Cpl. Candice McMackin, a member of the Thompson RCMP, spent much of 2010 in Afghanistan, drawing on her experience to train members of the Afghan National Police (ANP).
After three months of pre-training at Canadian Forces Base Kingston and in Ottawa, McMackin left March 26 for Afghanistan, where she spent five months in the southern Kandahar region with American military police, followed by four months in the Panjwaii district with Canadian military police before returning to Thompson in December.
"One of the things I always wanted to do was a mission, whether it was Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti or what have you," says McMackin, adding that destinations like Haiti or Sierra Leone were out of the picture as she is not fluent in French. "It's one of these options you can do as a police officer, especially with the RCMP."
"I was situated at Forward Operating Base Walton which is an American military base just outside of Kandahar City," she recalls, explaining the first half of her mission. "We were attached to a military police battalion of the American army, and we were all assigned a police sub-station in Kandahar City. We did patrols to the police stations where the Afghan police lived and worked. With my squad of Americans, we went out for three days, we actually embedded in the Afghan police station for three days, came back to the base for one day, back out for three, and so on." Her squad consisted of herself, another RCMP officer - now back in Nova Scotia after completing his term - and 15 American military police.
Drawing on her 15 years of experience with the RCMP, McMackin's primary role in Afghanistan was to train the ANP. "We worked with the American military police on training, running training classes for the Afghan police, mentoring them if they went to a call to search a compound for insurgency or Taliban or what have you, we mentored them on how to properly approach a compound, how to properly enter a compound - safety always a big concern - how to identify what kind of evidence is worthy of seizing and photographing, and if we have enough grounds to arrest any people we feel are insurgency or Taliban," she explains.
"We trained everything from handcuffing techniques to searching vehicles and persons," she continues. "As well, we mentored the Afghan commanders at their police stations on how to manage and lead their patrolmen."
McMackin found some differences in policing in Afghanistan versus policing Canada. "The concept of policing is the same, but what you're looking for is different over there," she explains. "Here, we're policing Canadian civilians for crimes under the Criminal Code - for the Afghan police, it's more seeking out insurgency, Taliban, and doing that kind of work. The policing aspect is the same in what you're looking for and how you approach things evidence-wise, but it is a completely different thing you're looking for. When we teach people to search vehicles in Canada, you're teaching them to search for knives, guns, weapons, evidence, that kind of thing. Over there, they're looking for potential bombs strapped on a person, or explosives or signs of explosives in a vehicle."
"One time we were doing a dismounted patrol to a police checkpoint, when I was out in Panjwaii with the Canadian Forces," says McMackin. "We were just doing a routine foot patrol, and sometimes trouble finds you. A Canadian Chinook [helicopter] was actually shot down right in front of us by insurgency RPG. Our essential task was to go to a checkpoint and do some training and mentoring for the ANP, but the situation changed like that - now we're going on a rescue mission for this Chinook that got shot down. As we were coming up to the crashed Chinook, we ended up taking fire from the insurgency that shot the Chinook down. As civilian police, we're not combat soldiers, however situations over there change in a heartbeat and I have to go where my squad goes - they can't leave me alone in the desert, if they're going somewhere, I have to go with them."
McMackin and her squad managed to escape from that situation and get back to the police station, where they went back to training the ANP and helping improve their image in the community. "If the local nationals have confidence in their police and see a professional police force, the whole idea is they'll come to the police if they see suspicious activity, or they know who the Taliban is in the village," she explains. "When I got there, there was no community policing aspect at all applied by them. They wouldn't speak to them, they would just walk through."
"Once you gain the confidence of the village elders and seniors, it's just like in Thompson, you gain the confidence and support in Thompson or any other communities, they'll tend to report things to the police and hopefully talk with the people in their village and pass the information and intelligence on to us," says McMackin. "We did start to see progression in that. We actually had village elders come right to the compound to speak with us, and the district commander of the ANP, and pass on all kinds of information and intelligence which is really what we wanted to see."
The RCMP have had a presence in Afghanistan since 2003, not long after the military mission began. "They started out with only two members there to more or less assess the situation there and what would be needed in the future," explains McMackin. "Through 2008 and 2009, you started to see a lot more in there - 40 CIVPOL - and now we can have up to 50 in Afghanistan at a time." CIVPOL, short for civilian police, is the name given to the group of global police who volunteer for a mission in Afghanistan.
The ANP are traditionally a male-dominated organization, but there have been great efforts undertaken in the past year to include women in more and more aspects of the force. "They've actually been running courses strictly for the Afghan policewomen, and that's never been seen before," notes McMackin. "When I first got there, you just didn't see Afghan women as police officers. The last few months I was over there, they had actual female recruits coming on courses and training to become police officers."
The ANP are traditionally a male-dominated organization, but there have been great efforts undertaken in the past year to include women in more and more aspects of the force. "They've actually been running courses strictly for the Afghan policewomen, and that's never been seen before," notes McMackin. "When I first got there, you just didn't see Afghan women as police officers. The last few months I was over there, they had actual female recruits coming on courses and training to become police officers."
Though McMackin enjoyed her time in Afghanistan and was able to fulfill her goal of completing a mission, she's not especially eager for a second go-around. "I really enjoyed the experience and it was great, but nine months is a long time," she says. "I wouldn't go back - not because I didn't enjoy it, but because it was hard to leave my husband home. There would be days when I wouldn't be able to talk to him, and of course the media coverage is all about explosions going off, and back home they're reading this and they haven't heard from me in a few days, so they start to worry. I put him through a lot of sleepless nights."
"I wanted to do a mission, I've done it," she says. "But I don't think I would want to put him through that again."
