by Kemp Ross
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida had had an alliance with the Taliban ever since they came to power. There were even rumours that bin Laden had financed the Taliban; and shortly before the attack on the World Trade Center, an al-Qaida suicide bomber had assassinated one of the Taliban's most troublesome opponents. In return, the Taliban had allowed bin Laden to use Afghan territory to set up some of his notorious al-Qaida training camps. It was hardly surprising, then, that in the wake of the September 11 bombings, when bin Laden became the most wanted man in the world, it was in Afghanistan that he hid.
The United States issued an ultimatum to the Taliban. Deliver the leaders of al-Qaida, close their training camps and hand over any terrorists in those camps. The Taliban refused. And so, on 7 October 2001, a coalition of forces from America, Britain, Canada and other NATO countries started military action. The Taliban government fell. Their supporters were forced to retreat from Kabul and then Jalalabad; by the end of the year they had fled their last stronghold of Kandahar city.
The Taliban were dispersed and a new government installed. In 2004 Hamid Karzai, a former Mujahideen, became Afghanistan's first democratically elected president. Coalition forces stayed on in the country in a peacekeeping role. By this time the attention of the world was focused on a more controversial struggle: that of the ongoing war in Iraq.
But the deposed Taliban were not to be so easily defeated. Away from the big cities of Afghanistan and in the smaller, more traditional villages – especially in the south – they started to recruit from the local population and in some areas there was strong support for them. They were not, by any means, universally popular; but they were armed and determined, and as time passed, the threat that they posed to peace in Afghanistan increased. The coalition forces started to prepare offensives to root out the Taliban insurgency and the battle between the two escalated sharply in 2006.
The British government's policy against the Taliban was determined and robust. They could not be allowed to regain power because if that happened Afghanistan would once more become an easy hiding place for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Thousands of British troops were maintained in that country where so many lives had been lost in military conflict over the past 200 years. They were concentrated in the area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban was strongest, Helmand Province, and there they became engaged in what military commanders described as the most ferocious and relentless ground combat British soldiers had seen since the Korean War.
Rumours of the Taliban's brutality became widespread. It was said that when four French special forces soldiers were captured near the northern ISAF base of Kajaki, the insurgents made them beg for death. The men were hung by their feet, then emasculated. They were blinded, then flayed. Once their skin had been stripped off, they were rubbed in salt. Only then were they left to perish. An old wives' tale, or an accurate description of a vicious enemy? It's difficult to say. What is sure is that back home in England, Helmand Province became a byword for violence and danger. And for the troops posted there, it became the scene of a bloody conflict against an unflagging enemy who didn't fear death because they believed they were fighting a holy war.
At Kandahar air base I shared a room with our assistant director, John Conroy. I slept badly and woke early, and we headed off to eat. We had a good breakfast – typical American fare of eggs, sausages, waffles, brownies and juice. It was perfectly adequate – not the best food I'd ever eaten, but Shangri-La compared to what the troops can expect when they're away from the base. We were surrounded by soldiers from all sorts of countries – primarily Canada, but also guys from our allies in the Middle East. A real mixture of faces – including a relatively large number of women in uniform.
After breakfast we went to the PX – the Post Exchange, a kind of shopping mall that exists on American military installations. You can buy all sorts here. To start with it stocked virtually every kind of knife under the sun – ones to gouge someone's eyes out, ones to cut someone's bollocks off. John Conroy took a healthy interest in these knives, earning himself the nickname Rambo; I bought one too, so I guess this pot was calling the kettle black. There were more benign items on sale, of course. We had been told that in the desert sweets would be an important provision: the dust is so dry and caustic that you need something to help lubricate your mouth. We stocked up on American candy. Had we wanted to, we could have bought cheap American boots, stereos, iPods. Less conventionally there were Operation Enduring Freedom mugs – souvenirs of the US government's operation in Afghanistan – and T-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as ‘Kill the Taliban before He Kills You’. The people running the Post Exchange have to do so on a commercial basis, so they stock only the stuff that sells. Hence the fact that it feels a bit like a Midwestern shopping mall with a military twist.
