pat4peace

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. It’s not that I haven’t been busy, just there’s a bit of a Groundhog Day thing that occurs here and I really didn’t feel like there was anything to report on. Maybe I’ll start with telling you about Camp Nathan Smith and the changes that have occurred there. I’ll take you back to Late March, when I first arrived in Afghanistan, there were less than 500 people living and working at CNS. Among them, a few dozen Americans peacefully living among Canadian soldiers and civilians as well as a small army of Afghans who worked at the camp. Fast forward to August. CNS has changed hands; it is now a US camp. It has grown in size by more than 400%. The influx of American troops ... 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

My first few days at Camp Nathan Smith were fairly uneventful. The day was filled with lectures, training and time at the firing range; the evenings mostly consisted of socializing and trying to get my new room organized to my liking. I had a roommate for that first week, but he was soon to leave for one of the forward operating bases or FOBs. From there, 10 from my group along with 7 from the previous group would work with US Military Police in order to mentor and train the Police Officers of Kandahar City. My job title is Administrative NCO, which really means I do a whole lot of everything to keep the mission running. That includes procurement, managing everyone’s holidays, planning our people’s mouvements with their military escorts and being a part of the ... read more

We departed Ottawa at 4 AM on Friday headed for Las Vegas and ultimately Fort Irwin, CA. The people booking the flights had forgotten that we had a massive amount of gear to carry and failed to realize that the Dash 8 propeller aircraft that was to fly us from Ottawa to Montreal could simply not carry that amount of cargo. So instead, we loaded all of our luggage on a truck and boarded a small bus bound for the Pierre-Trudeau Airport in Montreal to catch a 9:20 flight to McCarran Airport right off the strip in Vegas. The flight departed about an hour behind schedule. Getting through security was another story altogether. The hoops one must now jump through to fly to the US are time consuming to say the least. Nonetheless, customs was fairly ... read more