by Ben Anderson
Ben Anderson
10/9/11
Most of the time, I have transcribed in English what Afghans said in Dari or Pashtu. I worked from over 170 tapes and had everything translated as carefully as possible. In the process, I often found that what people were actually saying was radically different to what American or British troops were told they were saying. I have only included the interpreters’ words or phrases in Dari or Pashtu when mistranslations and miscommunications were particularly revealing.
I have had to be sloppy in using the word ‘Taliban’ to describe all opposition fighters in Afghanistan. It would take another book to explain the many different motives of the many different groups currently fighting, ranging from angry farmers to former Mujahadeen commanders. It is safe to say that a great many have no relationship with the pre 9/11 Taliban and even fewer have any link with or affinity to Al-Qaeda. Many are just angry local men who feel obliged to fight government or foreign forces. It’s often said that this is simply the way they are, but in many cases they took a considerable amount of persuading. These are the men I’m referring to when I say ‘Taliban’.
THE BRITISH ARMY
JUNE TO OCTOBER, 2007
QUEEN’S COMPANY
THE GRENADIER GUARDS
The British Army, it was thought, would be perfect for Helmand province. From their extensive experience in Northern Ireland, they knew how to interact with people, and with their self-deprecating, informal approach, should be brilliant at winning hearts and minds. They first deployed to Helmand in 2006, when they were the only major military force in the province. They expected to stay no longer than three years.
The Ministry of Defence had kept reporters away from the fighting. But when the soldiers started releasing their own footage, shot on hand-held cameras and mobile phones, showing fierce fighting from tiny, isolated and almost derelict outposts, they were forced to change their policy. After over eighteen months of negotiations, I was finally allowed to join the troops in the summer of 2007.
The MoD weren’t the only ones who didn’t want me in Helmand. The BBC had also shown little interest. The trip only happened at all because I’d been supported by one executive, who had commissioned me before. Everyone else thought there was nothing to say or learn about the war in Afghanistan, and even less public interest. Only when I returned with hours of footage of battles that lasted for days was I given a slot in peak time.
‘My conscience is clear because it was a genuine mistake. You know and I know the Taliban were keeping those people there because it was a target’, said Lieutenant Colonel Richard Westley, the Commanding Officer of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters. He was holding a shura (a meeting of elders) with Dur Said Ali Shah, the Mayor of Gereshk, the second-largest town in Helmand province. ‘I would like to make a goodwill payment to help with the cost of the funeral. This is not compensation. Nothing can compensate for the loss of a whole family. But it might just help with the payment for the ceremony, the funeral and the guests that have to be entertained as part of Afghan protocol.’
The Mayor nodded.
‘I will rely on your judgment and wisdom to tell me when the best time to do that is’, said the Colonel.
The Mayor nodded again but remained silent.
On the day that I first arrived in Helmand province, twenty-five civilians had been killed by a 500lb bomb dropped on a building from which the Taliban were firing. Only after the bomb had been dropped and the fighting stopped did the British soldiers who had called for the air strike realise their mistake. As well as around thirty fighters, they found the bodies of civilians, including nine women and three children. They had been hiding in a small room in one corner of the compound.
‘The intensity of fire from that building was such that trees and branches were being knocked down by it, and the risk to my soldiers was so great that we engaged with an aircraft and dropped a bomb’, the Colonel explained.
Every senior British soldier I spoke to was certain that the people had tried to flee but were prevented from doing so.
The Colonel said that even the man whose family was killed blamed the Taliban.
‘He was vehemently against them and holds them responsible for a pretty deceitful and cynical incident where they rounded his family into a building, then fought from that building, knowing that we would respond. We killed all the Taliban but unfortunately, and unknown to us, we killed all the civilians that the Taliban had been incarcerating there. We were duped. And frankly, that rather hurts because we like to think we’re a little bit cleverer. While we are deeply deeply regretful about it, it is some comfort when people come up and say “look, we don’t hold you responsible, we know who is bringing about the evil in the valley and it isn’t ISAF (International Security Assistance Force)”.’
President Karzai denounced the incident on television, saying that the ‘careless’ killing of innocents will wipe out any goodwill generated by everything else foreign governments are trying to do in Afghanistan. ‘Afghan life is not cheap and should not be treated as such’, he said, more angry than I had ever seen him. The deaths took the toll for 2007 to almost 250, more than the number killed the previous year. It was still only July.
The Colonel addressed the Mayor directly. ‘It is my promise to you that we will not again strike buildings unless we are absolutely sure that civilians are not in the area. I will find the Taliban and I will destroy them. But if I kill ten Taliban and one civilian, that is a failure.’
Afghan homes are surrounded by high and impenetrable walls. The actual living quarters are hidden from view. The pilot who dropped the bomb had flown over the building twice and seen nothing but Taliban fighters with weapons. That there were no civilians to be seen is hardly a surprise – they were unlikely to stand out in the open after the Taliban had gone into their homes and started firing. It is impossible to know that there are no civilians in a compound unless someone can go in and check every room, which they can’t do in the middle of a fight. The bomb had been dropped at night, in complete darkness.
