SCOUTING in Kabul
Canadian soldier from Montreal recounts his experience with the resilient orphans he got to know in Afghanistan.
It was a different mission: Drive around Kabul ensuring NATO government and strategic advisers got where they needed to go — safe and on time. In their meetings with locals, we stayed with them ... just in case. In Afghanistan, some disputes get settled the old-fashioned way — boom! Minor altercations via email aren’t such big hits here, yet be warned: Sharp objects and AKs abound.
It was the fall of 2012, and I was a master corporal on a squad of Canadians integrated into the 4th Alabama Infantry’s Bravo Company. It was my second mission in Afghanistan, and I was alternating as vehicle commander and convoy commander. But I’m never just the mission, no one is. The Sarge is a father, and my driver thinks about what else he might do if not for the army.
The mission had me planning routes, checking threat reports and routinely updating our position. But as myself, just me — I was watching the kids. At home in Montreal, an errant child on the street is rare; here, I could not help but notice again how present the children were — everywhere, out and about.
Scrawny Kabul children worked intersections and places where traffic slowed — selling things, begging and sometimes just having a little fun with us. Knowing that insurgents may use a child as a weapon was an added stress. They slapped and knocked the sides of our vehicles, they tried the door handles, they pointed at their mouths. They only tried so many times before giving up and sitting hungry on the curb, where I imagined them hating us. It’s what I would do if I were starving and 7 years old.
Any maverick thoughts I had of stopping, opening the door and making an offering were put to rest on an earlier foot move. We were armed escorts for our regular VIPs and I was bringing up the rear while passing a school. Three playful smiling boys walked beside us and asked if we had pens for them. I so happened to have a superfluous felt marker.
What initially seemed like a good PR move got crazy the instant I said “baly” (Dari for “okay”) and my red Sharpie came into view. The closest boy snatched it animal-fast, then the other two attacked him in a vicious melee of kicks, tugs and grunts. It was enough that the Sarge, 50 metres ahead, turned to see what was up. I played it off and kept walking.
Inside the gates, he asked: “What the f — k was that about?” “I gave them a pen.” (Pause) “Don’t give them any more pens.” No s — t. But I don’t judge — it’s all circumstance.
We were lucky. There were interesting people from all over in our camp: Germany, El Salvador, France, Japan, Mongolia and places I can’t remember. But mostly there were Americans, and I mostly hung out with them. One such American stands out, a U.S. Marine Corps pay sergeant named Jeannie Bailey. As I recall, one did not really hang out with Jeannie — one simply ran into her a few times a day and got the news. It was Jeannie the socialite, one Friday morning, who invited me to a Scouts meeting.
Afghan Scouting began in the 1930s, and by the 1960s the organization was participating at international jamborees. It’s been a tough go since. The country’s youth movement — championing self-reliance, sense of community and equal rights — had trouble keeping afloat in a nation at times completely dissolved by regime change and war. In 1978, the Soviet-influenced government disbanded the Scouts, who then numbered more than 10,000 — even forcing some into paramilitary groups and a rat-out-your-neighbour-style youth police force.
The Scouts are now back in good recognizable form — re-established since 2003, coed, with uniforms and merit badges. Through Scouting, Afghan children learn how to maintain their premises, care for one another, and to read and write — all ages, boys and girls alike.
For the first time in Afghanistan, Scouts number over 30,000 strong.
Unlike Scouts in Canada, the kids we saw were all orphans — being left on your own at a young age has become an unofficial Afghan Scout prerequisite.
But before I would meet any local Scouts, I would meet one more American, a Vietnam veteran working outside the government, the military, and the normal limits of charity and self preservation: Keith Blackey. It was Keith who educated us on the history, progress and developments of Scouting in Afghanistan.
Over the next few months, as my schedule allowed, I began to take part in Scouts meetings in Kabul. I saw girls giving Scout salutes with hennaed hands, the young taking care of the younger, and a let’s-get-down-to-business attitude that makes referring to them as “kids” not entirely right. Their compound was neat, colourful, gardened, and even had a restaurant offering brunch to bring in a little cash.
Collectively, these children were giving themselves an equal or, quite frankly, better upbringing than many kids with parents received. And they never asked us for anything. Because of my work schedule, I missed some of the Scouting activities.
But coming up to a year since my return to Canada, it’s the Scouts that stay foremost in my Afghan memories.
