Trained as a navy clearance diver, the Haligonian says he's having the time of his life working 700 kilometres away from the ocean in what he fondly calls "the sandbox."
Smith has one of the most dangerous jobs in what has become the most volatile corner of Afghanistan.
The sailor, whose superiors would not allow his real name to be used or for him to be photographed, is the top Canadian in a secretive cell of combat engineers who study how and where the Taliban place landmines and improvised explosive devices and what they use to build these lethal weapons and trigger them.
Amassing this institutional knowledge is vital because the most effective way the Taliban has found to kill coalition soldiers has been to attack their convoys with suicide bombers or to place mines and IEDs on or near the roads and dirt tracks those convoys travel on.
Of the eight Canadian soldiers who have died here since Ottawa switched its military focus from Kabul to Kandahar last year, four of them were killed in such hit-and-run attacks. A Canadian diplomat was also killed in a suicide bombing.
While quick to volunteer that front line units and army combat engineers attached to them here were in even more danger than him or his team, Smith added, "Everything we deal with is unstable.
"I think the public is very interested in what we do. Unfortunately, we can't really talk about it in any detail. We don't want the enemy to know what we know, because they would change it."
The cell where Smith works alongside specialists from several other western countries is responsible for the pivotal work of analysing and devising ways to prevent suicide bombings and other IED attacks against coalition forces and Afghans in the province of Kandahar, where the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry operates. To acquire this knowledge, the unit is rushed out with a multi-national Rapid Reaction Force to the neighbouring provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul whenever there is an attack involving IEDs.
"This is the pointy end of the stick," Smith said.
"What you can see here in a few weeks equals what I might see in my whole career in Halifax. If there is a gunfight, the Taliban don't stand a chance. So, it's generally guerilla warfare.
"Guys who drive the vehicles may be low level, may be pushed into it, but the others are pretty indoctrinated and are willing to do just about anything."
Except for a small anchor on his tan battle fatigues, and his navy-issue 9-mm Sig-Sauer side arm, Smith looks like every Canadian soldier here. How a career sailor ended up giving up the sea for "a hootch" in the desert is something surprised infantrymen and army engineers ask Smith about all the time.
"My primary job is to clear harbours of surface mines, drifting mines and bottom mines, basically any explosive device in the water," Smith said.
It's a special skill set that the army, which was skeptical at first, has turned to the navy for help with because after being stretched to the limit by 15 years of non-stop tours in such places as the Balkans, Africa and Afghanistan, there are no longer enough army combat engineers to go around.
So all but one of the six Canadian combat engineers studying this arcane but vital piece of the battlefield in Afghanistan and suggesting remedies are, like Smith, navy divers.
PUBLICATION: Edmonton Journal
DATE: 2006.06.19
BYLINE: Matthew Fisher
SOURCE: CanWest News Service
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