It was that they didn’t want to believe it.
In hindsight, I recognise that, to the top brass, the picture of Afghanistan in August 2011 was of a country ‘saved’ by the ISAF coalition. It was a lion that had been tamed by visiting experts. It was, essentially, a war that had been won. And my daily reports of wide-scale local aggression did not fit that narrative even slightly.
Later in the month whispers of our withdrawal from the region started to come through. Not just J Company’s exit – the whole international force. Operation Liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban was being wrapped up. Job done. Mission accomplished.
So why didn’t it feel like that to me?
Every single day since June we’d risked our lives for a cause that shifted in the wind. We’d do it again and again until we were told to stop. It would just have been nice to think that we were being useful.
* * *
Coming back after R&R I realised a few home truths. The biggest was how shit my men looked. I knew if I picked up a mirror I’d look no better. We were the ghosts that I’d seen haunting Camp Bastion five months earlier. But what could I do about it?
Very little, in reality, but I did what I could. I tinkered with the patrol rota so that, where possible, no one would go out for more than two days in a row. Myself included. Two days out, one day in on domestic duty, be it in the sangars or the ops room, or working on some other task. It didn’t mean we got any more sleep but it felt like it. Not being on hyper alert for eight hours in a row was the closest we got to forty winks.
Nothing replaces the real thing, though. August and September were littered with fist fights among the lads, petty arguments over meaningless shit, and regular visits to me saying, ‘I’m not going on patrol if So-and-So is.’ It was all ridiculous stuff, but that’s what happens when you are living on a powder keg. There wasn’t one individual I wouldn’t trust with my life. To see them at each other’s throats, however temporarily, was all the proof I needed that something was seriously wrong.
I did what I could to resolve matters. What did the trick more than anything, though, was action. After another week of being on the receiving end of firefights on patrol, I decided that we’d take the initiative. Take the fight to the insurgents. We just had to work out how to combat our two main enemies.
The Taliban – and our own rules of engagement.
* * *
Just as the insurgents seemed to know exactly for how long to hide when a Tornado aircraft was in the vicinity, they had an unerringly accurate ability to shoot at us from mopeds when they knew we weren’t in a position to deploy our heavier artillery. Either they would stand outside a civilian building or between us and another patrol, or they would run into a mosque – all out-of-bounds targets. Their tactics were as clever as they were frustrating. The fact they were able to spend entire days monitoring our movements before launching their own ambushes didn’t help.
I knew for a fact that the genial old gent in the compound opposite our CP was in cahoots with the Taliban. At 7.30 a.m., without fail, he’d appear outside his wall sitting on a chair, for all the world taking in the early-morning sun. Of course, if we happened to send out a patrol during his time sitting out there, it was mere coincidence that he’d disappear inside his compound and we’d hear on the ICOM: ‘The Americans are leaving.’
He wasn’t the only one. I spoke to the owners of every single compound in our district and each man, each respected elder of the region, assured me on their children’s lives that they would never co-operate with the Taliban. And yet, I began to notice an awful lot of bonfires being lit that August. No sooner would my patrol have passed a compound than a distinctive cloud of grey smoke would billow above the compound walls. Every building we passed lit its own fire, no matter what time of day we were there. At first I put it down to coincidence; then, to dinner time – people were obviously cooking.
Eventually I had to admit the facts. Every owner of every compound was in the pocket of the insurgency. We couldn’t go into a compound without noticing a bonfire prepped and ready to be lit the second we departed.
Via Max and John, I asked Afghan after Afghan why they were siding with men who would kill them as soon as look at them. Eventually we found a man brave enough to answer. Taking us behind a wall where no prying eyes could see, he said, ‘No one chooses to help them.’ He looked around anxiously. ‘You are good men. You have powerful weapons. But you won’t kick down our doors in the middle of the night, steal our children and kill our wives if we don’t co-operate. The Taliban will. And they do. No one wants to help them. But we are more scared of them than of you.’
It was actually a member of the Afghan Army who put it into perspective: ‘As a people we don’t respect a man just because he has the biggest stick. We respect a man who will use it.’
The truth hurts. All ISAF troops had sticks bigger than the Taliban’s. But none of us, not even the Estonians, were prepared to use them. And both the locals and, more importantly, the insurgents knew that. I was glad I didn’t know the Afghan word for ‘toothless’ because I suspected I’d have heard it said of us more than once.
I was actually embarrassed. I thought, We have to show our strength.
According to Card Alpha, launching an ambush against the Taliban was illegal. Off limits. Totally outside our rules of engagement. Which is why I would never authorise such a tactic. And yet …
A ‘standing patrol’ is a group of men stationed on watch. They can be in plain sight but it makes more sense for the patrol to be shrouded. Hidden, even. Their role is to monitor the surroundings and, if appropriate, to respond. If that means leaping out on unsuspecting insurgents, so be it.
But they are not an ambush. Because that is illegal.
I didn’t really have the numbers to maintain standing patrols. Luckily Tom Phillips, H, M’lord and Al Blackman all offered to chip in men, as and when I needed them. That proved to be sooner rather than later.
