It has been just over eight years since I boarded a flight out of North Bay, destination Kabul, Afghanistan. As we watch the Taliban take district after district, it makes me wonder about the sacrifices left in the sand and the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many so far away from home.
I joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2007 in part to pay for a university education and in part due to a patriotic zeal that can only be found in young people looking for adventure. My training took me through the Air Force with various stints working alongside my brothers and sisters in the army. I remember a speech given by the commandant of the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School where he emphasized that “You folks joined during a time of war, and for that I commend you”. That was the time it really struck me- you are going to Afghanistan. I was like countless young men before me joining for adventure and out of youthful foolishness.
I deployed out of Shilo, Manitoba, the home of the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, or as it is more colloquially known, 2VP. Many of the Patricias were veterans of multiple tours, many dealing with PTSD - or would soon be. These battle-hardened and experienced soldiers would guide us new to combat arms and turn us from softer sailors, army support trades and aviators into slightly less soft versions of ourselves.
The army refers to competence and bravery in terms of hardness- a metric I still apply to people and situations as I think it explains a person’s ability to adapt and overcome difficulty.
I learned two particularly important lessons during workups:
1. I didn’t know half of what I thought I knew. Month after month I grew as a soldier and a leader. As a Lieutenant on workups, not too much is expected of you in terms of soldiering. I had the fortune to be placed on a team with excellent leaders and enlisted members. It did not hurt that I got marksman level on our firearms training, the only one on my team. It also did not hurt that two people were accidentally shooting my target
2. Morale is everything to soldiers in the field. There was little that a quick wit and a cigarette couldn’t overcome.
As I started my five months of work ups, my wife and I discovered that she was pregnant with our second child. She spent most of her pregnancy with me out of province, keeping up the home front, working full time, raising our daughter, and dealing with the myriad of problems that always develop when I was away from the house.
One afternoon in Shilo I got a call from my wife with the news that our second child would be a boy (who we would name Alexander after my maternal grandfather). I was excited to have a second baby on the way but terrified at the thought of leaving her alone to have the baby and of the vague concept that I might die without ever having seen my son.
The flight into a combat zone is like nothing else.
Forty-plus hours spent shuffling from the airport terminal to bus- back to the terminal. Our long flight had us visit what seemed like the airports of half the globe before we landed at Ali Al Salem base in Kuwait. A sign hung prominently in the U.S. Airforce terminal: No Sleeping. We all had a laugh at the multitudes that likely missed their flights, prompting this sign- but all looked for a corner to shut our eyes and hope our compatriots would wake us when the plane was ready to go.
The last leg of the flight was when it really hit me.
Sitting sideways with your brothers and sisters on the plane, the lights inside the cargo hold were switched to red and we began our descent. I know now that fear has a taste- copper. As we were descending, I can remember the howl of the engines and the taste of copper on my tongue.
We sat side by side, somberly awaiting touch down. We were told that there had been action around Kabul International Airport and that we would be coming in a bit quicker than usual. After an uneventful but exciting landing the doors to the plane opened, and the smell of diesel, jet fuel, sewage, and burning plastic entered my nose for the first time. This exact combination of smells sits waiting in my memory, and as I write this I can actually still smell it. Diesel and sewage were the smells of Afghanistan- and probably still are. Imagine a city of four million people without a working power station or sewer system. Diesel and sewage.
Within hours of getting off the plane, we were being sent throughout the country- me settling in downtown Kabul at Camp Eggers in the “Green Zone”. This heavily fortified area was one of the most defended places on earth. It was home to the Government of Afghanistan, embassies, NATO HQ, and the Presidential Palace. Although this made it well defended, it also made it a heavy target for Taliban and other insurgents as we would see repeatedly throughout the twenty years of war.
I met my interpreter in the first few days on the ground.
His name was Daoud (name intentionally altered for his safety) and he was a student at Kabul University. He was part of a team of interpreters hired by NATO and working with the Afghan Border Police. He was a family man, with a wife and children and took the job for the same reason any parent does, to make a better life for his children. In a country where the average salary is hundreds of dollars a year, the interpreter job is paid handsomely. For the rewards, there were also profoundly serious risks. Members of the Afghan Police Forces and Army were known to be Taliban agents, and this fact was not lost on the interpreters.
