D & D Part 2.

So, one of the stipulations of my blog is that I can't talk about things that aren't currently in the press. So, I danced around this a bit in my previous posting. Below I'll post a news article about one of our locally engaged staff being assassinated last night. I had actually wanted to write about this man at some point because he embodied one of th few things I admire in human beings and that is dedication.

As mentioned in this article, you'd see this guy around camp at all hours of night doing his rounds well past the time that most people who have quit for the day. A friend of mine commented on facebook that he was the hardest working man on the PRT and I don't think that's an exaggeration at all. The most impressive thing about it is that I knew for a fact that he wasn't paid for any of the work he did after 3pm or on weekends, but he did it anyway because it needed to be done.

He had nothing to do with the fight and still someone found the need to take him out because he was affiliated with the coalition forces. I'd like to believe that the human soul couldn't sink the depths required to deliberately target an innocent man to send a message, but apparently that's not the case.






Longtime fixture at PRT base watched warlords and armies come and go
(Afghan-Cda-Popeye)
By Bill Graveland

THE CANADIAN PRESS

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan _ He had lived and worked on what is now the
**>provincial reconstruction team<** base in Kandahar city since he was
a small boy.

And now Fida Mohammed, a jack of all trades affectionately nicknamed
``Popeye'' by American soldiers several years ago, is dead. He was
believed to be 60.

Mohammed's body was found outside the base in Kandahar city by his son
Saturday. He had been murdered.

The affable maintenance man watched as his father helped build what was
originally a fruit cannery at the base and eventually ended up working
there in a number of jobs over more than 35 years.

The PRT was originally a prosperous fruit cannery built by Czech
investors in the early 1970s, a time of prosperity in Afghanistan.
As many as 1,400 workers showed up for work each day to can
pomegranates, apples and grapes for export.

The operation was scaled back when the Russians invaded in 1979 and shut
down for good when the mujahedeen warlords took over in 1992.

All through those years Mohammed was there.

``First I was shocked and then I was saddened by it. Popeye was quite
simply a good man,'' said Maj. Dave Muralt, the public affairs officer
at the PRT in 2006.

Popeye was always working said Muralt, who said he left the base only to
visit his four wives and other members of his family.

``One of my memories of him was one night I came out of the TOC
(tactical operations centre) and he was there putting bottles of water
into the fridge so they would be frozen for the troops to use,'' he
said.

Mohammed lived on the base in a plywood shack but medics scrounged up a
bunch of building materials and had the engineers at the time build him
a new house.

``We all gathered around and had to chase a cat and a kitten out who had
set up housekeeping and we gave him the key to his new house for him and
his son,'' Muralt said.

Although he was unable to read or write, Mohammed was a walking
historian.

He watched governments and their armies come and go _ the former Afghan
monarchy, followed by the government of Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan
(which abolished the monarchy in a bloody coup), the Communists, the
warlords, the Taliban and now the U.S.-and NATO-backed administration of
President Hamid Karzai.

``While working with different people in the past I have not been
working for government. I'm working for this country,'' he said,
speaking through an interpreter in an interview with The Canadian Press
four years ago.

``Whoever comes, whoever goes, it's not my problem,'' he shrugged.

Mohammed said all previous regimes, with the exception of Daoud, had one
thing in common. ``Except for Daoud, all the kings were corrupt, the
Taliban was so corrupt, everybody was corrupt and everybody was thinking
about themselves,'' he said .

News of his death was a blow for the residents of the PRT, who plan a
memorial in his honour.


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