Canada in Afghanistan: The War So Far

Index

Preface

In his book Marching as to War, Pierre Berton writes about the Boer War:

The Boers, too, were baffled, as George Shepherd of Paris, Ontario, discovered later that year when he encountered an imprisoned Boer general in a military hospital. Would you kindly tell me why it is that you have left a civil peaceful life to come here to fight a selfish war and endure all the hardships of the field? the general asked him. I am not surprised by the action of the English or Cape volunteers, but it puzzles me why you identify yourself with the quarrel. I don’t suppose it was the mere love of fighting that brought you here.

To which Private Shepherd replied, It was not so much to actually assist England as to show the world the unity of the Empire, and to show that if one part of the Empire is touched, all are hurt.

He did not say anything for a while, Shepherd wrote home, but stroked his beard and appeared lost in thought.

One can imagine Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar (if he’s ever caught) asking the same question.

The South African War, in which 7,000 Canadians volunteered and 277 died, was overshadowed by the carnage that followed when more than 60,000 Canadians were killed in World War I and 42,000 died in World War II. And even after 1945, Canadians answered the call to arms—no longer for the British Empire but for the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In Korea in the early 1950s, 500 Canadians lost their lives.

However, what occurred on September 11, 2001, changed everything. If the tragic drama of that day didn’t herald a new era in world history (more significant, for example, was the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, leaving the United States as a single superpower) or precipitate the clash of civilizations, it did introduce Afghanistan to Canadians. Since the Suez Crisis of 1956, Canadian soldiers had served in Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Somalia, and Kosovo. But these were regional conflicts where the threats were self-contained and Canada itself was in no danger. Not so with Al Qaeda (The Base) and its Afghan sanctuary.

The image was of the twin towers coming down on September 11, reflected Member of Parliament John McCallum (later minister of national defence), with a mental footnote to the effect that this could also happen in Canada. Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Stogran, commanding officer of the Princess Patricia’s Battle Group, recalled upon returning to Edmonton after service in Afghanistan: We had a tremendous welcome home from Canadians. I think the reason is that on September 11 our lives changed. It was a real and profound challenge to our way of living . . . and we were the spearhead for Team Canada. When asked why Canada was in Afghanistan, Brigadier-General David Fraser replied frankly: This is the home of the Taliban, the Taliban are a threat to nations around the world, including our own. It’s naive of us to think that Canada is not a pathway to get to America and that Canada would not be the next objective. As Private Shepherd explained to the Boer general, If one part of the Empire is touched, all are hurt.

That Canada was risking its national security unless its soldiers fought in Afghanistan became the cornerstone for involvement in that country. When irrefutable evidence confirmed that the Taliban was based in Pakistan, when the labelling of any anti-Coalition insurgent as Taliban proved too simplistic, and when in June 2006 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) could find no connection between 17 Canadian citizens arrested in Toronto as terror suspects and the Taliban or even Afghanistan, the mantra did not falter. The Taliban might only know the Hindu Kush mountain range and the deserts of Rigestan, but it supported jihad and home-grown jihadists such as those who bombed London in July 2005. The defining case is that if Afghanistan fails again as a state and becomes a platform for jihadists, all NATO countries will be threatened. What occurred on September 11, 2001, was not a war-game scenario, the cancer of extremism has since bloomed, the war in Afghanistan has become firmly linked with that of global terrorism, and if Canada hadn’t confronted terrorism at its source, it would have come to Canadian shores. Abandoning Afghanistan was never an option.

I first came to know Afghanistan through the works of Rudyard Kipling. An Anglo-Indian author like myself, Kipling has always been a favourite writer of mine. In fact, I can still recite his poem If. Family history has it that one of my ancestors, as editor of the Allahabad Pioneer newspaper, gave the young Kipling his first job as a journalist. Whether that tale is true or not, it was Kipling’s novel Kim that introduced me to the Great Game that the British Raj and the Russian tsar played out in Afghanistan. However, what really brought the country home to me was the British writer’s short story The Man Who Would Be King. In it two British ex-soldiers, Peachey and Danny, hatch a plan to be crowned kings of the Afghan province of Kafirstan with the help of the latest weaponry—in this case Martini-Henry rifles. Everything ends badly when, led by the local mullahs, the Afghans exact a terrible revenge on the pair. Kipling based the story on the life of American adventurer Josiah Harlan (1799–1871) who, in a similar fashion, had himself made Prince of Ghor, the province north of Kandahar. The moral of the story was a metaphor for colonialism and a lesson that no foreign power, even with a technological advantage, should impose itself on what it considers to be a backward people.

