The Circuit (23 page)

That experience in Borneo taught me to vigorously seek out local knowledge whenever possible. Without it, even the most well-planned operation can fail.

Back in Kabul the press corps was buzzing with talk of ‘CNN’s trip to Helmund’. It was definitely a coup for Nic Robertson. Rather than follow the herd to Jalalabad he ventured into uncharted territory to deliver a hard-hitting report on Afghanistan’s drugs trade.

The night after we got back to Kabul there was a party for journalists, UN and NGO staff at the Intercontinental Hotel. Normally I would discourage my clients from attending what I view as a great opportunity for insurgents to take out dozens of westerners in one fell swoop. But Nic wanted to catch up with his colleagues in the press corps to see what had happened in Kabul while he was away. Admittedly, I also wanted to go. I still had virtually no direct contact with other security advisers working in Afghanistan and I was banking there’d be a few at the Intercon looking after clients.

The party was well under way by the time we got there. Dozens of people were crammed into a suite of rooms; pop music was blaring, alcohol was flowing and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. A small group of westerners was passing around a hash pipe. I couldn’t believe it. The international community was supposed to be eradicating Afghanistan’s drugs trade, not funding it. Few seemed to care either that they were breaking Afghan law by consuming alcohol. I’d never seen some individuals show such a total disregard for the delicate nature of an operating environment.

I spent most of the party in a corner drinking orange juice and talking to some journalists who I knew from Iraq and the West Bank. Like Nic, these were highly professional individuals who’d gone to the party to catch up with their peers, not to get pissed.

At one point, a female producer from Sky News approached me. She wanted to know how we pulled off the Helmund trip and whether I thought her team could do it as well. I asked her if she had a security adviser. The producer pointed to a tall lad in his mid-thirties. A group of people was huddled around him and he seemed to be the life and soul of the party.

‘What’s his background?’ I asked.

‘He’s an ex-military medic,’ said the producer.

I told her he’d be very useful if they got wounded, but it sounded to me like he didn’t have the right military background to manage a trip to a place like Helmund. I explained that in the military, it’s pretty much ‘horses for courses’; a medic does medical work, an infantry man does infantry work, a Close Protection team protects, etc. In order to anticipate and respond effectively to all the security issues a news team encounters – i.e. travelling alone without military support, working among civilian populations, embedding with troops, etc. – an adviser needs to have the proper training. I told her that if her adviser did not have proactive skills, she should look for one who did, such as an ex-SAS lad or someone with a background in covert military surveillance. Ideally, the adviser would blend in with the rest of her team and not stand out. Finally, I recommended she find someone who understood her objectives and could help her get stories. Security advisers are expensive but if they help a news crew get world exclusives, they pay for themselves several times over.

The next morning, Nic turned his attention to the other goal he’d set for himself on this trip; the embed in Khost province. He hadn’t heard back yet from the US military Public Affairs Officer but knew he could get the go-ahead at any time. When the call did come, Nic wanted to be as prepared as possible to cover the story.

With that in mind, he asked CNN’s local fixer Hamid if he knew of anyone who’d been to Khost recently or could offer some insights on what was really going on there. As usual, Hamid came through with a real winner: an ANA Commander who’d just returned from Khost. The Commander agreed to sit down with us for an informal, background meeting.

The briefing took place around the dinner table and lasted several hours. Nic, his crew and I were in attendance as was Hamid, who acted as translator.

The Commander had just returned from fighting alongside US troops stationed in Khost province. The joint military operation involved stopping Taliban and al-Qaeda militants from coming over the border through Pakistan. The Commander told us the enemy was proving quite formidable and he’d lost a great deal of men that year, even though it was only April. Moreover, insurgent activity wasn’t confined to the border. The Taliban and al-Qaeda, he said, had joined forces in Khost and were getting stronger by the day.

When the Commander was asked whether the coalition’s reconstruction projects were winning the support of the local population, he laughed. The militants, he said, had a far more effective method of securing loyalty; they threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the coalition. Working with westerners of any sort, including non-military, wasn’t tolerated. The insurgents were offering a bounty of US$25,000 for the head of any westerner caught in Khost province – a king’s ransom in a country where the average household income is only three hundred dollars a year.

The background briefing was invaluable in my eyes. Though it was common knowledge that Khost was dangerous, the Commander had given us a more detailed picture of the province’s security issues. Moreover, he’d given us specific intelligence that we never would have found in a published source.

A few days later, I accompanied Nic to the weekly press conference at the US military base in Kabul. Nic still hadn’t heard a word on his embed request and he wanted to meet directly with the PAO to check his status.

I’d been to a few pressers in Kabul by that point and I found them to be a real giggle. A US Army officer would come out and tell a load of rubbish to the media about how well the US and ISAF missions were going and how the reconstruction efforts were right on schedule.

I expected the propaganda. What surprised me, however, was the follow-up by the press corps. Many of the journalists didn’t question the official version of events and when someone did ask a hard-hitting question, the press officer would skirt the issue by saying he’d have to ‘look into it’ and get back to them later. Rarely would the journalists help each other out by asking follow-up questions.

