The following day, at first light, they set off again. This time they found three of the four trucks in the convoy. Two were burned out. An Apache fired a Hellfire missile into the last one to destroy any sensitive equipment that might remain.
There was no sign of bodies, but the following day local people handed over the corpses of the two dead Frenchmen and the nine missing Afghans to the troops at FOB Robinson.
Afterwards, the story of what had happened became clearer. A first attempt to drive south had been made on 19 May. Trucks carrying ANA troops, an American team who was mentoring them and the French forces had set off from Kajaki, near the hydroelectric dam that generated electricity for the province, for FOB Robinson and soon came under fire. Two vehicles were lost but no one was hurt. The convoy turned round and tried again the following day. The plan was to take the main highway for the first leg of the route then branch off east into the desert to avoid contact with the locals. Some vehicles appeared to have missed their turning, blinded by the clouds of dust thrown up by the trucks ahead of them. The Taliban had been warned of their approach and proceeded to shoot at them along a 6-mile stretch of road.
When the incident was analysed it revealed some disturbing realities. It underlined the fact that any vehicles moving along the roads of Helmand were liable to attack. The battle group was already aware of the risks from IEDs. But this was a full-on ambush. It made even clearer the value of helicopters over convoys when inserting large groups of men or carrying out resupplies. Local people appeared to have joined enthusiastically in the Taliban attack. According to Pike, the survivors reported that ‘everyone was coming out of their houses and having a go – quite why, who knows – but the valley in that area kicked off’.
The search-and-recovery mission had used up precious helicopter hours. This meant a further delay in establishing the ‘Sangin effect’. As preparations resumed, another emergency blew up, requiring another diversion from the programme. A panicky message from the governor claimed that the town of Now Zad, about 60 miles north of his seat in Lashkar Gah, was in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban. It seemed the Taliban had not been deterred by the setback at Musa Qaleh on 18 May. Daoud’s office claimed that there had been several clashes and the police station in the centre of town had come under fire. ‘B’ Company was tasked to fly in and stiffen the meagre resistance that was all the contingent of ANP who were in the town were expected to be able to put up.
The laconic Giles Timms set off with about half his men. They were pleased to be doing something definite at last. The reports suggested that they would meet strong resistance from the Taliban on arrival. When they landed in Now Zad on 22 May, everything was calm. The smiling chief of police was there to escort them in. At the police station there was little evidence of an epic battle. ‘There was a reasonable amount of brass and empty cartridge cases lying around,’ said Timms. ‘But there was no real evidence that Taliban had tried to make a concerted effort to take the place.’
Now Zad seemed to be dealing with the crisis admirably. It was ‘a bustling little market town. Not every single shopfront was open for business but maybe two-thirds were.’ They undertook an initial vehicle patrol through town. ‘We got some funny looks, some scowls from people. But we didn’t get taken on. It was just like a normal market town and still was when we left.’
‘B’ Company stayed for twelve days. They got to work building up the defences of the police station, which sat on the main street, refreshing themselves with Zam Zam, a sickly, strangely addictive soft orange drink. They were starting more or less from scratch. The existing fortifications amounted to no more than a few rice sacks filled with dirt. The police contingent had been in the habit of standing at their posts for only half an hour each evening before retiring to smoke dope. They were all from elsewhere in the province, Lashkar Gah and Gereshk. Their wages were poor and they often went unpaid. Many failed to return after going off on leave. ‘They were pretty much a joke really,’ said Timms. ‘The moment we arrived they said, “We are glad you are here, we can sleep now,” and took no further part in defending their district centre.’
Corporal Chris Prosser of Support Company, who went with Timms’s men, felt some sympathy for them. They were, at least, ‘trying to do something for their own country’. The Paras built six sangars. They put Afghan policemen alongside them on the front gate so the people of the town could see that this was a joint effort. Despite the apparent normality, there was an undercurrent of sinister activity in the town. Intelligence reports warned that the Taliban were watching the new arrivals. ‘They were basically dicking us,’ said Prosser. ‘Trying to work out the layouts, how many people we had, what sort of weapons, basically the general set-up in Now Zad.’
