‘It’s beautiful until you realise there are dudes up there trying to kill you,’ says Captain Todd Polk, the company commander, as he sees me looking up. Then he points out the ‘OPs’ – US observation posts on top of the surrounding mountains.
Until six months ago, only Special Forces ventured this far north but now there are neat rows of tents along gravel paths that house the men from 10th Mountain Division, some of America’s most experienced conventional forces in Afghanistan. Even so, many of the camp’s activities are top secret – we must not photograph anything.
Every night, howitzer guns pound away at the enemy in the hills, sending shudders through the whole camp. ‘We interact with the enemy on a regular basis,’ says First Lieutenant Joe Lang, who heads the Information Operations Cell. ‘The camp gets rocketed a lot. You’ll probably get rocketed. Who knows if it’s something bin Laden is directly involved in?’
‘We all want to get Osama to make the world a safer place for our children,’ says Private Zak Schultz, of Charlie Company. ‘But I gotta tell you, ma’am, it’s like chasing shadows up there.’
Fighters disappear across mountains into what the American soldiers refer to as ‘Paksville’. ‘If we could go just ten miles the other side we could finish this,’ he complained.
The US military has been increasingly losing patience with attacks from across the border. Last year they carried out several bombing raids inside Pakistani territory, particularly in Bajaur Agency which borders Kunar. Last January a US drone dropped a bomb on a house in Bajaur where it was believed bin Laden’s deputy al-Zawahiri was hiding, just a few miles from Naray. He was not there; US officials suspect he was tipped off. Then in October a madrasa in Bajaur was bombed, killing eighty-two allegedly training to be suicide bombers.
General Dan McNeill, the new US commander, flew to Islamabad before assuming command in February, to confront General Musharraf with video surveillance showing fighters openly crossing into Afghanistan in front of Pakistani border guards.
Having got nowhere through force and searches, American commanders have changed their strategy in Kunar and hunting militants is now only one part. ‘Initially we came here to hunt and destroy the enemy,’ said Lieutenant Lang. ‘But now we realise we’re fighting an insurgency and the cornerstone of fighting an insurgency is securing the population. We’re no longer breaking people’s doors down – that was a mistake,’ he added.
To win over local support they have begun an aggressive programme of building roads which not only make travel much easier for locals but also are harder for the enemy to mine. The commander Colonel Michael Howard has $50,000 a month to use at his discretion on anything from school classrooms to micro-hydro projects.
‘This is a very neglected area so what we can do is show we have something to offer – roads, schools, clinics, etc – whereas all the enemy is bringing is fighting,’ explains Lieutenant Lang.
But the resurgence of the Taliban and deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan has meant that many of those who were looking for bin Laden are now engaged in trying to prevent the Taliban retaking southern Afghanistan.
‘I think we’re just about out of luck,’ says Mike Scheuer. ‘We still have SF and CIA officers chasing bin Laden but I understand it’s a pretty cold trail and as long as we don’t go into Pakistan…’
While the US has 22,000 troops inside Afghanistan charged with trying to hunt down bin Laden, most people involved have long believed him to be over the border in Pakistan where they cannot officially look.
It might seem odd to suggest that America’s ally in the war on terror could be harbouring its deadliest enemy. After all, as Pakistani officials are quick to point out, they have 80,000 soldiers on the border while President Musharraf has narrowly escaped two assassination attempts. But at the same time this is where al-Qaeda was born and it seems more than coincidence that all six of the most senior al-Qaeda people to be arrested since 9/11 were living in Pakistani cities – Karachi, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi.
‘I keep telling our American and British friends, please be patient with us,’ says Tariq Asis, General Musharraf ’s national security adviser and closest friend. ‘It’s not that we’re being hypocrites but there are certain things we can and can’t do. You have to remember that Pakistan had twenty-two years of Islamisation after General Zia took over in 1977. It was state policy to support the Taliban. We can’t turn this round overnight.’
