A Million Bullets: The Real Story of the British Army in Afghanistan (40 page)

As Musa Qala was reconquered, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, announced what his officials called 'a shift of emphasis' in Britain's Afghan strategy: from now on, he would support President Karzai's bid for reconciliation with middle-ranking Taliban who were prepared to lay down their guns and abide by the constitution. As 2007 came to a close, it emerged that British officials had in fact already been talking to the Taliban in an unofficial way for perhaps six months – so unofficially, indeed, that it seemed that the Afghan authorities themselves did not always know about it. Soon after Musa Qala's recapture, the Governor of Helmand, Assadullah Wafa, complained to Kabul that two senior foreign diplomats – Michael Semple, the acting head of the EU mission, and Mervyn Patterson of the UN – had travelled to the region for secret talks with the Taliban without telling him. President Karzai, apparently incensed at the perceived undermining of government sovereignty, promptly expelled the pair from the country. The details of how, precisely, the Taliban should be engaged in dialogue remain unclear. A negotiated settlement for Afghanistan will remain elusive for as long as such confusion continues; but at least the prospect of talks is closer than before.

Gordon Brown's new strategy was sugared by the promise of an extra £450 million of development funds between 2009 and 2012. It may be too little, too late. To date, despite some improvements since 2006, not enough has changed for the people of Helmand. Development and reconstruction work, even in Lashkar Gah and Gereshk, is still far from what it should be. As Paddy Ashdown, the former High Representative for Bosnia, pointed out, in mid- 2007 the amount of aid being spent per head of population was precisely one-fiftieth of what the international community put into Bosnia and Kosovo, 'less, in terms of resources, than has ever been put into a successful post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction effort'.

Meanwhile, opium production remains at record levels – the British and Americans are still arguing about counter-narcotics strategy – and suicide bombings are on the rise across the country. A record 140 such bombs exploded in 2007. In February 2008 in Arghandab, the idyllic-looking district north-west of Kandahar I had visited a year earlier, a bomber killed more than a hundred men and boys who were attending a dog-fighting festival. There are more suicide bomb attacks over the border in Pakistan, too, where democracy itself seemed to falter at the end of 2007 when elections were postponed following the assassination of the leader of the Pakistani People's Party, Benazir Bhutto.

With a few notable exceptions, the Afghan National Police are as corrupt and indigent as ever, and quite unready to take over. Doubts also remain over the ANA, despite some notable improvements in its performance since 2006. Worst of all, thanks in part to Coalition reliance on air power, hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians continue to be killed in insurgency-related violence, with a potentially catastrophic effect on public relations. An estimated 6,200 people were killed in violence related to the insurgency in 2007 – an estimate that one very senior officer told me privately was far too low. Whatever the true figure, no one doubted that the 2007 fighting season was easily the country's deadliest since the US-led invasion of 2001.

The British Army looks certain to go on paying a heavy price. At the time of writing, sixty-five young soldiers had either been killed in action or had died subsequently from their wounds, and more than 300 had been injured, 101 of them seriously or very seriously. The Prime Minister declared in December 2007 that troop levels would settle at about 7,800 for the long term, but declined to set a time limit for this commitment – unlike General Dannatt, who in the summer of 2007 warned of a 'new great game' in central Asia, and ordered his commanders to prepare accordingly. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador to Kabul, specified that stabilization of Afghanistan could take thirty years. The Home Front seems unlikely to have the patience for that if, as seems likely, the violence continues at the present intensity. As they say in Afghanistan, 'You may have the watches, but we have the time.' The American experience in Iraq has hardly been encouraging, and domestic British support for Operation Herrick remains elusive. According to the most recent poll, a third of respondents thought that British and Nato troops could never win in Afghanistan, and 62 per cent thought that all British troops should be withdrawn either immediately or within the year.

And what will happen to Britain's Armed Forces? Between June and November 2007 more than 5,000 military men and women quit their jobs, 1,300 of them officers; another 2,000 were waiting to have their resignation applications approved. Such a rate of attrition cannot be sustained for long. A 'broken' Army could spell the end of the government's ability to project or protect national interests anywhere abroad. Our relationship with the US would be greatly weakened, along with British influence in Europe, the UN and the world.

