The British would be part of a multinational force of about nine thousand soldiers. The contributing nations included Canada, Holland and Denmark. The command rotated among the lead nations. The Canadians would be the first to hold it. The battle group’s area of operations would be Helmand, which was in dire need of development but was also the scene of increasingly vigorous insurgent activity.
Defence Secretary Reid made it clear that combating the Taliban resurgence would be one of the battle group’s main tasks. The troops were being sent to ‘deny terrorists an ungoverned space in which they can foment and export terror’. The underlying, long-term aim was to ‘help the people of Afghanistan build a democratic state with strong security forces and an economy that will support a civil society’. In the British area of operations this would be done through the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), which would work with the military, the British Foreign Office and the Department for International Development (DfID) to deliver a ‘tailored package of political, developmental and military assistance’. The specific mission was to ‘help train the Afghan security forces, to facilitate reconstruction and to provide security, thereby supporting the extension of the Afghan Government’s authority across the province’. This last phrase would come to have a powerful significance when the battle group began their work.
As if this was not enough, there was a further aspect to the mission. Helmand was opium poppy country. Poor farmers relied on the poppy to make a living, selling their crop to local drug lords. The troops, said Reid, would be expected to ‘support international efforts to counter the narcotics trade which poisons the economy in Afghanistan and poisons so many young people in this country’. Nine-tenths of all the heroin on British streets originated in Afghanistan, he claimed. Once again, decisive action in a far-flung place could benefit British society.
It would be claimed later that Reid had presented the mission as a risk-free exercise in nation-building. This was based on an interview he gave to the BBC’s Today programme in April, just as the deployment was beginning. On a crackly line from Kandahar, NATO’s main base in the south, he said that ‘if we came for three years here to accomplish our mission and had not fired one shot at the end of it we would be very happy indeed’.
In the months that followed, as the British mission grew more and more hazardous and shots were fired by the hundreds of thousands, these words would be repeated by critics as evidence of his naivety. In fact the phrase was ripped out of context. Reid had been frank about the risks from the start. In the same interview he declared that ‘although our mission … is primarily reconstruction it is a complex and dangerous mission because the terrorist will want to destroy the economy and legitimate trade, and the government that we are helping to build up’.
The way the task force was structured made it clear that trouble was expected. The Helmand Task Force was drawn primarily from 16 Air Assault Brigade based in Colchester. At its heart was 3 Para, who, as its commander was proud to boast, ‘fight on their feet’. Without air support, however, they could not function. That was to be provided by seven CH-47 helicopters provided by the Royal Air Force. The twin-rotored Chinooks, with their huge lift capacity, were the main workhorses of the task force. They were armed only with three machine guns and needed protection. This was the job of eight Apache attack helicopters from 9 Regiment of the Army Air Corps, which were being deployed for the first time with the British Army. They also played a crucial role in supporting ground troops when they were under attack. Four Hercules C-130 transports would be supplied by the RAF.
The fighting core of the force was 3 Para. They were reinforced by a company from the Royal Gurkha Rifles and a detachment from the Royal Irish Regiment. The Household Cavalry Regiment (HCR) with their Scimitars and Spartans would supply an armoured element. The Royal Horse Artillery’s 7th Parachute Regiment (7 RHA) would contribute a battery of 105 light guns. The operation was supported by a parachute-trained squadron of engineers from 23 Engineer Regiment, units from the Royal Logistics Corps and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and medics from 16 Close Support Medical Regiment.
An advance force of engineers were set to go to Helmand ahead of the main deployment to build camps, protected by a company from the Royal Marines’ 42 Commando. By July, about 3,300 troops were expected to be in place in Helmand, excluding the engineers building the camps. The task force could also call on the assistance of American bombers, support and attack helicopters, and other NATO countries were considering offering fighter cover and transport aircraft.
The size of the ‘force package’, as it was called, had been the subject of long debate in London. Men and materiel were in short supply owing to commitments in Iraq. Reid described the deployment as ‘substantial’, and said that it was sufficient to ‘maximise their chances of success and minimise the risks’. The battle group’s senior officers were reasonably content with what they were given, though like all commanders they would always have preferred to have more. But that view would alter as the original mission changed and the force’s responsibilities spread far beyond their original intended area of operations, stretching manpower and resources to the limits. ‘The fact is’, said a senior ISAF commander after the Paras had returned home, ‘that the 3 Para battle group … was woefully insufficient for the tasks that were being laid on it.’
The operational boundaries of the deployment were vague and elastic from the start. Reid said the British were not going ‘because we want to wage war’, and that the military assets were intended ‘to deter and defend ourselves’. But the political and military landscape they were entering made war fighting inevitable. There were several powerful interests seeking to direct their actions, voices that could not be ignored. They were fitting into a multinational force whose members had different agendas. The most important were the Americans, who had little interest in the reconstruction effort and would expect the British to contribute to their campaign to decapitate the Taliban leadership. They would be leant on by Britain’s ally, President Karzai and his representative in Helmand, to expand the government’s authority into the badlands.