While I was doing the research for Canada in Afghanistan: The War So Far, Eric Newby, author of some of the best travel literature books, died. His A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) is quintessentially English, though the short walk is actually an arduous journey through the more remote parts of Afghanistan, with elements of comedy that describe both the Afghans and the author—never more so than when tribesmen test the waterproof nature of Newby’s watch by immersing it in goat stew. Newby met the legendary British explorer Wilfred Thesiger on the banks of the Upper Panjshir in Afghanistan. (He had hoped that the significance of the event would rival that of Stanley meeting Livingstone, but the great man looked with disgust at Newby’s blow-up mattress and called him a bloody pansy.)

It has been said that Canada is a country with too much geography and too little history and that with Belgium (and Britain) it is the opposite. While the comparisons are wildly inaccurate, Afghanistan is overburdened with too much of both—and in its case, neither the history nor geography are particularly appealing. Indeed, both have been described as mainly Dust and Blood. Perhaps because of this, Afghanistan has captivated authors as diverse as Herodotus, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Winston Churchill, James Michener, Ken Follett—and myself.

Even if you don’t believe that Kabul was founded by the biblical Cain, son of Adam, the city was still said to be as exotic as Casablanca, as lawless as the Shanghai of the 1930s, and as far off the tourist trail as Lhasa before the package tours. I knew that the legendary Silk Road passed through Afghanistan, and so did the Koh-i-Noor diamond. That the traditional Afghan sport remains buzkashi (a type of polo) where only recently the carcass of a goat has been substituted for that of an enemy. That the Greek/Buddhist/Indian cultures co-existed peacefully at Bamiyan, once famous for the serenely beautiful giant Buddhas. Today, where no corner of the planet has escaped the proliferation of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, Afghanistan outside its cities remains in another era where fable and fact abound, populated by mysterious burka-clad women and shaggy, bearded frontiersmen shouldering bolt-action Lee-Enfields. There are said to be no people more handsome, more devious, more hospitable, more cruel, and more fascinating.

But all of that was the Afghanistan of the past—before the Soviet invasion of 1979. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan’s harvest of opium in 2006 was 6,100 tonnes, a staggering 92 percent of the total world supply, exceeding global consumption by 30 percent. An estimated 35 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, or around US$2.7 billion, is earned through illicit poppy cultivation. Despite massive injections of foreign aid, the majority of the Afghan population continues to suffer from insufficient food, clothing, housing, and medical care, with three out of ten children dying before the age of five, and half of those who survive being severely malnourished. The United Nations estimates that 35,000 Afghan children died in 2006 alone from measles, simply because they weren’t vaccinated. The United Nations de-mining office has stated that at current clearance rates it will take 500 years to clear the mines from Afghanistan completely. And if Kandahar is the birthplace of the beautiful Mughal princess Nur Jehan called Light of the World and the home of the Shrine of the Prophet Muhammad’s Cloak, it is also where the terrible events of 9/11 were first planned.

In writing a book about a war that is currently underway, the author risks rebuttal and embarrassment. By the time this book is published, events could take an unforeseen turn. Pakistan might implode in its own civil war like Iraq. Depending on the results of an imminent federal election, Canada might pull its troops out earlier than the intended 2009. Canada in Afghanistan was written to give perspective to what Canadians see nightly on their televisions and read in their newspapers or on the Internet. The canvas is unashamedly ambitious, incorporating the 3Ds—Defence, Diplomacy, and Development—between two covers. Even the book’s subtitle, The War So Far, is contentious. For years the Canadian government, Liberal and Conservative, refused to call this conflict a war. The Boer War was so identified as was the Korean War, but five years and 45 Canadian deaths later, the deployment in Afghanistan is still called stabilization to prevent another terrorist atrocity like that of 9/11. Before that date Afghanistan rarely figured in our consciousness and an afghan was a shawl one’s mother knitted. Few Canadians could find the ancient city of Kandahar on a map then, let alone the mud-walled villages of Pashmul, Panjwai, and Zhari. Few had heard of Operations Athena, Mountain Thrust, and Medusa, or knew what ramp ceremonies, IEDS, G-Wagons, and PRTS were, or could discuss shuras, Pashtuns, and Loya Jirgas. All these names and terms are now commonplace in Canada’s vocabulary, and it is a rare television newscast that doesn’t feature RPGS, LAV IIIs, or the Taliban.

