On the afternoon of 3rd November, the team were chatting in the compound’s courtyard with a number of their Afghan colleagues. Just back from a patrol, they’d removed their helmets and body armour and put their weapons to one side. They were sitting on a step that ran around the edge of the compound’s main building, relaxing in the gentle sunshine.
Suddenly one of the Afghan policemen, known only as Gulbuddin, stepped into the courtyard and opened fire on the soldiers with an AK-47. They were all lined up for him, and never stood a chance. Sergeant Major Chant was one of the first to be hit, along with Sergeant Matthew Telford and Guardsman James Major. Sitting near them was Lance Corporal Liam Culverhouse, who made a run for it.
“It just all went so fast,” he said. “When he saw me, he just basically unloaded a magazine firing at me. He only managed to hit me six times, thank God.”
Lance Corporal Culverhouse was hit in both arms and legs, and blinded in one eye.
Gulbuddin moved from the courtyard into the main building, still shooting. He hit eleven British soldiers in total – killing five – before fleeing the compound. The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack, although British commanders had suggested the rampage was more likely the result of a grudge. Gulbuddin himself was never caught.
A preliminary hearing into the killings at Blue 25 had already taken place on 11th February 2011. It was told that drug use was commonplace amongst the ANP, with Gulbuddin known to be a regular user of cannabis. Coroner David Ridley told the hearing in Trowbridge, Wiltshire: “There is a culture that the smoking of opium or cannabis is, to them, like to us the smoking of cigarettes.”
The hearing was also told by Paul Kilcoyne, representing the families of Sergeant Telford and Guardsman Major, that drug use amongst the ANP was rife: “They would smoke drugs so they couldn’t walk straight – and these are people with our weapons.”
It was obvious the full inquest was going to paint a pretty appalling picture of the ANP. The preliminary hearing heard that more damning evidence was to come, detailing the ANP’s penchant for skipping training, ignoring their mentors and sometimes refusing to go out on patrol. The deaths of the five British soldiers had made headlines around the world, so the inquest was likely to generate a fresh wave of negative press.
Against this backdrop, I had to find something positive to say about the ANP. The training centre on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah had opened just a few weeks after Gulbuddin’s rampage at Blue 25, its launch brought forward as a result of the killings. Since December 2009 more than 3,000 recruits had graduated from the centre, completing an eight-week training programme that focused not only on policing skills, but also on reading and writing.* An eight-step vetting process had been introduced at that time, collating biometric and fingerprint information on each new recruit. Police pay had also increased, the monthly salary for a new recruit rising by a quarter to 8,250 afghanis – or about US $165 – in the immediate aftermath of Blue 25.†
Drug abuse was still a problem, but the latest figures did at least suggest that things were getting better. In February 2009 the BBC obtained emails from an unnamed UK official who estimated that 60 per cent of Afghan police in Helmand were using drugs.‡ In March 2010 a report by the US Government Accountability Office found that up to 40 per cent of recruits in regional training centres were testing positive for drugs. Most recently, in January 2011, the commanding officer of the Police Development Advisory Training Team in Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel Adam Griffiths, said that over the past four months the number of new arrivals at the Lashkar Gah training centre who’d failed an initial drugs test had fallen from 8–10 per cent to less than 2 per cent.
Lieutenant Colonel Griffiths had quoted the figures in person at a briefing in Whitehall to an audience of journalists, but I couldn’t find them reproduced anywhere by the British media (I only discovered them by trawling through the press archive on the MoD’s official website). The 60 per cent figure was easy to find in the above-mentioned BBC report, as was the 40 per cent figure (most prominently on the Daily Mail’s website on 14th March 2010, under the headline “Nearly Half of Recruits for Afghan Police Fail Drugs Test”), but the 2 per cent figure proved elusive.
At a national level, of course, the media took no interest in good news for one very simple reason: it was boring. It didn’t sell newspapers and it didn’t boost the ratings. Only really terrible news could be relied upon to excite the people, so marketing our optimistic take on the ANP to the British media was going to be a struggle. My only hope of reaching a UK-wide audience was to persuade the bigger media outlets to run our coverage of the training centre as part of a companion piece to their coverage of the inquest. A then-and-now feature on the ANP, for instance, would give the story some added context and depth.
I wasn’t holding my breath, however. The bigger media outlets didn’t call on the Combat Camera Team for context and depth. They called on us for combat footage.
Fortunately, the smaller media outlets were a lot less discriminating. Working in local news, they had to be. I knew only too well the pain of trying to fill a bulletin with reheated stories about council cutbacks, the amount of chewing gum stuck to the city’s pavements and the alarming rise in the number of pigeons shitting on park benches. I’d made a living out of it for ten years. Anything that was just a little bit different would get snapped up.
Out of curiosity, I searched for “Lieutenant Colonel Adam Griffiths” and found him on a couple of websites local to his home in Oxfordshire. He’d been interviewed by the Oxford Mail prior to his deployment – his photograph appearing under the headline “Army Officer Returns to Afghanistan to Train Police”* – and he’d also spoken to Oxfordshire’s Heart Radio.† Because of his Scottish links – he commanded the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland (5 Scots) – he’d also been interviewed by the Glasgow-based Daily Record (“Scots Troops Fly out on Mission to Train 4,000 Cops in Afghanistan”)‡ and also the Paisley Daily Express,§ based in the Argyll’s recruiting patch of Renfrewshire.
