For four weeks beginning on 9 September, 2011 — one decade to the day since anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives in a brazen act of war-baiting abandon — Austin was stationed in Afghanistan for a close-quarters study of the fabric of a nation riven by three decades of civil war.
Accompanying the Canadian Expeditionary Force on its training mission to help prepare the Afghan National Army for the moment when the last NATO foot soldier leaves, Austin’s piece Fractured Past, Ransomed Future: Debriefing Afghanistan’s Lost Decade investigates the lessons Canada can share with the world as its role shifts from combat partner to nation builder, while asking what measures can be taken to avoid repeating the many past post-withdrawal crises that have earned Afghanistan the nickname “graveyard of empires”.
