Imagine the surprise of Canadian soldiers in the Port of Montreal recently when they opened military shipping containers coming back from Afghanistan and discovered some were empty and others were filled with rocks and sand.
“We’ve been robbed!”
The National Defense officials say tents, tires and tools had been taken from those containers, but no weapons, ammunition or Canadian soldiers' uniforms were stolen.
Isn’t that nice? As if armies don’t need tents, tires or tools. As if some zealous Taliban might not slip in a home-made into the container and seal it up again.
Who took the stuff? Taliban, crooks, Al-Queda, border officials, police inspectors? Who knows. This is Afghanistan.
Nice of them to put rocks and sand into the looted containers so we wouldn’t notice until they got to Montreal. And we had to pay for shipping rocks. Somebody is laughing in their tea in Afghanistan.
There’s flea market in downtown Kandahar where you can buy military uniforms of your favorite NATO country, complete with weapons and ammunition. Great for Halloween! The place is called “The George Bush Market.” It’s located across the street from the Afghan defense ministry. Convenient, isn’t it?
The Canadian military is still going through 448 containers held behind. It’s a huge operation. So far they know that 20 of the 448 containers have been opened, 20 were emptied, and 182 are still held up at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where the thefts probably occurred. Another 40 containers are on the high seas on the way back to Canada.
The military brass will be trying to figure how our soldiers could just be standing by while the containers were being opened and rifled and looted. Or were they asleep? The loss so far is estimated at $4.7 million.
The firm responsible for getting the containers back to Canada is A.J. Maritime of Montreal. Company president Alda Rodrigues says thefts are a “recurring problem” in military equipment transportation.
So it happens often! Reassuring, isn’t it?
The real danger is that if the Taliban, or whoever, can get into Canadian containers so easily, they might get the bright idea to slip an explosive among the rocks, timed to go off somewhere on the Atlantic or later in Montreal?
The Canadian military promise a full and thorough investigation. What else did you expect? The “George Bush Market” might be a good place to start.
“Do you have any tools, tents or tires to sell, Sir?”
