This is a great story on part of our current training contribution.
For ‘Operators’ Pen is Mightier
Richard Johnson | Sep 26, 2012 6:59 AM ET | Last Updated: Sep 26, 2012 7:55 AM ET
More from Richard Johnson | @newsillustrator
These aren’t men you’d describe as approachable. Something about their mix of self-assurance, muscular build, facial hair and abundant tattoos keeps you at bay. Something around their eyes warns you off — the dull clarity in their unflinching gaze, hinting at knowledge of things best left unknown. There’s something in their movements, something calculating, something constantly measuring, something pent up, leashed, held in check. These are not men you’d like the look of, but these are the quiet professionals of Canada’s Special Operations Regiment (CSOR).
Officially CSOR is a high-readiness Special Operations Force (SOF) capable of conducting independent operations … on behalf of the Government of Canada. These were the men that we sent to Libya to secure the safety of our embassy staff there in Tripoli, in 2011. These same men have been conducting operations against the Taliban since 2006, interdicting, capturing or eliminating threats to our regular forces in theatre. These men are a big part of the reason that our losses here have not been higher.
The drive out of Kabul was a security nightmare. A trio of unmarked, unimposing, but heavily armoured cars travelled through the dense, thriving city along roads where every vehicle might be a threat. Disguise is important here. Blending in, essential. The threat of Vehicle-Bourne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED) is as real as the one that killed 14 people 10 days ago. The seconds saved by this thin, urban camouflage could save your life. There are enemies looking for a target of opportunity every time Canadians venture off of a base.
The traffic in the city in the early evening is best described as challenging and dense. No rules apply. A two-lane road becomes a four-lane parking lot, before cars switch to driving into oncoming traffic. The men of CSOR stay in tight radio contact, and do their best to stay together. They watch the vehicles around — somehow hoping to spot a vehicle moving menacingly erratically in a sea of menacingly erratic vehicles. Kabul traffic surges and bumps obliviously around them. Children beg, Burka-clad women wipe dust from windows, cyclists slip by, and pedestrians lean in to stare in the car windows – looking inside through our obvious subterfuge and dust.
Master Corporal Black almost tailgates a truck full of bricks when the traffic suddenly opens up, then just as suddenly stops — during our three-car thrust across a traffic circle. Car number three almost hits us as it rockets past and becomes the number two car before we manage to extricate ourselves from the melee. “That was f-d,” MCpl Black says, happily, as we slew back into position.
“Two up” MCpl Green says calmly into the radio.
The right turn into the village of Chahar Asyab is unmarked. The dirt road through the village — lined with high-walled compounds — eventually opens out into fields, before climbing into the foothills, and arriving at the security gates and a checkpoint manned by private security guards. Almost nothing is visible in the darkness beyond the gates. “Home again,” MCpl Black says.
Camp Morehead is a small ISAF base within the considerably larger Camp Commando Afghan National Army Special Operations Command (ANASOC) base. It is built in a high valley surrounded on all sides by rolling hills, daunting mountains and abandoned Soviet tanks. Camp Commando was a Soviet Special Forces base. A huge carving of a Spetsnatz parachutist in descent is still visible, even though it was carved into a hillside almost 40 years ago. It has also been a Taliban training camp.
The mission of CSOR in Afghanistan has, since 2008 included mentoring commandos in the Afghan National Army. But when the active mission changed for our regular army in Afghanistan, the mission grew for CSOR. Their task now is to continue to mentor the training of the Afghan Commandos, but also to help create a further level of expertise in the form of an Afghan National Army Special Forces (ANA SF).
At first blush, this group of Canadian SOF operators would seem a strange fit for what is by most accounts a teaching job — and yet these men are not their stereotype. Or at least are much more than their stereotype. As well as being experts in their own field, the nature of the small SOF units in Canada has them become experts in one another’s fields as well. Many of them hold university degrees in sociology or history or political science, and even the most edgy-looking, spends his down time playing 18 games of chess online at the same time. Add to this the group intellect – their five years of experience garnered while working shoulder-to-shoulder in actual warfare and you have a knowledge base that most military schools would garrote someone for.
“We have never lost anyone operationally. … We have been good, but there have been some situations where it has been pure luck,” said Warrant Officer (WO) Pink, the CSOR Team Second in Command (2IC).
WO Pink was born in British Columbia, raised in Winnipeg and now lives in Ontario with his wife and three daughters. His eldest is going to be an artist when she grows up.
