Combat Mission Kandahar

February 20, 2017
Fowler (Courage Rewarded) gives readers an insightful cross-section view of Operation Athena, the Canadian combat mission in Afghanistan, largely based on interviews with seven soldiers who served on it in various roles and ranks. Leaving aside the questions of whether Canadian forces should have been in Afghanistan at all and how effective Task Force Kandahar was, Fowler writes that his focus is on Canadian soldiers’ combat experiences. He wants the book to fill in a gap between the daily news reporting that Canadians heard during the mission and more thorough academic analyses that will presumably be published in the years to come. The soldiers describe the threats of hidden improvised explosive devices and the dangers of finding and removing them, the challenges of counterinsurgency warfare in the battle to win the “hearts and minds” of Afghan villagers, and the difficulty of training the Afghan National Army, which sometimes relied more on prayer than on tactics and training to influence the outcome of a battle. Many readers will have to turn to the glossary for help navigating through military acronyms used throughout the book. Through these seven firsthand accounts, Fowler paints portraits of soldiers who were dedicated, loyal, and highly trained, and of whom Canada can be proud.