Obviously local and regional¶ news came with a reduced audience, but that was better than nothing. Lt Col. Griffiths had by now flown back to Oxfordshire and been replaced by Lt Col. Fraser Rea, the commanding officer of 2nd Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles (2 RGR). Like his predecessor, he was based at Lashkar Gah in a tent just a few yards from the TFH office. Cornering him for an interview would be easy, but I also wanted to speak to his deputy, Major Paul Temple, who ran the training centre itself. In my opinion, he would make for the more interesting home-town story, being the man who lived and worked alongside the recruits. I couldn’t find any pre-deployment interviews with him on the Internet, but that was probably because 2 RGR were normally based in Brunei, out of sight and out of mind of the British media. That in itself was no obstacle to a home-town story, of course – I’d simply target the media in the town he was born, pitching the story along the lines of “Local Man in Charge of Training the Afghan Police”.
I met the man himself the following morning. Paul was a Manchester United fan with tattooed arms who’d worked his way up through the ranks over twenty-odd years, earning his wings with the Parachute Regiment along the way. He still wore the maroon beret – it sat comfortably above his sun-narrowed eyes – but the famous winged-cap badge had made way for the crossed kukris* of the Gurkhas.
He gave us a tour of the training centre, steering us around a grid of humid tents and scorching ISO containers. It was a miserable place, with a noticeable lack of colour, as though everything had been bleached by the sun. I don’t know why – maybe it was the lack of a gentle breeze – but the heat here felt different. It was like an invisible gel that clung to your skin, slowing down all of your movements. Even in the shade, it made you feel cranky and desperate.
Paul showed us a building site on a patch of wasteland within the compound walls, where a handful of Afghan bricklayers had started to build an accommodation block for the recruits.
“We’ve been given 1.4 million pounds to spend on this compound,” he said quietly, as though this fact alone could get him arrested. For some reason, I wasn’t sure he trusted us. What he thought we were going to do to him, I had no idea.
He led us back to the cookhouse for lunch. On the way, we spotted a stray dog, sitting just inside of the compound wall. Being dog lovers, Ali and I called him over.
“Here boy!”
The dog walked towards us, panting happily, but as he got closer we saw that he only had one eye. He didn’t seem to be in any pain – he was moving OK – but there was clearly something wrong. He came right over and sat down at our feet, looking up at us, showing us in close-up the huge gash running all the way down the side of his face, from his blood-caked eye socket to the corner of his mouth.
He clearly needed medical attention, but this was Afghanistan, so what hope did he have? There was a handful of British Army vets in theatre, but they were spread all over the place, and very much in demand. The only other option was the charity Nowzad,* but that would take time and money.
The dog looked at me, still panting happily. He seemed OK for now, but it was only a short matter of time before the wound would become infected. Flies were buzzing around his face in growing numbers, waiting to move in. I waved them away, wanting to comfort him, but reluctant to give him a pat on the head. I had no idea how he’d come to be injured, and if he bit me, I’d be bundled onto the next plane back to the UK for a long spell in quarantine, pumped full of anti-rabies drugs.
As though sensing my unease, the dog turned away from me, allowing me to stroke his back. I ran my hand along his thick coat, the fur dark and matted with dirt. I wondered how he managed to cope in this heat.
“He needs to be shot,” Paul said.
He was right, of course. Without immediate treatment, the dog was only going to suffer a slow, painful death.
I had assumed there would be someone on the base who did this kind of thing, maybe a corporal who’d been given five minutes of specialist training for this very eventuality, but I was wrong. Paul meant to do it himself, right now. He called the dog over and walked back towards the compound wall, removing his pistol from his hip holster. The dog followed, still panting.
Russ, Ali and I turned our backs. We heard the shots almost immediately – two of them, two seconds apart. I turned again and saw Paul already walking back towards us, grim-faced, returning his pistol to his holster. The dog was lying on its side, perfectly still, with no visible sign of injury. Paul clearly knew what he was doing. I had expected to see some blood on the wall, but it was still clean and white.
The coldness of it – the rendering of a friendly dog into a corpse – upset me, but at least he hadn’t suffered. Paul had done exactly the right thing, dispatching him with the minimum of fuss, although that didn’t make the scene any less depressing. For a minute or so, the world was just an empty, wretched place, with life nothing more than a futile exercise in the avoidance of pain.
We slowly made our way back to the cookhouse. Ali blew her nose, crying a little bit.
“I’m sorry, but he was suffering,” said Paul. “I didn’t like doing it.”
In the cookhouse, the chef was refilling the trays at the serving counter, his red face glistening with sweat. The heat coming off the ovens behind him was off the scale. None of us were hungry, but we took some food anyway, Russ and I opting for meatballs and pasta, Paul going for pie and chips. Ali had hung back, taking a moment to compose herself in the transit tent where we’d left all our kit.