At this moment those world leaders who were there when Operation Enduring Freedom began—George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Pervez Musharraf, and Hamid Karzai—are still in power. For Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, Afghanistan never figured highly on the agenda. Afghanistan is Stephen Harper’s war, a commitment, one suspects, that suits him just fine. Written while Harper was facing increasing pressure to define Canada’s role and ambitions in Afghanistan, there are three themes in this book. The first sets the stage on which the drama is being played out—Afghanistan. The second is why and how Canada got to Afghanistan and attempts to find a coherent pattern to the events, political and military, that have shaped Canadian involvement since Operation Enduring Freedom began. The third focuses on the good things Canada is doing in Afghanistan, and for that I was fortunate to be able to make the journey to the heart of such benefits, the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

One of the things that I found when I was commander of international operations, said Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, was that the most dangerous thing of all was the individual who visited the theatre for 48 hours and then left an instant expert with the solution to everything, which was invariably wrong. (Fortunately, General Hillier was talking about the conclusions of the Paris-based Senlis Council, not mine.) The trail over which my research took me was difficult and dangerous, beginning with the flight into Afghanistan. As an aviation author, I knew well the checkered history of the Ariana Afghan Airlines Boeing 727-200 that brought me to Kabul. Thirty years before, when it was owned by Faucett Peruvian Airlines, I had watched its wings buckle as it corkscrewed into the airfield at Cuzco. That flight was an experience I will never forget, as hard as I try.

Having never been in the military, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to many who are and who were generous with their time in helping me write this book. Captain Doug MacNair, Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM), arranged for me to be embedded with the Canadian Forces (CF) at Kandahar Airfield in the summer of 2006. Others in the CF who gave of their expertise were: Captain Richard Perreault, public affairs officer, CEFCOM, who told me of the airdrops; Master Corporal (now Sergeant) Chris Stringer, FCs Tech/NSE/Maint. Coy, Camp Julien; Captain Richard Little of Surveillance and Target Acquisition; Lieutenant-Colonel J.D. (John) Conrad, commanding officer of the National Support Element, Task Force Afghanistan; and Master Seaman (now Sergeant) Bill Pritchett. At the PRT it was my pleasure and privilege to interview three extraordinary Canadians whose experiences appear in this book: Captain Tony Petrilli, the Civil Military Cooperation (CIMIC) Projects officer; Major E.A. Leibert, the deputy commander of the PRT; and RCMP Superintendent Wayne E. Martin, police adviser.

An unexpected source of research was the Air Cadet 632 Phoenix-Telesat Squadron in Orleans, Ontario. Not only is the squadron fortunate to have within its ranks my two daughters, Sergeant Holly Pigott and Corporal Jade Pigott, but the parents of the cadets put me in touch with two of the main sources for this book. Colonel J. Grondin, CD.MHE.CHE, found me Major J.A. Bradley, the deputy commanding officer at the Multinational Medical Unit, Kandahar Airfield; and Colonel Ralph Schildknecht put me in touch with Lieutenant-Commander Rob Ferguson of the Canadian Strategic Advisory Team. In the words of the squadron’s motto, the contributions of both men were Nulli Secondus.

For the diplomatic side, I was yet again fortunate to have Réjean Tremblay at the Lester B. Pearson Library track down the inter-library loans. Program Manager Peter Marshall is a member of the unsung band of administration officers who open our embassies around the world. His account of creating the Kabul Chancery should be recorded in a departmental history on embassy buildings, if one is ever written. By an amazing coincidence, I already knew Bruce Gillies, who 20 years earlier had been a key person in the operation to bring the Russian defectors out of Afghanistan. In his book Out of Afghanistan, David Prosser described Bruce in 1987 as slightly reserved and immaculately dressed and sporting a goatee. I can safely report that he hasn’t changed at all. I owe much to him and his charming wife, Christina. I would also like to thank the photographers of Combat Camera and Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star.

