Blogs from Kandahar, South, Afghanistan, Asia

It's been quiet enough in Kandahar City for the last few weeks, perhaps a lull before the storm or a "Phony War", but according to reports in fact the time when the Coalition has been tightening the so-called "Ring of Steel" around the City as part of "Operation Hamkari". We've had the occasional "crack and thump". For the non-military, an AK round makes a "crack" as it goes overhead... the "thumps" are usually the Bad Guys getting whacked in return... A bit like a Monty Python sketch - Bad Guy pops off a couple of rounds, then a big THUMP and he's gone. Anyway, yesterday afternoon (first day of Ramadan, Wednesday 11th August) things seemed to change. There was a lot of helo activity (Kiowa gunships) over an outlying district to the South-West of the City ... read more

The following is an article I wrote for www.afghanistan.gc.ca and will appear online later in July... At present, there are about 50 Canadian Civilian Police Officers working in Afghanistan, these officers, known as CIVPOL, hail from municipal and regional police services across the country as well as from the RCMP. Our mission involves improving the capacity of the Afghan National Police (ANP) through training and mentoring. This is accomplished in several ways. The training component refers to good old fashioned classroom instruction in a police academy setting. Young recruits are put through their paces and senior officers are taught leadership skills that will enable them to lead their officers into the future. A few of our CIVPOL officers are also senior mentors. They regularly visit high ranking ANP officers at Police Headquarters to discuss various ... read more

Our mission: to look at the possibilities for agriculture south of Kandahar City. Where we got to: Tarnak Agricultural Research Station, better known as Osama Bin Laden's training centre, famous for the videos of Al Qaeda recruits running over the assault course. Tarnak Farm is where it all started. All this frightful mess and loss of life we've suffered in the last ten years. 9/11 was planned here and the leader, Mohammed Atta, apparently made his will here before he left to attack the Twin Towers. OBL moved to Tarnak in 1998 as a guest of the Taliban government (yes, the Taliban WAS the legitimate Afghan Government between 1996 and late 2001) when his residence near Jallalabad was threatened. There is a suggestion that the Clinton Administration planned to kidnap him at that time which would ... read more

Stuck in the high security prison - sorry compound - with the bad guys on the outside, we are in the centre of Kandahar City waiting for the "surge" to occur; I hope readers appreciate the irony of the folks from the most powerful nations of the world, here to help (we like to believe) cowering from a bunch of illiterate peasants armed with small arms, nothing more powerful than an AK rifle or an RPG. Time for a little reflection. The big picture is this: these powerful countries, led by the USA, would like to see an Afghanistan re-built in their image - a glance at my post on the history of Helmand and a look at the link to what AGF was like in the 1950s gives some idea of what the Western Powers ... read more

Our first field mission outside the compound was to the Arghandab Valley to the west of Kandahar City. The Arghandab River is a major flow from the Hindu Kush into the Helmand River and waters an enormous irrigated area that was constructed in the 1950s - by the USA. The valley is a veritable Shangri-La and used to be the food basket of not just Afghanistan but much of the region. It grows a profusion of pomegranate, grapes, wheat and all kinds of vegetables. Conflicts over the last 30 years have reduced its productivity, but the potential remains. We drove from our secure compound in the centre of KC, kitted our in body armour and enclosed in armoured cars with teams of "shooters" hefting AK-74s (an upgraded '47) to the district HQ, in a fortified post ... read more