Others put it more bluntly. ‘No one here is interested in finding Osama,’ says Shujaat Hussein, president of Pakistan’s ruling Muslim League. ‘Here he is far more popular than President Bush.’
However, some suggest it is more sinister. Senior UN officials in Afghanistan believe that Pakistan is playing a double game so that while its military intelligence (ISI) officially cooperates with the hunt for bin Laden, there is a shadow ISI making sure no one gets near him. This is after all a country where government ministers I go to interview turn up the television volume because they believe their offices are bugged. Its national hero is nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, a man who ran his own black market in nuclear weaponry. Until he was exposed by western intelligence two years ago, he was smuggling weapons technology to pariah states such as Iran and North Korea.
US intelligence is convinced that ISI tipped off al-Zawahiri the few times they got near.
The theory that bin Laden is in a Pakistani city is something an increasing number of US officials now consider possible. Could it be as the Afghan government argues that he is being protected by Pakistan’s military?
For the time being the spotlight has been on the seven tribal agencies that run along the 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan, a dirt-poor land where almost everyone is armed and lives on smuggling and kidnapping. So fierce are these tribes that when this area was part of the British Empire in India, colonial officers gave up trying to control them. Instead they put in political agents who acted as go-betweens for central government and the tribes, basically paying off maliks, or tribal leaders. When Pakistan was created in 1947, these so-called Tribal Areas were left semi-autonomous.
In these wild lands where mountains rise out of barren plains like scales from a dragon’s back, tribes live by the Pashtunwali honour code. Under this, retribution is an eye for an eye, so people live inside forts with walls three feet thick and watchtowers to protect themselves from those with whom they have feuds. They are highly conservative with women kept in purdah and literacy is only about 10 per cent. Pashtunwali also requires that guests must be protected whatever they may have done, all of which suggests this could be a safe haven for al-Qaeda fighters, particularly as many are said to have married local women.
The Waziris are said to be the fiercest of them all and it was in Waziristan that the British met most resistance. One political agent was murdered in his sleep for lying with his feet towards Mecca. In 1936 a mysterious leader known as the Fakir of Ippi led an armed revolt against the farangi, or foreigners, in North Waziristan. At one point there were 40,000 British and Indian troops searching for him yet he was never found and died in his own bed in 1960.
‘Remember the Fakir of Ippi,’ says a friend from the Afridi tribe when I ask him why no one can find bin Laden.
I would like to go to Ippi but there is a problem. My visa is stamped ‘Islamabad only’. Local journalists who have tried have ended up dead or badly beaten. I go to the frontier town of Peshawar where friends warn me off.
‘Where is Osama?’ sighs Lieutenant General Ali Jan Aurakzai, the blue-eyed Governor of the Frontier who is himself from the tribal areas and commanded Pakistan’s troops when they entered those areas in 2003 for the first time. ‘I’m fed up with this question.
‘The Afghans say that the Taliban are being trained in Pakistan and bin Laden is in a Pakistani military base. I would say why would they come to our tribal areas infested with troops and intelligence agencies rather than Afghanistan where the writ of the government barely extends beyond a
few cities, and foreign troops are only in a few bases and daren’t venture out?’
The embarrassing failure to find bin Laden has led the Bush administration to try to downplay his significance and insist that the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy are fatally weakened, detached from their followers and unable to plan any new operations.
‘Al-Qaeda is on the run,’ declared President Bush just before last year’s mid-term election. The US Army’s highest-ranking officer said in February that he believed there was ‘not that great a return’ in capturing or killing bin Laden.
‘So we get him, and then what?’ asked General Peter J. Schoomaker, the outgoing Army Chief of Staff. ‘There’s a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today. He’s hiding, and he knows we’re looking for him. We know he’s not particularly effective.’
