by Ben Anderson
The boys talked among themselves. ‘Did they destroy your other house?’ said the one in the brown shawl.
‘Yes, they destroyed everything’, replied Saifullah.
‘They will destroy this room as well.’
‘Why?’ asked the younger boy, who looked about seven years old.
‘Because they want to be able to see from there. They can see the road from that position.’ The boy pointed to the compound from where we had come and then to the roof where the rest of the platoon had set up machine-gun positions.
The boys walked through a gate in the wall and into the field the marines had thought they were blasting their way to. ‘Did they make two holes in your house?’ asked the younger boy.
The boy in the brown shawl nodded. ‘They are going to make a bigger hole over there as well’, he said, pointing to the gate they had just walked through. ‘They think our doors are no good for them.’
The younger boy had a pained expression on his face. It looked like all this was new to him. It was the face of a child walking past a man asleep on the streets and asking why no one was willing to help. I walked up to the two young boys and flipped over the little viewing screen on my camera so they could see themselves. It was a pathetic attempt to make them feel better. They giggled and pointed at themselves, then became suddenly shy again. Behind them, the little girl was clearly eager to see herself too but she froze at the top of the stairs. I wanted to take the camera to her but I froze, too.
Beyond the compound walls, the bulldozers and ABVs strained for a few seconds as they came to walls and buildings, then exhaled as they flattened them.
As it got dark, we all put on every piece of clothing we had before we got into our sleeping bags. I tried to get to sleep before it got too cold but it was impossible, even wearing two pairs of thick socks, boots, trousers, gloves, a jacket and a woolly hat. By 2 a.m. I thought I’d got frostbite; my toes were so cold they felt as if they’d drop off if I flicked them. At 4 a.m., half-mad with tiredness and cold, I got up, hopped across the roof in my sleeping bag, emptied the contents of my backpack and put my feet in, pulling the zips on either side up as far as they’d go. But it didn’t make any difference. At dawn, everyone woke and immediately lit cigarettes. It was impossible to tell whether they were exhaling smoke or cold breath. Two marines held a serious conversation about how handy the cold would be if they stepped on an IED. Frozen stumps, they thought, would bleed less.
‘We’re moving in one minute, so if you want to follow a cleared path, get your shit on’, said Lieutenant Grell, who was already packed up and ready to go.
‘Let’s go destroy some more people’s walls, man’, said the marine who’d blown the last two walls the night before.
We walked down the stairs and out of the compound. Before the sun had crept over the horizon to offer a tiny promise of warmth, we walked a hundred metres up Pharmacy Road, turned right, climbed through what had been a window and entered a building that looked close to collapse.
Not until I’d walked around inside and read the graffiti did I realise we were in the old British base, FOB Wishtan. Lima Company had reached their objective.
* * * * *
Sergeant Giles and his squad started conducting patrols to the neighbouring buildings. They all had to be cleared and if they were uninhabited, demolished. At the first gate, a tiny old man greeted us. He looked surprised when the marines asked permission to enter, as if he weren’t used to having a choice. The man had a feeble, buckled frame, with huge ears, pushed outwards by his black turban. His thick, white beard curled back in a long S-shape under his chin but his moustache, and the hair on his cheeks, starting just below his eyes, was black. His eyes were pleading, and the expression on his face was at once sad, kind, wise, and pertified. He led us into his home – four rooms off a cross-shaped corridor – and started to walk up the stairs to the roof. The marines asked if it was safe. The man stopped. He didn’t know, he said; he hadn’t been up there for months.
‘We have no other choice, there are so many mines in this area. We have no choice but to sit in here for hours.’
‘How long have you lived here?’ asked Rock. ‘Six to seven months’, said the old man.
