tactics, planning and organization to a fine art during complex peacekeeping missions.
Now the warrior is learning from the strategist, as a small group of Canadian soldiers under Rheaume’s command takes on the job of helping train the fledgling Afghan National Army.
This is the army that everyone is hoping can one day take over the job that 20,000 international troops are now doing, tackling everything from al-Qaida to drug traffickers to warlords to providing security for elections.
It’s a daunting job.
“We have to start from zero with all of them,” says Rheaume. “Most of them have a lot of experience fighting, but they don’t have any military concepts, structure, planning process. It’s very difficult for them to plan for more than a day.”
That’s where Rheaume’s 14 embedded trainers come in.
Everyone in the Afghan army goes through basic training at the Kabul Military Training College, with instruction by American, French and British soldiers.
But then those graduates get out and actually have to act like an army. In the North American and European military, that means a highly organized structure, where officers at the top do the planning, while non-commissioned officers — like middle managers — ensure all the detail work gets done to make those plans a reality.
It also means having units with different specializations: Reconnaissance, engineering, communications.
So Rheaume and his men are spending the next several months coaching one combat-support kandak (the equivalent of a battalion) in the 1st Brigade to get them from zero to functional.
Working with the Oklahoma National Guard, which is overseeing much of the training of the Afghan army, they spend their days tackling everything from literacy to hygiene to hand-tohand combat to first aid.
Rheaume has started out with his group simply trying to get them to understand the role of different kinds of officers.
Flip-chart lists decorate the commanding officer’s conference room. The logistics officer, the list says in English and Dari, is supposed to “Have an inventory of all supplies and equipment; co-ordinate the distribute; keep records of everything; order supplies.”
Elsewhere, Sgt. Dominic April is standing under a tree with a dry-erase board while 10 soldiers sit on the grass in front of him as he teaches his beginning lesson on reconnaissance by explaining what reconnaissance is: Not fighting the enemy directly, but getting information without being seen, acting as the eyes and ears of the commander.
For everyone involved, the job so far is proving almost unbearably frustrating and yet oddly rewarding.
The frustrating part is how far there is to go.
Not only are the Afghans perplexed by the simplest ideas of military organization, but they are often stymied by a lack of basic supplies.
Rheaume brought two ledger books of his own so the kandak has a way of keeping track of who is where in the battalion. At the moment, about twothirds of the men are on leave, but no
SANA SAFI/SPECIAL TO THE VANCOUVER SUN
Canadian Forces Maj. Sylvain Rheaume confers with Maj. Mohammad Isaq, the second in command of the 4th Kandak, 1st Brigade, as Canadians help train the Afghan army. Rheaume is the team leader of a group of 14 working with this group for the next several months.
their $100-a-month salary by harvesting poppy crops.
The rewarding part, says everyone, is the desperate eagerness of the Afghans to learn and be successful.
They’re sick of war, they tell their American and Canadian mentors repeatedly.
And they want to be part of something that helps Afghanistan overcome the ethnic fighting that has destroyed the country.
Sgt. Noor Arqa, one of those learning reconnaissance from April, says he joined the army because he wants to help his country. And Arqa, a Pashtoon from Kabul, likes the fact that all ethnic groups are together in the army fighting together for the country.
“We want to make our country beautiful again.”
He is hoping the Canadians and Americans will help them do that.
He spent five years fighting with the Northern Alliance.
“In those days, it was very bad, disorganized fighting,” he says. “I like this because it’s organized.” one has a list of which ones are gone.
While April was trying to talk about the role of leadership in reconnaissance, soldiers repeatedly interrupted to tell him they have no equipment except for the ubiquitous Kalashnikovs that everyone carries here — something April has no control over.
The army has also been plagued by desertions, as soldiers are pressured to leave by factions or religious leaders who tell them they’re working for the Americans; or they’re enticed to leave because they can earn more than