More on troops in action in Afstan

Sun Media are doing a good job with this series.

1) "Here comes trouble!" (a "multicultural" soldier)

In the Force Protection unit at Kandahar Airfield, Sgt. Abdoul Guindo has an unrivalled reputation as a little one-man island of bad karma.

He's been here since August, leading convoys to and from the far-flung coalition outposts dotting the landscape around Kandahar City. He's been bombed, strafed and mortared at least 12 times ... maybe more. He lost count a couple of weeks ago.

"I prefer the phrase 'living legend' to 'crap magnet,' " he said, cackling.

He's 28, lives in Ottawa, just got married over a year ago. His wife just had a daughter, their first.

"I stopped counting after the first two attacks. I guess there's a kind of stigma that sticks with me. Our unit gets hit all the time."

Oddly enough, he's never been injured.

"And I never lost anyone, and we've been through some hairy, hairy situations."

How hairy? Take his hairiest day to date - August 29. His convoy rolled out of base and was hit by a suicide vehicle bomber within hours. It blew up one of the trucks, but the convoy escaped without serious injury. They repaired the truck, and moved on.

"Then we rolled into a minefield nobody told us was there. That was fun," he said...

Guindo was born in Quebec City to a Haitian Catholic mother and a Muslim father. He was raised Catholic, and devout.

"Hundred per cent Quebec Catholic boy, cross tattooed on the arm, St. Michael medal around the neck, the whole nine yards," he said. "How my folks got married I don't know. I blame alcohol.

"We moved to Haiti when I was eight. After that the war broke out, so we stayed, right, 'cause we couldn't leave. Then we moved to Ottawa when I was 10; 18 years in Ottawa."

His background gives him insights into Islam and religious devotion few Canadian soldiers share. "Muslims are very serious, hardworking people in terms of what they believe in and they'll see it through to the end," he said.

" I admire ( Afghans). I admire their mental work ethic. Too bad it has to be aimed against me.

"We talk to them through the interpreters. We have long discussions. I know the Qur'an a little, and I like to destroy my interpreters' mentalities. I tell them that they're wrong and that the Qur'an actually says this and not this, and they're like, Whaaa?..

2) "Keeping the faith" (a Muslim soldier)

l. Ayman Abedi carries three levels of protection into battle: his body armour, a glass pendant his anxious Muslim mom in Toronto sent him to ward off the "evil eye," and a St. Christopher's medal.

When you're fighting a war in a region with multiple gods, it pays to cover the bases.

"Don't tell my parents, but I'm not really praying every day," he said, buckling on his vest and harness before climbing into his armoured vehicle for another dangerous convoy run to Kandahar City.

"I pray before I leave the wire. Just silently, to myself. I'm not really observant, but I don't leave camp without a prayer."

SUICIDE BOMBING

Abedi, 27, is with the 2 Military Police unit out of Ontario - one of just a handful of Muslims serving with the Canadian military in Afghanistan. His convoy yesterday was a day trip through territory which has seen the most intense suicide bombing activity in recent months...

Many of the Canadians who come here for the first time can't help thinking of themselves as belonging to a lonely island of civilization in a wilderness of violence and zealotry. The army issues them with booklets listing simple greetings in Pashto and Dari, and a sort of minute primer on Islam and Afghan customs. But it's hardly an education.

So the troops in Abedi's convoy treat him as a kind of walking Islamic encyclopedia - even though he's the kind of Muslim who prays standing up, facing in whichever direction his convoy is heading.

"I speak Arabic, because I know the Qur'an," he said. "It helps, sometimes, to know a few verses from the Qur'an when you're dealing with the Afghans. It's a way to communicate."

Abedi was born and raised to age seven in Lebanon, where Muslims have lived peacefully, for the most part, with Christians for centuries. The more radical, intolerant version of Islam at work in Afghanistan's wild south came as something of a shock to him.

"The kind of Islam down here isn't the real thing. It's crazy, it's not God's will at all," he said.

"That's why I think we need to be here, to support these people as they try to build a stable country - so what happens here doesn't bite us in the *** again."..