One night there was a report that an attack was imminent and the garrison was ordered to stand to. But nothing developed, and on 2 June the Paras handed over to a small force from ‘D’ Company of the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Gurkha Rifles. Now Zad was to turn out to be a much hotter assignment than the Gurkhas’ original task of protecting Camp Bastion. When ‘B’ Company returned later that summer, the place was unrecognisable. ‘It was a complete war zone,’ said Timms. ‘Nobody was there any more. The shops were shut. A lot of the buildings had been demolished by air strikes.’
By answering the Afghan government’s distress signal, the British were now committed to the defence of Now Zad. Tootal’s intention was to support the Afghan forces rather than to do their job for them. The day after ‘B’ Company’s deployment, despite the established risk of ambush, an enormous seventy-six-vehicle convoy was put together to deploy a fresh company of ANA soldiers to FOB Robinson near Sangin and take out those who were there. It was led by the CO of 7 RHA and boss of the OMLTs, David Hammond.
The job of screening the convoy along the 70-mile route from Bastion was given to Mark Swann and Patrols Platoon. ‘It was quite a tricky task because the vehicles kept getting stuck and it took twenty-odd hours to get up there,’ he said. When they finally arrived at FOB Robinson, Swann was handed another task. The Canadians ordered Colonel Hammond to press on the extra few miles to Sangin town itself. Once again, the Afghan government was claiming that disaster was imminent. The district centre, the administrative compound that was the symbol of its flimsy authority, was supposed to be under siege.
Hammond asked Swann to carry out an old-fashioned recce, probing forward to establish whether the Taliban were present, and if so, where exactly they were. Effectively, this meant driving around until they were shot at. After the long journey chaperoning the lumbering convoy, Patrols Platoon were exhausted. ‘My boys were absolutely chinned at this point,’ said Swann, ‘but we had to do it.’ The platoon was mounted in WMIKs, modified Land Rovers. The acronym stood for Weapons Mount Installation Kit, a reference to the rig that allowed a heavy Browning .50-calibre machine gun to be bolted on to the back. The man on the gun could swivel the weapon through 360 degrees and lay down a devastating stream of fire that could rip up anything short of a tank at a range of 1,300 yards. The firepower was further boosted by a 7.62mm GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun), which was operated by the vehicle commander from the passenger seat. The Rover’s 4.2-litre engine made it fast and powerful and its manoeuvrability was impressive if it was not too heavily laden. The WMIK looked like the descendant of the Vickers gun-toting jeeps driven by the Long Range Desert Group which operated in North Africa and was the precursor of the SAS. Swann and his men saw themselves as belonging to the same tradition.
It was the middle of the night when Patrols got their orders. The cover of darkness would be welcome. But it also increased the risk of running into one of the unmarked minefields left behind by the Soviet army. It was wiser to wait for first light, and the platoon took the very welcome opportunity to get their heads down for a few hours.
As they set off at dawn, intelligence warned that the Taliban were preparing an ambush. Swann altered course and set off on a dogleg, diverting from the straight ro
ute to town. They arrived at Sangin District Centre unharmed and called Lieutenant Colonel Hammond and the Afghans, telling them to follow the route they had taken. Swann had been impressed by the incident. He said later: ‘This was the point when I thought that this was not going to just be a few stray rounds being fired at me by some young lad trying to prove something. These people are organised.’
Hammond and the Afghans occupied the district centre and toured the police checkpoints. The local security forces denied that they were facing any serious threat from the insurgents. That did not mean that the Taliban were not there. The atmosphere seemed tense to Swann as he drove around Sangin. ‘People ran away when we approached. Through our optics we could see people in the distance getting down into what could only be described as firing positions. We couldn’t see the weapons so we didn’t engage … you saw people prowling.’
