The taking of Haji Baba highlights new challenge for Canadians in Kandahar

HAJI BABA, Afghanistan - The taking of Haji Baba will be a game of inches, likely setting the tone for the twilight of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.
Canadian Forces launched a massive show of strength over the weekend against the insurgent stronghold southwest of Kandahar city, seeking to open a new front in its fight against the Taliban.
But this was a lumbering giant. It showed up late for its appointed debut and was quickly brought to heel at the outskirts of the tiny village, where it found itself amid a maze of IEDs.
If the tide started to turn for the Canadians, it was due less to their numbers or awesome machinery than a willingness to play the rules of an age-old Pashtun code.
Late Monday night, after Canadian and Afghan National Army soldiers had advanced little more than a kilometre into the town, the battle group commander smiled at the slow pace of progress.
"That's the reason why you don't fall into the trap, why you go so slow, you take it one step at a time," Lt. Col. Jerry Walsh said from the back of his light-armoured vehicle, where he was following the action.
"In Afghanistan, time is almost meaningless."
Some 1,000 Canadian soldiers were joined by a 200-strong Afghan National Army unit intent on extending the "key village" approach, which has met with some success in Dand district, into areas where the tribal structure is less favourable to the presence of foreign troops.
Dand district is heavily populated with members of the Barakzai tribe, which helped wrestle Kandahar from Taliban control in 2001. The areas around Haji Baba are largely Noorzai, a tribe that has been affiliated with the Taliban since the 1990s.
"It's a huge litmus test... if in the birth tribe of the Taliban there are those who see that the Taliban way is not the most favourable," said Walsh.
Haji Baba also has a huge strategic importance for the Canadian military. It is part of an area in southern Panjwaii known as a gateway for insurgents seeking access to Kandahar city or more northern hotspots such as Zhari.
Senior military officers spent months preparing for the operation and rehearsing with a contingent of ANA soldiers.
Finally on Saturday, Alpha and Charlie Company of 1 Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry set up camp north of Haji Baba. Alpha, headed by Maj. Ryan Jurkowski, set out at dawn the next morning with the intention of breaching the town limits then moving west to protect Charlie Company's flank as it moved towards the town centre.
But tanks broke down, an ambulance overheated and several ANA Ford Rangers refused to start. Five hours later than planned, the first soldiers entered Haji Baba.
Alpha Company had not covered much ground before platoon commander Cpt. Cole Petersen did a double-take at a mud-covered pipe sticking out from a wall.
As a counter-IED squad prepared to clear the device, an explosion went off close to several troops. Not long after, another IED was found with a command wire leading to the compound of one of the town's elders.
One soldier clutching a belt-fed heavy machine gun started shouting, "Stop every fighting-aged male."
With daylight fading fast and the nerves of his troops beginning to fray, Petersen opted to regroup.
"The Taliban probably think they won the day," he said. "But tomorrow will be different. We'll play hardball with the elders."
Alpha Company retreated and hunkered down against the outer wall of a graveyard, where the ANA suggested they take refuge. As temperatures dropped and a stiff wind bristled through the tombstones, hidden Taliban shrieked like hyena into the night.
In the morning, the Canadians put Ramatullah - an avuncular ANA captain with a gap-toothed smile who speaks Pashtu fluently and commands the respect of his Canadian mentors - to work.
"It's too bad we didn't have a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand Ramatullahs," said Walsh. "Someone like that can inspire a village, and a people, to a new future."
Ramatullah has even taken to compiling his own collection of aphorisms about war, such as, "Use small words to make a book," and, "Win with ideas."
With elders of Haji Baba and surrounding villages arriving at the graveyard for a burial, a shura was quickly held.
"The problem in Afghanistan is we fight each other," he told about 20 elders who gathered around him. "We have damaged country. We don't want to destroy it anymore."