# Rebuilding Afghanistan, one project at a time



## schart28 (16 Dec 2006)

Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061216.wxblatch16/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

The other day, a 34-year-old *Canadian reservist* named Corporal Shawn Denty got to deliver the medical supplies his friends and colleagues in Oakville, Ont., had collected after reading an e-mail about his distressing visit to Mirwais Hospital, the lone civilian hospital in Kandahar city.

“I was shocked,” Cpl. Denty wrote home. “The dirt, the dust... it was a shambles. There I was, standing in the middle of a Third World country.”

Like many of those who came before him, and surely many of those who will follow, all he wanted was to do something for the poor and suffering of this battle-scarred nation.

Back in Canada, in Manitouwadge, Ont., his fiancée, family and co-workers at Xerox Business Supplies beat the bushes, and came up with about 20 boxes of supplies that are like gold in Kandahar: an EKG heart monitor, green surgical gowns and towels, bed sheets, diapers, syringes, and intravenous cannulas.

Everyone involved, but particularly Cpl. Denty, who had seen the gaping need at the hospital while escorting VIPs on a tour, dreamed of helping Afghans and especially children.Instead, what happened was that his treasure trove was given over to a tiny Afghan National Army medical clinic just outside the giant NATO base at Kandahar Air Field, journalists were invited to bear witness to his soldierly good works, and in the end much of the valuable booty was taken to a warehouse, where despite the locks on the doors it may yet disappear to the black market.

Therein lies the lesson of aid, reconstruction and development in this most battered part of Afghanistan: Good intentions are never enough.

Arguably, nowhere has it been better learned than at the Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team headquarters on the fringes of Kandahar city, the second-largest in Afghanistan, and birthplace of the Taliban.

By the time the PRT crew from the Royal Canadian Regiment arrived last August, weary Afghans here had been promised the moon by the soldiers, aid agencies and various levels of government that collectively make up what's known as “the international community,” and by their own leaders, and yet had very little to show for it.

And, as in broad strokes the international effort here has been much criticized — most harshly in a recent Senlis Council report which announced that the Taliban was winning the “hearts and minds” campaign because of the world's failure to make the lives of the Afghan people even marginally better — so the Canadian PRT, as it was operated under the auspices of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, came in for its share.

That in turn prompted concerns on the Canadian home front that the supposedly three-pronged nature of Canada's role here had turned into a purely combat operation.

But the PRT team in place now has quietly managed in little more than three months to get 75 projects under way, most of them small and Afghan-run and some remarkably innovative.

They have two assets their predecessors didn't: a dedicated “force protection” team which allows them to move about the sprawling city safely and easily, and a squad of 12 combat engineers who act as managers on larger projects and who can, as deputy PRT commander Major Steve Murray says, “write up a contract on a field message pad and do it so it's enforceable.”

With the engineers at the helm, the team found an Afghan contractor who has been able to repair three of four neglected Afghan National Police substations, start building some of five planned new ones and get to work on improving 14 ANP checkpoints, all aimed at improving security in the city, of course, but also at professionalizing a police force that is widely considered inept at best and corrupt at worst.

A platoon of military police and civilian Canadian police, most from the RCMP, meanwhile, continues to train ANP officers.

But it is from the contingent of 14 CIMIC soldiers — the acronym stands for Civilian-Military Co-operation — that some of the most ingenious small projects, most costing under $5,000 (Canadian) each, have come.

Sergeant Ted Howard burbles with enthusiasm about them, particularly the two being run under the auspices of the Afghan Women's Council.

One of them has war widows sewing custom-made winter jackets for the 400 children who live at the frigid, unheated Abdul Ahad Karzai Orphanage that sits off the much-bombed Highway 4 (the building's windows were shattered by the Nov. 27 suicide bombing which killed Regimental Sergeant-Major Bobby Girouard and Corporal Albert Storm). The PRT, with money from the Department of National Defence-Commander's Contingency Fund, will buy the jackets from the widows.

The other project has imprisoned Afghan women, who in many cases are jailed — with their children — for offences under Islamic laws that would not be crimes in the West, busily making blankets for Afghan security forces; again, the PRT will buy the blankets.

In both instances, penniless women and youngsters benefit.