The first challenge for those hoping to become an ANA SF soldier takes previously qualified ANA commandos through a series of grueling physical tasks, over a period of three days. The hopefuls are forced to carry a backpack filled with 50 pounds of rocks. In one such test, an ancient artillery piece (see art at top) must be rolled almost a kilometer to the top of the nearest Ghar — and back down again — by a team of 16. In another a 200-pound log must be carried between four men to the top of the same hill and back. In another, a strongpoint of sandbags must be created from a pile of sand 500 metres away. In still one more they each carry an ammunition box to a remote outpost.
“We are not just testing their stamina … we are also looking at intelligence, problem-solving and how they interact with one another. They will take an IQ test as well,” said WO Pink.
Starting just after dawn on the first day, 230 volunteers and a few “voluntolds” take on these “tasks” of pain. At the end of the first day of misery, around 200 remain. By the end of the second day, 176.
Each section is designed to break the will of the young men who wish to become ANA SF. Accompanying each group is an Afghan mentor to provide direct motivation and a Canadian Special Forces advisor to, well, advise. The Canadians keep the Afghan mentors and the would-be ANA SF — undergoing their purgatory of pain -– under a watchful eye to ensure fairness and safety.
On the third day, CSOR MCpl White stands by a small stream of grey-green water.
MCpl White is from New Brunswick; this is his fifth deployment to Afghanistan. He left behind a seven-day-old baby girl and a fiancee to come and do what he is doing now.
Waist deep in the stream, eight men, covered in mud, carry, along with their 50-pound packs — what appears to be a man-sized sack of sand tied to a gurney made of two three-metre-long steel flagpoles. They shuffle slowly downstream. One appears to be singing.
“You want numbers, but you need quality guys. There is a huge requirement for SOF in the battle space. It hurts me when I see them fail, but I can’t affect the process. You just can’t mass produce SOF,” said MCpl White.
MCpl White is a good example of the anathema that is our CSOR mentors. He is an expert in all kinds of armed force and yet despite the understood risk of the rising numbers of so-called green on blue, or insider attacks, he continues to move without body armour among the ANA soldiers on the camp. According to an American report (http://www.michaelyon-online.com/images/pdf/trust-incompatibility.pdf) many, if not most of these attacks stem from cultural misunderstandings or reaction to perceived insults, not from insurgent penetration of the ranks of ANA.
“I try to be with the (ANA) instructors all the time, and have a solid relationship with them. I never put my foot down, or try to establish dominance … I offer suggestions, and I treat them as my equals. I always salute their colonel in front of their troops. And I treat the students the same way, because to me [the students] are the highest threat, because I don’t know them. The instructors I have complete trust in. I would invite them home to Canada,” said MCpl White.
“In ’green on blue,’ there is little chance your marksmanship is going to save you. The thing that is going to save you are your relationships,” said WO Pink.
At the opposite end of the day as the sun is clipping the tops of the mountains, MCpl White stood beside a Humvee at the top watching as an ex-Soviet artillery piece slipped from 16 pairs of tired hands and careened down the hill on its own. Far removed from the debacle he watched the students follow the cannon into the gulley where it came to rest. They immediately began dragging it out and back to the road.
The survivors of these physical and mental tests are accepted into the Afghan SF course. Once accepted into the program, they begin to learn the real tradecraft of Special Forces soldiering. With extended courses in marksmanship, forward observation for artillery and mortars, advanced map reading, demolitions, communications, Laws of Armed Conflict, Information Operations, and Civil Affairs.
The overall pass rate into the Afghan SF over the last eight inductions is 61%. But the pass rate for those who did not graduate the standard precursor commando course first is a miserable 17%. For graduated commandos who choose to try out, the pass rate into SF is closer to 90%.
The commando course is also CSOR mentored. It has anywhere between 500-1,000 inductees at any one time. Over the 10-week course they learn exhaustive weapons craft, marksmanship, first aid, helicopter operations, communications, engineering, driver training and reconnaissance.
CSOR Operator MCpl Green is a direct mentor to the ANA commando-training program. He is from Nova Scotia, chews tobacco and has a warm feeling for a girl at Camp Phoenix in Kabul. This is his third tour in Afghanistan. He is at the firing range monitoring the firearms training.
“My job is to mentor the instructors. Not necessarily the individual commandos” said MCpl Green.
Moments later though, before even making it to the range, he was helping one of the commando students who had a problem with his M-4 rifle. With a borrowed Leatherman and a deft turn of his wrist he dismantled the rifle on the hood of his truck. In the end he did not have the tools needed to fix the weapon for the student, so he sent the student to his own chain of command to get it repaired.
This is a mini glimpse of the challenge for the Canadians here — to mentor, but not to help. To force the Afghans — without it seeming like we are doing so –- to solve their own problems.
“It is better to let them [the ANA] achieve the 70% solution on their own, than it is for us to do the 100% for them. So if they are getting it, I just kind of let them go,” said MCpl Green.