But where is relief to come from? Despite pleading, Britain's chief European partners are still refusing to commit the necessary troop reinforcements to Afghanistan's dangerous south. Nato, a military alliance that has underpinned Western security for fifty years, could well end up being buried in Afghanistan, a country long known as 'the graveyard of empires'. 'I think [southern Afghanistan] may be the death knell of Nato unless we're very careful,' said Lord (Peter) Carrington, a former Nato secretary-general. 'I mean, when we get a situation in which so many countries are not prepared to join in. Really only the Canadians and the Americans and the British and the Dutch are fighting there. I think this is very dangerous for Nato. I think we ought to ask ourselves, if this doesn't work, what on earth is Nato for?'

Osama bin Laden once taunted the West for its unwillingness to fight, and it may indeed be that some of Britain's main Nato allies have lost their appetite for it. As one of the
Spiegel
journalists I met in Kandahar pointed out, just one person has been shot dead by a German soldier since the end of World War Two, a guerrilla in Kosovo who unwisely attacked a UN peace-keeper there in 1999. The soldier responsible, the journalist added, was instantly taken off duty and sent off for psychological counselling, despite his protests that he didn't need it. The modern German Army is a very different beast from the Wehrmacht of popular memory.

Britain seems to have bitten off more than she can chew in Helmand; and her Army – brave, proud and uniquely professional, but scandalously under-resourced by government and tragically under-appreciated at home – is looking ever more isolated internationally. The Dutch and the Canadians are under intense domestic pressure to reduce their military commitments. In Washington, outgoing President George Bush and his neo-con supporters are on the back foot, with presidential elections pending. Despite the reconquest of Musa Qala, a jihadist wave partly set in motion by British policies is still building in the wider region. The 'kinetic' nature of Operation Herrick 4 set the tone for Britain's Afghan engagement for, very probably, years to come. Was it really worth the risk?

Edinburgh, April 2008

Notes

Introduction

3: A professor at the Royal Statistical Society . . . comrades in Iraq: Professor Sheila Bird, quoted in the
Independent
, 1 October 2006.

5: By the end of the year . . . 320 non-combatants:
Observer
, 12 August 2007, 'Civilian death toll rises in the bloody battle of Helmand'.

7: 'They looked on with astonishment . . . enter the field as competitors': Henry Havelock,
Narrative of the War in Afghanistan 1840
, quoted in Patrick Macrory,
Kabul Catastrophe
(1966; reprinted 2002, Prion Books), p. 124.

10: 'We are running hot . . . I say "just"':
Guardian
, 4 September 2006.

12: In November 2007 . . . required strength of 101,800:
Guardian
, 23 November 2007, Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Under-strength and under strain as experienced soldiers queue to quit'.

13: 'I don't see how any Muslim . . . they can't be like us':
Guardian
, 5 July 2006, 'Muslim soldier's family condemn "terrorist" claims'.

14: The objectors' self-interest was widely condemned: see, e.g.,
Sunday
Telegraph
, 5 August 2007, Jenny McCartney, 'There are some news stories that force you to question just what Britain has become'.

17: 'It's the man who is the first weapon of war . . . even quicker by overuse':
The Times
, 10 October 2006.

Chapter 1: In Kandahar

39: 'As we cleared the pass . . . in complete disorder across the plain': J. Martin Bladen Neill,
Recollections of Four Years' Service in the East with
HM Fortieth Regiment
(1845; reprinted by the Naval and Military Press), pp. 160–2.

Chapter 2: Aya Gurkhali!

51: Around Now Zad . . . in only three years: see
www.aims.org.af/afg/dist_profiles/unhcr_district_profiles/southern/helmand/naw_zad

51: In 2006, according to the UN . . . responsible for almost half of it: Senlis Council,
Helmand at War
, June 2006.

52: The province is on the way . . . and even Colombia: UNODC World Drug Report 2007.

81: Most worrying of all . . . cannot begin to police itself?':
Newsnight
, BBC 2, 26 October 2006.

Chapter 3: The Dragon's Lair

90: 'Hero Dean' . . . THIS is what our boys face':
Sun
, 1 November 2006. 111: Taken together, the stories . . . according to plan: see
Daily Mail
, 22 September 2006.