I asked if there would be a change in tactics.
‘No. We just have to apply the tactics we’ve used in the past with a greater degree of certainty. Individuals have to be targeted directly, without buildings being hit. We need to be that bit more certain there are no civilians in the area.’
And if this happens again, I asked, do you stand any chance of winning the support of the local people? The people of Gereshk, he explained, were pragmatic. They would sit on the fence and see what happened before choosing which side to take. (Or whether to take sides at all, I thought.)
‘I think we’re at a fairly critical stage. I don’t think another incident of that nature would undermine the good that we’ve done. But I’m just not prepared to take that risk’, he said.
It wasn’t chance that the first meeting I saw between Coalition troops and Afghans was about civilian casualties. The subject of damage to people’s homes, or security in general, dominated the vast majority of discussions I saw. More than a year after entering Helmand, the British effort, which was supposed to be about aiding reconstruction and development, had become overwhelmingly military. The soldiers were struggling to protect themselves and the measures they were taking were costing the Afghans dearly.
The Mayor’s phone rang with a tune that sounded like a theme from a Super Mario game.
‘Good ring tone, good vibe’, said Westley, nodding his head slightly to the rhythm.
The shuras took place every week and were open either to the public or to elected Afghan officials, who were supposed to be consulted on military operations and development projects, while being mentored on how to govern. But with the British faces changing every six months, Afghan officials often simply went along with whatever was being said and took what they could. The long-term deals were done elsewhere.
Lieutenant Colonel Westley and Mayor Ali Shah sat on cushions at one end of a long, old carpet, in a small room just outsid
e the soldiers’ accommodation in Forward Operating Base (FOB) Price, the main British base just outside Gereshk. Below them, on the carpet itself, were an Afghan National Army (ANA) commander, a police chief, three British soldiers, ‘Lucky’ the terp (interpreter), and two American Special Forces soldiers, sporting thick beards, who never spoke.
‘How are the people in the town feeling about security at the moment?’ asked the Colonel.
The police chief said that the people wanted the Taliban out but they didn’t want these big operations. The people didn’t understand why the Taliban had to be fought in their midst. They wanted to know why there couldn’t be another front line outside the town. Colonel Westley promised that would happen one day. The Afghan Army commander said the Taliban hid their weapons under their scarves and hid themselves among the people. They took shovels and pretended to be working in the fields. ‘And as soon as you’re gone, they throw away the shovels’, he said.
‘That’s what insurgents do’, said the Colonel, ‘but with your help, the NDS (the National Directorate of Security – Afghan intelligence) and fingerprinting equipment I’ll soon have ... we’ll be able to see if these people have fired a weapon and if they are locals or Punjabis, Pakistanis or Chechens.’ There had been intelligence reports and rumours about foreign fighters, including British Pakistanis (one with a Midlands accent), Arabs and even a sixteen-year-old female Chechen sniper.
‘Between us we will sort them out’, said Westley. He ended every statement with a sentence like this, always using the words ‘we’ or ‘us’. A reminder that this was supposed to be a team effort. It was a sentiment or illusion that the Afghans didn’t seem to share. They always said ‘you’.
* * * * *
A few days later, after a heated argument with my Ministry of Defence minder, I attended another shura with some local farmers, about more civilian casualties caused by air strikes.
‘Where apologies are required, they will be made’, said Captain Patrick Hennessey. He was a well-spoken officer (you can usually identify a British Officer just by hearing them speak) from the Grenadier Guards, attached to the battle group commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Westley. ‘Then, the process of reparations will be looked into. Compensation is a big thing in the Afghan culture, in a way that we find quite strange. There’s a very clear financial compensation defined for the loss of a daughter, a son or an uncle and it’s something that we will go into in this meeting in depth’, he said.
The strikes had mostly been American, and been called by the Brits, but everyone defending them was from the Afghan government; the first and only time I saw any representatives from the central government in Helmand. Captain Hennessey and an American soldier – who’d appeared from nowhere – sat at the back of the room but were soon fast asleep in their plastic chairs.
An official, the head of the anti-crime department of the Gereshk district police, stood up to speak. A small man, with a neatly-cropped beard that had started to turn grey, he was as emotional as the men he addressed and struggled not to break down. ‘The ISAF operations are not useful’, he said. ‘They leave and the Taliban come back, so we will always have these problems. Local commanders, ex-Mujahadeen, can establish security, not outsiders. They are indiscriminate. They see no difference between women and children and the Taliban.’ His finger trembled as he raised it in emphasis. I thought he was going over the top, trying to let everyone know that he empathised with them. But then I realised that he too had lost several family members to an air strike. ‘You can ask anyone about how honestly I have served the government and if I have any links with the Taliban’, he said, almost in tears. ‘But they have hit me so hard that I am stunned. What can I do? I have lost four of my brothers. How can I look after their families now?’
