Among those who followed the mission, there was a debate on when exactly the country realized it was at war. Some argued for the very first firefight in Sangin, the one that killed Private Robert Costall. Skeptics scoffed, saying it was later, around the time of Captain Nichola Goddard's death. Measuring the pulse of a sleeping nation is never precise. Some academics and politicos insisted the acknowledgement in the public's heart, if not its mind, went all the way back to cabinet's approval of the Kandahar mission. But this was not the kind of war you could put a time stamp on. There was no start clock, mostly because everyone wanted it to be something other than what it was. By late summer that year, there was no debating or hiding from the realization that Kandahar had turned into a bloody morass. Yet, in the politically correct world of Ottawa, politicians and mandarins refused to use the word "war." Afghanistan was a "mission," an "operation," an "exercise," an "intervention." The last one used to crack me up; it made it sound as though we were packing the Afghans off to rehab, even if it was Ottawa that was lodged in deep, intractable denial.
Arguments about timelines occasionally got right down into the weeds and extended to specific battles. There are some who say that the largest battle to that time in the war - Operation Medusa - began not on September 2, 2006, as the official record states, but a few weeks before. The revisionists call what happened in Bazaar-e-Panjwaii on August 19, 2006, "Pre-Medusa" and painted it as a warm-up for the big show. It happened on the very cusp of the handover between Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hope's 1 PPCLI battle group, which had been bloodied almost from the moment it hit the ground, and Lieutenant-Colonel Omer Lavoie's incoming team of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. The firefight in and around the dustbowl farming town was an orphan. It belonged to nobody, or so it seemed.
The district centre is a series of low slung, sun-bleached cement buildings surround by a concrete wall and razor wire. It sits on the outskirts of the community, where farmers bring their stock to market. It was supposed to be the place where the district leader met with staff and villagers, but with the local Noorzai tribes still clinging to the Taliban, the place sat almost empty, a striking emblem of the hollow promises of good governance.
A few days before the battle, Hope led his replacement on a tour of the area. His tight, swiftmoving column of light armoured command vehicles pulled up to the base of Ma'sum Ghar, the soaring, dark volcanic peak that looms over Bazaar-e-Panjwaii. The place always seemed spooky to me. The coarse, dark brown rock appeared black, even in the blinding Afghan sun. It was chilling, somehow.
Lavoie got his first taste of what the tour was going to be like at sunset that day when, during a stop at the newly established Patrol Base Wilson, an 82-mm mortar round whistled in and exploded right next to his vehicle.
Shrapnel punctured the LAV's machine gun and wounded its gunner.
"It was a close call," Lavoie recalled.
Hope saw his friend Captain Massoud for the last time during that farewell tour. The Afghan cop, whose wily spirit and spiderweb of cellphone contacts had proved invaluable, had been living in a hilltop fighting position with his detachment of police for a week. Massoud came down to greet Hope and brought with him a disturbing report, one final intelligence gift.
The militants had planned to attack Kandahar city directly, but battle group operations in early August had disrupted them, according to Massoud. The Taliban were everywhere in Panjwaii and Zhari and multiplying fast. Hundreds had been mowed down in the battles of the spring and summer, yet they kept coming on like a force of nature. Some of the guys described them as a freak legion of zombies. The Americans, to Hope's relief, realized over the summer that the two districts had spiralled out of control and had started to dedicate more resources to supporting the Canadians and the thinly sprinkled Afghan security forces. Massoud had not been home to see his family in Kabul for almost six months, but he told Hope he was willing to stay to defend Panjwaii. He said if he expected his men to stay, they had to see he was committed to doing the same. Hope admired that.
Two days after their meeting Hope handed over command of the battle group to Lavoie, who ordered Major Mike Wright to position himself and his men on the heights of Ma'sum Ghar. The job was to find the mortar team that had taken the pot shot at them and was keeping up daily harassment. The Taliban, right around that time, unleashed a tempest on the town that stood in the shadow of the big rocks.
"It was very difficult to figure out where the enemy was coming from because of the fact they were coming from the south (which) was not what we were expecting at all," Wright said.
The Taliban quickly overran the ANP outposts.
"As I was giving orders on the radio, my LAV gunner was firing at a rock formation where we could see a guy skirting back and forth where the police had been. (My gunner) was the one who was basically able to see the Taliban in waves trying to go up to the top of Ma'sum Ghar."
Hope, back at KAF and ready to leave for home, went to the tactical operations centre and listened to the radio traffic as the fierce battle was underway. While he was still in command the day before, he'd ordered Alpha Company of 2 PPCLI placed in Bazaare-Panjwaii to support Massoud's beleaguered police detachment. The fighting became thick and Hope was told at one point that Massoud and the small number of ANP and ANA were cut off. Determined not to let down the man who'd helped him so much, he marched 500 metres from the plywood operations centre through the dusty laneways of KAF to the RC-South headquarters, where he asked NATO commanders to order the platoon to move to support the Afghans. He also wanted Canadian artillery to fire in support. He got neither. In one last gamble, Hope went to the American control centre for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and convinced the duty operator to zero in on Bazaar-e-Panjwaii. The Predator in the sky that day had Hellfire missiles on its wing tips.
"Together we tracked several enemy groups before using two missiles to destroy two of them," Hope recalled. "I had the operator search Massoud's fighting post. I confirmed that there were still ANP in place despite their having taken casualties. I prayed for him that night and stayed with the UAV unit ready to help them track any other visible targets until the enemy firing stopped and reports informed us that the Taliban had given up the attack."
It wasn't until the next day Hope heard through the governor's palace that Massoud had survived the attack. He never heard from the police commander again.
Origin
Source: Ottawa Citizen
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