* * * * *
Before the big operation, I managed to meet a unit of twelve men from the Queen’s Company, the Grenadier Guards. The Guards, who had the reputation of being one of the last relics of the British class system, were sometimes unfairly dismissed as being better suited to performing ceremonial duties outside Buckingham Palace in their red tunics and bearskin caps, rather than fighting. These Guards were living with the ANA, sleeping in cots under mosquito nets, in a small and decrepit base built by the Russians in the 1980s. They formed an OMLT (Omelette – Operational Mentor and Liaison Team), tasked with training a unit of Afghan soldiers, whom they described as ‘below average students’. Sitting on a wooden bench and encouraged by each other’s laughter, they talked on, until they had left me with an image of the ANA as a heavily-armed, badly-dressed version of the Keystone Kops. On drugs.
The ANA were exceptionally brave, said the Guards, often sprinting towards the Taliban when they attacked but showing no interest in any other aspect of soldiering, sleeping through their shifts on watch, and often stoned. The national desertion rate was around twenty per cent but according to Sherard Cowper-Coles, the former British Ambassador to Afghanistan, was as high as sixty per cent in those deployed to Helmand. New recruits were put on buses before they were told where they were going.
The Afghan troops often watched the British showering and openly engaged in varying levels of camp or homosexual behaviour on what had become known as ‘man love Thursdays’. (‘Thursday night is the start of the weekend, so it’s a party’, explained an Afghan friend.) Cultural sensitivity training had told the Brits not to let the ANA see their men’s magazines, for fear of causing offence. But the ANA begged for them and often only worked if they were bribed with ‘sexy mags’ like Nuts, Zoo or FHM. Just before I arrived they had been told to stop smoking weed, so they sat in a circle, piled their stashes in one big heap and set it on fire, inhaling the fumes. When they were caught, one of them ran outside and tried to escape in a jeep; he was so stoned he reversed into a canal instead.
* * * * *
A few nights before the operation, I was drinking tea outside the Naafi (a British services shop) when a young soldier sat down and introduced himself. His eyes were glazed and he swayed slightly, struggling to stay upright. I thought he was stoned, or drunk, looking to start a confrontation. But he just said, ‘I’m scared.’ I told him he’d be lying or mad if he thought otherwise but my words carried no impact. He said that on the last big operation, his friend, lying next to him, was shot through the eye and died instantly. The attack was so heavy that no one could move, so he had to stay there, next to his dead friend, for an entire hour.
‘I hate my job. I can’t function, can’t sleep and I’m totally scared about this big op coming up.’ He had just turned eighteen and this was his first tour. One of his superiors had reluctantly agreed to let him see a psychiatrist – but made it clear that if he was lying about his condition he’d be crawling around the camp until his hands and knees bled. The soldier, who was still just a boy, told me he was praying for malaria or a bullet in the foot so that he could go home.
After dinner that night the fire alarm went off but as we got up to leave there came an order to sit down again. Lieutenant Colonel Westley appeared at the front of the tent and announced that Captain Sean Dolan, his close friend, had been killed. He had been on attachment with American troops and had taken a direct hit from a Taliban mortar.
I walked outside and shuffled about on the black plastic decking, not quite knowing what to do with myself. Afghan workers, in Kellog, Brown and Root t-shirts, lowered the flags. ‘Those fucking flags spend more time at half-mast than they do up’, said one soldier as he walked past.
The flags stayed at half-mast the following day. The Grenadier Guards I’d spent the night with had been hit by a suicide bomber as they drove back to Gereshk. One of them had been killed and four injured. The bomber had wrapped the explosives on his body with newspaper, glue and hundreds of ball-bearings the size of marbles, making himself into a human cannon as well as a bomb. The stumps of his legs landed twenty metres apart on the road, together with his entire jaw, including his beard.
