# Michael Den Tandt - In Afghanistan Blog



## GAP (9 Oct 2007)

Michael Den Tandt - In Afghanistan Blog
Article Link

Blog Link - previous articles on Kandahar and PRT here

Phew. I’m home.

We left Kandahar, early on the sixth…. three days ago? It feels like longer. But then, time gets distorted in Afghanistan, because the days all begin at six and end at two or three a.m. on the following morning…the days run together, one into the next, until after a week you’ve lost track of everything but the basic, such as: where am I right now? Where do I need to be next? Where will be bunk down tonight, and do they have internet access, and is it accessible to us? 

What an extraordinary ten days. The last time I blogged, we were at the PRT - Camp Nathan Smith, in Kandahar City. That was a real eyeopener for me, because I saw all manner of things that I hadn’t expected to see. There are new buildings, large ones, all over the camp, where 18 months ago there were none. There are new buildings going up in Kandahar City too - mainly police stations, which is critical, because they serve as bases for the Afghan police, which helps them project power, which helps establish order. The environment remains extremely dangerous, and Canadian soldiers and aid workers are constantly under threat of attack. But the force projected on the ground is such , and the level of training now of the new Afghan army is such, that the omnipresent sense of chaos is, well, lessening. That’s not at all what I expected to find. It could turn the other way in a heartbeat, but from what I saw, there is progress. The cost in lives, the cost in aid dollars, is achieving concrete, if slow, results. That’s not what most Canadians understand to be the case, is it? 

The day we left the PRT, I had mixed feelings. I’d have liked to stay on longer, to write about what’s happening there. It really is one of the most extraordinary stories I’ve ever come across, in 15 years in this business - a small, tight-knit group of Canadians, doing incredible work under the most bizarrely difficult, dangerous condidtions, and actually getting somewhere. But we had to go. We were ferried out on a Blackhawk helicopter, provided by the United States, back to Kandahar Airfield. Our tent had moved in our absence, and the new spot was actually quite a bit better than the old. It was near Old Canada House. New Canada House, a much large building a 20-minute walk away, is a marvel by comparison. It has its own PX store, a barber shop, conference rooms, all the amenities of home. Old Canada house is homier, a little grittier, older. There’s a big poster of Don Cherry on the wall. Upstairs, where we set up to write, is a little library, with two or three shelves of paperpacks, mostly thrillers, which the soldiers use in their time off. 

Our last night at KAF, my colleague Lindsey Wiebe, from the Winnipeg Free Press, went over to the coalition hospital and spoke with the doctors and nurses there. That’s a story I still need to write - didn’t have time to finish it before we left. The hospital is very well-equipped, just like any hospital in Canada, but it treats more severe trauma injuries than any hospital in Canada ever would. The night we were there an Afghan man and his son were brought in by helicopter and treated. They were hurt in a motorcycle crash. It turns out the vast majority of casualties at the hospital are Afghan, not coalition soldiers. The hospital treats enemy fighters too: Under the Geneva Conventions, we provide medical care to all combatants, regardless of which side they’re on. There’s a special room at the back of the main operating theatre, where they keep Taliban casualties, under guard. 
More on link


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## Scoobs (10 Oct 2007)

A very good read of all his blogs.  Finally a reporter that tells both sides without a hidden agenda.  We need some more of these regional newspapers to send people so that all parts of the country get a balanced view of Afghanistan, instead of the crap that CTV and CBC puts out.  CTV = private company out to make $$$  (just privately ask the current CTV reporter in theatre) and CBC = twisted liberals with reporters like David Common out to get a piece of the limelight even though he doesn't bother to check his facts (casualty blog).


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## Babbling Brooks (11 Oct 2007)

Den Tandt has a fantastic piece in his paper today:



> The Afghan war is not one conflict but three: a guerrilla war, a development war and a communications war. Canada is gaining ground in the first and slowly winning the second.
> 
> We’re losing the third.
> 
> ...



It's well worth your time to read the whole thing (even if you're already aware of the information, it's a morale booster to see it written like this).