Based on all our patrols, the patterns of attacks and where the mopeds seemed to zip off to after an ambush, I had a pretty good idea that a mosque to the south-east of our CP was a place of interest. One morning – hours before the old guy across the road took up station on his chair – a bunch of my lads, led by Mac, climbed over the wall and headed off east towards the mosque 2 kilometres away. At the same time Tom Phillips, his guy Sibsy and a couple of others sneaked in. At 7.30, when I knew the spotter outside would be in place, we set off as though on a normal patrol, me, Tom and his guys.
My genius plan was for our patrol to take the direct route to the mosque and draw fire from the usual insurgent pests. I’d worked out the most likely place for a ‘shoot-and-scoot’ attack from one of the moped menaces. By coincidence, it was near where my men, the standing patrol, were lying in wait in a field – not in ambush, obviously, because that would be illegal.
I’ve never been so excited about the prospect of being shot at. I really thought this would be the day we snared a couple of Taliban.
We were still in sight of Daqhiqh when the ICOM started. The old man hadn’t let me down. The further we walked the more call signs came on line. They all had weird and wacky names. ‘Pumpkin’ was the probably the best one that day. The radio chatter correlated with the number of young men brushing past us on mopeds. I tried to take in their faces but they may as well have worn masks. They all looked identical.
It was a slow walk to the north side of the mosque. We still had the threat of IEDs to contend with. Mac’s team had eyes on the east.
‘Is it clear?’ I asked him.
‘There’s a lot of activity. Loads of young men hovering around the building.’
‘That’s promising,’ I said. ‘It’s the wrong time for a call to prayer.’
I wanted to know if any of the men were armed.
‘Negative.’
According to the GPS we were one building away from seeing the suspicious activity with our own eyes. A few more steps, one corner, and we had to be
prepared for anything.
‘Standing to, guys,’ I said. ‘Let’s do this.’
I was just about to lead the men out when a bullet suddenly hit the wall inches away from my head. Others were close behind. We all dived into kneel-and-shoot pose. Mac heard the mayhem. He was shouting over the radio, ‘Everyone outside the mosque has found weapons and they’re heading in your direction.’
‘Can you engage?’ I said.
I waited for him to respond but he didn’t answer. The next thing I heard was a raw explosion from the other side of the wall.
‘Mac?’
Another explosion followed. Then the sound of machine guns.
When Mac got back in contact he reported two grenades had been thrown at them from the rear. They also had three assailants shooting at them no more than five metres away. The non-ambush had met the real thing.
‘So much for the element of surprise!’
There was nothing for it. We had to retreat. Somehow we made it back to Daqhiqh to take stock of the situation. Tom Phillips couldn’t believe how the insurgents had seen through our subterfuge.
‘It doesn’t matter what we do,’ I sighed, ‘they’re always one step ahead.’
‘I’d like to see them stay a step ahead of an Apache,’ Tom said. He was as frustrated as I was.
‘Me too. But that’s never going to happen.’
And that, we had to admit, was a harder pill to swallow than being beaten into a retreat. Knowing you have the tools to finish a job – in this case, helicopter gunships – but aren’t allowed to use them sucks.
At least we’d proved, with some certainty, that the mosque was a place of interest. HQ agreed. Two days later we took in a troop mentoring some local Afghan Army forces. These were locals I didn’t mind staying over at the CP. I put it to them that we should hit the mosque en masse.
This time there was no standing patrol, just sheer numbers. The Afghan Army took the initiative and I couldn’t have been happier. Where we were tied up in red tape they treated the insurgents the same way the insurgents treated us. The second we encountered a suspicious-looking young male near the mosque, he was grabbed before he could retrieve a gun from behind a wall. In seconds his bare feet were bound and he was tied to a tree. Then the Afghans began whacking the soles of his feet with a cane. As they did so, they yelled out to the local people standing around us, staring.
‘What are they saying, Max?’ I asked.
‘They’re saying, “This is what happens to Taliban scum. Stay away from the insurgents or end up like this.”’
I couldn’t help smiling. This was better than watching crops burn. ‘Is it too late to join the Afghan Army?’
While this public humiliation was taking place, the main body of men stormed the mosque. The Afghans’ commander called me over. I was reluctant to enter the building, not being a Muslim, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
‘You’re about as deserving as anyone who’s set foot in here,’ he said. ‘Even the Imam’s a fake.’
As happy as I was at that stage to see any Afghan in handcuffs, the idea of arresting a religious leader could result in an awful lot of paperwork if not handled correctly. Refreshingly, that was the last thing on the commander’s mind.
‘Are you sure about him?’ I said.
The leader nodded. ‘Tell me what you see over there.’ He pointed down the hall into the main chamber.
I’d been inside London mosques with the police. As in those, here I identified prayer mats and, on a lectern at the far end, a copy of the Koran.
‘Look again,’ the Afghan commander said. ‘It’s not the Koran.’
‘What is it then?’
‘Some old shit. The point is, the Imam can’t read. None of his flock can read. I bet the only thing he’s spouting at prayer times is political hatred.’