They knew that at any moment, their ally could turn enemy.
The Taliban reviled interpreters, deeming them collaborators with the “Christian Occupiers.” They viewed them as traitors supporting the un-Islamic secular Government of Afghanistan. When they discovered the identity of an interpreter, or someone otherwise working for the Government or NATO they would often use a “night letter” to threaten them and their families with severe consequences if they didn’t stop immediately. The Taliban would come by night and affix these letters to the doors of houses, mosques, or other community locations to enforce their will through intimidation. The threats were not idle. The Taliban meant business.
Working with the Afghan Border Police meant travelling often throughout the area of operations.
It was my job to advise the Generals in charge of Intelligence and Training of the ABP. As a young man of 27 at the time, staring across at former mujahideen more than twice my age (and with vastly more warfighting experience) was humbling. The Intelligence Major General Shahryar was a veteran of both the Soviet War as well as the civil war that followed. During my first meeting with him, I could tell that he was less than impressed. Having read the man’s resume before starting to advise, I knew quickly that he was a shrewd customer. The AK-47 under his desk told the rest of the story. This man was all business.
Working through interpreters we were able to build rapport.
Imagine having a conversation with someone where neither side understood a word of what was being said and your voice was being repeated by a third party. The interpreter's role is two-fold.
Firstly, he was a social customs adviser. He would ensure that the way words are said are clear, concise, and culturally sensitive. A turn of phrase in English could be interpreted to mean something far worse when translated. We worked together, the three of us, to ensure Afghan Border Police Intelligence Officers got the training they needed and ensure the professionalization of the force. Secondly, he would point out when it was time to leave a room or area. He was an expert on the pattern of life or how things are supposed to be in the area. If something seemed off, it was his job to let us know.
The interpreters would often travel with us. They would take the same risks that we took.
Travelling with us meant showing their faces to the Taliban and other insurgents- putting their names out there in the community. They shared the ever-present fear that we shared- as our vehicles were the targets for Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks.
On my tour, our interpreters were also unarmed. Although we shared the risks, we had the ability to defend ourselves. They did not. Every one of them to a man was desperate to get out of Afghanistan. They worked with us, with the belief that helping NATO and specifically Canada, would mean a chance to leave the war-torn nation and a chance at a better life.
I was on the last Canadian mission to Afghanistan, Operation Attention Rotation #2-13.
This would be the last mission with Canadian sailors, soldiers, and aviators on the ground in support of the Afghan government. There is an old saying in the military- you do not want to be on the first rotation, but you also don’t want to be on the last. During my tour, we heard from the Canadian government that we would be losing our war pay, as the combat role in Kandahar had ended. In a strange coincidence, the day of this announcement was a particularly violent day in Afghanistan that left us discouraged by the waning support of government and the lack of interest the public was demonstrating back home.
In the end, due to the ongoing violence, the government relented and kept our pay the same.
We were travelling light, in lightly armoured commercial vehicles (Toyota Land Cruiser and a Chevrolet Suburban). We had cell phones for communications, not the radios of the battlegroups before us. We had no battle group, air support, or artillery waiting for a fire mission. It was less dangerous in terms of a threat than the warfighting that occurred in Kandahar, but in terms of risk- it remained extremely high due to how isolated we were once we left the camp. We had personal radios that gave us communications between the vehicles with a range of less than 100m. If one vehicle got too far away you would truly be alone. We were 11,000km from home, in vehicles that were overweight and underpowered, with insufficient firepower for a prolonged firefight. The interpreters were riding with us- front and centre in all our interactions with our ABP counterparts and with people in the countryside.
As the tour was winding up it meant that support for the border police would be ending soon.
Unceremoniously we informed the ABP that half of our team would be leaving in October (myself included) and the other half would be leaving in December. You could see the trepidation build in our interpreters as they rushed to prepare certificates and other formalities for the departing team.
