The Dry Place

This was written by a friend of mine, a Canadian veteran of Afghanistan. Check out his blog at the link.

From Joseph Whittaker

The Taliban are the government again in Afghanistan.
Some of you know that my last tour of duty as an active soldier was there.
People have been asking me, and many other veterans about what we think. They have a full view of the fear, the political mess, the accusations, the faces of people left stranded facing immanent rape, being sold as slaves, or being murdered.

Some people can't get enough of a thrill from the images, and ask me questions without even concealing their ghoulish interests. Some are looking to troll, others to mock.

Some want to know how I feel.

***

Someone said that under the NATO political umbrella, the US had spent twice as much rebuilding Afghanistan as they had rebuilding Western Europe after the Second World War.

A lot of infrastructure sure was getting built there alright.

Most people still don’t have clean water, electricity or the internet, even though SOMETHING was always getting built…

But the opium fields never stopped growing.

The slave trade never ceased.

The numbers of missing children kept growing every year.

The abuse of women and children never really stopped.

When we prepared to leave in 2011, we knew then that the moment the last boots were off the runway and in the air, the country would collapse.

We had watched – for years, really – that every training mission --  mission after mission -- were failures, although every one of them was always called a success by the big brass and the politicians. We knew that our intentions – to train the air force, army and police of that country to Canadian military and Police standards – was unsuccessful.

 In fact, in most cases they did not meet even the lowest, watered-down minimum standard.

And yet, at the same time as we were packing up all of our gear for return to Canada, we saw massive amounts of gear, equipment, hardware and munitions coming into the country for them.

They say the Taliban have 89 billion dollars worth of US-made military war equipment and hardware.

89. Billion. Dollars…

Held by a largely incompetent national force that is half the strength in manpower of the Iraqis the year that ISIS showed up.

I watched ISIS drive down an Iraqi highway I knew well, driving rental trucks I could recognize – we had cleaned and returned many of them to the Afghan rental companies before we returned to Canada.

That’s right, folks. The Toyota Hinos we all  saw in those pictures and videos on TV were used as runabouts and light duty vehicles in Kabul, Kandahar airfield, and at some FOBS.

 In Afghanistan.

A few years later, driven by ISIS, unchallenged  in a ten kilometer long convoy down a highway in Iraq, and not a single military plane in sight to stop them – US or Iraqi.

What is Afghanistan doing holding TEN TIMES as much equipment – 89 BILLION DOLLARS WORTH  of equipment – as the Iraqi national defense forces? A force that is twice their size?

People said last Sunday that 40,000 US citizens were still in the country and risk of death if they couldn’t evacuate.

Really? 

Why?
Are they all Christian missionaries? 

Are they Jewish?

What they were doing there in the first place?

Stopping the opium trade, pedophilia, sex trafficking and slavery?

If that were true, then we should expect that these things would have noticeably diminished after over 20 years, not increase every single year.

Christianity should be at least be tolerated now, but it is still an instant death sentence.

We - my brothers in arms, and I - should not have had to locate, identify and remove every single Jewish and Christian grave that we could find, so that we could relocate the remains to a safe third country where they might once again rest in peace without desecration.

Are you still confused by what you are seeing? 

Do you still not understand what is going on there right now?

Just like Al Qaida? 

Then just like ISIS?

I knew many of the Canadians who died there. Many were my friends. Some, younger than I, were like my own sons.

That my country sent to that place, for secret reasons of its own, where they died.

Then my country, knowing something was going to happen but never telling anyone the truth, packed literally everything we had brought there that could be returned home, and left.

To this day, most Canadians act like we were never there for 12 years. 

Few  among my fellow citizens -- my people -- know how many died, let alone their names. 

How do I feel about all of that?

How do I feel?

Nothing.

 I have gone numb.