Another old man appeared, even more frail and bent-over than the first. The green turban on his head, and the once-white shawl that hung over his back, were so big on his emaciated body that it was almost impossible to see where his shoulders might be. ‘We are so scared because of all the explosions’, he said, slowly walking towards us. ‘I am a poor person. I have nowhere to go, what can we do?’ He squatted on the floor in the corridor, next to his friend. They pointed to their shattered windows. Rock promised they would be compensated, then told them that there was about to be a big explosion and they shouldn’t be afraid.
‘You are better than the others, we can talk to you’, the second old man said to Rock. I assumed that ‘others’ meant the Taliban. In places like Wishtan, people saw both sides almost every day. The idea that they would be anything other than as pliant as possible was ludicrous, especially considering how helpless most of the people were. ‘I have some military experience in Kabul, I know how government works’, the old man went on. ‘These others, we don’t know where they come from; we cannot go out at night. If someone is screaming outside no one will come out because they are afraid.’
‘Yes, I know, it’s very difficult’, said Rock, sadly. ‘Life in Afghanistan, especially in Sangin, is very difficult. I don’t know how you live in this area.’
‘What can we do? We have no choice’, said the old man.
‘We pray to God for peace in Afghanistan’, said Rock.
‘We are so poor we can’t even afford to pay the fare of a vehicle. I have no children, it’s only me and my old wife’, said the first man. ‘He has one son and three or four girls’, he gestured towards his friend. ‘They are all ill. All the doors and windows have been blown up by mines.’ I’d guessed the men were in their seventies or eighties but the mention of children made me think. I was shockingly bad at working out Afghan people’s ages, often overestimating by several decades.
A third old man joined us. His right eye was badly infected; it looked like it was cast from creamy-coloured, misty glass, like a prized marble. The three men chatted with Rock, who tried to interpret highlights of what they said to the marines, so that they might show some sympathy. He said, almost begging, that they were ‘Persian people, very good guys. Their knowledge is family but they are so poor. If they had money they would go back to their homeland, in Ghor province [in central Afghanistan].’ He said that because they spoke Farsi (Persian), no one spoke to them, so they trusted no one in the neighbourhood. ‘Tell them I don’t either’, said Sergeant Giles, as he walked past. Another marine pointed into a small room, with long brown finger marks on the wall. ‘So you shit in here, wipe your ass with your hand and then wash your hand here’, he said, laughing, pointing to the wall.
The explosion Rock had warned the men of shook the house. The man with the diseased eye flinched, gasping slightly, as if he had been slapped hard on the back. I didn’t know how he survived a single night in that house.
I followed four marines as they put ladders between roofs to a neighbouring mosque, where they set up a couple of machine-gun positions and kept watch for a few hours. They could see the building on top of the hill where they had taken one of their first casualties, who’d needed a double amputation after an old IED exploded. ‘That’s Building 47’, said Giles. ‘Whenever you came up on that hill and exposed yourself to this side of the hill for longer than five minutes you’d start getting shot at from over here.’ We now sat on the buildings the Taliban had disappeared into after such attacks but Giles was under no illusions about how much effect that would have. ‘They’ll still operate in this area, just not as freely’, he said. ‘They’ll just move east, towards the desert and into the wadis they had used to transport weapons.’
Even if the marines could co
mpletely halt the Taliban’s ability to operate in Sangin, it was one of only a handful of towns and districts that had anything like the manpower and resources needed. On maps of Afghanistan – even just of Helmand province – these towns were mere dots. It was easy for the Taliban to move on, as they had since the initial invasion.
‘Holy shit, that’s big as fuck, dude’, said a marine, digging out a huge bullet from the wall with his knife. I asked if it had been fired by Americans: ‘I hope so’, he replied. Some kids in the courtyard below asked for chocolate and offered to sell us what looked like chillies. ‘I ain’t eating your pepper, it’ll give me the shits’, said the marine.