Questions picked up about how we would be leaving them, what support they would have. We told them to apply for refugee status, work visas, etc… with the Canadian Embassy as they had worked with us throughout. No luck. Their best chance, they were told, was applying to the U.S. or other NATO nations as Canada did not have an entry program for them. They were being left behind as we pulled our forces out of Afghanistan for good.
I returned home after a brief stopover in Cyprus. My son had been born while I was away, and I came home with the worst lung infection of my life. I had to avoid all contact with my family for a while (Tuberculosis is still prevalent in Afghanistan) as I was being tested for a variety of nasty bugs.
After a while, my lungs cleared, and I was able to rejoin my family again and enjoy a brand-new baby boy. Life was good being home, but there was ever-present guilt about leaving my friends behind and for leaving the interpreters that we surely knew would be killed. There was never a debate- it was a fact to all of us that served there. If we do not take them, they will die.
A few months later I began to realize that the stress of the tour was affecting me in ways that I had not really appreciated.
Compared to my friends who fought in Kandahar, Kabul was relatively non-eventful. We had our brushes with danger, but the constant threat of being alone outside the wire, under-armed, under-prepared, and virtually on our own for months had re-wired a part of my brain.
Over the course of six months, my mental health deteriorated to a point where I had to leave my position and give up a career that I had spent ten years building. It was the lowest point in my life.
The thing they do not tell you when you are signing up is that the second something goes wrong in your mind, people will treat you like you have a contagious disease. I went from being an adviser to Generals to being relegated to my home with mandatory doctor visits and virtually no contact from my former military chain of command.
Out of the frying pan and into the ice water- the steel that I had forged cracked, and I descended into a darkness that is hard to describe.
I was furious at the military, furious at my chain of command, and worst of all furious at myself. How could I have PTSD from Kabul? It wasn’t the combat missions my friends had been killed and injured in. Why was it affecting me? My whole life became about anger. I sat alone all night not sleeping, eating, and drinking too much.
It took me 5 years to rebuild my ego, personality, and my body. I decided to make a new life outside of the military. I pursued my passion for brewing (a throwback to when I had little money in university and made my own beer) and went headlong into this new adventure. I started New Ontario Brewing Company in what had become my new hometown of North Bay and never looked back.
I went to school for distilling and when COVID 19 hit, took my new skills and went headlong into public service again, producing hand sanitizer at a time when none was available. The Canadian Armed Forces and Veteran’s Affairs deemed me permanently disabled, and my ambitions of ever rejoining the forces were forever dashed. I was now a civilian- and I started to like the sound of that.
A guy I knew from high school had died in the fighting in Afghanistan. His name was Mark McLaren and was a Cpl in the 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment. During the fighting in Kandahar province, while being ambushed he crawled across open terrain 10 metres to extract and provide aid to an Afghan soldier who had been acting as their interpreter.
Years later he would be awarded the Medal for Military Valour, Canada’s third-highest medal for valour (2nd highest handed out during the conflict). Mark would die in an IED attack, but his valour to save the Afghan soldier/interpreter shows the bond that exists between those fighting on the same side. It was a brother crawling to save his brother.
With the American withdrawal and Taliban advances, Canadians are seeing the places they fought for be overrun by the same people we fought and died to remove from power. We are seeing district after district fall to the enemy. There is little hope for the government that we empowered, and most military leaders are predicting a full-scale victory by the Taliban. As the “night letters” promised, there will be a reckoning for those that helped us. That reckoning is rape, imprisonment, and death for them and likely their families.
We have very little time left to act.
There is very little time left to get our brothers out of harm's way. A recent report posted by three task force commanders stated that we have 115 interpreters left in the country. That makes up a miniscule fraction of the total number of immigrants Canada typically accepts in a year. These are people who put everything on the line- and for whom we would have risked everything to protect. They are our brothers, and we do not leave brothers behind.
We are writing history at this moment. It will be the moment Canada stepped up to save those who helped us, or it will be the moment we condemned those that served us to certain death.
I choose to believe that the Canada, which I and so many others served and sacrificed for, is a nation that stands up for right, stands up for its friends and a nation that does not leave the lambs to the wolves.
Contact your MP and request that they bring our nation’s adopted sons home.
Captain (Ret’d) Mike Harrison
North Bay
