Afstan: Canadian Psy Ops/More Van Doos en route

The CF effort is rather more multi-dimensional than many seem to think, especially in the opposition parties.

It's not just heavily armed insurgents and suicide bombers Canadian troops are battling here -- it's also the Taliban propaganda machine.

On this day, two members of the Canadian's Psy Ops (psychological operations) team were accompanying a foot patrol to the tiny village of Kondano in Panjwaii district. The countryside is dotted with shepherds herding their flocks and farmers harvesting truckloads of marijuana which grows so abundantly in this region.

The collection of small mud dwellings is home to about 40 people. Goats run through the narrow streets and barefoot children remained silent but watched with interest as the patrol of Canadian and Afghan National Army soldiers arrived.

The main purpose of the patrol was to allow a sergeant from the Provincial Reconstruction Team to talk to village elders about hiring refugees who have come to the village in the cash-for-work program.

But Lt. Jason Demaine of Ottawa was talking to other villagers on the outside in watching the proceedings. This group had come to Kondano because it was safer than the Sperwan area to the northwest.

"Do they ever see foreign fighters?" asked Demaine, 32.

"No, we are not allowed to meet with them. They are despised," said a man, flocked by his brother and children as he leaned up against a thick mud wall.

"Tell them we are here to help them and to make their life better," said Demaine. "One of the ways they can help is not letting the Taliban or foreign fighters come into their villages, and reporting it to us."

Would kill us

"If we give you information for example," the man replied, "and you are bombing the Taliban and if they came back and got information (that) it was us, they would be killing us in our homes."

The work done by Psy Ops is not military intelligence. It is aimed at "influence peddling" or selling the Canadian forces to the impoverished people of the region. You might call it the anti-propaganda unit.

"In all my 36 years I've never seen a more sophisticated propaganda machine as the Taliban," Gen. David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said six weeks ago.

Demaine and the Psy Ops squad acknowledge it is an ongoing battle to undo the propaganda being told to villagers by the Taliban. The Taliban know when the Canadians enter a village and meet with locals. That often results in "night letters" or leaflets being nailed to the doors or handed out by the Taliban warning locals of the consequences of betraying them.

"They have night letters. They move through some of the villages and intimidate people, so we try to counter that," said Demaine.
"You can go down to the local market here and buy a CD they make. At one point they were telling people that ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) wouldn't allow the members of the Afghan army to pray and that, of course, was not true," he said.

But fear is a powerful weapon, and the Taliban know that well, he said.

"It's our job to counter that fear and reassure the local population and to show them our intent."

Meanwhile, a contingent of 120 soldiers from the fabled Royal 22nd Regiment left Canadian Forces Base Valcartier Monday to fight the Taliban but also bring humanitarian aid to war-torn Afghanistan.

The soldiers from the regiment, which is better known as the Van Doos, will join their colleagues in Kandahar, in the south of the country, for a nine-month mission.

I wonder how Quebec public and political opinion will react in the event of fatalities.

Meanwhile, Major Harjit Sajjan, a Sikh, has returned to Canada.

Maj. Harjit Sajjan, who finished a nine-month tour of duty in September and received his Canadian Forces service medal at Rexall Place yesterday, says he never doffed his turban in the Middle East [note to reporter: Afstan is not in the "Middle East"; Central Asia if anywhere].

"I can wear a helmet. I can wear a gas mask. There's nothing that my turban or my beard can prevent me from doing in the military at all," said the 36-year-old Sikh from Vancouver.

"To put a helmet on, you have to have an inner liner. My turban acts like an inner liner, so I just wear the kevlar shell over top."

Sajjan admits turbans are rare among his fellow Canadian soldiers. In fact, he estimates there are fewer than two dozen Sikhs in the Canadian military [are there really so few? Pity].

But he's hopeful military recruiters will help bolster that number...