In the years to come, more books about the war in Afghanistan will be written by others. The military analysts will move the chess pieces about and the generals, both armchair and in the field, will reminisce about the dust, the Boardwalk, and the IEDS. The government will commission an official history of Canada’s involvement in that far-off country. Monuments will be erected to the fallen in parks and city squares, schoolchildren will recite poems about Panjwai and Spin Boldak, and on November 11 the veterans of the Afghan war will polish their medals. Until all of that happens, there is on a footbridge that crosses the North Saskatchewan River near downtown Edmonton a plaque with a name. It is called the Ainsworth Dyer Bridge.

Peter Pigott

December 31, 2006

Ottawa

1

The Petri Dish of Afghanistan

¹

Fortress of Islam, heart of Asia,

Forever free, soil of the Aryans,

Birthplace of great heroes.

— Afghan National Anthem

To the sophisticated Persians, the land of rocks and desert at the edge of their empire was Yaghestan. Filled with savages who would never accept the rule of law, it was simply where civilization ended. There is some evidence that the country’s most ancient name was Avagana, a Sanskrit term, but another school of thought believes the land was originally called Ab-bar-Gan, or High Country, which derives from the Sumerian language and dates back as far as 3000 BC. In religious terms, the Afghan or Pashtun origin is said to stem from the Old Testament’s Abraham. Afghana, Saul’s grandson, was raised by David and was made chief of the army. His family became so powerful that in the sixth century BC, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, exiled them to Khor, the site of modern Afghanistan. Greater Khorasan is a historical region that includes territories in today’s Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. Persian travellers referred to the many tribes in its mountainous area as Pashtun from the language spoken there, and it was only in the 18th century that Europeans called the area Afghanistan, after the Afghans, the ruling tribe then.

The Afghans themselves have an explanation for the physical features of their country. After creating the countries of the world, God had some rubbish left over. This he moulded together and dropped on an area of the planet that no one wanted, creating Afghanistan. Trapped historically between Persia, Russia, India, and China, the country has been cursed throughout history. From ancient times this collision of mountain ranges, tribes, and empires has had a strategic importance, even more so today since its modern neighbours are Pakistan, China, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the first two being nuclear powers and the third suspected of trying to join that club. The British historian Arnold Toynbee thought Afghanistan was the roundabout of the world (traffic circle, in Canadian terms). For Lord Curzon, British viceroy of India at the beginning of the 20th century, it was the cockpit of the world.² After the disastrous British and Soviet invasions, Afghanistan earned the title of Graveyard of Empires. A geographical expression in search of a state, Afghanistan is more commonly called the Corridor of Asia. Whatever the name, to the great powers of any day, Afghanistan has always been a vacuum that has to be filled.

Located in Central Asia on the geologic Iranian Plateau, Afghanistan is 647,500 square kilometres, an area similar in size to Manitoba and slightly smaller than Texas. Like Switzerland and Austria, it is landlocked, mountainous, and heir to a few languages and religions. Its present-day boundaries are artificial, having been drawn up early in the 20th century in London and Moscow. Because of its past, Afghanistan was known for the ferocity of its warriors. In fact, so impressed was Lord Kitchener with an Afghan tribe called the Hazaras that in preparation for a Third Afghan War (1919) he raised a battalion of Hazara Pioneers. When London wisely cut its losses and refused to get involved with pacifying Afghanistan, the Hazara battalion accompanied Kitchener home and during World War I went to France, Kurdistan, and Baghdad, fighting for the British with distinction.

The Hindu Kush slices through the country, beginning in the high northeast where the former Soviet Union, China, and Pakistan meet, then continuing to the barren lowlands of the Iranian border. Because of these mountains, Afghanistan is chopped into the Central Highlands, the Northern Plains, and the Southwestern Plateau. Deep, narrow valleys, the storied Khyber and Bolan passes, the Suleiman Mountains that march across the border with Pakistan, and the Central Highlands form the popular notion of Afghanistan.