It seemed to the Paras themselves, as they made their preparations, that the fact of their presence in Helmand was bound, sooner or later, to provoke a fight with the Taliban. Will Pike emphasised to his company that ‘we were there to enable development, to enable reconstruction and that the military arm was not the decisive thing, but winning the hearts and minds of the people’. When the Paras talked among themselves, however, Pike said, ‘we all knew that it was easier said than done and we were very aware that this operation was probably going to be the most significant thing we had done as a battalion since the Falklands and it was going to involve fighting on a scale we hadn’t seen since then’.
Pike knew Afghanistan from a previous tour – he had served in Kabul with 2 Para in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. As he understood it, Helmand was something of a sanctuary for the Taliban. The international military presence was sparse – some Americans engaged in targeted counter-terrorism operations – and the central government weak. The place was essentially run by the same people who ran the narcotics trade. ‘We knew that people were going to oppose the strands of development that we wanted to try and secure,’ he said. ‘So whilst the ferocity of the fighting came as something of a surprise … I don’t think we were under any illusions.’
In their pre-deployment training 3 Para hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. Study days were organised and visiting experts gave lectures on the people, history and customs of Afghanistan. Several soldiers were sent off on crash language courses and everyone was taught a few Pashto phrases for basic interaction with the locals. There were bouts of intensive tactical training but it was hard to recreate the conditions they would be operating in amidst the cold and wet of a British winter.
Early in 2006, however, 3 Para were sent for a month’s training to a much more useful environment – the stony hills and wa
dis of Oman. ‘Much of the training involved going to mocked-up villages, establishing relations with the locals and displaying a culturally aware attitude to the people they would be dealing with,’ Martin Taylor remembered. ‘Much of it had already been learned in Iraq. We were rehearsing the less aggressive “hearts and minds” side of things.’ But at the same time they were ‘always, always rehearsing what would happen if we came under attack. We trained with helicopter gunship and air support. Among the exercises was a live firing exercise in which the scenario is that you are out patrolling and come under attack from the Taliban who are firing from a strongpoint and you have to go and attack that. The blokes trained really hard and were very fit when they came back.’
While they were in Oman, news trickled down to them of what was going on in Afghanistan. It seemed to confirm their instincts that there was trouble ahead. The reports mainly concerned the Canadians who were in charge of the Kandahar area of operations, the sector next to the Paras’. ‘I was responsible to brief the blokes up,’ said Craig Mountford,
so every night in Oman I would sit down with the company commanders then pass it down to the lads. There were regular reports that someone had been killed in Afghanistan. But it wasn’t the fact that people were being killed. It was how they were killed. I heard one particular story about a Canadian officer who went to one of these “meet and greets” with the locals. He went in, took his helmet off and sat down on the floor to take tea with them. He had a bodyguard with him. But someone came in and stuck an axe in his head. That brought it home to quite a lot of people, I think. People began to step back and think, ‘Bloody hell, this might be something of a fight.’
The question of how to distinguish friend from foe, gunman from civilian, played a large part in preparations. The Paras were taught some likely indicators that would alert them to an approaching suicide bomber: heavy sweating, an absence of body hair, the mumbling of prayers and a refusal to respond to warning shouts were all signs to set alarm bells ringing. In the towns and villages they would be working in there would be many opportunities for making catastrophic errors that could deal fatal damage to the effort to win consent and trust.
Everyone dreaded shooting the wrong person. But they were also extremely uneasy about what would happen to them even if they had made an honest mistake. The spate of judicial actions against soldiers who had got into similar trouble in Iraq had created cynicism and a belief that justice was being bent by political considerations. Tootal gave reassurance that no one would be hung out to dry. ‘The CO was very, very clear about what his approach would be if someone was deemed genuinely to pose a threat,’ said Martin Taylor. As long as a soldier ‘was acting in all honesty and was not misusing his power in any way he would be supported’.
On the other hand, Tootal also left no room for doubt that anyone who abused the local population could expect harsh punishment. He spelled out the difference in a talk to the troops, asking them to imagine that they were patrolling into a village at dusk. Unseen assailants had been shooting at them and they were tense and nervous. Suddenly a boy walks out of an alleyway, holding a shepherd’s crook. In the failing light it looks just like an AK-47 rifle. Someone makes a split-second decision and shoots him dead. Tragic though it is, it is a consequence of the friction of war. In the circumstances there would be an investigation. But if it was shown that the soldier was acting with honest intent he could count on his CO’s support.
If, however, the soldier had seen the boy and was about to shoot him, subsequently recognised his mistake but took him into the alleyway ‘then kicked the shit out of him because he’d been given a good scare, then I’ll have that soldier court-martialled,’ Tootal said.
