I don't know if you've ever read an adventure story and thought, wow that would be great and then had a real adventure and had that horrible sickly feeling in your stomach and wished your life was boring? That was me on the flight out to Afghanistan in 2002.
As we crossed into Afghan airspace all the lights inside and outside the Hercules aircraft went out. The pilot informed us we were now in a theatre of war and to stay strapped in as it would be a fast and low tactical landing. The RAF, amongst all their other annoying habits, love to make squaddies sick and this particular pilot certainly didn't want to disappoint.
I had no idea what to expect as we came into land. I was mindful of the briefings about rocket attacks on the airport and the threat of shoulder launched anti aircraft missiles and that an AK-47 was quite capable of putting holes straight through the Herc. I had a moment of deliberation about whether I should sit on my helmet like in Apocolypse Now. Head or balls, head or balls. It's a really tough decision when you actually have to make it and in the end indecision won out and the helmet stayed on my head.
I was also trying to figure out in the pitch black where the crate with all our weapons might be and how I'd get it open as the ramp came down and the Taliban onslaught began. I wasn't so concerned about putting down effective fire as being able to top myself to save me from being skinned alive and buggered as the Russian prisoners reportedly were.
Adventure, I decided, was something best read about.
“30 seconds”
“10”
“Brace, brace, brace”
The rollercoaster was over and the wheels were down. The deceleration was intense and then, like any other flight in the world, we taxied. A long, sauntering taxi. In a soft skinned aircraft. In Afghanistan. Surrounded by Taliban who wanted to bugger and skin me. And not particularly in that order. And I couldn't even ‘blow out my brains’ as recommended by Kipling.
Eventually after two or three hours, or maybe minutes, the aircraft stopped and the rear ramp started to come down. We could see figures coming towards us in the gloom.
“All right fellas?” A Scouser. A jovial, chubby (RAF obviously) Scouser. Thank god for Liverpool. “Welcome to Kabul.”
And so began my first, extraordinary, experience of Afghanistan.
For me the highlight of my tour was the foot patrols.
For every patrol we would all carry full chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear warfare suits, respirators, gloves, over-boots and decontamination kits – remember the anthrax letters in the US in 2001 when we thought Al Qaida was on the brink of unleashing WMD on us all? We carried 24 hours worth of rations, two litres of water, 180 rounds of ammunition in 6 magazines as well as bandoleers of spare rounds and spare link for the 5.56mm Minimi machine guns of which we had two per section. The section commander and the second in command had smoke grenades, flares, night sights and patrol radios. There were two grenadiers with high explosive grenades and a couple of LAWs, Light Anti-tank Weapons. As we were doing 'hearts and minds this, hearts and minds that, Northern Ireland, blah-blah-blah' we wore our body armour under our shirts soft patrol hats on our heads and carried our helmets in our patrol sacks so we didn't look threatening....
At the assigned hour we'd line up by the gate in a herringbone formation with each rifleman facing left and right alternately to cover the left and right arcs of fire. One by one we'd 'hard target' out of the gate running zig-zag for the first 100 metres or so, or as much as we could manage with 35 kilos of kit at 6,000ft altitude in 45 degree heat. [Hats off to the lads in Helmand who have to do this for real, with more kit and more heat.] The cigarette seller / Iranian intelligence officer across the street no doubt logged us in and out but other than that it was just us and the mad dogs out in the noon day sun.
And so the patrols would begin.
We were based on the outskirts of Kabul near the airport. To our west were a number of scattered villages and most of our patrols would concentrate on them. We'd move quite slowly and tactically, visually covering our arcs of fire with our weapons in the low port (held into the shoulder but pointing at the ground in front of us) rather than fire position (aimed at potential targets), hearts and minds remember.
Soon after we first stepped into the maze of mud bricked walled streets where the villages began we'd have our first encounter with the fabled and feared Afghan people. “Hey Mr. how are you?” “Hey Mr. Pen. Dollar. Biscuit.” The kids would surround us, want to play football with us, look through our weapons sights and have their picture taken. “Hey Mr. Axe. Axe” Axe, meaning picture, was probably the first Dari word I learnt.
“Hey Mr. You porridge wog.”
“Excuse me!”
“You porridge wog. Give me pen.”
The Paras who, as always, had been the first in had decided it hilarious to teach the kids the finer points of the English language and rehearse suitable greetings for the anticipated Scotch battlegroup.
Further into the villages with a suitable entourage of kids in tow we'd begin to meet the adults. Invariably they would want to talk to us.
“Chai mekhoride? Chai?”
