The Globe and Mail's Graeme Smith talks with CBC Radio's Dispatches about his tour of duty in Afghanistan.

"It's been frightening, at a lot of times. My car has been followed -- repeatedly. I've been shot at, rocketed, mortared, hit by a suicide bomber -- lots of nasty stuff."

Here's the podcast link for the Oct. 6 episode.

 Smith also provided this insight:

"I often tell my NATO friends they are fighting more wars than they realize. They're not only fighting a counterinsurgency war, but they'are also also fighting a culture war and to some certain extent, they're also fighting a war on drugs. And doing all these wars at the same time is very difficult."

The Taliban offered people in Kandahar province simple things -- security, order and justice; although they had a brutal, medieval idea of what justice entailed, he said.

What NATO is offering is complex, unreliable and disquieting, Smith said.

He found Canadian officers to be somewhat out of touch with the world outside Kandahar Airfield. Smith has been on the ground for two years in total -- most officers stay six to nine months -- and said he still feels like a newbie.

He also scoffed at the notion Canadians will be militarily out of Kandahar in 2011 as they hand off to the Afghans. "The reality is that the Canadians will not be handing off to the Afghans in 2011. They are handing over to the Americans."

The Americans are already taking over some security aspects of Kandahar, he said.

In terms of getting the reporting job done in a society swirling in rumour, Smith said "it's an art of approximation and what a Canadian political officer in Kandahar called 'triangulation.'"

Much of his job now involves hiring staff and training them to work as reporters, he said.

With the worsening security situation, it's tougher to get out in the field, he said, but added that affects military personnel too.

A general quoted him one poll that suggested the number-one institution that Afghans turn to for security are the Afghan police -- a statement that is so at odds with reality that Smith said he likes to repeat the line at dinner parties to get laughs.