I asked Giles what he’d been told about Sangin before he came. ‘We went on YouTube and there were hundreds of videos from the British. It was mostly air strikes and huge firefights. All the news articles we read, it was all “one of the worst places in Afghanistan” so we knew it was going to be a tough deployment. Marines like to fight, so we were excited to go somewhere that we knew there’d be plenty of fighting.’ I asked if there had been fear too. ‘You’re definitely scared too, scared and excited. I’d say before you get here, mostly excited and once you get here, a little more scared. It’s a mix of both.’
He said the Taliban were very good at guerrilla warfare. ‘We have way more guys than them, much better weapons, supplies, all that stuff, and they still manage to make it a good fight. So they’re good at sneaking around, they’re good at ambushes, they’re good at IEDs.’ I asked the question I’d often asked: have you actually seen the Taliban? ‘Actually seen them, no. Most of the time you’ll just see muzzle flashes or the dust signature from where they fired but I haven’t actually personally seen any. There’s only a couple of guys in my squad that have actually seen them.’
I asked how he kept on going out, when so many of his friends and colleagues had been maimed or killed. ‘It’s just ingrained in the marines or in any military: you just keep going, you have to get the job done. It’s scary. But it makes you want to go out and get the guys that have hurt your friends or tried to hurt you, so it’s a mix of things.’ I told him that things had got worse every year when the Brits were here and that by the end of their time someone was blown up every few days. Giles said he hoped the marines could win in Sangin. ‘If we give them [the people] a better option than the Taliban, then hopefully they’ll choose us.’
* * * * *
Back at the old British patrol base, I climbed on to the roof. The bulldozers went back and forth on either side of Pharmacy Road, flattening every wall and building in sight. Sergeant Giles was on the roof next to me. I asked if what we were watching made him feel bad. ‘Er ... not really’, he replied, without elaborating. The marines had several arguments for anyone who did feel bad. The people here probably didn’t own the shitty houses they were living in, they’d be given far more money than they were worth and some of them would be rebuilt by the marines much better than they were before.
The rest of the marines were inside, eating, resting, enjoying having reached their objective in one piece.
‘This is our shitty new patrol base’, said one with a smile.
‘We’ve still got ninety days though. Ninety days to keep our legs’, said another, smiling. ‘Three days of hard fighting and now we can masturbate in privacy.’
‘This is where we jerk off and shit’, said Zeimus, as he disappeared into a tiny room with a camouflage sheet for a door, the closest thing they had to a private space.
‘This is our new place. It’s great, a lot of concrete’, said another, stamping his foot on the floor. ‘We like concrete, so it’s mission accomplished.’ ‘Yeah!’ screamed another marine and the two embraced. It was indeed a massive relief to step on concrete; the only surface in Sangin which couldn’t conceal an IED. The physical sensation of hard and flat ground under my boots was so soothing. It was difficult to understand how we’d walked on soft earth for so long without breaking down.
Back on the roof, I could see the house the marines had mistakenly blown their way into the day before. The three boys and the little girl who had emerged from the basement in shock were there. The wall that separated their field from Pharmacy Road had been demolished; their house, and their family, was exposed, probably for the first time in their lives. Seeing Afghan houses without their high and impenetrable walls is like seeing western houses without windows, doors, curtains or blinds. But much worse, because a lot of Afghan family life happens within the compound walls but outside the main rooms. Without the essential privacy the outer walls had given them, the children looked naked and pathetic, afraid even to move while so many people could see them.
One of the older boys was walking slowly and nervously towards the building where we were. I jogged down the stairs and grabbed Rock, telling him that the boy was outside and needed to talk to someone. The bulldozers were getting closer, destroying everything on either side of Pharmacy Road. It looked like the boy’s house was next and I wasn’t sure the marines had told their CO – or the men in the bulldozers – that there were at least four children inside. That was one of the few times when I felt sure the tiny role I played in the world was important; that I was in a unique position to report something essential. Suddenly, I had the courage and conviction that I assumed other journalists always had and that many others thought I had. We met the boy at the edge of the field, about twenty metres from the old patrol base. Curiously, the boy had a broad smile on his face, something I’d often seen local people often do in Helmand – look as unthreatening as possible to anyone strong and potentially violent. For most people, it was all they could do.