One of their Pinzgauer carriers broke down. The edgy atmosphere persuaded Swann to order his men to strip it and rig it with explosives. ‘We thought if we are attacked now we are going to have to leave this vehicle and we can’t leave it to them.’ These were the sorts of procedures associated with war fighting. At dusk a Chinook flew in to lift the ‘Pinz’ out.
The Paras were beginning to get a practical understanding of the sort of enemy they were facing. The Taliban had shown that they were determined. They were also tactically cunning and used their knowledge of the terrain to mount well-thought-out ambushes. Furthermore, they could count on a degree of support from local people. Some of this was extracted through coercion. But some, as the shoot-out on Route 611 suggested, was given willingly. All this gave the insurgents a robust self-confidence. The realisation was growing that they meant it when they boasted of driving the British out.
Back in Bastion, Stuart Tootal was growing increasingly concerned at the direction the mission was taking. The Now Zad diversion was unwelcome. It meant fixing troops that needed to be mobile if they were to function properly in one location. The need to resupply them would place a further strain on the helicopters. The battle group could not function without support helicopters. Helmand had few roads, which made land movement predictable and vulnerable to roadside bombs and ambushes. The troops would have to rely on the Chinooks to transport them around the battlefield, supply them with food and ammunition and get them back to the base hospital when they were wounded.
The Chinook was developed by Boeing as a heavy-lift aircraft and came into service in 1962. It is still in military and civilian use all over the world. The variant used by the RAF – the CH-47 – dated back to 1966. It is a big, blunt beast, nearly 100 feet long with twin engines and two 60-foot rotors throbbing in tandem. It can fly high, with a ceiling of 18,500 feet, which made it especially useful in mountainous Afghanistan. It can carry thirty to forty men depending on the weight of kit or 28,000 pounds of cargo. All in all it is a fine machine. ‘Chinooks are the ultimate battlefield helicopter,’ said Flying Officer Chris Hasler of 18 Squadron RAF, who won a Distinguished Flying Cross piloting them. One of the squadron’s ships was over twenty-five years old and had seen service in the Falklands. Age hardly made any difference. Fixed-wing aircraft have a main spar running through the fuselage and wings that have a limited lifespan. Choppers go on and on. ‘Helicopters are almost like Lego sets,’ said Hasler. ‘You can bolt things on, take blades off, put in a new engine, but you still have the same frame. You can make a [Chinook] pretty new just by replacing some bits.’
The trouble was there were not enough of them. Seven were assigned to the task force, of which only five were serviceable at any one time, while the rest were in for maintenance. The heat and dust of Helmand made it a tough environment for rotary aircraft and regular checks were essential. The number of flying hours was restricted for safety reasons. In order to get the most use out of the helicopters, Tootal suggested that they be moved forward to Bastion from Kandahar where they were based. From the beginning the pilots spent most of their time at Bastion, accompanied by a small engineering detachment who lived in a tent alongside the machines, permanently caked in the dust that was kicked up every time a chopper flew in or out.
The Paras were thankful for the Chinooks and grateful to the crews who flew them. They only wished there were more of them. None was available. The decision to carry on spending the bulk of the RAF’s budget on fixed-wing fighter planes designed for a war with the Warsaw Pact countries which would never be fought had severely limited the air force’s ability to do the tasks that now made up most of its duties.
Tootal knew it was inevitable that his soldiers would have to respond to unforeseen events. But if there were too many of them, the battle group could end up as a solely reactive force and lose sight of its original stabilising and reconstruction mission. Tootal felt that the force was paying too much attention to Daoud’s demands and worried that local people would regard his soldiers simply as agents of the new governor. Daoud was unknown and untried. Bitter experience had taught the inhabitants to assume he was corrupt and self-seeking until he proved himself otherwise.
Even as Tootal was thinking this, another urgent request from Daoud was on its way. One of his key supporters, Haji Zainokhan, was in trouble. He was stranded in a village in the Baghran valley, about a hundred miles from Bastion in the north of the province, surrounded by Taliban who seemed intent on murdering him. On 24 May ‘A’ Company was sent to rescue him. They took off in two Chinooks with two Apaches hovering protectively alongside. Haji had got caught out while visiting some relatives. He had a bodyguard of twenty policemen, but felt they did not offer sufficient protection.