As if that wasn’t staggering enough, we unearthed enough military hardware in the mosque to keep the insurgents firing at my men for weeks. It was a good job well done. You might have thought that I might be envious that the Afghan Army took the lion’s share of the credit, but they deserved it. There was none of the smug silence that people like Mohamed Mohamed had shown me. The Afghan Army meant business. What’s more, they knew how to connect to the locals – because they were locals too.
As I watched them break prisoner after prisoner I found myself torn emotionally. As a British Royal Marine I knew I couldn’t be party to that kind of intimidation.
But as a soldier, robbed of sleep, almost constantly under threat, abandoned – or so I felt – by my political leaders, I was jealous. I knew that if I turned in the men the Afghan Army had arrested they’d be processed at Bastion and back out on the streets within a fortnight – probably to take pot shots at my men or to plant IEDs. I can’t lie: the Afghan Army way was a breath of fresh air. There wasn’t one of my men watching who didn’t think, If we were allowed to act like that this war would already be over – and our friends like Sam and Ollie would still be alive.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GO FIRM
By the end of August I’d been in Afghanistan nearly half a year. I swear I could stay a lifetime and still never understand the people.
One day H’s Kamiabi patrol were caught out in an ambush. They’d been cornered like rats while bullets rained down from a nearby compound. It was deadly stuff, although at least they knew where the attack was coming from.
In other words, they had a target with a bullseye on it to hand over to air support.
I can only imagine the buzz among H’s men as they waited for the Predator drone to arrive. Knowing that all they had to do was keep the Taliban shooting, then wait for the fireworks. It never gets old. The only thing that would have made it better was being able to see the looks on the Afghan faces in that split second when they realised they were about to be blown to smithereens.
The 200-pound bomb did exactly what it was intended to. Each insurgent was wiped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, so was most of the compound, including the family that lived there. The only survivor was the father. He was casevacked to Bastion to have his shattered leg amputated.
As a father myself, I felt for him. As a man I was appalled that innocent people were being caught up in this ridiculous war. But, as a marine on the wrong end of six months of compound owners like him letting Taliban scum use their properties to try to kill me and my friends, his personal tragedy barely registered. Play with fire and you get burned. Harsh perhaps, but that’s what I thought.
That is, until I was told I’d be doing a welfare check on him.
As per ISAF rules, once he was out of hospital the man had been given financial compensation for his loss. He had used it to buy another farm, which happened to be within our AOR (area of responsibility), hence my being tasked with this hideous job. Being betrayed by the locals we’d sworn to protect was one thing. Being asked to walk up to a bloke whose entire livelihood and family – and leg – had been wiped out by people on my side of the fence was something else entirely.
What – am I just going to say, ‘Sorry, mate’, pat him on the back and that’ll be it?
As we approached the new compound I went over and over in my head what I was going to say. Nothing sounded right. I felt more nervous than if I had been facing a firing squad. At least with guns I could respond. Whatever this man said I would just have to listen to and suck up.
We reached the gate and knocked. There was a strange scraping noise the other side, then the door flew open to reveal a farmer with a wooden leg.
We’ve got the right place at least …
I braced myself for the onslaught, but the moment the guy recognised our uniforms he welcomed us into his compound with open arms.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘You must be hot. Let me get you a drink.’
Well, this is weird.
One of the worst things you can do to an Afghan is refuse his hospitality. Even if you are convinced you are going to be poisoned. I couldn’t take my e
yes off the bloke. I didn’t want to be hostile but I didn’t dare trust him, either. When he offered me tea, I only took a sip of it, and once he had done so. When he produced some sort of cake, I made sure I bit into it after him. Obviously, I couldn’t rule out the chance of a ‘suicide chef’, for a man without hope might easily take his own life as well as mine. But something about his persona said he wasn’t in any hurry to die.
‘John,’ I said to our interpreter, ‘let’s get this over with. Ask him what we can do.’
The man replied, ‘You have done enough!’ Then he hugged us all.
Confused, I began reciting my rehearsed speech. The man barely listened. In fact he stopped me before I even got to the apology bit.
‘My friend,’ he said, ‘I didn’t really like my wife or children. You did me a favour. With your American dollars I have bought a better farm, I have more cattle than I ever dreamed of and I will be able to afford to buy two wives who will give me more worthy children.’
As the translated words came out of John’s mouth I thought that he had to be lying. The look on the farmer’s stupid happy face, though, backed him up.
I thought, This is beyond insanity.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said. ‘We have to go.’
I actually found more comfort on the way home when a gaggle of shooters engaged us in a firefight. At least that made sense to me. Everything else? I don’t think I’ll ever understand.
* * *
Watching the Afghan forces at work gave me hope that the populace could be saved. Just not in the way that we were going about it. The Afghan Army knew the people we were working with. They knew the culture. They belonged to it. To make an impression on the inhabitants of Helmand Province you needed to think like them and act like them.
‘You can’t fight fire with sweetmeats,’ one of the Afghans explained. ‘You have to use fire or get burned yourself.’
I knew our kid-gloves tactic wasn’t working. If I saw Mohamed Mohamed once, I saw him half a dozen times. On each occasion that he was captured he was arrested and sent to Bastion. The joke was that he knew he’d be back.
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