Donovan Kultgen, who served 15 years in the military and 213 days in Afghanistan. (Submitted photo/ Donovan Kultgen)

By Ian Gustafson

Afghanistan Mission

Local veterans react to the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan

Sep 3, 2021 | 7:00 AM

Watching the Taliban regain control of the country they served in has been devastating for two local Canadian Armed Forces veterans.

Matthew Hrycuik was in Afghanistan for nine months as part of the infantry in 2008. He called the current situation in the country ‘ridiculous.’

“My biggest stand on all of this is the fact that everybody, essentially for years, went on the fact that we shouldn’t be over there. So, then we all get out and everybody that understands what’s happening over there and has been over there, gave their life to be over there and body, limb and mind for that matter. It’s a crappy situation,” he said.

“Right from the get-go I figured that when they started talking about Canada getting out, I figured we should have been there another five to 10 years to stabilize them and train their military fully to their highest potential and make sure they are a self-sustaining country.”

After 20 years in Afghanistan, the United States officially withdrew their forces following the two-decade long war – allowing Taliban militants to return to power for the first time since before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The Canadian Armed Forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 2014. Forces were sent back in recent weeks to assist rescue efforts for Canadian citizens still there and thousands of refugees seeking to flee the Taliban regime, but that airlift mission ended last Thursday.

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Hrycuik said the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan is a terrible reality for the country and its heartbreaking to think of the many friends who lost their lives and left children fatherless fighting to prevent this from happening.

While serving in Afghanistan, Hrycuik, who was 21 at the time, said he drove over an IED which broke parts of his spine when it exploded and damaged parts of his hip and knee.

“I understand this is the latest and greatest and a splash in the news, but I honestly don’t understand why people even care at this point,” he said. “They haven’t cared over the last 15 years that we’ve been out there trying to make it right and all of a sudden cause they see some guy falling off an airplane trying to get out of the country all of a sudden it’s a big deal.

“I don’t get this world anymore. I really don’t. I don’t understand it. If everybody cares this much – if all it took was us posting pictures of what was happening over there on social media – like this is ridiculous, it really is. Either care or don’t. It’s not a matter of ‘oh now it’s such a big deal the Taliban have taken back over, are slaughtering all of their citizens and ones that can’t get away are filling up army planes and jumping off planes.’ Well, yeah of course. What did you expect?”

He explained what the public is seeing in the news now is what the military would see on a daily basis.

“The fact that people think it was a peace keeping mission over there in that everything was roses, it’s asinine to even have the audacity to think that way. We were at war,” he said.

When asked if he would like to see the Canadian Armed Forces return to Afghanistan, he said it’s ‘too little, too late.’

Donovan Kultgen served 15 years in the military and 213 days in Afghanistan. He told paNOW the United States pulling out to end the war is an ‘incredible waste’ in his opinion.

“We went there and there was an insane amount of potential to change an entire generation of people and it seems like our leadership half-assed it at best,” Kultgen said.

He said trying to improve the lives of the Afghan people was a tough goal to meet. In hindsight, he thinks the military should have really sunk in ‘like they did after the Second Word War or in South Korea after the Korean war.’ Or, he said, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

“War isn’t something we should play games with,” he said. “Every day I was there I sort of had a front row seat to the whole Panjwai valley and every day you’d hear machine guns going off or see the jets or choppers coming in. Where I was, I actually had a good list of information that was coming across the whole strategic board in our area, and it was never peace.”

Kultgen said he isn’t worried about a threat to North American, but Afghan locals and surrounding countries should be worried the Taliban could have access to weapons that could be used against local regions.

“The fact that [Afghanistan] fell so quickly and there wasn’t any plan, like from a tactical standpoint there should have been at least some strikes back to push them back. I’ve been watching the news fairly closely and the Taliban pushing through Afghanistan wasn’t overnight. It’s been happening over the last couple years, so it wasn’t a surprise they were at the gates but the fact everything just collapsed as it did was a huge failure on the American military and the Afghani military.”

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Ian.Gustafson@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @IanGustafson12