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...April began, the reopening of the Pir Mohammed School seemed imminent. Ellis had gotten all the elements in place, including a Canadian bomb-removal team. His superiors at battalion headquarters thought that reopening a school in the Taliban's front yard was such a feel-good story that a reporter should be around to record it. I happened to be in the neighborhood, and Captain Ellis graciously invited me - and photographer Adam Ferguson - along for the ride...
...School Ellis began his efforts to open Pir Mohammed in late January. To get permission to reopen the school, he needed the approval of three separate command structures - his battalion superiors, the Canadians who ran Task Force Kandahar and their NATO superiors at Regional Command-South, the NATO regional command for southern Afghanistan. He also needed the approval of the local, district and regional Afghan government authorities. That part wasn't too bad. Ellis was a gung-ho briefer. On Saturday, April 3, I watched him describe the school operation to a group of Canadian generals. "That...
...launch, the 1/12 battalion planning staff scotched it. "They said we hadn't done sufficient planning for the bomb clearance," Ellis says, "and I suppose they were right. The trouble is, there are only two American bomb-clearing units for all of Kandahar province. I managed to find a Canadian team." The operation was rescheduled for April 4, when the Canadians would be available...
Still, Ellis was confident the operation would go forward. This was just a bureaucratic glitch. Everyone thought so. On April 3, I spoke with Ellis' immediate superior, Lieut. Colonel Reik Anderson, commander of the 1/12, and with the Canadian in charge of Joint Task Force Kandahar, Brigadier General Daniel Menard, who was furious about the delay. "We're going to have a letter signed by the district and provincial governors, insisting that we go ahead," Menard told me, then proceeded to talk like a general. "This is essential. It would be the first nonkinetic breach of Taliban control...
...next afternoon, Ellis received word from battalion: there would be another delay, ostensibly of five days, but Ellis knew it would be longer than that. The Canadian bomb-disposal unit couldn't wait around. It had to go on to other projects. "This is becoming a joke," said one of the troopers who escorted me out of Combat Outpost Senjaray the following day. "It ain't gonna happen...