by Kemp Ross
There were other, less selfish reasons for going back. I wanted to see what had changed in a year. I wanted to see whether the Taliban had been pushed back from those areas where they had been dominant and who was really winning the war. I wanted to find out for myself whether conditions for the soldiers had improved at all. And perhaps most importantly, I wanted to see if the sacrifices that had been made by all the young British men and women – both those who had given their lives and those who had been traumatized by the experience – had, in the final analysis, been worth whatever territorial and political gains had been achieved. I'd been gone only a year and I wasn't expecting miracles; but I hoped to get some sense that the British Army's operations had made progress.
The MoD would allow us to revisit some familiar places; but there were now locations we could visit to which it would not have been possible to go the previous year. In 2007 the town of Musa Qala, an important strategic position for reasons that I would understand once I got there, had been entirely under Taliban control. This was no longer the case, although the Taliban presence was still strong and it was now the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in Helmand. It was decided that Musa Qala would be top of our list of places to visit.
We would also need to attach ourselves to an entirely new group of soldiers. A number of possibilities were suggested. At one stage it was mooted that we would be billeted with 2 Para, based in Sangin. Their CO, however, wasn't keen on the idea. Fair enough. Another suggestion was the Royal Irish Regiment, who were in Helmand as part of an Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (OMLT, pronounced ‘omelette’). This meant that the Royal Irish were accompanying and mentoring members of the Afghan National Army (ANA). It would have been very interesting to work alongside an OMLT, and I wasn't averse to spending some time with them, but I felt that it wouldn't have much resonance for our British viewers, so we decided against it.
In the end we were posted with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, or 5 Scots for short. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was formed in 1881 and has a long and distinguished battle history, from the First and Second World Wars through Korea, Suez and the Falklands. The Royal Regiment of Scotland's motto is ‘Nemo Me Impune Lacessit’ – which I'm told means ‘No one assails me with impunity’. Or to put it another way, no one tries it on with me and gets away with it. By the time we were assigned to 5 Scots, they were already well into their tour of duty. I wondered if the Taliban were feeling the truth of that motto.
The men of 5 Scots were posted at Musa Qala District Centre. The camera team and I would meet them for the first time when we arrived in that war-torn town – no training exercises or bonding sessions with the lads to ease us in this time. Instead we were thrown straight in at the deep end, with the now familiar journey to RAF Brize Norton in order to board a flight to Kandahar. We were to be transported in one of the RAF Tristars that are used exclusively for transporting troops. These are very elderly aircraft and they are delayed on an almost routine basis; our flight to Kandahar was no exception. We arrived for an 08.00 flight; the delay was announced and true to type almost every British soldier who was due to be on that plane cheered enthusiastically. It turned out that the plane had sprung an oil leak and the oil had got on to the brakes. Obviously not an ideal situation. The aircraft teams, of course, professional to the last, picked up the problem straight away; not for the first time, however, it struck me that our armed forces should be better equipped for the jobs they have to do. Those Tristars are substantially older than most of the passengers they carry and although delays like this might not seem such a serious problem in the grand scheme of things, they can have a cost in terms of the troops' morale. I got talking to a few lads who were on their way to Afghanistan for the first time, having been posted in Germany. They'd been waiting four days for a connecting flight. I don't suppose they were too sad to have their journey delayed; but if the boot were on the other foot and they were delayed on their way home for R and R, it would have been a different story. I'm sure the Tristars are safe but surely they're due for an update.
We were delayed for twelve hours while another aircraft was brought in and all the gear swapped over. We finally took off at 20.00. Having made this journey a couple of times before, I knew what to expect. However, you never quite get used to the sight of those stretcher beds at the front of the plane with their straps and oxygen masks; you can never quite take your eyes off them. And despite the fact that I had been to the region before, it would be a lie to say that I wasn't nervous. I was. Very. But my nervousness was tinged with the excitement that always accompanies going to a war zone. Of course, there were no air hostesses with gin and tonics to calm me and my fellow passengers down. Orange squash, as always in the British Army, was the order of the day, and it doesn't do much to settle the butterflies in your stomach.
Because of the delay at Brize Norton we had to land at Kandahar during daylight hours – not something the pilots like doing because of the risk of mortar attack as they're coming in to land. No matter how edgy a night-time landing in full darkness is for the passengers, at least it stops you from being a highly visible target. As the aircraft touched down I was greeted with a familiar sight. It looked like mist rolling in along the runway; in fact it was sand filling the air, billowing up as though to welcome us back to Afghanistan.
We spent one night at Kandahar. I was surprised, and I suppose gratified, to meet so many people who had seen and enjoyed our first Afghanistan film, which had been broadcast since I had last been here. Not everyone, of course, was a fan, but in general it seemed we had the support of the troops. The next day we kicked around the base, buying a few supplies from the American PX – sweets, a knife, a new pair of sunglasses. There was time for a quick walk round the boardwalk and by nightfall it was time for us to board our C-130 Hercules bound for Camp Bastion.