Rarely reported in the media is that better distribution of water is critical if Afghanistan is ever to become a stable nation. Although the country has experienced several years of drought, it still possesses tremendous water resources. Drought, ineffective management, and lack of available infrastructure have created conditions for massive internal displacement of the population. The dearth of water has caused opium cultivation to increase, inflamed local conflicts over access rights to water, and raised health concerns. The recent proliferation of thousands of tube wells has also led to a decrease in the water table, further disrupting the local community as control over wells becomes an issue. Despite all this, there is no shortage of available water in Afghanistan.³The problem is one of management. There are three types of irrigation systems in the country: surface, karez, and formal. Fifty-five percent of irrigation is by traditional methods such as diverting surface river water. Karez systems use the groundwater by digging tunnels that channel the liquid from underground to the surface where it can be redirected to crops. With streams and seasonal springs, karez systems comprise 30 percent of the nation’s irrigation, with the remaining 15 percent consisting of formal systems such as large-scale government projects.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that only 1.4 million hectares of land out of a potential 5 million hectares is currently available for extended seasons. The average production of wheat is 1.3 metric tonnes per hectare, but with improved water management this figure could potentially triple. The application of surface systems is often based on traditional use, and local management of these includes the distribution of water as well as responsibilities for maintenance. Samandar, a 40-year-old peasant from Andarab, a district in the northern province of Baghlan, told the United Nations’ Integrated Regional International Network that he had lost a son and a brother to a water dispute in his village. They were killed by farmers of a nearby village, he said. He believed that more than 70 percent of the tensions and anxieties affecting his village arose from disputes over the distribution of irrigation water.

Vineyards have flourished for centuries along the Arghandab River valley in Kandahar Province, and before the Soviet war, Afghanistan was the source of 60 percent of the world’s raisins, exporting them largely to Iran and Pakistan. Only known as a battleground to Canadians, this lush farmland is divided into rectangular sections called jeribs, roughly equal to 2,000 square metres. Farmers usually surround their jeribs with thick mud walls and work the land using the methods employed for centuries. They create row upon row of parallel chest-deep ditches, either by building upwards with mud or digging down into the beige earth. These troughs serve as trellises for green grapes, which tend to be smaller than the grapes found in Canadian supermarkets but which have a more intense flavour. Other crops include wheat, pomegranates,⁴ watermelons, squashes, marijuana,⁵ and poppies. The last is harvested for opium and also the tasty seeds. Almonds (especially a thin-shelled variety known as khargazi) and pomegranates from Kandahar Province were once famous throughout the Indian subcontinent. The country’s agricultural base suffered severe damage during the frequent wars, and the recent drought further jeopardized the industry.

The country’s future hopes and wealth lie in the untapped mineral deposits and natural gas in the foothills of the Northern Plains where the Amu River, historically known as the Oxus, flows. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines and Industry Joint Oil and Gas Resource Assessment Team estimate that there are huge deposits of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in northern Afghanistan. In 2003 the Ministry of Mines, in partnership with various donors, made great strides in identifying priority projects and ensuring the regulation of the sector. The Minerals Law was passed in July 2005, and the Hydrocarbons Laws were approved by the Afghan government in December 2005. The World Bank estimated that Afghanistan’s existing mining operations were worth about US$60 million annually, and on June 30, 2006, the Bank announced that it had approved a US$30 million grant to assist the government to effectively regulate the country’s mineral and hydrocarbon resources and foster private-sector development in a transparent manner. By March 20, 2007, the Afghan government hopes that an enabling regulatory environment for commercial extraction of the country’s mineral wealth and other natural resources will be in place, not only for the oil but for more mundane resources such as the crushed rock, sand, and gravel necessary to build schools, houses, and hospitals. But without more stability and security, Mining Watch Canada has warned, private investors won’t feel safe, and as long as the Taliban remains in the country, any mining development will become the focus for insurgents, either as political targets or as a source of revolutionary taxes.

With no particular home are nomadic tribes like the Kochi, who despite decades of war continue to herd goats and the fat-tailed Afghan sheep. Many herdsmen have taken to long-distance truck driving, which because there is no railway system is the country’s only means of internal and international trade—and smuggling. Within the Hindu Kush live the Persian-speaking Hazaras, distinctive with their Mongol features and Shia religion, two reasons they have endured centuries of persecution by the Pashtun majority,