The five ranges are each dug into the hills that surround the base. There are around 150 students in the first range. Some are working on their stance, others are firing off rounds in order to ‘zero,’ or calibrate the sights on their weapons. Many look uncomfortable as instructors adjust their stance by hand, twisting and leaning and bending the students into the correct stance. Before this, many of the soldiers will only have fired their weapons a dozen times.
Eventually the students are allowed to fire at the targets. One of them refuses to close the correct eye and so has his dominant eye blindfolded by a big green bandage. For those that consistently miss their target groupings a short jog to the top of a nearby peak and back refocuses their attention on shooting accuracy. Not all of the students are keen to be here. Sometimes Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC) will decide to volunteer a group of students – whether they like it or not – to go and be commandos.
“We get guys that show up on day one who say ‘I don’t want to be here,’ and we get guys who go AWOL. The other day we had a guy who had tunneled under the wall of the commando compound and was bookin’ it toward the gate. The training commander chased him down in a Ford Ranger. He then paraded him around the training grounds with a megaphone shouting, ‘This guy is a deserter.’” Said MCpl Green.
The challenge of training an Afghan Commando force from a group of ANA soldiers, including a minority not motivated to be part of that training is a massive one. But more than anything else it seems that it is numbers, rather than quality, that is important. There are immediate and pressing needs for both the Commandos and the Afghan SF across the country.
There are plans afoot for the Afghans to take over on an ISAF program directly establishing Village Stability Operations (VSO). In a VSO, a small camp is established within a village at the invite of the locals. The camp will contain an ANA SF Team that will seek to build security and governance through Civil Affairs (CA) projects, building and mentoring local security forces known as Afghan Local Police (ALP), involved in part of this program before pulling out of Kandahar Province in 2011.
“You have to strike a balance between too hard and too soft. It can’t all be development programs … because then you are just a wallet. Under the new VSO plan ANA Special Forces would work in the villages – sponsoring trust and getting to know the locals to mentor them into building governance from the ground up, While the Commandos would handle any heavy work that needed to be done such as clearing enemy areas and capturing the culprits in the intimidation networks,” said WO Pink.
Afghan Commando Sgt Abdul Baseer Esmatullah was originally a graduate in the first Commando graduation in 2007. He has fought with the ANA in Kandahar and in here and possibly in the wider war across Afghanistan if they graduate. He has learned from his Canadian mentors the importance of trust. He is now a mentor on the ANA SF course. He hopes one day to move to America.
“I have a lot of experience now … and not just fighting. I also learned a lot about how to deal with the local people, which was the most successful thing for me. We learned how to gain the people’s trust, and let them know that we are the same … that we are from the same country, and that we have the same nation,” said Sgt Esmatullah.
At the very end of the third day of SF Selection MCpl White, perhaps the quietest of the “quiet professionals” here at Camp Morehead, parks his Humvee beside a group of sixteen soldiers who are being marched up and down a short hill while squatting on their haunches. The pain is etched into their every move as they “frog walk” up and down the hill, still with 50 pounds of rocks on their backs. MCpl White stands with his hands on his hips, obviously finding this additional task set upon them by their Afghan mentor to be particularly unnecessary and distasteful. But he holds his tongue, knowing that the Afghans have to figure out their own way.
“After five tours here and having worked with a coalition of different countries, Canada always holds the moral high ground. We will never take any short cuts to achieve any mission. I think that speaks volumes as to why we have successes, and how we are able to achieve what we have achieved so far.” MCpl White.
For the CSOF mentors at Camp Morehead, the factory machinery creating Commandos and Special Forces looks like it will not be slowing production anytime soon. Most of the Afghan instructors are now at the level where they can manage everything on the course without assistance.
“This course is now 95% Afghan led and run … and there have been weeks when it has been 100%,” MCpl Green said.
The work that the young men of CSOF have done here over the last four years – the subtle challenging inter-personal work of building bridges between cultures, while nurturing the slow, ever-so-slow growth of the Afghan skillset ; the work of being constantly ready for deployment at any time; the challenges of the actual missions themselves – is admirable.
These men take on their mental challenges in the same way that they take on their physical ones. They take on the weight of the problem, and as a group spread the load and work together to get the mission accomplished, quietly, professionally.
“I like the ‘quiet professionalism’ idea, working in the shadows … said MCpl White …
… I don’t need a pat on the back or thanks or anything.”
Which is lucky, because in Canada – other than military families – almost no one knows what our people are risking here now. Many back home will be surprised to find out we are still in Afghanistan.
Follow Richard’s work here nationalpost.com/kandaharjournal
On Twitter at @newsillustrator
Or see more of his work here at newsillustrator.com
Or contact Richard in the field at kandaharartist@gmail.com