Similarly, inspired by Mohammed Niaz, a PRT interpreter who lost both legs in a May 24 battle and who is back at work at the compound, the “cobbler program” is about to get started.

A cobbler paid by the PRT will come to Kandahar from Kabul, teach amputees how to make custom dress shoes on equipment bought by the PRT, and the amputees will set up shop at markets at the PRT and perhaps later at the much-bigger air field at Kandahar, with their captive audiences of foreigners looking for bargains.

Well under way, too, is the “canal and culvert cleaning” cash-for-work project.

At the behest of the Kandahar mayor, desperate to get his city moving again and to offer his business taxpayers a functional city service, the PRT hired a local contractor, who in turn is hiring as many as 200 local fighting-age men a day, to clear out six years of garbage. In October, the PRT paid for 1,800 “man days,” last month 2,250 — meaning several thousand unemployed, illiterate men, who “sign” for their wages with a fingerprint, had a little cash in hand and were at least in theory less vulnerable to Taliban recruiters.

“What we're doing,” Major Murray says, “is buying time” for the big aid players, such as the Canadian International Development Agency, which has major dam, bridge and irrigation projects in the offing, but still can't get them going until the security situation in the region improves.

As for Cpl. Denty, he's not giving up. There's a girls' school he wants to help, and even as he heads home this weekend, he'd like to come back to Afghanistan one day.

And Sgt. Howard has a little of the dreamer in him, too. By next spring, he says, he hopes to put flowers along volatile Highway 1, improve the park by the soccer stadium, and plant a few trees.

“Trees in downtown Kandahar,” he says with a smile. “Can you imagine?”


----------



## Jed (17 Dec 2006)

It is good to see the PRT get the recognition and for these soldiers to have a chance to tell us what they are doing. Keep up the good work !


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Dec 2006)

Her is an article from today’s (18 Dec 06) _Globe and Mail_ by Christie Blatchford (reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act) which points out that the Canadian PRT is _doing the right thing_ – making it possible for Afghans to rebuild their own country in their own way, and _doing things right_, too – keeping a low profile, letting Afghans see Afghans doing the rebuilding.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061218.wxafghanwoman18/BNStory/Afghanistan/home 


> Courage and ruin in Afghanistan
> *Women's director who faces down fear gets a quiet boost from Canadian team*
> 
> CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
> ...



See also: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/53964.0.html Maybe Ms. Blatchford is going to correct the _mainstream media’s_ myopia.  We understand, from the _Good Grey Globe’s_ Arts/TV expert John Doyle, than the effete, ever so trendy Yorkville latté sippers in the _chattering classes_ only want ‘news’ from Afghanistan which supports their _Laytonesque_ world view but, perhaps, the _Globe’s_ editors are made of sterner, firmer stuff.

Kudos to Christie Blatchford for reporting on more than just Canadian casualties.


----------



## Infanteer (18 Dec 2006)

We say that Layton, Duceppe and Co. are playing politics off of our soldiers backs - but at least soldiers can, and have, speak for themselves.  It is people like this that will pay the ultimate price for the policies of the anti-war crowd.  Cheers to Christie Blatchford for giving them a voice and showing that, although not as attention-grabbing as combat, the full spectrum of our operations in Afghanistan is worth reporting.


----------



## Edward Campbell (19 Dec 2006)

More from Christie Blatchford in today’s (19 Dec 06) _Globe and Mail_, reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061219.wxblatchford19/BNStory/Front  





> Laughter, outrage and a call to battle
> *Canadians find their way amid the noise of what may be the craziest little battleground on the planet, CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD writes*
> 
> CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
> ...



Maybe some Canadians, especially the friends and playmates of Gilles, Duceppe, Taliban Jack Layton and the _Globe and Mail_’s John Doyle, can figure out the ‘Three Block War’ from this.


----------



## dglad (19 Dec 2006)

Wouldn't hurt as a training aid for our own use.  Good real-life description of most of the "full spectrum" of ops.


----------



## LEAAMIE (16 Jul 2008)

DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO CONTACT THIS CORPORAL SHAWN DENTY?


----------



## geo (16 Jul 2008)

Ummm... yes
His name is on the DWAN
Can't give it to you but, if you send me a document, I can try to get it to him......


----------