‘They will destroy the whole house?’ he said, still smiling. ‘There are children in these houses and they are scared, it’s cold outside.’
‘No, no they will cause no destruction’, said Rock, ‘they will just destroy that wall.’
‘My father is coming. He is very upset.’
‘I know this must make you angry. If Americans came to my house and did this, I would be angry and I know you are.’
A stocky, bearded man walked towards us. He looked scared as he watched the bulldozer flatten a wall on the opposite side of Pharmacy Road. He was sweating; his movements were jittery and panicked but as he approached, he also smiled broadly, and shook our hands. He wore a long, light blue shalwar kameez, with a small label stitched to the chest pocket that read ‘Lucky’.
‘What is happening here?’ he asked, so terrified that the words came out somewhere between a chuckle and a whimper.
‘Sorry, but this is how it is. They will compensate you’, said Rock. He made it sound as if the bulldozers would indeed flatten everything we could see, as they feared.
‘All our belongings are there in that house, are you destroying it?’ the man asked. Rock didn’t know what to say. Buildings with people in them were supposed to be safe but no one was checking. And the man’s house was right next to the old patrol base. ‘Tell them that our stuff is there, we are poor people, what should we do? Tell him that our children are there!’
The Marines’ Civil Affairs Officer arrived. Rock began explaining to him that the man owned the house we were looking at.
‘All our stuff and our children are in there’, the man said again, his panic increasing. He struggled to remain calm. His smile had gone and his expression was desperate. ‘Do you want to destroy my compound?’ he pleaded.
‘No, we’re not going to destroy your compound’, said the Civil Affairs Officer. ‘Tell him it’s just the walls. It’s for the security for everybody because this whole road has been laced with explosives and we’re getting rid of it so we can keep security down this whole road, so his family can feel safer.’
‘At the back of my compound there’s another with a family ...’, the man said.
‘As long as there’s people in it it’s not going to get destroyed.’
Behind him, as he spoke, bulldozers flattened walls. When they reversed they bleeped loudly and repeat
edly, an absurd warning, far too little and far too late.
The man was asked his father’s name and his tribe. No one made an effort to address his obvious fears, no one apologised for the destruction or for the terror his children felt. As the Civil Affairs Officer made notes, Rock tried to reassure the man.
‘You are a poor man, you mind your own business. It is good for you to have a base here.’
‘But we are worried that if there is a base and someone takes a shot at it that we will be held responsible.’
‘Our presence is good for you, you live in this area, so no one can shoot at you.’
Rock told the Civil Affairs Officer what had been said. ‘Tell him I’m sorry for the inconvenience but it’s going to be safer for everyone and he’s going to get reimbursed at the end of this’, was the reply. Two more men approached from the other side of Pharmacy Road. Both wore dark green shalwar kameez and turbans. One wore a brown waistcoat, the other a brown blazer. They were ordered to stop and show that they weren’t carrying weapons or wearing explosives belts.
‘Nothing! There is nothing!’ they said, lifting up their tops to reveal bare chests and stomachs, then pulling up their loose-fitting trousers to reveal bare legs. They gestured towards an electricity pole that had almost been pushed over as a wall was flattened. ‘It didn’t knock down the line, just the pole’, said the Civil Affairs Officer, smiling.
‘This is our house, this is our area’, the men said, pointing to several buildings just off Pharmacy Road. It looked like they were next for the bulldozers; the walls surrounding the first house had already gone and large white crosses had been sprayed on the other buildings.
‘The engineers will come and rebuild it’, said Rock. ‘You will be compensated for all of this. Come here tomorrow, we will talk and we will assess the damage and they will pay you accordingly. Come tomorrow, every problem will be solved.’
‘Give us the compensation and we will rebuild it’, said one of the men.