By the beginning of April 2006 the theorising was over and the practice was about to begin. After years on the sidelines, 3 Para was ready to take to the field. The thought was both alarming and exciting. ‘There is one test that a parachutist wants to take,’ said Nick French, ‘and that is how do you react under fire. Are you going to flinch, are you going to hide or are you going to pass that test? If you do you will leave the army happy.’ In the months ahead they would have many opportunities to try their courage.
4
Afghanistan’s Plains
Rudyard Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads, published in 1892, contained a poem, ‘The Young British Soldier’, which was much quoted by those predicting the dire consequences of getting mixed up with Afghanistan. One verse ran: ‘When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains/And the women come out to cut up what remains/Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/And go to your Gawd like a soldier.’
To the Paras arriving at Camp Bastion, in the arid flatlands north of the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, it was heat and dust rather than the bloodthirsty attentions of fierce local women which seemed the main hazard. ‘A’ Company were the first to deploy, arriving on 15 April with the battle group’s tactical headquarters and the Patrols Platoon. They had also been the last to leave Iraq and had less time at home than the other company battalions. There was some whingeing among the soldiers, but the logic of the decision was accepted. It was, in its way, a compliment. ‘A’ Company had the most recent operational experience and the longest-established command structure. Going in first confirmed its members’ belief that they were the best.
First impressions of Bastion, though, did not raise spirits. To Corporal Chris Prosser, a machine-gunner from Support Company who was attached to ‘A’ Company, it came as ‘a complete shock’. The Paras were used to roughing it in the field but expected a few basic comforts back at camp. Instead, ‘there was nothing there. Inititally we were living in twelve-foot by twelve-foot tents with no aircon and nothing on the floor. We were living on ration packs for the first two weeks. Sandstorms came in every afternoon and swept through the tents so your kit was always covered in dust.’
‘Bastion when we arrived was just a dustbowl,’ said Hugo Farmer. ‘There were no hard roads and we were about fourteen to eighteen to a tent.’ The ablutions blocks were not completed and grey pools of waste water seeped into the gritty sand.
Other units at the base seemed to fare better than the new arrivals. Farmer speculated that there was an ingrained army belief that ‘the Paras liked that sort of stuff’. In the end they just got on with it, living out of their bergen rucksacks.
Stuart Tootal, who reached Bastion on 18 April, was more concerned with how the base would be resupplied. As it stood, it was reliant on a fragile air bridge provided by the Chinooks and Hercules. The lack of comfort did not worry him too much. His overriding preoccupation was getting his battle group into place as quickly as possible. The camp conditions, however, were a major concern to the Permanent Joint Headquarters staff who oversaw the operation from thousands of miles away in Northolt, Middlesex. They preferred to hold the remaining troops of the battle group back until Bastion was in a fit state to receive them. Tootal was frustrated at their caution. Dribbling his men into theatre risked losing the initiative. His view was that
[we] were an expeditionary army and we should be able to go out into the field and set up. I was quite prepared to say we’ll just live in the desert. We’ll live off rations and draw water because there’s plenty of water we can access. We’ll shit in holes and we’ll burn it off. We’re going to be dusty and we’re going to be uncomfortable. But actually, I’ve got all my fighting power with me.
In the end it was more than four weeks before all his infantry elements arrived. There was a further wait before key assets such as the artillery were in place. The Household Cavalry light armoured squadron did not reach the battle group until 10 July.
Fortunately for 3 Para, the Taliban were not yet ready to declare the fighting season open. The poppy harvest was about to begin. Once it got under way, the fields along the great river valleys that plough north to south through Helmand would be full of toiling men, women and children. The process was simple. First, the harvesters made four light incision
s with a multi-bladed razor in the head of the poppy. They left it for a few days for the sticky, milky sap to collect. Then they returned to scrape it off with a wooden spatula. Each head had to be scraped up to seven times to collect all the ‘milk’. The sap was shaped into slabs which were sold at established markets. They were then passed on for processing and transporting, increasing in value at every stage until the refined product reached the streets of Europe’s towns and cities as cellophane ‘wraps’ of dirty, brownish powder.
The poppy farmers sold their crops to local drug lords, who sold it on to the processors. Helmand province was reputed to supply 20 per cent of the world’s opium. The growers were expecting 2006 to produce a bumper crop – 50 per cent up on the previous year. When the Taliban were in power they had opposed the trade, coming close to eradicating production. But now they were trying to wrest back the power they had lost and were anxious not to antagonise either the peasants or the landowners who exploited them. Poppy was a vital part of the economy. Even a poor tenant farmer could expect to make £1,000 from a plot of land less than 100 yards square, a sum that went a long way in Helmand.
In their new, collaborative mood, the Taliban promised to suspend fighting so as not to disrupt the harvest. In return they could call on local chieftains to supply them with reinforcements from their private militias. They also imposed an opium tax which raised tens of millions of dollars to fund their supply and armaments needs. Until the opium had been sold, it seemed the Taliban were content to watch and wait.
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