Insurgent compound in which IED killed Cpl. Steve Martin now rubble

<p>TALUKAN, Afghanistan – The Taliban compound deep in Afghanistan’s Panjwaii district where Cpl. Steve Martin died is now rubble.</p> <p>Only the mosque remains standing.</p> <p>Canadian soldiers took care of the rest.</p> <p>”The locals asked us if we could actually get rid of that compound,” says Capt. Adam Siokalo, commander of Airborne Company.</p> <p>”They were afraid of it. They knew it was used by Taliban and that it was protected by the insurgents and that they operated out of it in this area.”</p> <p>It was last Dec. 18 when Martin began checking out the area in anticipation of a Canadian push west into an area dubbed the “wilds of Panjwaii.”</p> <p>Until the Canadians arrived, the region was under the control of the insurgents, a no-go zone for coalition forces.</p> <p>But the Canadians had decided to press into the area by building a road west.</p> <p>When Martin’s section arrived at the compound that had been used mainly during the summer fighting season, the insurgents had already pulled back for the winter _ gone to Pakistan.</p> <p>But they left behind lethal surprises for anyone who might dare darken the doorways.</p> <p>”They started to figure out where we were going with that road,” Maj. Francois Dufault, deputy commander of the battle group, says of the insurgents.</p> <p>The compound, near the village of Talukan, was booby-trapped to the hilt.</p> <p>The insurgents placed explosive devices in doorways and in walls, and in the surrounding grape fields.</p> <p>Even now, the grape fields are filled with weeds.</p> <p>”No one actually goes in to actually cultivate any of these fields right now,” Siokalo says.</p> <p>”The locals still believe that these fields around here are full of IEDs and mines in order to protect the compound.”</p> <p>Martin was one of the Canadians tasked with clearing the hideout as part of a larger clearance operation in the area in anticipation of the road-building project.</p> <p>The men found an improvised explosive device and were trying to cordon it off when Martin stepped on another one.</p> <p>Now the mosque is all that’s left of the compound where he died. Destroying it would simply have been a politically impossible step.</p> <p>Instead, the Canadians moved in and deliberately swept, cleared and destroyed everything around the mosque.</p> <p>It took at least four days.</p> <p>”(Locals) asked us whether we could go in and destroy them, and that’s just what we did,” Siokalo said</p> <p>”We razed the buildings. And we kept going.”</p> <p>Martin was just two days shy of his 25th birthday.</p> <p>”We will not forget the sacrifice of this soldier,” Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner, commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, said at the time.</p> <p>Now, a few metres in front of the rubble, is a new Canadian-built road that runs the length of Panjwaii _ a road coalition soldiers and locals alike use every day in relative safety.</p> <p>It is one of the signature achievements for Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan.</p> <p>It is also the legacy of a young Canadian soldier, whose death in a remote insurgent compound, helped pave the way for its construction.</p>