Canadians get wary welcome
TheStar.com - News - January 06, 2007 Oakland Ross Staff Reporter
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A reconnaissance platoon encountered no hostilities on a journey into unknown Kandahar territory, but our soldiers did have to fend off a few complaints from the local villagers, Oakland Ross writes
LWAR SOHBAT, Afghanistan–"If we come under fire, get under cover – behind a wall, whatever you can find."
Capt. Steve MacBeth, commander of 1 Royal Canadian Regiment reconnaissance platoon, is addressing a lone Canadian civilian who has hitched a ride out to this windblown, mud-walled corner of a country at war.
MacBeth turns to the dozen soldiers under his command, ranging in age from 23 to 30 or so. "If we have to," he tells them, "we'll pull back to the LAVs and try to suppress fire."
The LAVs are the three light armoured vehicles that have borne MacBeth and his men across a broad sweep of treeless badlands to the edge of this dirt-poor farming village in the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar.
The village is called Lwar Sohbat, and it is terra incognita for an international NATO-led force fighting alongside the Afghan National Army against a determined band of Islamist zealots known as the Taliban.
This is the account of one Canadian reconnaissance platoon, a single Afghan village, and yet another ambiguous chapter in a stubborn and uncertain war, a competition more for the hearts and minds of human beings than for places that can be marked upon a map.
Some 2,400 Canadian troops are part of the NATO coalition, and most are based here in Kandahar province, where bearded men in turbans and long flowing robes seem to come striding straight out of Old Testament tableaux, most of them in peace, but some of them carrying AK-47s or rocket launchers, while others are strapped with makeshift explosives.
It is all but impossible to distinguish the innocent from the enemy – until it is too late.
Here in Lwar Sohbat, no one knows what to expect, because no one among the NATO forces has yet to venture among the local people this far west in Kandahar province.
What's more, earlier this afternoon MacBeth learned that a "high-level" Taliban target resides in the town – a hard-core official of the authoritarian warriors who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when they were overthrown by a U.S.-led invasion. Now the Taliban are fighting again, to restore themselves to power.
"We recognize there's still a high threat in the area," says MacBeth. "No matter how benign it seems, there's still a significant level of danger."
He and his men set out on foot, tracing a path along a network of low mud dikes interspersed by occasional tree breaks. They all keep a prudent distance apart from each other – at least five metres.
"That way, a single RPG can't take us both out," a corporal tells the civilian behind him, when he gets too close. RPG means rocket-propelled grenade.
It is late afternoon, and the sun is already low in the west, casting a frigid coppery glow across the cracked terrain.
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TheStar.com - News - January 06, 2007 Oakland Ross Staff Reporter
Article Link
A reconnaissance platoon encountered no hostilities on a journey into unknown Kandahar territory, but our soldiers did have to fend off a few complaints from the local villagers, Oakland Ross writes
LWAR SOHBAT, Afghanistan–"If we come under fire, get under cover – behind a wall, whatever you can find."
Capt. Steve MacBeth, commander of 1 Royal Canadian Regiment reconnaissance platoon, is addressing a lone Canadian civilian who has hitched a ride out to this windblown, mud-walled corner of a country at war.
MacBeth turns to the dozen soldiers under his command, ranging in age from 23 to 30 or so. "If we have to," he tells them, "we'll pull back to the LAVs and try to suppress fire."
The LAVs are the three light armoured vehicles that have borne MacBeth and his men across a broad sweep of treeless badlands to the edge of this dirt-poor farming village in the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar.
The village is called Lwar Sohbat, and it is terra incognita for an international NATO-led force fighting alongside the Afghan National Army against a determined band of Islamist zealots known as the Taliban.
This is the account of one Canadian reconnaissance platoon, a single Afghan village, and yet another ambiguous chapter in a stubborn and uncertain war, a competition more for the hearts and minds of human beings than for places that can be marked upon a map.
Some 2,400 Canadian troops are part of the NATO coalition, and most are based here in Kandahar province, where bearded men in turbans and long flowing robes seem to come striding straight out of Old Testament tableaux, most of them in peace, but some of them carrying AK-47s or rocket launchers, while others are strapped with makeshift explosives.
It is all but impossible to distinguish the innocent from the enemy – until it is too late.
Here in Lwar Sohbat, no one knows what to expect, because no one among the NATO forces has yet to venture among the local people this far west in Kandahar province.
What's more, earlier this afternoon MacBeth learned that a "high-level" Taliban target resides in the town – a hard-core official of the authoritarian warriors who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when they were overthrown by a U.S.-led invasion. Now the Taliban are fighting again, to restore themselves to power.
"We recognize there's still a high threat in the area," says MacBeth. "No matter how benign it seems, there's still a significant level of danger."
He and his men set out on foot, tracing a path along a network of low mud dikes interspersed by occasional tree breaks. They all keep a prudent distance apart from each other – at least five metres.
"That way, a single RPG can't take us both out," a corporal tells the civilian behind him, when he gets too close. RPG means rocket-propelled grenade.
It is late afternoon, and the sun is already low in the west, casting a frigid coppery glow across the cracked terrain.
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