Our shopping spree over, we were transported – along with our twenty flight cases worth of camera equipment – to the airport section of the base, where we awaited the departure of our four-engine turboprop Hercules to Camp Bastion, Helmand Province.
The Hercules flew high, well out of the range of any missiles that some enterprising Taliban might otherwise decide to fire in our direction. From the window of the aircraft during the forty-minute flight all I could see for miles around was desert. There was perhaps one conurbation and certainly no water. This was a hostile, featureless place. We kept our height until we were very close to our destination for reasons of safety, then began a sharp descent.
Camp Bastion came into view.
From the air it looks like some futuristic encampment on the moon. It's massive – 8 square kilometres and at the time of writing home to 4,000 troops. Amazingly it was built in only four months by the Royal Engineers and on this, my first visit, there were areas that were still under construction. From the air you realize just how isolated it is – it's built 20 kilometres from the nearest town. This can be a blessing and a curse. The perimeter of the camp is surrounded by radar, meaning it's impossible to approach Bastion without being seen; but equally it's difficult for the huge quantities of supplies that have to be brought in by truck to get to the base.
The moment we disembarked from the Hercules the heat hit us. Dry, overpowering, the sort of oppressive heat you don't experience anywhere else. I knew this was the one thing the camera could never adequately capture and as I tramped through the dusty earth off the Bastion runway, I wondered how well the crew and I would be able to deal with it. And we'd only been in the open air for a few minutes – already we were covered with sweat – when we came face to face with the brutal reality of warfare.
Lance Corporal George Davey was twenty-three years old and had been in the army for three years. He was a section second of B Company's 5 platoon and had been on operations in the Helmand town of Sangin when he was killed as a result of a firearms accident. His repatriation ceremony took place just after we arrived. Soldiers from different regiments posted to Bastion lined up, quietly and respectfully, on the airstrip. We joined them. The sun beat down on our heads and I noticed quite a few of the lads around us fainting in the heat. A khaki military ambulance waited by the aircraft that would take George's body back to Kandahar and then return it home to his family. It was difficult to keep my eyes off that ambulance because I knew it contained a coffin. There wasn't a sound from the troops as a chaplain spoke in clear, solemn tones; I looked about and saw that the faces all around me were stern and pensive. There were tears. It didn't take much imagination to deduce what was going round their heads and I couldn't stop my mind from wondering who had been waiting back home for this young soldier to return. I later learned that he had a wife and two young daughters. The pain they must have been feeling was something I knew I could never fully understand.
‘The Last Post’ was played as George's coffin, draped in a Union Jack, was lifted from the ambulance and slowly carried by his mates on to the waiting aircraft. We watched as, blurred in the haze of the intense sun, the plane took off. As it passed us it dipped one
wing, a final gesture of respect and an acknowledgement of the sacrifice the soldier it carried had made for his country.
As the plane disappeared into the distance, the solemn crowd dispersed. I could sense that I was not the only one there who was having thoughts about their own mortality and I started to feel even more uncomfortable than before about the fact that in just four days' time I would be heading out to the front line.
In the meantime, though, I had to get used to my new home.
The running of Camp Bastion is an amazing logistical feat. Every soldier, every drop of water and every ammo belt used in combat in Helmand Province passes through these 8 square kilometres of desert. That's a lot of soldiers, a lot of water and a hell of a lot of ammo. But it's not just a processing centre: this was home to 3,000 troops, mostly British but also Danes, Estonians and a handful of Americans. And keeping soldiers safe and well in the unrelenting heat of this dangerous desert is no picnic.