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## GAP (11 Oct 2007)

Can you correct the link...it doesn't work

Thanks


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## MarkOttawa (11 Oct 2007)

Here's the link for the superb piece by Michael Den Tandt (why can't one of the major dailies' reporters write a piece like this?  Or at least reprint this one?):
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=725426&auth=Michael+Den+Tandt

Mark
Ottawa


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## Babbling Brooks (11 Oct 2007)

Sorry, GAP, my bad on the link.  Thanks for fixing it, Mark.


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## geo (11 Oct 2007)

Great write up by Mr Den Tandt.

Too bad MsM hasn't picked up and learnt from "real" newsmen


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## emmiee (11 Oct 2007)

Great article, thanks for the link

emma


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## MarkOttawa (11 Oct 2007)

Terry Glavin, a progressive of intelligence and real principle, posts this:

"Nobody's covering the Afghan side of the war..."
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2007/10/nobodys-covering-afghan-side-of-war.html

Mark
Ottawa


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## geo (11 Oct 2007)

Thanks for the link Mark

Another good read....

Take that Mr Duceppe, Mr Dion, Mr Coderre, Mr Layton


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## GAP (12 Oct 2007)

The sweet scent of home
Posted By Den Tandt, Michael
Article Link

Coming home to Canada from a third world country, let alone a third world country at war, is bittersweet. It's sweet because, frankly, you're safe and sound. The comforts seem more comfortable. The hot shower in the morning feels hotter, the cold beer tastes better. Luxuries you normally take for granted - watching television in the evening, relaxing on the porch early in the morning while the birds come awake - seem sweet and precious. 

It's bitter, at least a little bit, because no matter how hard you try, you can never fully convey the experience to someone who hasn't been there. For a writer, that's hard. I could write a dozen more newspaper columns about Kandahar and still not completely convey the look and feel and smell of the place. The waft of sewage and jet exhaust at Kandahar Airfield; the constant sense of activity, everyone moving with purpose, even if just to reach the mess for dinner. The sun rising like a molten ball, with a penumbra of grit, over the desert. The 24/7 roar of trucks, armoured vehicles, aircraft taking off and landing in endless rotation. 

I didn't realize until my first day home how quiet it is in Owen Sound in the morning before the sun comes up. 

As a newspaper writer you have to focus on the snap-shot, the precise moment, much as a photographer does. You write about the highlights and the lowlights and everything else flows downstream. Maybe you dredge it up later, in a column or a feature, or maybe it just becomes part of your experience. Writing these pieces is a process of sifting, sorting and letting go. 

They say that 80 per cent of human communication is visual, through body language. I believe that. I could read 50 transcribed interviews with Canadian soldiers about the Afghan mission and still not truly grasp how Bombardier Natalie Simard felt, as we sat over coffee a week ago in Kabul, and she told me about why she loves her work. 

Now I understand: I saw the conviction in her face and heard the depth of feeling in her voice. She teared up when she spoke of home, but not because she wanted to leave Kabul. She wanted people here to understand why she went and why she wants to stay. 

You write about that conversation or recount it in passing and someone will invariably say it's not that simple: It's never black and white. We don't live in a world of good guys and bad guys. The Afghan mission is complex, the politics are complex. You mustn't get lost in a patriotic fog in which everything our troops do is somehow sacrosanct, simply because they're ours. If you do that, you're playing into a political agenda, whether you like it or not. And that's all true. But here's the thing: Critics of the mission have their own moral absolutes too. 

My generation's perceptions of soldiering were formed mainly by Hollywood. Films such as "Platoon", "Full Metal Jacket", "Apocalypse Now", or TV shows such as "M*A*S*H" - all made by American directors in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. In those works the military is mostly portrayed as a blunt instrument, a tool of chaos. There are clear dividing lines between good and evil but, as often as not, the military itself is portrayed as evil. Those films were a natural cultural outgrowth of America's revulsion with that war, which it lost. 

Canadian soldiers do not resemble the ones we've seen in film and on television, not even slightly. 