The bomber had leapt on to the vehicle from behind a fruit and vegetable stall, giving the gunner no time to shoot. Company Sergeant Major Simon Edgell and Lance Corporal Jack Mizon had been in the only other vehicle. They’d had to treat the casualties themselves. ‘Sergeant Dave Wilkinson died straight away’, said Mizon, ‘and Lance Sergeant Shadrake got a piece of shrapnel in his neck. But there was five casualties. One bloke had a head wound, someone lost his ear and Sergeant Jason McDonald had lacerations to his neck and his back. So there’s two of us dealing with five casualties and then we started taking small arms fire. We managed to get them on in the end. But Dave didn’t make it.’ Locals, he said, stood by and watched them struggle. The small arms fire may have been ammunition boxes catching fire in the jeep.
I said that the intelligence reports of the five suicide bombers in Gereshk must have been correct. ‘What reports?’ Mizon said. Nobody had told the Grenadier Guards.
Later that evening, as I sat on a trestle bench with the other Grenadiers, a truck dumped the charred carcass of the WMIK on the ground. Soldiers in rubber gloves pulled the kit out of the jeep and laid it on the floor. Most of it was burnt black and soaked in what I guessed was blood. Sergeant Simon Alexander, who’d arrived at the scene soon after the attack, walked towards us. I tried to think of something to say but as we’d only just met I decided to keep quiet. None of the Grenadiers around me said anything either. Simon could see we were all uncomfortable and he reassured us. ‘Don’t worry, boys, everything’s normal, we’re fine’, he said. And walked into the Naafi to buy a cup of coffee.
The burnt-out skeleton of the WMIK jeep didn’t look that different to a brand-new one. WMIKs are old, roofless Land Rovers with machine-guns attached. Their only armour is a patchwork of small bomb-proof mats spread across the floor and seats. The bodies and heads of those inside are totally exposed. Tony Blair described them as ‘the army that gets whatever it wants and needs’ but I watched soldiers laying Kevlar plates from their body armour on to the floor of their WMIKs for a little extra protection. The Americans, whose smallest vehicles were heavily-armoured Humvees (and even these were soon to be restricted to bases or given to the ANA, because they weren’t considered safe enough) think the Brits are insane for going out in vehicles that belong on small English farms. As the suicide bomber had shown, if you aren’t killed in a WMIK, you will almost certainly be maimed.
One of the soldiers looked at the burnt-out WMIK. ‘I wish everyone could form a line’, he said, ‘and march through the Green Zone annihilating everything in sight and burning down entire sympathiser villages, Vietnam style.’
Later that day, we drove in convoy along the same stretch of road, past the black patch left by the suicide bomber. Nobody spoke. In every vehicle, a soldier on a raised passenger seat held a rifle. Behind them stood gunners controlling fifty cal machine-guns. All scanned the locals as we passed, as if any one could be one of the remaining four suicide bombers. Company Sergeant Major Glenn Snazle, the gunner in the jeep behind mine, also carried a pistol in his right hand, which he pointed outwards as he swivelled around in the gun turret. Oncoming cars were waved to the side of the road with an aggressiveness I hadn’t seen before. It was easy to see how a few deaths on both sides could destroy any chance of the counter-insurgency policy succeeding and turn the campaign into a fight for survival and revenge. It may well already have reached that point. It was certainly hard to see how to win hearts and minds when anyone who got too close was shot.
After fifteen minutes the tension eased slightly as the convoy pulled off the main road and drove across the desert back towards the base. I heard Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean playing from the driver’s iPod speakers. As we pulled up to the ANA checkpoint, Michael Jackson was drowned out by the trance music blaring from their stereo.
As we entered the base, the soldiers un-cocked their weapons. The ANA’s music faded away and the driver’s iPod, now playing Show Me Heaven by Maria McKee, came back.
* * * * *
That night, there was a final briefing in the dining tent about the operation to clear and hold a stretch of the Green Zone. No soldiers from the ANA were invited and no paperwork was allowed to leave the tent. The t-shirt of the soldier in front of me read, ‘God may forgive the Taliban. Mortars will make the appointment’.
Lieutenant Colonel Westley reminded everyone what they were supposed to be doing. ‘In its wider context, this is about setting enhanced security. We need to go in and defeat the enemy in the upper Gereshk valley, so that the townspeople’s confidence is bolstered and we can get on with our core job; development, reconstruction and reassuring the people that the government of Afghanistan is the way ahead and it is their future.’