We sat at one of the tables in the dining tent. A few of the Gurkhas were still finishing their lunch, but most had returned to their duties.
“It must be unbearably hot in that kitchen right now,” I said, trying to make conversation.
“Not as hot as if you’re out on patrol in the Green Zone,” said Paul, tersely.
We picked at our food in silence for a few minutes. Eventually Ali rejoined us, looking a little brighter. Trying to avoid the subject of the dog, we started to talk about the media. Paul seemed to think I was a press officer, for some reason.
“I’m actually a broadcast journalist,” I told him. “Ordinarily.”
“A journalist,” he said, making no effort to conceal his disgust.
“I’m really just a newsreader,” I said sheepishly. Persuading him to give me an interview was going to be harder than I thought.
The distinction was lost on Paul. He proceeded to launch into a rant about the evils of Fleet Street.
“What about all that phone-hacking?” he said, glaring at me.
I mumbled something about News International’s appalling behaviour.* On the grounds of my being a journalist, he seemed to think I was personally involved in the scandal. I wasn’t about to start an argument with him – he’d just a shot a dog – so I restricted my take on the matter to a few banalities. He stared at me, wanting more, but I didn’t give it to him. After a long moment he returned to his rambling monologue, bemoaning the state of the gutter press. I sat there in silence, prodding my meatballs with my plastic fork, waiting for him to run out of steam.
“So?” he said finally.
I snapped out of my meatball-induced trance. “So what?”
That glare again. “What newspaper do you read?”
“What newspaper?” I knew if I answered truthfully I would set him off again, but I couldn’t be bothered to lie. “I read the Daily Telegraph.”
“The Torygraph,” he sneered. “And why do you read the Torygraph?”
It was a good question, even if it was dripping with contempt. I’d never really asked myself why I read the Daily Telegraph. Maybe I liked the plain writing, the like-minded editorials and the picture layout. All of that sounded about right, although it wasn’t necessarily the most interesting answer.
“I read it because my father reads it.” This was arguably true as well.
“Ah,” he said. “So you’re institutionalized.”
I ignored this ridiculous but probably accurate comment. “What newspaper do you read?”
Paul took a moment to respond, giving it some thought. “I read the Independent,” he said finally. “Right,” I said. “Of course you do.”
I wasn’t buying it. Saying you read the Independent was like saying you were writing a book. All very worthy and impressive, but nobody actually did it. I tried to picture Paul with his head buried in the Indescribablyboring, but it didn’t compute. The Sun, yes, but not the Indy.
Somehow we managed to get to the end of lunch without Paul shooting me. He returned to his duties while I joined Russ and Ali in the welfare tent, hoping to watch some TV. Unfortunately the air-conditioning wasn’t working, so we crashed in the transit tent. It had eight bunk beds, all of them with proper mattresses and, most importantly, the air-conditioning was working. The three of us had plenty of room; the only other occupant being a dog-handler called Alan. He’d brought his dog in with him, a black-and-white springer called Memphis.
“He’s four years old,” said Alan. “This is his fourth tour.”
Fourth tour. Poor old Memphis. He looked exhausted, like a dog three times his age. Four tours in four years was outrageous. He should’ve been back in England, with grass under his paws, not sand. I gave him a scratch behind the ears, looking into his big droopy eyes.
Oh Memphis, what are we doing here?
At that point, to my amazement, he growled at me. I’d never been growled at by a springer before. I was confused and a little bit unnerved, a combination that triggered all sorts of questions. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with me? Could he tell where my hand had been? Did he know I’d been stroking another dog, just seconds before its death?
I had always been a great believer in the psychic capabilities of dogs. Monty and Trudie, my mother liked to assure me, would always start barking precisely five minutes before my arrival on the doorstep at home. What was that, if it wasn’t a supernatural gift?
We filmed the police graduation ceremony the following morning. Memphis did his thing, sniffing around the ISO containers that surrounded the parade square, looking for any suspect devices. Security had to be tight, with a dozen Afghan dignitaries watching the ceremony from a row of seats on the front edge of the square. In the middle of this audience was Helmand’s Chief of Police, a beefy character called General Hakim Angar. Around 150 recruits took it in turns to march across the square to collect a graduation certificate from him. He would’ve made a nice big target for any would-be assassins, but thankfully none of the recruits felt the need to start off their careers by killing the boss.
I interviewed him after the ceremony. We needed his input for some all-important “Afghan face”. Despite his busy schedule, he was more than willing to stop and talk, his interpreter rendering his Pashto into a number of media-friendly soundbites for my press release.
“This was a very good ceremony,” he said. “I can see the recruits are very disciplined and they’ll be very good at their jobs. When they go back to their checkpoints and their neighbourhoods, the people will see they’ve got a professional police force.”
Paul meanwhile was saying nothing. Having made vague assurances about giving us an interview at some point during our stay, he’d been doing a very good impersonation of a man who was trying to avoid being interviewed at all costs. Whenever an opportunity arose to say a few words, he’d found something else to do, something more important. At lunchtime, with our transport about to return to Lashkar Gah, I tried to corner him one last time, but he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
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