It’s a life many Canadians can’t imagine; the constant sound of gunfire and threat of attack. But it’s a life the City of Edmonton’s Emergency Management Officer experienced.
Last year, Mike Cook spent one year in Afghanistan – assigned to the NATO training mission – as a mentor and advisor for the Afghan National Police Force and Fire Department.
“These people are put out on the street and basically given a basic uniform and you’re out on a check-point,” Cook refers to the task of police officers in Afghanistan.
A police force of 140,000 officers – many with little to no training – is expected to protect the citizens of Afghanistan from insurgents.
“The attrition rate is mind-boggling. We were seeing when we were there, every 24 hours within Afghanistan 10-15 police officers killed, which is just a staggering figure,” explains Cook.
Edmonton’s Emergency Management Officer describes his initial days in Afghanistan as overwhelming.
“You go from feeling like a tourist as you go through Frankfurt and Dubai and carrying your suitcase and wandering in and out of stores, to all of a sudden there’s a detail waiting for you with armoured vehicles, and you’re issued body armour and weapons on the ground right then and there,” says the former member of the Edmonton Police Service.
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Cook’s job was to build training programs, renovate and build fire stations, as well as purchase new equipment.
“With the fire department, imagine them responding to fires with no infrastructure. For example, in Kabul, it used to be a city of 750,000 people, it’s now over 5.5 million. There’s no infrastructure as far as water mains, there’s no fire hydrants. So when that fire crew comes to fight a fire they bring 25 gallons of water with them and that’s it. They don’t have anymore,” explains Cook.
“And then add on to that that someone may be shooting at them while they do it.”
Cook faced his own dangers while in Afghanistan. Every trip off the base was potentially life-threatening.
“There’s a percentage of the population that wants you there and obviously a percentage of the population that didn’t want you there,” says Cook.
But Cook’s strongest memories are of the people he met, not the dangers he encountered. In particular, he remembers the children.
“I think they’re always the backbone of our society and the backbone of any country. To drive down the road there and see children playing in a dirt parking lot with a soccer ball just like they’d be playing in a schoolyard here in Edmonton. That innocence is there and those children actually want a better life,” suggests Cook.
During his time in Afghanistan, Cook would often walk in a safe zone between two camps. There was a group of children who sold bracelets in the area. Cook would stop and give them candies, sadly, when he returned to Edmonton, he received news some of those children had died.
“I got a note from one of the guys that someone had ridden a bicycle into that area with an IED on it and the IED had gone off, killing a number of the children. No coalition, no Afghan military, no structural damage to any of the bases just killed a bunch of children. And to me that was probably the most heart-wrenching and tragic situation that could have happened,” explains Cook.
Despite the challenges, Cook hopes to return to the country one day. He says the trip has been life changing. It’s reminded him of how fortunate Canadians are.
“We have so much in Canada, and we fought for what we have, but we do need to give back. We need to be part of the world. We can’t just look within the Canadian boundaries. We have to be as Canadians part of the world and give back to the world for what we have and what we take for granted.”
The accomplishment Cook is most proud of during his year in Afghanistan is doubling the manpower in the fire department, which then allowed him to set up a new disaster response branch, the first of its kind in Afghanistan.
With files from Erin Chalmers, Global News
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