Neither the other officials nor the farmers reacted. The fact that this had happened to a senior government official surprised no one. ‘After the bombing, no ground troops came out at all. They could have come but no one did. I don’t have anything else to say, my only request is that in future operations, civilian casualties should be prevented’, he said, although the only two people in the room with any connection to air strikes were fast asleep.
The elders raged about the bombings, saying that the Taliban were often far away by the time the bombs were dropped, that security was getting worse and that people would soon start joining the Taliban. ‘Life has no meaning for me any more’, said one man, ‘I have lost twenty-seven members of my family. My house has been destroyed. Everything I’ve built for seventy years is gone.’
Metal containers were brought in, placed on tables and opened. The elders were given bricks of five hundred Afghani notes, signing for them by dipping their right thumbs in ink and making fingerprints. Captain Hennessey thought that millions of dollars were being handed over: $100,000 per person killed. The actual amount was closer to $2000. The men were told the money had come from the president himself. As he handed it out, the ANA commander said, ‘May God give you the fortitude to bear this and protect you from such sorrows in the future.’
The money, a huge amount in Helmand, was handed out in front of the Afghan National Police. I worried that the men (who carried the money wrapped in sheets and would bury it somewhere in their compounds) might soon be receiving another unwelcome visit.
Afterwards, I spoke to some of the men who had received compensation.
‘I lost twenty people and I was given two million Afghanis [about $46,000]’ said one man, explaining what had happened. ‘It was before 12.30 at night when your forces came to our area. They were involved in a fight but the Taliban retreated. I had put everyone, all the family and the children, into one room but after the fighting was over we brought them outside to their beds. Later, a jet came and dropped bombs on our house. Two rooms were destroyed. In one of the rooms, my two nephews and my son were there. My son survived. I rescued him from the debris. In the other room were six of my uncle’s family. All became martyrs. They were buried under the soil. I moved the children away and came back to rescue those under the debris. While we were trying to do that, the children were so frightened they started running away. The plane shot them one by one.
‘All we want is security, whether you bring it or the Taliban. We are not supporting war. We support peace and security. If you bring peace and security you are my king. If they bring security they are our kings. I want nothing. I don’t want a post in the government. All I want is to be able to move around.
‘I was given this money for the martyrs but it means nothing to me. I wouldn’t give one person for all the money I’ve been given. I’m grateful that the president has paid attention to us but if you gave someone the whole world it wouldn’t bring a person back.’
He was in tears by the time he’d finished speaking. I couldn’t ask him any more questions.
A week later, I awoke at 5.30 a.m. to go on a reconnaissance patrol with the Grenadier Guards into the upper Gereshk valley. The valley is part of what’s called the Green Zone, a narrow strip of some of the most fertile land in Afghanistan. It follows the Helmand River from the Hindu Kush all the way to Iran. In contrast to its fortified Baghdad namesake, the Helmand Green Zone is where most of the fighting takes place. Its irrigation ditches, hedgerows and high-walled compounds are perfect for guerrilla warfare and the Taliban had created a network of trenches, tunnels, booby traps and weapons caches. The American Special Forces called it the ‘Heart of Darkness’ but its neatly arranged green fields, thick bushes and hedgerows make it look oddly like the English countryside.
The patrol was to a village, Zumbelay, from where six families had recently fled, saying they’d been forced out by fifteen Taliban fighters. After walking less than a kilometre, we saw other villagers running away. This usually means they know there are Taliban close by and there will soon be fighting. Suddenly, a single shot ripped the air around us. Then came dozens more, so loud and so fast that it felt as if we were being attacked from every tree and bush in sight. I l
ay down in the grass next to Glenn Snazle, whose bulk, tattoos and cleanly-shaved head made him look like a classic sergeant major. An awful burst of popping filled the air above our heads. That isn’t the sound of guns being fired. It’s the noise of bullets breaking the sound barrier. It’s a sound you’re never supposed to hear, because it means you’re far too close. I gripped the earth with both hands as if it that might lessen the impact of being shot.
Four or five RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) whooshed over our heads, sometimes exploding, sometimes sinking into the wet mud around us. We ran to one side and crouched next to a wall. An RPG exploded on the exact spot where we had been lying. Some of the Afghan and British soldiers charged towards the direction of the gunfire and soon there was so much noise it was impossible to tell who was firing what and at who. Two bullets hit the wall next to us with such velocity that we instinctively flinched. I heard someone report a casualty over the radio; an Afghan soldier, with a three-inch hole in the back of his neck, staggered past supported by two of his colleagues.
The Taliban were attacking from three positions and trying to get another group to move west, to surround us. (‘They draw you in, then the horns of the bull come down on either side of you’, is how one soldier described the tactic.) We heard a series of howls, followed by deep thudding booms. I was told these were Chinese 107 rockets, being fired from yet another position. There was an awful wait as the rockets arched through the air, then landed hundreds of metres beyond where we crouched.