123: It can carry ten tons of ammunition . . . bullet casings from the aircraft floor: see Dan Mills,
Sniper One
(Michael Joseph, 2007), p. 140.

123: The accusation spilled over into the press . . . hearts and minds:
Guardian
, 10 August 2007, Declan Walsh and Richard Norton-Taylor, 'UK officer calls for US Special Forces to quit Afghan hotspot'.

136: The twenty-fifth anniversary . . . in the conflict itself:
Sunday Times
magazine, 10 June 2007, Michael Bilton, 'Lions Bled by Donkeys'.

Chapter 4: The Joint UK Plan for Helmand

145: 'Well, we will offer an alternative . . . he does not question me further: Leo Docherty,
Desert of Death
(Faber & Faber, 2007), p. 145.

146: 'What's the form?' . . . we're doing fuck-all about it!': ibid., p. 175.

149–50: Yet it was not until June 2007 . . . a meeting closed to the public:
The Times
, 28 August 2007, Michael Evans, 'Army chief predicts "a generation of conflict" '.

152: 'It's all very well having bombers . . . the insurgency': Noel Barber,
The War of the Running Dogs
(Collins, 1971), pp. 62–3.

161: 'Brigadier Ed Butler has it all . . . a man ready-made to lead': Michael Evans, in
The Times
, 19 May 2006.

163: Yet when they reached the chief's son . . . some pain-killers: Patrick Bishop,
3 Para
(Harper Press, 2007), p. 110.

164: Some of those who dealt with the Governor suspected that he was prone to 'flap': ibid., p. 110.

167–8: It was not until January 2007 . . . a two-mile security perimeter: see
Observer
, 28 January 2008, Jason Burke, 'Dam holds back force of the Taliban'.

173: According to the journalist Christina Lamb . . . 'the Maiwand thing':
Sunday Times
, 9 July 2006, 'Death Trap'.

173: In 1998, in the Panjshir Valley . . . the legend 'VR 1840': see
Kandahar
Cockney
(Harper Perennial, 2005), p. 45.

181: In 2001, hundreds of bright yellow MRE . . . public relations disaster: see, e.g.,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Landmines_html/ClusterBombs_Afghan_HRW.html

181: In 2007, another attempt to curry favour . . . the World Cup in 2002: this story was widely reported, but see, e.g., Brian Whitaker in the
Guardian
, 28 August 2007.

183: 'establishing relations . . . [we] would be dealing with': Patrick Bishop,
3 Para
, p. 30.

Chapter 5: The Chinooks Push the Envelope

191: 'I want to know exactly . . . and they are not': see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/6303011.stm

191: That summer a suspected SAM-7 . . . the following July:
Daily
Telegraph
, 29 July 2007, Tom Coghlan.

192: The results then were devastating . . . aircraft were lost: Defence Research Paper, Advanced Command and Staff Course, Number 9, Sept 2005–July 2006.

193: 'parallel-parking a car with your eyes closed': see
Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel
, 7 April 2003, Katherine M. Skiba.

197: Hasler, suspecting that some spare 'chicken fuel' might be useful . . . the engines to burn up: Patrick Bishop,
3 Para
, p. 173.

209: 'Clearly we could generate a higher tempo . . . reconstruction and development': BBC News, 8 October 2006.

211: But the reporter chose not to mention this . . . twenty-five years earlier:
Daily Telegraph
, 4 October 2006, Tom Coghlan.

216: One egregious example . . . bikinis:
Sun
, 27 March 2007, 'Does my bomber look big in this?'

Chapter 6: Apache: A Weapon for 'War Amongst the People'

221: Early on in Herrick 4 . . . gutted alive:
Independent
, 1 October 2006, Raymond Whitaker.

221: The threat to aircrew . . . a mole working at the MoD:
The Times
, 31 January 2007, Daniel McGrory.

222: 'The Brits are good . . . Lieutenant Jack Denton:
Sunday Telegraph
, 29 April 2007, Gethin Chamberlain, 'US aircrews show Taliban no mercy'.

Chapter 7: Tom's War

236: The report, broadcast on
Newsnight
, generated much controversy: BBC 2, 26 October 2006.