7
Sangin
Everyone from the governor down was delighted by what French Force had achieved at Kajaki on the night of 17 June. But while it temporarily took the pressure off having to station part of the Battle Group permanently at the dam, the requirement to relieve the American troops in Musa Qaleh remained. A Company had been warned off for the task and we were in the process of planning to send them into the town’s district centre. Then reports of a more urgent mission began to filter into the JOC. Insurgent activity had been increasing significantly in Sangin and was being exacerbated by local tribal politics. Dos Mohamed Khan was the chief of the Afghan National Department for Security in Helmand and had established his power base in Sangin. Khan was also an Alakazai and his tribe had been seen to prosper under the Karzai regime in Kabul at the expense of other tribes in the Sangin area. His brutal rule had alienated many of the local people and was compounded by the actions of his district chief of police, who had abused his position to abduct and rape children from the town. This provoked an outcry among the inhabitants who besieged him in the local police station. Daud wanted the British to extract him and UKTF became caught on the horns of a dilemma. If they rescued the police chief they would be seen to support the activities of a ruthless criminal. If they didn’t rescue him they would be failing to support the governor.
The situation was exacerbated on 18 June when a rival warlord and leader of the Ishakzai tribe capitalized on the growing unrest in the town. With the support of the Taliban he ambushed and killed forty of Khan’s Alakazai followers. Khan’s son was badly wounded in the fighting and Daud wanted the wounded boy and the rest of Khan’s followers extracted from Sangin along with the chief of police. The issue of being tainted with supporting the criminal activities of the police chief was resolved when the elders escorted him to FOB Robinson and handed him over to the ANA. However, Khan’s wounded son and the rest of his supporters remained in the district centre where they claimed they were about to be overrun by a coalition of hostile tribal factions and insurgents.
The intelligence picture indicated that any British intervention into Sangin would meet with stiff resistance. The risk of having a helicopter shot down as it landed into an unsecured LZ was considered to be severe. Entering Sangin would also consume another company if it became stuck there. With the need to occupy Musa Qaleh still looming on the horizon, there was a danger that the whole of 3 PARA would become fixed in holding static locations. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, Ed Butler passed the issue up to the British Ambassador in Kabul to get a political decision. In the meantime he asked me to produce a risk assessment of conducting the rescue. He was particularly keen for me to give him my estimate of how many casualties we might take if we had to fight our way in. While discussions were held between Lashkar Gah, Kabul and London, the Battle Group worked up the plan for Sangin. PJHQ and Butler were cognizant of the risk involved but the political imperative dictated that we could not be seen to fail to support the governor’s request.
On 19 June I participated in a radio conference with Butler who had flown forward to Lashkar Gah. The conference lasted into the early hours of the next day and Butler was receiving intelligence reports on the situation in Sangin from the governor’s office as we spoke. We talked through the casualty estimate I had produced. I reiterated that the best case was that we got to the district centre unmolested and lost no one. The worst case was that we had a helicopter packed with paratroopers shot down; in this scenario we could lose up to fifty people in one go. Butler paused; he knew that I understood the political importance of the mission and I knew that he appreciated the military risks. ‘Stuart, we have got reports coming in that the district centre is about to fall. If we are going to reduce the risks to the helicopters we need to use the cover of darkness and go before first light. Given that dawn is less than three hours away, I need to know whether you can launch the mission in the next ninety minutes.’ Now it was my turn to pause and I looked at the staff and commanders of A Company who were gathered round the bird table. In essence Butler had given me the final call. ‘Brigadier,’ I replied, ‘give me twenty minutes and I will come back to you with an answer.’
I put down the headset and looked to Huw Williams. ‘Do we have everything in place to lift off within the next hour?’ I asked.