As I talk to officials in Washington, many look pained when I raise the subject. ‘To be honest I am relatively relaxed about the situation with bin Laden,’ says Dr David Kilcullen, chief strategist on counterterrorism for the US State Department. ‘I think he’s largely irrelevant. Five years ago the guy killed 3,000 people in New York City. Now he makes videos.’
Kilcullen insists that bin Laden’s command and control abilities over al-Qaeda have been damaged. ‘You guys want to grant him the kind of rock star status that he’s seeking. But the guy is not ten feet tall. He has lots of problems.’
But others say that al-Qaeda has regrouped and is training for new attacks. Those involved say the hunt is now ‘confused and unfocused’.
‘The President likes to believe bin Laden is running from rock to rock but I don’t think he’s in a cave – that’s the Hollywood version,’ says Scheuer. ‘I think he’s probably in a pretty comfortable compound. He’s certainly beaten us at the moment.’
Back in Manhattan, the man who could have got bin Laden, looks at a souvenir postcard that I have just bought that still shows the twin towers.
‘We will get him in the end,’ insists Gary Berntsen. ‘One really good officer can make a difference and one lucky break. I’ve captured people who have been on the run for sixteen years. They make mistakes. You only have to be right once to be able to pull the trigger and it’s all over.’
* He eventually released another video in September 2007.
‘Have You Ever Used a Pistol?’
Sunday Times, 2 July 2006
Zumbelay, Afghanistan
‘Have you ever used a pistol?’ yelled Sergeant-Major Mick Bolton amid the Kalashnikov fire and bursts from a machine gun as we ran across a baked-mud field and dived for cover. ‘If it comes down to it, everyone’s going to have to fight.’
Round after round fizzed past our ears, sending up clouds of dust. My heart was thudding crazily against my flak jacket, my breath coming in short, rasping pants like an animal. The whoosh of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) close enough to lift the hairs on the back of my neck was followed by an orange blaze of flame as it landed nearby.
I hurled myself into an irrigation ditch and crouched amid the tall reeds, the soil just above me flying up as bullets landed all around. Then firing started coming from behind too. The Taliban had us from three sides.
Justin Sutcliffe, the photographer, and I were with the elite of the British Army, forty-eight men of C company, the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment – with an attachment of airborne troops of the Royal Irish Regiment – facing a bunch of Afghans in rubber sandals.
We could not see them, but we knew they were less than a hundred yards away.
The silver-haired sergeant-major had kept us amused for days with his wisecracks, behind which was a touching concern for his soldiers and adoration for the girlfriend, Lizzie, he was due to marry in November, whose photograph he had shown me.
Now this veteran of two tours in Iraq and six in Northern Ireland was telling us we were the closest he had ever come to being ‘rolled up’.
‘If we get overrun I’ll save the last bullet for myself,’ said Private Kyle Deerans, a handsome South African of 23. With his black floppy hair, I was sure he had broken a string of hearts.
As I stared at them in horror, it dawned on me what had been wrong about Zumbelay, the village we had just visited on a hearts-and-minds mission with soft hats and offers of development projects. I should have noticed there were no children around.
There was no time to think about that as a mortar landed nearby. ‘Get out of the ditch!’ screamed someone. I wanted to stay in hiding. ‘No, no, it’s not safe,’ shouted Leigh Carpenter, a military policeman attached to the unit, tugging me away.
I clawed my way up the slippery bank, oblivious to the thorns ripping my hands. I felt terrifyingly exposed as I climbed over the mound and rolled down the other side. ‘Keep down! Keep down!’ came another shout. As I flattened myself, a mortar landed just where I had been crouching.
For the next two hours we were trapped under such relentless fire we thought we would be killed. The ambush of our lightly armed patrol was not only unexpected but also brought into question the entire strategy being pursued by the British in Helmand, the huge province they have taken on.
The paras had been in lively mood earlier that day when we left Camp Price, the British base at Gereshk, a sprawling town of walled compounds, two bridges and a bazaar. C company is a close-knit group and the trip was the furthest east they had ventured since arriving in Gereshk two months ago.