On two different trips to Afghanistan I've met and exchanged views with dozens of soldiers of all ranks and from every part of Canada. The vast majority have been respectful, thoughtful and, for lack of a better term, kind. If a soldier don't have these qualities when she joins, I suspect they're drummed into her. And because I've spoken to Natalie, and many others, I can say beyond any shadow of doubt that our soldiers' purpose over there is crystal-clear. The analysts and strategists and politicians have their complex arguments about the Afghan mission, pro and con. Some make sense, others don't. For rank-and-file soldiers it's simpler. They're there to help the Afghans and to help each other. The rest is noise. 

The relativist argument suggests that no cause is every truly good and none truly evil. Taken in that light, every conflict and every justification for conflict, can be dismissed as spin. There's no such thing as a just war.

But there's a point where abstraction ends and sharp reality begins. For our grandparents' generation that point was the Nazi invasion of Europe. For ours, I think, it's on the ground in Kandahar, just outside the wire. 

No sane person can argue that burning medical clinics and beheading teachers is good. No sane person can say that blowing up a crowd of women and children in a marketplace is good. No sane person can say that the deliberate veneration of ignorance, or forced ignorance through barbarity, are good. They're not good. They're bad. Here, always and everywhere. 

By my lights, such acts are as close to evil as we can find in this world. And the fact that the very term "evil" has been discredited by George W. Bush does not make the Taliban any more than what they are, or our soldiers any less. 

Michael Den Tandt is editor of The Sun Times. He recently returned from assignment in Afghanistan. Contact mdentandt@thesuntimes.ca.
More on link


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## deh (15 Oct 2007)

I had the pleasure of sitting down for a little chat with Mr Den Tandt when he was here at the PRT.  Being one of the few people who did some time in Meaford made me the closest thing to a local he could find.  Great guy, straight forward, seemed very interested and enthusiastic.  For what its worth, the article he wrote about us did get republished in the sun or the star in Toronto.  Dad was proud I made the paper with no mention of a trial date.


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## MarkOttawa (15 Oct 2007)

The "fantastic","superb" piece is in the _Ottawa Sun_ today:

Is it time to pull out?
The truth about Canada's mission in Afghanistan
http://ottawasun.com/News/Afghan/2007/10/15/4576954-sun.html

Mark
Ottawa


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## Simon (15 Oct 2007)

The relativist argument suggests that no cause is every truly good and none truly evil. Taken in that light, every conflict and every justification for conflict, can be dismissed as spin. There's no such thing as a just war.

But there's a point where abstraction ends and sharp reality begins. For our grandparents' generation that point was the Nazi invasion of Europe. For ours, I think, it's on the ground in Kandahar, just outside the wire. 

No sane person can argue that burning medical clinics and beheading teachers is good. No sane person can say that blowing up a crowd of women and children in a marketplace is good. No sane person can say that the deliberate veneration of ignorance, or forced ignorance through barbarity, are good. They're not good. They're bad. Here, always and everywhere. 

By my lights, such acts are as close to evil as we can find in this world. And the fact that the very term "evil" has been discredited by George W. Bush does not make the Taliban any more than what they are, or our soldiers any less. 


I couldnt say it any better than that, and I have tried time and time again, great article.


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## geo (15 Oct 2007)

It's nice to see that the wee people in the small market publications can teach the big media types a thing or two.

good read!

Thank you!

CHIMO!


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## Scoobs (15 Oct 2007)

MarkOttawa said:
			
		

> The "fantastic","superb" piece is in the _Ottawa Sun_ today:
> 
> Is it time to pull out?
> The truth about Canada's mission in Afghanistan
> ...



It is nice to see a reporter telling the truth and not twisting the story or only covering our deaths just to get people's attention.  It is too bad that this story will most likely get lost or forgotten because the mainstream media won't sell papers or have people watch their TV shows on a consistent basis if only good news comes out of Afghanistan.  Everyone in the mil knows that we aren't in Afghanistan to occupy, but help.  Why doesn't the PM let the people that can tell the good of our mission speak?  If he is interested in staying in power, then my advice to him is to do just that.


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