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| Afghanistan |
| Roadside diplomacy |
| 2006-05-15 |
| Soldiers urge Afghans to stand up for themselves, one villager at a time SHEIKH MEHDI, Afghanistan -- When the talking stops and the diplomats go home, Canada's attempts to build democracy out of Afghanistan's social rubble come down to this: an earnest young soldier in the dusty heat, urging curious villagers to overcome the fear ingrained by 30 wartorn years and stand up for themselves. "A lot of these people are scared to say anything because they've been so mentally beaten by the Taliban that they're scared to say anything other than 'Everything's fine,' " says Sgt. Jeremy Silver of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. "A lot of these people are scared to tell us about problems in their areas. They're scared something that happened to their friend four years ago is going to happen to them." Silver, a 30-year-old from Bridgewater, N.S., with a steady gaze and even voice, had just returned from leading a so-called "presence patrol" to Sheikh Mehdi, a village just south of Kandahar. No Canadians had been there previously, and reports indicated the Taliban were using the area as a route into the city. So eight members of Silver's section loaded into three G-wagons, small armoured vehicles, and hurtled through the streets of Kandahar to Sheikh Mehdi. Vehicle-mounted bombs are a constant threat, so the soldiers neither stop nor allow anything to get between the elements of the convoy. If that means throwing water bottles at car windshields, nudging taxis out of the way with a G-wagon's beefy bumper or even waving a handgun in the air, they do it. And if that erodes the goodwill the Canadians are trying so hard to cultivate, so be it. Kandahar's urban tangle of sidewalk vendors, donkey carts and battered Toyota Corollas opens briefly into sun-blasted desert, which is then replaced by the narrow lanes and mud-walled compounds of Sheikh Mehdi. Silver spots an old man squatting beside the road and decides this is as good a place to start as any. The G-wagons stop and the helmeted and flak-jacketed soldiers fan out as Silver approaches the man. Within minutes, more than a dozen men and children - no women - emerge from tumbledown homes still scarred from the Russian invasion in the late 1970s. The elder turns out to be uncommunicative, but a turbaned young Pashtun with striking blue eyes steps forward. "The powerful people, they capture everything and they do not ask the poor people," he says through an interpreter. "If the money comes in, it goes into their pockets." He points to the dirt drainage ditch at his feet that was supposed to be concrete-lined. Two of the village's five wells go unrepaired. The village's leadership is corrupt, he insists, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. "He will not listen to my speech," says the man, Mohammed Rahim. "There is no council, there is no meeting to discuss the problem of one person." "Maybe you need to go again, and again, and again, until finally he's able to listen," Silver tells him. "But this is the problem," says Rahim, a 28-year-old former member of the Afghan National Police. "The people of the village do not have unity. The people do not have the courage to stand and talk and solve their problems." "That's the problem I see," Silver says. "People do not have the courage to do this because they do not have the one person that's willing to stand up." For two hours they talk by the road in the mid-40 C heat. A few times, soldiers fetch crates of bottled water from the G-wagons and hand them out to the eager children. Silver collects information about the village. It has a school, but no paper or pens. There are no security problems, says Rahim, and nobody has seen any Taliban - information Silver collects with a grain of salt. But Silver keeps encouraging Rahim to speak to his friends and stand together to demand the chief elder address their concerns. "If he's going to take a stand and describe to his friends in the village about the right things that need to happen, then maybe they'll tell their friends and everybody will understand from there," he says to the interpreter. Eventually, it's time to leave. Silver's men are getting edgy from being in one place so long. Silver and Rahim shake hands and pledge friendship. Before the G-wagons roar off into the dust, Silver promises to return. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #2 Words lead to ideas. |
| Posted by: Thinemp Whimble2412 2006-05-15 12:06 |
| #1 The Canuck is right. But they need more than words to fend off the terrs. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-05-15 09:00 |