The soldiers at Bastion are housed in air-conditioned pods, a bit like enormous tents perhaps 10 metres long, that can comfortably sleep about twelve men, or more if necessary. The air conditioning is better than nothing, but it is still immensely hot in the pods. Each soldier has an aluminium-framed camping bed, famously impossible to put together. I made the mistake at first of putting a roll-mat over the canvas mattress, but that way no air comes up from underneath, so you cook as you're lying there; once I had figured out to remove the roll-mat I actually found the bed quite comfortable. Come the small hours of the morning, though, the temperature in the desert drops; when this happens the presence of the air conditioning units is more of a hindrance than a help and you're glad of your sleeping bag.
Some of the pods are interconnected. Those that aren't are separated by lines of Hesco barriers. These are collapsible wire mesh boxes with a heavy fabric inlay. They concertina out and are filled with local sand and earth. The resulting fortifications are very effective against enemy fire and although Bastion itself is principally constructed out of concrete, many of the army's Forward Operating Bases in Helmand Province are largely constructed from Hesco. There are ditches all around – a nightmare in the dark, but if the base should come under fire you need somewhere to take cover.
As this was our first trip to Afghanistan we were told we needed to have three or four days' adjustment. This was a very new environment for all of us and it was essential that we acclimatized to it before we went up country. It took some getting used to. The desert air is constantly filled with mini dust whirlwinds. Sometimes they're as big as a truck, sometimes they're as big as a ten-pence piece. The sharp dust gets everywhere, inducing a complaint known as Bastion throat; if you clamp your mouth shut to reduce the effect, you find yourself bleeding from your nose as the dust scrapes abrasively against the skin. Later the authorities at Bastion introduced large trucks to douse the ground and stop the dust from becoming airborne, but when I arrived there in 2007 that particular luxury was some months away.
The affectionately named ‘desert bogey’ was another complaint we would have to get used to. The dry dust that you're breathing in creates massive stalactites that hang down from your nose. They reminded me of being a kid and decorating sandcastles with fistfuls of watery sand. If you pick them, you pull away the surface of your skin. The flies love that and they're always flying round to try to get at your bleeding nostrils. The temptation to rip out your desert bogeys is immense – a bit like trying to eat a doughnut without licking your lips – but it's best to leave them there. It just means you snore a bit more. Or in my case, a lot more.
One way of keeping the dust down is to cover the ground with a kind of interlocking plastic flooring. This is everywhere – in the pods, on the way to the mess, on the way to the shitters. The sanitary facilities are pretty good: clean and comfortable, if unbearably hot. You don't want to go and powder your nose at midday in Camp Bastion because you come out feeling as if you've just had a sauna. The showers are equally acceptable, but again the water is boiling hot because the tanks in which it's kept have been baked by the sun. Cold water for washing is hard to come by.
We quickly became accustomed to life as what the troops on the ground would jokingly refer to as REMFs – rear-echelon motherfuckers. I went running each day, and made use of the gym with some bulky Royal Anglians and a few Estonians who were built like brick shithouses. Everyone was welcoming and friendly, although I had to put up with the inevitable piss-taking from the soldiers encamped there as I had on Salisbury Plain. It was schoolboy stuff, mostly. If you respond to something that's intended to be obvious and a wind-up, that's a laugh. If someone shouts out ‘Ross!’ and you turn round, that's a great joke. If someone shouts out ‘Grant!’ and you turn round, it's an even better one.
‘What have you got stuck on your heels, Ross?’ You raise your foot and turn round – it's an effeminate posture. You look like a girl with a handbag, it means you're gay and the jokers fall about laughing. No one could say it's sophisticated comedy, but I got my fair share of it and it was mostly pretty good-natured, designed to test if the new boy, the pampered bloke off the TV, was cut out for life in Camp Bastion. I took it in my stride, responding with what I hoped was good humour, and after a while the ribbing started to die away.
