WALKING the hot, dusty, dangerous streets of Kandahar isn't most people's idea of a good time.
But ask RCMP Sgt. Kevin Bracewell about his recent nine-month tour in Afghanistan and he answers: "I found it very challenging but very enjoyable."
Bracewell is a big, cheerful man of 53 with the bearing that comes from decades of service as a soldier and police officer. In July, the North Vancouver Mountie returned from an RCMP mission to help train Afghanistan's fledging national police force. It's a huge task, fraught with danger and complications. Success, said Bracewell, is measured in small, daily victories.
"It's a slow evolution," he said. "The changes are subtle, but you can see them, especially over a nine-month mission. People talk to you more.
"My first role was mentoring senior Afghan police leadership, and then in the second portion of the mission, when I was in Panjwai (a district of Kandahar), I was attached to a POMLT, which is a Police Operational Mentor Liaison Team. We were assessing and training the Afghans in police procedures in the field and in the police stations."
While the first job took place in relative safety, by Afghan standards, the work in Panjwai often meant walking the beat with an Afghan police officer, a translator, and a Canadian Forces escort. Sometimes the teams would ride in an armoured vehicle, sometimes they walked the streets on foot.
"We were not there to enforce Afghan law," he said. "We were there to mentor Afghans enforcing their laws.
"They run the same gamut of policing issues we do, they're just tasked with doing it while there are warring factions in the country," he said.
"In any country that has its share of troubles and is moving towards a democratic model, one of the key things in that model is there has to be a force of law and order that is separate from the military. So there isn't the perception that it's a military arm of the state, as you see in dictatorships. So it's training on a democratic policing model.
"Having served in the military and having been on a mission before," Bracewell said, "I was fully aware of what this mission entailed and I was fully aware of Canada's participation. To me it was a new phase of my career I was moving into, albeit with a high level of risk. But by the training and what our mission was, I think the risk was well mitigated. At the end of the day, policing is dangerous here too. Overseas, there are heightened threat levels because Afghanistan is a country in conflict. It's facing a lot of challenges. A lot of the facilities we have become used to in the West are just not there in Afghanistan. So it's a challenge to adapt to a different lifestyle in a country that's facing such enormous challenges."
Bracewell, who volunteered for the mission, is originally from Lancaster, U.K. He served as a tank commander in the British Army. Like many NATO countries, Britain sent its armoured units to train in the wide-open spaces of Canada, and following an exercise near Suffield, Alta., Bracewell made a quick trip to Vancouver.
"I thought, 'This is the most beautiful place in the world. I am coming to live here someday,'" Bracewell recalled. "I ended up immigrating here when my enlistment was up in 1983."
Employment options were thin at the time, but Bracewell worked as a City of North Vancouver bylaw officer before joining the RCMP in 1990 and getting shipped out to the training depot in Regina. But he was back in B.C. before long, spending nine years as a beat cop in Surrey.
"It was Surrey," he said with a smile. "It was an interesting place to work, lots of interesting files and a very busy detachment. I went from Surrey to the National Security Centre and I worked there for about three years. It's counterterrorism. You're dealing with threats that are perceived to be from external or internal areas. I was in the national security investigation centre."
Can he talk about any of the files he worked on?
"No." After that came promotion and Bracewell's first stint with the North Vancouver RCMP.
After working as an officer of the watch at the East 14th Street detachment, he got his first exposure to international training missions. Alongside about a dozen other Mounties, he helped train Iraqis in policing techniques. The academy was based in Jordan, as 2005 was one of the most violent years in post-invasion Iraq.
"There was a very strong reception for it. Lots of Iraqi nationals joined the police force to, in their eyes, see a better Iraq. It's like everything else. You build an organization from the basement up. It was their version of a police academy."
Like many RCMP officers, Bracewell has moved around a lot. After the Jordanian work, he was posted to Squamish until volunteering for the CIVPOL mission in Afghanistan in 2010. While the number fluctuates, there are usually about 45 RCMP officers working in Afghanistan.
"It was very good training that we did in Ottawa," he said. "It's a composite of both police training for the Afghan culture and also a training component with the military. Because our force protection was heavily involved with the Canadian military, we had to know how that functioned and how we fit into that arena. And you work through a language assistant, so everything you say is translated by an Afghan national that is multilingual. The training takes longer than it would if you were dealing with someone from your own linguistic culture, but also you have to make sure the points are made and the translation is as pure as it can be, as opposed to it being translated as the language assistant assumes it should be. So it's very interesting and very challenging. You can usually tell when they respond to what you're teaching and through a practical confirmation that they are understanding. The language assistants obviously have to go through background checks as well. You work as a partnership. When I work with a member here (in North Vancouver), we work together and there's that same concept."