`We do, Colonel,’ he replied. Huw had given me the answer to the practicalities, but he knew that I wasn’t looking to him to give me the answer as to whether we should go or not. It was the lives of my men on the line and as their commanding officer it was up to me to decide. I felt the burden of responsibility weigh on my shoulders as we quickly rehashed the pros and cons. Having listened to the views of others, I reflected on the balance of risk. We were here to support the government of Afghanistan; if we didn’t go we would fail to do that. If we didn’t go now, we would lose the slim element of surprise that we might have and we would probably be pressurized or ordered to go subsequently. Finally, we were Paras and being asked to do difficult and risky things was what we were meant to be about. I gave my decision to the men around me at the bird table; they all accepted it and the rationale that I gave them. I looked at each one as I picked up the headset. I spoke into the mike: ‘Brigadier, we will be airborne in an hour.’
I scrambled into the back of the aircraft, the engine exhausts pumping out blasts of hot air as I stepped on to the tailgate. I clambered over the members of my Tac group and the men of one of A Company’s platoons as I made my way to the front section by the two side door guns. I put on a headset and listened to the pilots go through their final checks. They were ready to go, but one of the other aircraft reported a technical fault. We sat on the pan with the engines running as we waited for it to be sorted out. It seemed to be taking an age and I considered calling off the mission as the first feeble light of dawn began to creep through the gunner’s open hatch. My headset crackled into life and I was told the technical problem was fixed. I gave my acknowledgement and listened to the changing pitch of the engines as the power increased and we began to lift. Matt Taylor looked at me and shouted over the noise of the vibrating cab; he was pumped up and wanted to get it on. I felt a sense of personal guilt for not sharing his youthful enthusiasm. I flicked open my map to double-check the coordinates of the LZ and wondered about the sort of reception we would receive on landing.
As we gained height and headed out across the desert, I stood by the port-side M60 machine gun enjoying the relative cool of the slipstream that blew in through the gunner’s open hatch. It provided a brief respite from the stupefying heat of the desert floor a few thousand feet below me. The two-minute warning came over the headset from the pilot. It was immediately followed by the customary two-fingered signal given by the senior air crewman to warn us we were two minutes out from the LZ at Sangin. I rechecked the belt of bullets in the feed tray of the M60, as the troops behind me made last-minute adjustments to kit and checked that their automatic weapons were made ready. The aircraft dropped to low level to make a nap of the earth approach from the western side of the Helmand River. The tension mounted as I felt the acceleration and the tilt of the aircraft, bringing with it the familiar heave in my belly with the sudden loss of altitude. Daylight had broken and the aircraft flew low enough to cast up dancing plumes of sand as old Russian trenches dug in along the heights overlooking the town of Sangin passed beneath us. We dropped over the high ground into the valley below and I saw a momentary flash of aqua blue as we crossed the river and headed to the LZ on the eastern bank. I listened intently on the intercom for the codeword call that the commander of the escorting Apaches would give if he considered that the LZ was cold and safe to land. If he detected the presence of the enemy, he would use another codeword to indicate that the landing area would be hot. He called the LZ cold and we continued to descend. But it didn’t mean that the Taliban weren’t located in the undergrowth waiting to fire at us during the most vulnerable moments of our descent.
In
the final few seconds the smooth beat of the rotor blades slowed to a rhythmic clatter. Nose up and tail down, the aircraft pitched itself into a swirling cloud of dust, followed by the thump of the landing gear as the wheels made contact with the ground. A split second later the tailgate was lowered. Simultaneously, Paras began to run off the ramp and fanned out to take up fire positions forming a V shape beyond the back of the aircraft. All wore goggles and put their heads down to shield themselves from the blast of grit and sand as the aircraft lifted off Twenty seconds after landing it had gone, leaving us in the silence of the settling dust and the incongruous beauty of our surroundings. We had expected to land under fire, but the scene that greeted us as the dust settled was one of tranquillity. The high reed grass and the green of the trees and fields a few hundred metres off to our right were a stark contrast to the sun-baked yellow-brown monotony of the surrounding desert. A brace of startled marsh snipe broke cover and headed across the river that gurgled leisurely by to our left.