The plan was to go to Zumbelay, meet villagers, then camp before stopping at another village on the way back.
Some of the soldiers had not been out of the camp before and none had experienced a ‘contact’ with Taliban, unlike their fellow paras in A company who have had what they describe as a ‘fruity’ time and were engaged alongside British Special Forces further north. To keep the men occupied, Major Paul Blair, C company’s wiry Irish commander, had organised an ‘Iron Man’ contest the day before involving ordeals such as flipping a giant tyre and sprinting round the camp weighed down with boxes of ammunition.
As we set off with cold drinks and Pringles, we joked about going on a picnic. ‘Aggressive camping is what I call it,’ said Colour Sergeant Michael Whordley. They laughed at me in my local dress of shalwar kameez worn with desert boots and a flak jacket.
We were in a convoy of fifteen vehicles, an assortment of Snatches – the lightly armoured Land Rovers that have caused such controversy over their vulnerability to roadside bombs in Iraq – open troop-carriers and WMIKs (weapon-mounted installation kits), open Land Rovers that look a bit like safari vehicles except for the machine gun on the front and heavy guns mounted on top. Their firepower would save us.
As we drove out of Gereshk we noticed a man in a black turban pull out on a motorbike and follow alongside for a while. But we could hardly hide our intentions, sending up clouds of dust visible for miles as we travelled east through the desert.
Long ago, when the Russians occupied Afghanistan, I travelled around on the backs of motorbikes of anti-Soviet mujahideen who went on to become Taliban. Even back in 1989 they regarded them as the best transport against a fixed army.
The journey east took about ninety minutes through a landscape of undulating sand and gullies in temperatures close to 55°C. We were close to Zumbelay by late afternoon – that special time of day when fingers of fading sunlight trap the dust being churned up by men returning to the village with herds of goats.
Much of Helmand is scorched brown desert but Zumbelay seemed a small oasis. Bedouin tents and mud-walled houses, some with courtyards of flowers, were scattered amid a patchwork of fields of tall green grass and dried poppy stalks. A wide canal ran through one side, with deep irrigation ditches leading off between fields.
The convoy stopped about a mile from Zumbelay. A fire support group (FSG) drove off in the WMIKs with a mortar team to take up a secure position beyond a ridge to protect us in the event of trouble.
The rest of us downed helmets and walked in, crossing a field
where a few scrawny camels gazed at us. I caused hilarity by falling into a ditch and emerging covered in mud. Everyone commented how quiet and bucolic the village seemed. ‘All it needs is a nice pub where we could enjoy a cold pint,’ joked Major Blair as we watched a kingfisher swoop low over the water in a flash of bright green.
Even the name had a nice ring to it: Zumbelay made me think of Manderley from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Of course Manderley had a sinister secret and in retrospect the quiet of Zumbelay was suspicious. The one thing we should have noticed was the lack of children, who usually come running up demanding candy or baksheesh.
We sat on a raised bank at the edge of the field under a mulberry tree along with a few other men, one of whom seemed to be glaring at us from under his sparkly prayer cap. ‘We are British not Americans,’ explained the major through an interpreter. ‘We come at the invitation of your government as friends and brothers to help you and find out what you need.’
An old man with a white beard said the other elders were at the mosque for prayers. (Later we would realise it was not prayer time.) He said the village had no problems and suggested we come back for tea two days later on Thursday at 10 a.m. when everyone would be around. As we took our leave, he pointed in the opposite direction to the way we had come. ‘If you go that way there is a bridge,’ he said.
Afghans are the most hospitable people on earth, offering everything when they have nothing. I was thinking it was unlike them not to offer tea to visitors, but Major Blair seemed happy. ‘I think that went well – they seemed quite friendly,’ he said to me as we walked away.
Almost immediately a burst of gunfire rang out from the ridge to the left where the FSG was deployed. ‘We’ve had a contact,’ crackled the message over the radio.
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