The ANA weren’t briefed about the operation until the day before it was launched. Even then, they were only told to be ready to leave the base at 4 p.m., in the hope that they might be ready by five. They weren’t told where they were going. ‘Otherwise they’ll get on the phone and tell everyone they know’, said Company Sergeant Major Glenn Snazle. I asked if that might include the Taliban. ‘Some of their loyalties are in the wrong place. We just have to keep an eye on it’, he replied. I asked if they’d shared information with the Taliban before. Snazle smiled. ‘They have. They’ve been disciplined, kicked out and probably then gone and joined the Taliban.’
Snazle had given the ANA Sergeant Major a list of things he needed to do, including bringing water and a fuel truck. As four o’ clock approached, it was clear the list had been ignored. ‘As long as they’ve got ammunition that’s all they give a shit about’, he said.
‘We try to make them feel like they have an input’, said Sergeant Simon Alexander, ‘and one day they’ll come up with a plan themselves.’ I looked at him quizzically. ‘One day it might happen, we’ll have to wait and see’, he said, laughing. ‘Do you think that will happen in your tour?’ I asked. He laughed some more. ‘No’, he said firmly.
‘They’re very bright and colourful; it’s a wonderful sight. They’re a very visual army’, said Major David. ‘Today is the first time in weeks they’ve been on time because they’re know they’re going for a scrap.’ He was also optimistic about the operation. ‘With this amount of manpower we aim to destroy the enemy and take the ground this time, not cede it like before. This will be the first time for two months that we’re actually going in to take and hold ground.’
Sergeant Alexander, like most of the NCOs, was unable to lie about the way things were. ‘When the ANA are excited, they’re very brave. But it only lasts about two days and then they get bored. They’re like children – their attention doesn’t last long.’
As the ANA were ordered into formation, someone started blowing a whistle. ‘It’s the easiest way to control them. It’s like being at school’, said Alexander.
I said it looked like a chaotic start.
‘This is good!’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘This is fucking squared away, they’ve got vehicles and everything. We’re happy.’
The ANA had been issued with helmets and body armour but only a few wore either. They preferred baseball caps, brightly-coloured bandanas hanging down to their hips, sunglasses, and orange and pink tie-dyed t-shirts. They drove unarmoured pick-up trucks with fifty cal machine-guns on the back and dozens of rockets jutting from every available space like golf clubs. Huge photos and murals were taped to the middle of their windscreens, often portraits of dead colleagues or idyllic mountain scenes. More than anything else, they displayed huge portraits of Massoud, the ‘Lion of Panjshir’. Massoud is a hero to many around the world for his for his brilliance as a guerrilla commander during the Soviet invasion. But within Afghanistan he is hated as much as he is loved, especially by those who lived through the indiscriminate shelling of Kabul in the early nineties.
Afghanistan has been in various states of civil war for over thirty years. Although the sides and alliances have changed more times than it is possible for outsiders to comprehend, the fighting mostly has been between the ethnic groups of the north – the Northern Alliance – led by Massoud, and the Pashtuns of the south. Not all Pashtuns are Taliban but most of the Taliban are Pashtun. When the Taliban first swept to power, largely because they seemed to be an answer to the barbarism of the civil war and the corruption of the warlords, only Massoud resisted. Just a few years later, after September 11th, 2001, the Northern Alliance swept the Taliban from power, aided by American airpower. Massoud had been assassinated by Al-Qaeda two days earlier, on September 9th. There was no reconciliation after the fall of the Taliban. The southern Pashtuns watched aghast as the same old warlords and corrupt officials appeared again. There had been great hope that the outside world would deliver something much better.
So an army carrying Massoud’s image everywhere didn’t look anything like the national army it was supposed to be; more like the Shura-i-Nazar’ (Massoud’s band); the Northern Alliance back in power and looking for vengeance. The vast majority of the ANA soldiers came from northern Afghanistan and spoke Dari rather than Pashtu. Its leadership was dominated by the northern ethnic groups, particularly Tajiks. Pashtuns from elsewhere in Afghanistan sometimes joined up but estimates of the numbers of southern Pashtuns hovered between two and three per cent. Even then, they often left, after their families were threatened.