The men of A Company set about readying themselves to move off as a thin early morning mist rose from the river. Tac closed in and established radio contact with Bastion as A Company’s lead platoon started moving through the haze towards the district centre. If they came under contact they would call on the support of the two mortars that were setting up next to us. The mortar men were busily checking that potential target grids had been properly plotted into their hand-held fire control computers. As we waited for A Company to secure the district centre and call us forward, I chatted to Corporal Peter Thorpe and Lance Corporal
Jabron Hashmi who were part of a signal detachment attached to the Battle Group. Initial reports indicated that the Taliban had begun to withdraw from the town on our arrival. This appeared to be confirmed by the fact that A Company were able to move into the district centre without coming under fire.
We saw the party we had been sent to rescue as soon as Tac entered the compound on the heels of A Company: a group of twenty or so Afghans. There were more of them than we had anticipated, including a middle-aged relative of Khan’s who had been shot through the buttocks. All were dressed in the traditional shalwar-kameez of long, flowing baggy shirts worn over loose-fitting trousers. Younger men carried AK-47s and wore ill-fitting web-strapped pouches for their magazines. The older men wore white and black turbans and long grey beards. Deeply lined faces indicated their seniority and a lifetime of hardship. In their midst was a fourteen-year-old male who lay quietly on a makeshift bed of white sheets. Hit in the stomach by an AK-47 round, this was the district security chiefs wounded son who had prompted our mission. He lay uncomplaining as his elder relatives fussed over him and Harvey Pynn checked him out and prepared him for evacuation.
The district centre lay on the eastern bank of the Helmand River on the outskirts of Sangin. It consisted of a typical administrative whitewashed compound. In its centre was an arch-fronted one-storey building and a collection of outhouses surrounded by a high wall. The compound incorporated an orchard and two patches of lawn surrounded by bright Afghan flowers. Next to the compound lay the shell of a large, partially completed structure of two floors, the building work long abandoned. A canal ran off the nearby river and separated the compound from a more modern two-storey building that was the ANP quarters. It was reached from the back of the main compound by crossing a large pipe that acted as a footbridge.
I climbed the crumbling stairs of the half-built building and surveyed the surrounding area from the rooftop, empty AK-47 cases betraying where Khan’s militia had fired their weapons against the Taliban. From my vantage point I could see that the collection of buildings that made up the district centre dominated the antiquated ferry-crossing site that had been used by the patrol during their fateful search for the downed UAV. The river bent and flowed towards Gereshk past the open pebble banks where we had landed that morning. There was also a small rickety footbridge that crossed the river and was swept away at the end of each winter when the melt water came. Set among cultivated fields to its north and south, the beginnings of the urban sprawl of the town lay less than 150 metres away on either side of a wide gravel-strewn wadi bed. A group of goat herders milled about in the dry wadi bed and traded some of their flock. To their east a line of shuttered shops and empty market stalls led through the bazaar to the main part of the town. I could make out a road bridge that took Route 611 through the centre of Sangin and a small number of other two-storey buildings that dominated the town’s skyline. The odd vehicle moved across the bridge and black figures darted between doorways as if to suggest that the townsfolk of Sangin were alive to our presence.
We roasted for an hour in 46°C of heat as we waited for the incoming helicopters to pick up my Tac party and Khan’s supporters from a field by the side of the district centre. But it was nothing compared to the conditions A Company would endure. I was leaving them behind with their mortars and machine guns and the RAP; in all, ninety men and a motley crew of about twenty ANP. Daud had promised to send another fifty ANP in three days’ time to relieve A Company. But for the moment they would have to make do with the light scales of equipment they had brought in with them. In the days that followed A Company lived off their belt order kit and daysacks until their heavier bergens could be brought forward. Conditions in the centre were austere in the extreme and the company adopted what soldiers call ‘hard routine’. The compound had no running water or electricity. The limited water that could be flown forward from Bastion was reserved for drinking purposes only. With the exception of an occasional dip in the canal, there were no washing facilities and the men stopped shaving. They became used to prickly heat as they worked and slept in filthy clothing, in temperatures that reached 50°C. The one latrine consisted of the flat corner of an old storehouse that the ANP used to shit and piss in. To reduce the plague of flies that proliferated in the mass of tight-packed humanity and heat, A Company set up their own latrines using old oil drums near the orchard.