Most of B Company were out on an operation, but we'd go to the Anglian mess tent and chat with those who were there. The mess is about the size of three tennis courts and is just by the laundry where the troops can take their washing – or ‘dobie’ – to be cleaned. In the mess hall you need to wash your hands with an alcohol gel before joining the queue for food. The food was adequate if not great. I would never have a go at the caterers because they do an amazing job with what they're given. Not only that, but being stuck in a kitchen full of ovens when it's 50 degrees outside suggests to me that even though they're not on the front line they're hardly living a cushty existence. However, out in the desert there isn't much opportunity to supply the troops with fresh food. There are always baked beans on the menu, and maybe some pie. What you really want in that kind of heat is something lighter. If you were lucky there would be some salad with tuna out of a tin. And pigs might fly.
Compared to what anyone is used to back in England, nobody could say that Camp Bastion was the lap of luxury. But in military terms it was fine. And it wouldn't be long before I would find out just why soldiers out on the ground would be desperate to return to the relative security and comfort of their base.
5. T4
My introduction to hostilities in Helmand Province was as part of Operation Lastay Kulang. Lastay kulang is Pashtun for pickaxe handle. I suppose the name should have been indication enough that this would be no gentle stroll through the sand. It was with a certain amount of apprehension that I attended, as instructed by Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Carver, a briefing with the rest of B Company so that we could learn what the operational intentions of Lastay Kulang were.
When I had met him back at Pirbright Barracks – a place that seemed a million miles from where I was now – Stuart Carver had seemed, as I said before, a little detached. Now that I saw him performing the nitty-gritty of his job, the qualities that had propelled him to CO of the Anglians became perfectly clear. He was a career soldier with a good sense of humour but who largely kept himself to himself. There were no airs and graces about him, no snobbery. He was a family man, and I had the impression that that sense of family extended to the soldiers under his command. I found that I liked him very much.
We met during the unbearable heat of the afternoon. Some of B Company had only just returned from another operation and the difference between them and the guys who'd had a few days relaxing in the relative tranquillity of Bastion was astonishing. Major Mick Aston, OC of B Company, looked as if he'd had a punishing time of it. He'd dropped a load of weight, his skin was raw and his face was covered with scraggly stubble. As with Josh Hill, most noticeable were his eyes: he had a dark, serious expression, no doubt the result of several days of intense stress. It
was an expression I would see any number of times during my time in Afghanistan. If you'd seen him on civvy street you might have thought he'd had a few heavy nights. And so he had – but this was a Taliban hangover.
Mick was not the only one who looked like he'd had a hard time, and it truly brought home to me how demanding the next few days were going to be, as did Stuart Carver's matter-of-fact briefing. ‘What you are about to receive,’ he announced to the assembled company, ‘is orders for Op Lastay Kulang. It's an offensive operation in the area north-east of Sangin and the wider aspiration is to keep the Taliban on the back foot. The reason we want to do that is to allow reconstruction and development to get underway and there hasn't really been much of that so far. There's been a lot of talk about it, but no actual physical tangible results to display to the local people that we're going to provide them with something. All these people in Sangin are wavering about whether to fully support us or whether to go back to the Taliban.’
They call it the battle for hearts and minds, but in the fight against the Taliban, it's a battle that can often be forgotten about. From our Western standpoint it is easy to assume that the ordinary Afghan villagers in Helmand Province see the war in black-and-white terms, as you or I do: Taliban bad, British Army good. They don't. For years – centuries, in fact – Afghanistan played host to many invading forces. None of these forces were there for entirely selfless reasons. The Soviet occupation occurred within living memory; it is hardly surprising, then, that many Afghans view the current occupying force with suspicion, even though they might not wish a return to the brutalities of the Taliban era.
The British Army understand this and there is a genuine desire up the chain of command both to engage in projects of reconstruction and to win over the respect, if not the affection, of the Afghan people. The issue adds an extra layer of difficulty to the struggle in Helmand Province, not to mention an extra layer of ambiguity. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the military's policy towards the poppy harvest of Afghanistan.
