How do we protect our embassy protectors abroad?
It wouldn’t be helpful to publish the specifics of what Canada and its diplomatic team in Kabul are pondering today, as they strategize ways to better protect the people that protect them.
But you can bet the broad strokes involve two obvious steps: armoured wheels for the survivors of the private, mostly Nepalese team that secures the Canadian Embassy in Afghanistan; or a new living arrangement that moves the team inside the Afghan capital’s security bubble, as near to the embassy as possible, outside the line of fire.
Perhaps both steps are needed now, in the wake of the devastating suicide attack that shredded the team’s thin-skinned minibus early Monday, killing 14 men and seriously injuring at least five others the moment they emerged from their living compound, en route to their embassy jobs.
Other embassies — the British, the Japanese, included — will be having similar conversations as their embassies in Kabul have similar private arrangements.
Private security contractors are not, in theory, a soft target. But Monday’s attacker — both the Taliban and an Afghan offshoot of Daesh released competing claims of responsibility — was waiting for the softest moment in their day. Just after dawn, as they rolled in the most vulnerable of vehicles from home, en route to the place where the (supposedly) real danger would be.
“Our enemies are always looking for soft targets. And by going after these poor Nepalese guards not at the Canadian embassy but instead outside their home, it proved tragically soft. They were sitting ducks,” Afghan MP Khalid Pashtoon told the Star by telephone from Kabul.
If you are wondering why there are no Canadians at the gates of the Canadian Embassy, the odds are you haven’t been in anyone’s embassy lately.
Try entering the U.S. Embassy in London, to name but one, and you will pass first through two to three layers of non-American security people before you meet your first American.
Outsourcing of the most vulnerable, front-line security work is very much the international norm, especially in places where the embassies in question represent countries whose soldiers have played an active combat role on the ground.
Unconfirmed reports indicate at least two of those killed Monday were not just Nepalese but actual retired Gurkhas. If true, this might raise awkward questions about Canada’s obligation to the families. Nepalese Gurkha bravado has been demonstrated on a variety of British battlefields for more than 200 years. And the debate over the dubious British treatment of Gurkha veterans has lasted nearly as long, involving everything from pension levels to resettlement rights.
In fact, there are actual active-duty Gurkhas in Kabul today involved in the continuing British mission to train and mentor the Afghan army, as part of Royal Gurkha Rifles 2nd battalion.
You can see them on Facebook, sending video greetings to their faraway fathers, just hours before Monday’s attack.
Many will argue that private is private and once a security contract is signed, so be it. Almost every facet of Afghan life during the last 14 years has been visited by every imaginable range of armed men, including no shortage of ex-soldiers, American, Canadian, British, Australian and more besides, working privately. They take their chances accordingly. Often for pay far greater than what they received as active-duty soldiers.
But Gurkhas — the Nepalese, specifically — have managed to work their patch of the danger-fraught Afghan security file with exceptional honour, according to MP Pashtoon, deputy chair of Afghanistan’s Internal Security Committee.
“Our hearts go out to these men and their families because they were not bringing any harm to our country. Nepalese security guards are working not only with the Canadians but other diplomatic missions as well,” Pashtoon said.
“We consider them security guards, not soldiers. They are here to protect diplomatic premises and they never raise guns against other Afghans. So there’s a lot of sympathy and compassion for what has happened.”