As I left, Pike’s men were already preparing defensive positions around the compound. Built for Third World civic administration rather than defence, the district centre was vulnerable and needed to be fortified against attack. We anticipated that the Taliban would soon return and A Company utilized any materials they could lay their hands on to build sangar positions that would act as bunkers for machine guns and missile launchers. Crumbling, locally made breeze blocks were used to build additional walls, and ration boxes were filled with earth in lieu of sandbags. The FSG located their machine guns and Javelin missile launchers on the roof of the two-storey half-built structure. The height of the building would allow their weapons systems to command the surrounding countryside and it quickly became known as the FSG Tower. Before our departure the men of the mortar section were already digging firing pits into the green lawns for their mortar barrels. Nearby in the main compound building Harvey Pynn was turning one of its small dark rooms into an RAP ready to receive casualties.
What started as a rescue mission was the beginning of a much longer commitment to Sangin. The ANP reinforcements that Governor Daud promised to send never arrived and A Company resigned themselves to being in Sangin for considerably more than the three days they had been promised. Daud reluctantly agreed to attend a shura with the local elders in the district centre on 24 June, four days after A Company arrived. I flew back into Sangin with Daud’s party, which included Charlie Knaggs. The locals reiterated the points that they had already made to Will Pike during a meeting he had held with them on 22 June. In essence they didn’t want to see British troops in the town and believed that they should be left to provide their own security. But they mentioned that they would welcome the economic development our presence could bring to Sangin and hinted that they were being intimidated by the Taliban. After Daud’s shura, the majority of the elders had begun to leave the compound, but as Daud spoke with Charlie Knaggs and me a spokesman for the elders returned. He said that he needed to be given three days to consult with the Taliban and drug w
arlords about accepting a new chief of police and the presence of British troops. It was agreed that we would not patrol into the town during this period until he came back to us with a response. With that he left, we returned to Bastion with the governor’s party and A Company began another period of watching and waiting.
As I flew back on the Chinook I thought about the implications of holding Sangin. I was convinced that we could not sustain Robinson, Gereshk, Now Zad and take on the tasks of holding both Sangin and Musa Qaleh. Although unbeknown to me at the time, we had been sucked into another static commitment that would stretch our thin resources and test our resolve to breaking point. Sangin not only sat in the middle of a confluence of several tribal areas, but it was also the centre of the opium trade in Helmand. These dynamics made the area a volatile melting pot of intertribal factionalism, feuding warlords and a place where the Taliban were determined to establish their ascendancy. It also dictated that it would be where the insurgents would focus their main effort in an attempt to break the will of the British commitment to Helmand. Consequently, it was probably the worst place in the province that 3 PARA could have stumbled into. The uneasy peace in Sangin held for two days, with the exception of an isolated shoot against one of the sangars. Then in the early hours of 27 June the fighting started.
I knew it was bad when I was shaken awake and looked up to see Huw Williams’s face-looming over me. ‘Colonel, you need to come up to the JOC. There has been a contact up in Sangin, there have been casualties and there might be a soldier missing in action.’ I fought to clear my mind from the fuddle of sleep as I threw on my uniform. From what Huw told me I knew it wasn’t A Company. I glanced at my kit, which was packed ready in a corner of my tent; something told me that I would soon be flying out to Sangin. The situation was unclear when I arrived in the JOC but what we knew was that a Coalition Forces patrol had been involved in a heavy fire fight on the southern edges of Sangin. It had been a lift operation to apprehend a Taliban leader. Working out of FOB Robinson they had called on the platoon of Gurkhas stationed there to drive into the outskirts of the town and pick up them and their quarry in Snatch Land-Rovers. The Gurkhas had been ambushed as they drove out to meet the patrol and one of their vehicles had been destroyed by RPGs. As the patrol moved on foot to the pick-up point it had run into the back of the Taliban ambush. A vicious firefight ensued. The patrol managed to fight their way through to the Gurkhas and extract back to the FOB under covering fire provided by the base’s artillery. But in the process one member of the patrol had been killed, another wounded and one of their number was unaccounted for.
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