Bracewell flew commercial to an undisclosed "jump-off point" before getting on a military transport aircraft bound for the war zone.
Bracewell's first job was the delicate task of trying to introduce essentially Western law enforcement ideas to senior Afghan police officers, without appearing to be imposing Western culture on them.
"Anywhere you go you have to deal with across-the-board changes - with government, with religion, with personal interaction. The training we did in Ottawa set us ready for them. You have to understand those cultural differences before you inadvertently cause offence through a misunderstanding. They're a very proud people. Family is very important to them and, as well, they also have a larger family, which is their tribal allegiance. So you are dealing with lots of different formats. It's interesting to be able to appreciate why and how things are done so you can get involved with that and provide some input and education."
That level of family and tribal commitment can easily lead to corruption and uneven application of the law. Illiteracy and bribery are also ongoing challenges. But, said Bracewell, there are universal ethics held by Canadians and Afghans alike.
"Nothing is simple," he concedes, "but what you have to do is constantly refer back to doing the right thing. In any culture that has a strong family tie, and you did something, would your mother and father be proud of you? If the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that. That was a common thread we used to teach. Every culture has its moral guidelines. Are his parents proud of him for supporting the family and turn a blind eye to what he does? They're not proud of him for growing opium. That's something you can address by providing an alternative means."
Another key task was to train how to train, so when Western police go home, the Afghans can perpetuate and build on those ideas.
In the later portion of his stay, Bracewell traded the classroom for a forward operating base, the textbook for a C7 rifle and went out with Afghan police officers trying to help them put their training into practice.
"We go out with a specific task, to check on a police station for example. We'd go out with military escorts and the Afghan police. Along the way, we'd be guiding the Afghans in the basics of community policing - saying hello to people, for example.
"It's amazing. Even in a war zone, life goes on. People still have to shop, there are still traffic accidents, there's still municipal and provincial issues. There are property disputes, there's assaults, there's theft. Life goes on. If you take the war out of it, everyone's got the same problems."
Traffic accidents? "They do have a traffic section," Bracewell said, slowly. "I can honestly say I never saw a traffic ticket, but they do have traffic police."
Staying and working in the same area slowly built a certain level of trust, Bracewell said. Locals started to realize that some of the men with rifles were soldiers, and others were police. Through greeting people in the streets, attending shuras - meetings with elders - and trying to effect some small positive changes, like encouraging sports, life was becoming subtly, but perceivably better on his colleagues' beat. Afghans, it turns out, really like volleyball.
"There is a will I saw over there to move out of conflict and into a more normal life, because you can only sustain a conflict in your life for so long before it grinds you down. As Canada brings innovations and people understand a life beyond conflict, it's one of those decisions to make: Which one do you want?
"I definitely saw people's desire for things like whether a village can access fresh water and whether the children can play in the streets freely. That reduces the tensions for parents and allows them to be more productive."
Bracewell flatly refused to discuss if he was involved in any violent incidents, but it's worth noting four Canadian Forces personnel were killed in Kandahar during the time he was there, and 86 coalition servicepeople have perished in the province this year.
Bracewell did say there's a certain transition process involved in adapting back to life in Canada. The RCMP provides help with "decompression" and then 10 days leave.
"It's not like here where you can walk out for a coffee. You're either on the base or you're outside, armed and protected, doing your job. It's a war zone. You're not free to move around. You go from a place when you're always in uniform and in your helmet and flak jacket and then all of a sudden you leave and it's . . . funny. It's different to go from something very structured and intense. One of the best things was choice. I can have a burger, fries whatever."
Bracewell is back at the North Vancouver detachment now, in a new position intended to spot trends and co-ordinate the response to citizen's concerns.
"My job now is to make sure I get back to you, keep you informed and try to reach a resolution. We're still looking for a name for it. I'm the city response sergeant for the crime reduction unit."
Looking back on his Afghan mission, Bracewell reiterated how it's the brief, passing encounters that add up to progress. It may be a classic, even clichd image of soldiers in a foreign land, but these moments do happen.
"When you give a little Afghan kid some candy and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread to him, you've made an impression."
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