By Stone Martindale Oct 14, 2006, 2:07 GMT
Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have had to deal with an unlikely, wily and potent enemy, impenetrable 10 foot walls of forest thick marijuana plants.
Pot! Hemp makes awesome paper products, clothing, rope and can be burned for fuel! REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
Canadian soldiers said they killed several insurgents, although officials would not confirm exact numbers. Col. Fred Lewis, the deputy commander of the Canadian task force in Kandahar, said the insurgents still feel a powerful draw to the area where the Taliban movement was born.
This has been a traditional stronghold of the Taliban, going back perhaps to the Soviet times, Lewis said.
The arrid Arghandab River beds, steep mountains, the dauntingly huge marijuana fields, walled stone compounds and vineyards combined with a population keen on subterfuge make it desirable for insurgents.
General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.
"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.
"We tried burning them with white phosphorous, it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel, it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.
Even burning the massive amount of vegetation had its obvious issues.
"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said.
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