Time Immortal

I can’t seem to find mention of this incredible operation anywhere in the Canadian news services. Perhaps I am just missing it, but somehow…well, somehow, I doubt that I am. Our news media here in Canada seems intent on reporting only those things which either make the Canadian Forces look bad, or those things which inspire a defeatist sentiment in the general Canadian public.

Something genuinely heroic, like Canadian participation in Operation Oqab Tsuka — a top-secret, five-day mission to deliver a massive turbine (too large to be taken by air) to the Kaiaki Dam in Afghanistan.

The mission’s goal was to drag a second turbine up treacherous roads, and put it online. The operation was of a magnitude large enough to warrant its own name: Operation Oqab Tsuka: Pashto for “Eagle’s Summit.” Some of the younger soldiers, when they heard about the plan to drive a giant convoy straight through Taliban territory, had another name for it: “Operation Suicide.”

The mission was led by British troops, paid for by the Americans, and assisted by the Australian, Danish, Afghan, and Canadian forces in the region. Its entire route passed through Taliban-held territory, and a part of its task involved the largest mine-clearing operation conducted since the Second World War — this was necessary to get the 200-vehicle convoy the mission was charged with escorting safely through passes and hill country.

The loss of any one of the seven critical trailers would constitute mission failure. A second mission of equal magnitude could be attempted, but it would probably have to wait until spring. This mission was one of the largest logistics operations during the entire war and certainly one of the most important civil affairs efforts. Although it was top secret at the time, news of mission failure would quickly spread. In terms of propaganda value, failure would be a major victory for the enemy.

The Canadians have an excellent reputation among British and American forces, and so the Canucks were tasked to clear the road for the convoy. This was a chain of many links: if the Canadians failed, the mission would fail.

In the end, the Canadians did their job well, under fire or threat of fire the whole time. The convoy got through, enduring numerous attacks from the Taliban the whole way. One soldiers — apparently from Britain — suffered a crushed pelvis when a vehicle fell on him during a work break, but the mission sustained no combat casualties. In return, upwards of 200 Taliban were killed. The turbine was delivered, and over a million Afghan citizens will have electrical power made available to them when it begins operation after its installation.

But you’d never know our boys (and girls) were one vital link in the chain of events that made such a thing possible, at least not from reading Canadian news.

Fortunately, Michael Yon is in Afghanistan to document history as it unfolds.

Interesting footnote: the PsyOps team working with the mission decided to hang banners with verses from the Koran on the sides of many of the convoy vehicles, in the hopes that the presence of the words of the (false!) Prophet would deter the Taliban forces from attacking said vehicles directly. Rather clever.