“It’s dog-eat-dog, there,” says Master Cpl. Donald Mouland after spending six months in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Imagine,” he says, and pauses. “I don’t know if you can even imagine — there are no laws there, it’s all sorts of anarchy. There are police on the corner but they don’t do anything. They don’t bathe, I think women are still oppressed there, they wear burkas in the city, there are problems with electricity and water. It’s very dry, a lot of rocks and dirt. It’s totally different. I was so happy to leave.”

Mouland is in the third battalion of the 22nd Regiment in the Canadian Armed Forces and returned home to the Eastern Townships on July 30 after his tour of duty in Afghanistan. He says he’s happy to be home. “It’s always hard to leave,” he says. “I was missing my two girls [Kayla, 5, and Drea, 2] and wife [Celia].”

The seasoned soldier has been in Cyprus, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Croatia, Haiti, and Bosnia. This was his first time in Afghanistan and he says, “once is enough.”He compares his experiences with those he had in Somalia and Haiti where there is less development, little education and little infrastructure. “The people in these countries, they have a mentality of as long as they eat, they’re okay,” says the 38-year-old Milan native.

He says that even though there were other non government organizations there to help out with development, the Afghans’ minds were on basic survival. “They have hand pumps for water wells and it would be broken so we’d tell an engineer or someone else, but maybe it would be fixed, maybe not,” he says. “It wasn’t their first priority. It wasn’t our first priority. The first priority was security.”

Mouland worked as an instructor for the Afghan National Army, training soldiers and patrolling the city. “It wasn’t a peacekeeping mission,” he says. “Usually peacekeeping is with the UN. We were there to help restructure the country. I guess you could say we were just trying to help people out.”

He worked with Americans in his group of nine people with everything from drill instructors to artillery trainers. “We were trying to teach them how to form an army.”

He says the work day started at 7:30 a.m. and went until 3 p.m. with an hour and a half break. “The Afghans don’t usually work in the afternoons because they pray and then don’t want to do anything after,” says Mouland. “If we wanted to do anything with them, we had to do it in the morning.”

One of the differences he cites between the Canadian and the Afghan army is the more lax attitude in Afghanistan. “They don’t like to discipline their troops because they’re afraid they’ll go AWOL,” he says. “Some will leave and come back and there’s not a lot of discipline.”

The lack of infrastructure is also a hindrance to properly training the army, says Mouland. When his course finished and the Afghan soldiers were given a 10-day leave, 46 people didn’t come back for training. “We ended up with only 11 people because the rest of them just couldn’t get back to the base,” he says. “They would’ve had to take horses or bikes or walked and it would’ve been too much.”

Mouland and his regiment trained for a year to be ready for Afghanistan. “The army has really changed a lot,” he says. “We have to adapt to the new reality.” When Mouland joined the reserves in 1983, the world was a different place, he says. “When I started, the danger was the Soviet Union and the threats were different. Before, it was if you grabbed Berlin, you won, but it’s not like that anymore. It’s more about terrorism and fighting within the country now.”

When his team first got to Afghanistan to replace the Canadian troops already there, Jamie Brendan Murphy of Conception Harbour, Nfld had been killed by a suicide bomber. “We were all worried about that and had to be careful,” says Mouland. “But for the most part, the country was safe. We always had our pistols ready, but fortunately, we didn’t see any terrorists.”

Mouland says the worst thing that happened to him was on the day before he left when there was an explosion about 10 kilometres from where he was. “It must’ve been a vehicle or something, we’re not sure, but it was definitely large enough for us to feel it,” he says.

He also came into contact with a friendly-fire mishap when a bullet went flying past his head. “It’s not scary at first because we have things to do for safety when that happens, but then things calm down and you start thinking about your life,” says Mouland. “Aside from the taxes, I think we live in the best country in the world.”

Despite the dangers and risks involved in these types of assignments, Mouland says the Afghan people were very nice and welcoming. “We got to know the mayor very well,” he says. “We talked to him in his house all the time about what was going on in the city and he was very welcoming. The people were very friendly — they’d always be offering us tea and talking to us through translators.”

Canada first sent 2,000 soldiers to Afghanistan and now that number has dropped to just over 600 — a trend Mouland says is happening with the entire Canadian army and those around the world. “There’s just no use for big offensive armies anymore,” he says.

Although Mouland says Canada should have at least a 100,000-people army, he doesn’t think sending more troops overseas for development is necessarily the way to go. “Look at the U.S. in Iraq,” he says. “They have 160,000 soldiers there. It looks good politically. But what we’re doing, [training and development] 160,000 or 600, it doesn’t matter. If the people are going to better themselves, they have to do it themselves. We can’t tell them what to do.”

He’s hopeful, though, that the Afghans are learning and eager for change. “They were happy, but there is still a long way to go,” says Mouland. By the time he left, he says, children were going to school and crosswalks were painted.

When asked if he thought his own work would carry on now that he’s not there, he quickly says no. “Everything we did was in Kabul, in the city. But everything outside is controlled by the warlords and I don’t think they’re going to back off that easily.” He repeats, “There’s still a long way to go.”

For now though, he has five weeks off before he heads back to Base Valcartier. “I’m looking forward to puttering around the house and taking care of the land and being with my family.”