Last time I had taken the short hop west from Kandahar to Bastion, we had done so during the day. Now, however, things had changed and the pilots prefer to make such journeys during the hours of darkness. They wore special night vision goggles. They told me that they could see further with these than with the naked eye during the day; but the bigger advantage, of course, was that the Taliban couldn't see our aircraft and take pot shots at us. I wasn't going to argue with that.
Since I had left the previous summer, the British base in Helmand had doubled in size with the construction of what had become known as Camp Bastion 2. It seemed to me that this expansion of the base had occurred somewhat under the radar; certainly I didn't recall it being widely reported in the UK. It was a clear indication, I thought, that the British intend to be in Helmand Province for a long time to come. Outside the new general headquarters, a monument had been erected to the fallen, with a list of all the British soldiers who had died since the occupation began. It was a long list, with names of people I had known. It had not been updated since February of that year. At that moment, if it were to be updated, another twenty-one names would have to be added. Clearly the tempo of the fighting had not decreased. Clearly the war was very far from being over.
Bastion was a different place to the camp I had spent time in a year ago. An immense amount of construction work had occurred in the intervening months. Many of the canvas pods had been replaced with hard-covered accommodation units. Much of the Hesco had been replaced by concrete walls. There were new facilities, including a hospital. I couldn't help but think back to the tented accommodation a year before. It was hardly recognisable. I was able to take a quick tour and meet some of the doctors and nurses, having been told that they had some of the best trauma surgeons in the world.
In the operating room lay an Afghan national. His leg was being lifted up by a steel handle and had been perforated with holes the size of a golf ball. His ankle was hanging off by the ligaments and looked like a drawing from a medical textbook. The guy was out cold while the surgeons, wearing magnifying glasses, sutured his arteries with what we
re essential soldering irons. The room reeked with the smell of burning flesh – it was hi-tech and medieval at the same time. There were also two other adults and a child in there. I was informed by the head surgeon that they had been caught in an IED strike in Musa Qala, which did little to ease my growing anxiety about returning to the front.
As I walked around the wards and had my photo taken with the nurses – much to the befuddlement of the Afghan nationals – I noticed a young Afghan in a coma with an oxygen mask over his face. He'd been shot by ISAF forces while trying to fire an RPG. The Northern Irish doctor tending him had given him six pints of his own blood. (He joked that there may have been some Guinness in there too.) He was interested to know what the boy's feelings would be when he woke up and realised his life had been saved by infidel blood.
In all, I couldn't have been more impressed by the dedication of the staff at the hospital, and in particular by the love and care they gave to the young Afghan amputees around the wards.
Elsewhere, I saw that a well had been bored so that the camp could have its own water. The cookhouses had improved immensely. And of course, with the construction of Camp Bastion 2, adjoined to the original base by just a wide strip of heavily protected dead ground, the sense of scale was much greater.
There wasn't time, however, for much sightseeing round the new facilities. Because almost as soon as we had arrived, we were loaded up into a Chinook and ferried to the town of Musa Qala.
Control of Musa Qala has changed hands a number of times in the past few years. In the summer of 2006, UK troops occupied the DC at the request of the then governor of Helmand Province. Subsequently, a mix of Danish and UK troops held the position. The garrison was repeatedly attacked, difficult to resupply and became somewhat beleaguered. Following a ceasefire, the Helmand governor and the elders of Musa Qala reached an agreement in October 2006 and ISAF forces left the DC. A 5 kilometre exclusion zone was agreed, and no ISAF forces or Taliban were permitted to enter. There is some disagreement about the extent to which the Taliban infringed upon the agreement, but after a senior Taliban commander was killed by a US airstrike just outside the exclusion zone, the Taliban took full control of the town in February 2007. For many months it remained a no-go area for foreign troops.
Then, in December 2007, a couple of months after my first visit to Helmand, ISAF forces working alongside the Afghan National Army moved to regain the town. They dropped leaflets warning civilians of the impending invasion; the Taliban prepared to welcome the invaders by mining the town heavily. Operation Mar Karadad – or the battle for Musa Qala – was a success. British troops took up residence in an old hotel in the District Centre, or DC, and the Taliban were forced to withdraw. However, they remained in significant numbers on the outskirts of Musa Qala and it was certainly true when I arrived that the British forces' ‘occupation’ of the town was limited to a relatively localized area around the DC. For this reason, they had to make regular patrols towards the outer edges of Musa Qala in order to keep a ring around the town and stop the Taliban advancing on the DC (though they could, of course, still walk around the town with impunity if they weren't carrying a gun).
There are strategic reasons why Musa Qala was so hotly contested. The town itself is built around the meeting points of two rivers, one of which stretches to the very north of Helmand Province and the Taliban stronghold town of Baghran. The riverbeds, dried out in the summer, are important commerce and travel routes. It's impossible to stop every vehicle that travels up and down them. Further south, at Sangin, the Musa Qala river connects with the Helmand river, making Musa Qala a staging post for anyone wanting to travel from the north of the province to the south. As such, it is an essential location in the poppy trade. Control Musa Qala and you control the flow of opium from vast swathes of northern Helmand Province. Arms, too, pass through here on their way from Iran and Pakistan. No wonder the Taliban are so keen to get what they perceive to be their town back.
