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...January. To get permission to reopen the school, he needed the approval of three separate command structures - his battalion superiors, the Canadians who ran Task Force Kandahar and their NATO superiors at Regional Command-South, the NATO regional command for southern Afghanistan. He also needed the approval of the local, district and regional Afghan government authorities. That part wasn't too bad. Ellis was a gung-ho briefer. On Saturday, April 3, I watched him describe the school operation to a group of Canadian generals. "That was one of the most impressive op rants I've seen in a long...
...logistics were a killer. To reopen the school, Ellis needed to purchase some of the adjacent land to build an access road and the police station he had proposed. Hajji Lala, the local warlord, insisted he had that covered. "I kept asking him for the names of the landowners," Ellis says. "He kept saying, 'No problem.' " But it was a problem. Most of the property in the Zhari district is owned by absentee landlords. When Ellis pressed Hajji Lala for names yet again in late February, he was told, "You're going to have to find out who owns that...
There were a multitude of elements to put in place. A generator was needed for the security outpost. Blast walls and Hesco baskets - the ubiquitous wire and cloth fortifications filled with rocks and soil - were needed to protect the troops who would be stationed at the school. The local police chief had to be convinced to lend some of his officers for the operation. The plans for clearing the bombs and booby traps had to be specific and plausible...
There was a two-story house across the eastern canal from the school that Ellis thought would be perfect, and we proceeded there carefully, in the dusty golden haze of late afternoon. The soldiers handed out pencils, plush toys and cheese crackers to the local kids, who gathered as the patrol snaked slowly through town. The kids, who had seen all these offerings many times before, weren't satisfied. "Qalam," they shouted, surrounding me. "Qalam...
After the wounded were treated and evacuated from Senjaray, Ellis led a patrol into the local bazaar. "The initial mood of the population as we went into the bazaar was hostile," Ellis e-mailed me that night. "We asked them to follow us to a meeting place so we could talk, but they were not willing. I then went stall to stall in the bazaar and met with groups of elders. I explained the following: 'I have fought for many years now and seen my own Soldiers and the enemy killed and it never has affected me as much...