The helicopters flew low, following the contours of the river valleys. Given the reports of a Taliban presence it had been thought wise not to tell Haji when exactly they were coming, or how. Will Pike, leading ‘A’ Company, knew where the village was but not the precise location of their man. Just before they landed, they called him on his mobile satellite phone and told him to get his men to light a bonfire. The helicopters touched down into a scene of bucolic calm. ‘It was perfectly peaceful,’ said Hugo Farmer. ‘It was actually a very nice place.’ The chief and his entourage were loaded on and flown back to Bastion. He was, Pike remembered, ‘pretty chipper, pretty chuffed’. One of his police bodyguards was little more than a boy and seemed terrified of flying in a helicopter. ‘One would think that being left to the Taliban would be more frightening,’ Chris Hasler, who was flying one of the Chinooks, noted in his diary. ‘Each to his own, I suppose.’
The operation had gone off well but it was not what ‘A’ Company were supposed to be doing. Their energies were meant to be focused on delivering the Sangin effect, establishing the ‘ink spots’ that would bring stability to the province. ‘A’ Company was never to put the plan into practice. The ever-shifting dynamics of the Helmand mission were changing again. The Paras and the Taliban were about to collide.
6
Operation Mutay
On 4 June the Paras set off on what was billed as a ‘cordon and search’ operation. Their target was a mud-walled residential compound, 70 yards square, on the eastern outskirts of Now Zad. According to the sketchy information available, it was thought to be an ammunition and weapons dump, possibly a Taliban bomb factory and a safe house for insurgent commanders. The idea was to secure the compound, seize the materiel and grab any Taliban who might be there.
The job had been handed to them by the Americans. It was part of Operation Mountain Thrust, their ongoing hunt for ‘high-value’ Taliban and al-Qaeda targets. It seemed a relatively straightforward task. The intelligence brief warned that there might be some Taliban present, but not enough to pose a major threat. ‘Cordon and searches’ were a staple company-level activity in Northern Ireland. They had also been practised in exercises before the deployment. The terraced streets of Ulster and the empty desert of Oman, however, were very different propositions from the mud-brick mazes of Helmand. The operation was to turn into one of the epic clashes of the Paras’ tour, a
six-hour fight in which virtually everyone involved got their first, hard look at the face of battle.
Altogether there were about a hundred men taking part. The mission would be led, once again, by ‘A’ Company, the ‘Ops One’ company at Bastion. 10 Platoon of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, garrisoned in the Now Zad district centre together with some Afghan police, and Patrols Platoon, who were in the area, were tasked with setting up an outer perimeter to seal off the area. Then ‘A’ Company would arrive by air to capture the compound. The Gurkhas would take the local district chief along with them to give the operation an ‘Afghan face’. Air power was on hand to come in and blast the enemy if needed, in the shape of A-10 jets and Apache helicopters. As it turned out they were to play a vital role.
This was a battle group operation and, as commander, Tootal went along with his headquarters team to oversee it himself. Even before he hit the ground, it was clear that the Taliban were waiting and eager for a fight. The Gurkhas had set off from the Now Zad district centre at 11 a.m. to establish their sector of the outer cordon around the target compound. They were expecting an uneventful day and thought they were unlikely to encounter anything more than a handful of fighters.
There were about thirty in the convoy, including eight or nine Afghan police. It passed through a village on the northern edge of a town called Aliz’ay, and along a wadi that led southwards. Rifleman Ananda Rai was driving the lead WMIK when they came across a small group of men who were apparently civilians. One of them broke away and ran into a house. Rai thought he had taken fright. But then he re-emerged carrying an RPG launcher. He ‘screamed and dropped to one knee’. The RPG streaked across the bonnet of the vehicle.
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