The folks Jeannie introduced me to were called Scouts for Afghan Scouts (SfAS), a small hodgepodge of military and civilian people — the corporals, colonels, scientists, financial and legal advisers of many nations. The two chairs in SfAS were longtime Scout leaders back in the U.S. We met weekly and did our best to give the kids what we could.
Since Keith was not an active military man, it was my privilege to be his sponsor when he came to Kabul’s NATO post, which served as my home for nine months. He often travelled with Miriam, a 13-year-old Afghan Scout who weekly brought goods for sale to our downtown district of Wazir Akbar Khan — the same part of Kabul made famous in Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. Miriam was polite, poised and unassuming. Her English was basic and I never knew her beyond our genial greetings. She appeared adult and comfortable, observing the camp and its expats.
In one group meeting, an idea was entering the planning stage. The leaders of SfAS wanted to host a “space derby” for the kids — basically a race between homemade wooden “rockets” that run along fishing line, powered by wind-up plastic propellers. Despite my general enthusiasm, a soldier’s cynical reserve crept up in me: “These kids are living in constant danger week to week, if not day to day — and we’re gonna have them race wood on a string?”
A few months earlier, we had done a more tangible, no-nonsense event with the 40 Scouts we saw regularly — emergency survival training. We taught them how to stay cool in the desert and warm in the winter, how to stop a wound from bleeding, and my own hit station: how to change a flat tire. It was immediate, it was practical — dispelling cynicism and lofty ideals at once. Weeks later, another day was dedicated to fire safety — a little prevention, a little extinguishing and a little of the ol’ stop-drop-’n’-roll.
Nonetheless, SfAS leadership was serious about pretend rocket racing. It seemed kinda hokey. Even knowing how the story ends, it still seems kinda hokey. But the experienced Boy Scouts of America leaders knew best — when the big day came, in June of last year, it was becoming of the famous Borat words: “Great Success!” The kids ... effing ... loved it! It was the shining example of ordered chaos: childhood glee and fervent wooden rocket ship making, and still I could not believe how wellbehaved and respectful they were.
Jeannie and I were at the pit-crew table helping with final touch-ups and new tweaks. We put in a few extra winds, a little twist in the blades, an extra tight centre pin and new upgrades the Scouts were inventing, always. Although we had to get back to our day jobs and saw few of our mods and repairs in action, the eruptive cheers from the track told us what we needed to know: They were into it — big time.
One boy’s face stays with me, though we never spoke more than a few phrases. As it is with groups of 30 or more, one or two make a deeper impression. He had an older-than-his-age-face — a man at 12.
Beyond impressions, I never got to know any of them really. There was just a sense of this one or that one — the one with the sad eyes, the one with the happy eyes, the ones that were so cute you wanted to put them in a box and keep them that way
With all the rockets mended, daylight waned golden. Jeannie and I sat on the edge of a makeshift stage — the sun, she and I facing the taut strings that were the track.
“They’re going to remember this,” Jeannie said, “but not so much right away.”
For them a month ago is a year ago, and a year ago all but doesn’t exist — the capsule of the present sprawls not for the young. Ask an adult what’s going on these days and it’ll be about a new five-year car loan. Ask a 7-year-old to hear about today only. A few stirred images from my own childhood flashed by, sparked by theirs in the making. One day in a glow of nostalgia, we’ll be their vague memories. Maybe they’ll think it’s weird, their youth occupied by so many foreigners.
It was the kind of day no one wants to be over. Awards were given, Scouts prayers were said, and to their old bus they marched quietly, happy. Yes we were tired, but with hearts recharged. I’m not the sort to think things like that, much less express them; good news is not often a soldier’s privilege.
I think about them sometimes — often, actually. I worry about what they’re facing in the coming years. I don’t know what they’re going to do — but to paraphrase Gandhi, it’s important that they do it.
From talking with Keith, I know they’re doing well but face an uphill battle; there is ever the day after the space derby, and ever the day after that — there are ever more orphans who are not yet Scouts.
For anyone who knows how lucky they are and how easy they have it, what’s not easy is making sense of the difficulties others face. It makes sense when I view struggle as good — to push against easy, until I come to struggle with something — and let the good times fall where they will.
They were giving themselves an equal or, quite frankly, better upbringing than many kids with parents.
forever, and of course modest Miriam steadfastly raising money at the bazaar. It’s often that way between children and adults — we experience them as groups, they experience us as part of their environment, someone to be obeyed, listened to, at times manipulated, but largely living a separate existence. I would’ve liked there to have been more to say between us — but I don’t think there was.