“Zero Bravo this is Bravo Four Nine. I think we have a local trying to pass us some intel. Send up the 'terp. Over”
Most of the interpreters were young and liked to humour us by wearing body armour and maybe carrying a can of Coke in lieu of rations in deference to our encumbered state. When we did tactical halts they would squat down next to us whilst we took up fire positions in drainage ditches and lying pressed in against tree trunks. Abdul was in his sixties and had been working at the University as a professor, he would walk along beside us in his brown suit, white Islamic cap with his hands clasped firmly behind his back clutching his prayer beads. When we went to ground he seemingly stood alone in an empty field contemplating the sky and no doubt thinking “Oh dear! Here we go again.”
“Tea.”
“What?”
“He's asking if you would like some tea.”
“Erm. Zero Bravo this is Bravo Four Nine. We're being invited for tea. I think it might be a trap. Over.”
“Bravo Four Nine this is Zero Bravo. Had intel on ricin plot. No tea. Over”
“Roger. Out.”
“Tell him thank you but we've just had a brew before we left.”
And then we'd meet the next local.
“Chai mekhoride?”
“What?”
“Tea. He's asking if you would like to be his guest and drink tea with him.”
“Why?”
“The people are very pleased you are here and that you have made the Taliban leave.”
“Does everyone want us to drink tea with them?”
“Yes. In Islam hospitality is very important. If you are our guest we will provide you with tea, food and somewhere to stay. If you are our enemy... Well that is a different matter.”
“Zero Bravo, erm, I think one of us should drink tea with them. The rest of us can be on guard. What do you think? Over.”
“Bravo Four Nine. That's a negative. Could be a contagious biological agent that takes us all out. Out.”
“OK Abdul. Would you mind telling him thank you very much perhaps another time.”
And so I'd spend a lot of my time on patrol chatting to Abdul, or the other interpreters and as many of the locals as I possibly could. As I was an 'Attachment' to the patrol and not strictly part of the fighting force I was given significant latitude. When the guys were doing a tactical halt and taking up fire positions behind walls I, with Abdul, could stand and chat with the locals.
“So what do you need here?”
“Water. We have no water. The wells are dry. Six years of drought. We need deeper wells.”
“OK. I think we should be able to help with that. I'll see what we can do.”
If you had a dollar for every time an Afghan has heard that and then nothing happened you'd be as rich as some of the thousands of development contractors living in compounds in Kabul.
I tried various different avenues to try and get some wells into the local village but with absolutely no success. As a very junior rank in a big organization in a multi-national, multi-agency environment my request for a drop of water got lost in the tidal wave of need. And so I had to go back out on patrol and look those Afghans in the eye and say ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing we can do.’ It was one of the most painful and obviously untrue things I’ve ever had to say in my life. After all if we could fly an entire battlegroup half way round the world we could certainly dig a hole.
By the end of my tour and the end of 2002 the honeymoon was obviously coming to an end. The villagers had given up inviting us for tea or asking for wells. They discontented themselves with the four mile round trip to the nearest source of water. The kids were less keen to play football or look through our weapon sights and every now and then they’d throw stones at the open sided Land Rovers, especially if one of them had been recently knocked down by a speeding military convoy.
I left Afghanistan with two really strong impressions. The first was of the overwhelming hospitality and generosity of the Afghan people who had absolutely nothing to give but tea and bread but offered it anyway. I developed a deep respect for the Afghan people and a love this extraordinary country where the sense of optimism and possibility was so palpable you could almost see it hanging in the air. The second was watching and being part of the institutions of the international community effectively landing on the moon with a corporate sense of fear and desperately looking for reference points, systems, processes or institutions they could recognise and work with and being completely befuddled. Afghanistan is like nowhere else in the World. Finding nothing we understood, recognised or weren’t afraid of, even tea, we set about the mammoth and frankly sacrilegious task of making Afghanistan more like the rest of the world.
So largely through fear and institutional ignorance we missed the opportunity to drink tea, dig wells and learn about Afghanistan. Instead we determined ourselves to stay within our burgeoning blast walls, write policies and spend huge sums establishing the institutions that would teach the Afghans how to be more like us.
Despite the pervading institutional sense of doom surrounding Afghanistan I still retain the sense of optimism that pervaded my first (and second) military tour. Afghanistan is a personal and social, not institutional, environment. I now live and work amongst the Afghan people and once you step away from the armour, heavy machine guns and blast walls you can still find those kind, generous and welcoming Afghans who greeted us in 2002. There is still every opportunity for a successful outcome in Afghanistan but I believe it will come from focusing our energies on areas where we can make more friends not kill more enemies.