Early on, there was a realistic hope that our intervention would put an end to the civil war. Instead, desperate for their support, we handed control of the police, army and intelligence services to the Northern Alliance. I suspect our efforts were doomed from that point. The very people we were trying to win over and persuade to pick sides would think that the civil war was very much an ongoing event and that we were fighting on behalf of the other side.
* * * * *
For the unit of the Grenadier Guards I was accompanying. the aim of the operation was to clear and hold the village of Kakaran. The area had been fought for three times but never held; there had never been enough manpower. At the same time, the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters were to clear and hold Rahim Kalay, to the north-east of Kakaran, overlooking the Green Zone. The two forces would then work together to clear the ground between them, moving the front line forward by about six kilometres. Other British forces would do the same from Sangin, about twenty miles up the Green Zone, and everyone would meet somewhere in between, flushing the Taliban out completely. This was the planned strategy across Helmand: clear, hold and build. But so far, it had never got much beyond clearing and holding; and rarely beyond clearing.
The Grenadier Guards drove in a huge arc across the Helmand desert, hoping to get into position without being seen, or blown up. We entered the Green Zone as the sun was setting, driving down a straight road that ran alongside a canal on our way to a small forward operating base. We passed a truck full of young men and several groups of children, who shouted ‘hello, hello, hello’, as we went by. On the other side of the canal, men on motorbikes drove slowly by. There was no chance our arrival hadn’t been noticed.
At the patrol base, we were told to get a few hours’ sleep, resting on the sand and gravel outside. At 2 a.m., we got up, crammed what we could into backpacks and walked into the Green Zone. Within minutes, we heard an explosion. A mine had struck one of the Worcester and Sherwood Foresters’s vehicles but no one had been hurt. It was still dark as the Grenadier Guards crept through the fields that surrounded Kakaran, talking little, and then only in whispers. As we entered the village at dawn, it was clear that every compound had been abandoned, very recently. Piles of dried poppies lay all around, their bulbs marked with the rows of diagonal incisions that allowed the opium to ooze out and be scraped off.
‘By and large, because this area has seen a lot of fighting, many families have moved out’, said Major David. ‘This is bad news, because it means we
’re not achieving the effect we’re hoping for, which is to bring security. But hopefully after a few days we’ll have taken this area properly and sent a message that people can move back.’
It seemed to be assumed that the owners of the houses had fled a long time ago and that anyone who’d been there recently was squatting. I didn’t know if this was true or if it just made the soldiers feel better about rifling through abandoned homes. ‘Either they’re brilliant liars or the whole compound ownership thing is a very fluid concept’, said Captain Paddy Hennessey. ‘Because whenever you go into a compound, the people there never own that one; they’re always friends of the owners.’ Denial of ownership, he said, usually comes after weapons, mines or opium have been found. ‘Of course, then, if you say “so you won’t mind if I take this?”, a different story emerges.’
I asked Sergeant Alexander what he thought the Taliban were doing. ‘They saw us arrive last night, they’ve watched us all morning. They’ll pull back to a line and if they’re determined, they’ll spank us there.’ I asked him if he thought the Taliban could ever be made to give up. ‘No, they won’t, ’cause that’s not in their nature. That’s Islamic extremists for you. They’ll switch to an Iraq situation, using IEDs. Obviously, the advantage we’ve got at the moment is that it’s a stand-up fight, which we’ll win every time. We’re better-trained, better-equipped and we’ve got more fire-power. When they start getting the IED technology from Iraq, then you’re digging in, you’re entrenched.’
As I sat, leaning up against a mud wall, it was easy to forget that the Taliban were probably watching us and getting ready to attack. Water trickled past in sparkling streams, birds sang, houses shone in the dawn sun and perfectly-ripe bunches of grapes hung from verandahs. Gereshk and the Green Zone were once part of the hippy trail; I could easily imagine Dennis Hopper lookalikes laughing, smoking weed and listening to Jimi Hendrix on portable cassettes. ‘It’s paradise-like. Lush green vegetation, vegetables and fruit growing in abundance, idyllic little compounds. It’s lovely’, said Major David.