In addition to all this, there is a fragile and complicated political situation in the area. Musa Qala is the home of a powerful Afghan warlord called Mullah Abdul Salam, a veteran of the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1980s. Mullah Salam has strained links with the Taliban, but is also rumoured to be receiving money from the American government. He is rumoured to be a producer and transporter of heroin and it is said he collects so much protection money from some of the villagers that they often run their little businesses at a loss. Mullah Salam might be on our side, but he's no angel. It may sound galling that the Americans should be protecting such a man, but such is the intricacy of Afghan society that it is impossible to judge such a situation by our Western standards. If keeping Mullah Salam on side means bringing peace to Musa Qala, it seems inevitable that we should have to accept his less acceptable activities. There were plans for me to meet him in return for a packet of his own drug of choice – Viagra (and with six wives, who can blame him?) – but they never materialized.
It is said that the success of ISAF's mission in Helmand Province rests or falls by what happens in Musa Qala. That alone made it sound to me like a dangerous place. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, then, that within minutes of stepping out of the Chinook that had ferried us from Bastion and into the dusty surroundings of the Musa Qala landing zone, I was told that the very next evening I would be going out on patrol. For four days. Into one of the most battle-torn parts of Helmand. Forty-eight hours previously I'd been in London. Well, I told myself philosophically, that was what I'd come here to do…
We had flown in low and fast to avoid enemy fire. (Weeks earlier a Chinook carrying the governor of Helmand Province to a meeting with Mullah Salam had an RPG smash between its rotor blades and they had to be replaced.) The good news about the forthcoming patrol was broken to me in the shadow of the Chinook by Alan ‘Goody’ Goodall, Company Sergeant Major of Delta Company 5 Scots. ‘You're guaranteed to see what you came to see, mate,’ he told me in his broad Scottish accent.
I gave him a nervous smile.
Our liaison man was Captain Stevie Rae. We would become good friends during my time in Musa Qala and he was one of the most impressive soldiers I have ever met. Sorry to make you blush, mate. He had previously been an RSM and to have done all this at such a relatively young age was testament to his abilities. He was modest too, and didn't want to be mentioned or appear on camera; but without Stevie our time in Musa Qala would have been very different, if not terminal.
I was taken to the DC – an old hotel that the Taliban had used for the same purpose when they were in charge of the town. It looked like a cross between a bombed-out NCP car park and a half-constructed concrete monstrosity on the Costa del Sol. There was evidence that it had been used for purposes other than housing troops. Brown stains on the inside of the walls indicated that some previous residents had been refining poppies into brown heroin sludge that could then be transported far and wide. On the roof, satellite transmitters stretched up to the sky and machine-gun posts gave a 360-degree arc of fire.
To one side of the hotel was a line of cubicles. These housed the satellite phones. The soldiers are given a set time to phone home. Their calls are good for morale but largely uninformative for the families, not so much for reasons of security but because the guys simply don't want to worry them with talk of the dangers they've been facing. (More than once, after our first documentary was aired, I had soldiers coming up to me complaining that their family had become ten times more nervous about their tours of duty now that they had seen what life on the front line was really like…) The only time phone privileges are withdrawn is when a soldier is killed. Regimental gossip being what it is, the authorities have to do what they can to stop rumours spreading before the next of kin can be informed.
Beyond the hotel was a wadi, about 500 metres at its widest point, and a wall surrounded the whole area. Delta Company were billeted in tents up against the wall, so it was here that we were to make our home for the next few weeks. Our sleeping quarters were
surrounded by high walls of protective Hesco and, like the soldiers, we tried to make our surroundings as restful as possible. It was difficult. We didn't have much in the way of creature comforts and the area stank of piss – clearly someone had taken a leak here pretty recently. A small gap between the top of the Hesco wall and the roof let the light in. Unfortunately it also pointed in the direction of where the oil drums of shit got burned on a daily basis. Air freshener Afghanistan-style – every morning I would wake and cough up a horrible brown sludge thanks to breathing in the stench of burned faeces every night. Still, beggars can't be choosers and at least we were protected by Hesco not canvas. We barely had time to unpack before we had to start preparing for our patrol the following day and head off to the briefing.
The briefing was given by the OC of Delta Company, Major Nick Calder, a military man from a military family. One brother was the 2ic of 5 Scots, the other had been 2ic of the Royal Anglians when I was out there on Herrick 6 and was now in command of the Fusiliers. Nick was astute, friendly and intelligent with a cut-glass English accent – but if ever there was a man under pressure, it was him. You could see it in his face. Nick told me that wherever he travelled, he took with him a box. It contained a picture of his wife and kids. Every morning he'd get it out, look at the picture, then return it to the box and put it away. That ritual over, he'd turn his attention to his other family: Delta Company, the seventy or eighty men whose lives and wellbeing were his direct responsibility.