On one occasion in particular the US military just plain lied by providing the press officer in Kabul with a misleading account of an incident. It was announced that a US Ranger had been shot dead in what was described as a ‘huge’ gun battle with the opposition near the Pakistan border. It was big news in the US because the dead soldier, Pat Tillman, had been an American football star who had turned down a multimillion-dollar sports contract to fight the War on Terror. I remember turning to Nic and saying that the description of a ‘huge’ battle didn’t ring true. If it had indeed been a contact involving dozens of troops, it was unlikely that only one soldier would have died. I smelled a rat. I told Nic I’d bet my mortgage that the lad had been hit by his own side.

Sure enough, an American broadcaster asked whether the soldier was killed by ‘friendly fire’. The press officer was adamant that there were no reports to suggest that was the case. Over a month later, the US military finally came clean and admitted that the soldier had indeed been a victim of friendly fire. Poor laddie; he was undoubtedly brave and honourable, turning down a fortune to do what he believed was the right thing. It was disgraceful that his own military did not tell the public about the full circumstances of his death for so long.

At the presser, Nic learned that the PAO he’d left his request with had been replaced while we were in Helmund. The new PAO was a short little major with a squeaky voice and an annoying habit of speaking to people without removing his sunglasses (probably because he didn’t want to look anyone in the eye). I disliked him immediately.

The PAO told Nic that his Khost embed was imminent and would more than likely come through within the next forty-eight hours. When it did, the military would fly him and his crew to Camp Solerno, a forward operations base in Khost only a few miles from the Pakistan border. Just like his predecessor, this PAO told Nic that driving to the embed was out of the question.

I had to excuse myself while Nic went over the details with the PAO. I was afraid if I stuck around, I’d compromise Nic’s chances of landing the embed. Everything about the PAO wound me up. I don’t hide my feelings well and in retrospect it was terrible of me to show my emotions on my face, but for reasons I couldn’t understand at the time all I wanted to do was rip the sunglasses of his fat little head and chin him.

Nic was excited after his meeting with the PAO, but his enthusiasm was dampened by the crew limits placed on him. The military aircraft could only accommodate three civilians. A standard news crew is comprised of a correspondent, camera person and producer. Normally, I’d replace the producer. As I’ve said before, even though embedded journalists are surrounded by soldiers, it’s still a very dangerous assignment. But CNN wanted Nic to file live reports from Khost which meant he’d have to take the ‘fly away’ (satellite) engineer with him. When all was done and dusted, there was simply no room for me.

Later than evening, around 10 p.m. local time, I heard Nic shouting for me from his room. I went to see him immediately. He was going wild.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

Nic told me he had just got a call from the PAO. He had the embed, but there were no flights available to transport him and the crew to the base in Khost. It got worse; the PAO warned Nic that if he didn’t present himself at the gates of Camp Solerno by 3.30 p.m. the next day, he’d lose the embed and his name would fall to the back of the queue.

CHAPTER 23

Nic asked me if there was any way we could drive to Khost. Nic is a very proud man and, like me, whatever he’s thinking shows on his face. He would never beg me to make the trip but it was crystal clear from his expression that he was desperate to go.

It was extremely unethical in my view for the PAO to warn us against driving to Khost and then leave Nic with no other option for getting to the embed. To me, it seemed like a stitch-up and I wasn’t going to stand for it.

Luckily, I’d anticipated just this sort of scenario. The PAO seemed a little bastard and I’d got the feeling that if Nic did get the embed there’d be a sting in the tail somewhere. I’d already approached Hamid and our local drivers with the possibility of driving to Khost. To a man, they were all happy to do the trip with us. I’d built up a lot of goodwill during our journey to Kandahar and Helmund. I’m sure hazard pay also played a role; local wages tripled on assignments outside Kabul due to the increased risks.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll drive. And I’ll get you there safely.’

Nic was over the moon. He spent the rest of the night taking care of administrative details which included compiling a manifest for the PAO detailing the names and titles of who would need to overnight at Camp Solerno. The list included all the westerners in our party: Nic, his cameraman, the engineer and me.

While Nic dealt with the Yanks, Hamid and I pulled together the travel plan and security arrangements; no mean feat considering it was Friday night and we were in a Muslim country (it’s like trying to get something done on a Sunday night in London).

To get to Camp Solerno we’d have to travel through Kabul province, then south through Lowgar province, then south-east towards Gardez, the capital of Paktia province and then finally through Khost province. Weather permitting, I figured the entire trip would take approximately nine and half hours.

Once again, we needed to leave Kabul no later than 3.30 a.m. On this trip especially, it was crucial we have plenty of daylight to spare at the other end as driving through Khost at night was unthinkable. Nine and a half hours was probably a conservative estimate but I needed to err on the side of caution because the variables of the journey were difficult to gauge. Road conditions, for example, were impossible to predict. We’d be travelling on a series of old, poorly maintained roads, not a sleek new highway like the A1 through Kandahar and Helmund. Terrain was another variable; instead of driving past mountains, this time we’d be driving over them; three mountain ranges in total. We also had to consider who was in charge of the areas we’d be traversing. The roads we’d be travelling were not as critical commercially or militarily as the A1 so the coalition tended not to get involved each time a warlord flexed his muscles and closed one down. The fiefdoms we’d be driving through would be exactly that; territory controlled by individual warlords, each of whom governed according to their own rules, laws and whims.

Warlords and dodgy mountain tracks notwithstanding, we also had the standard security issues to prepare for including insurgents and armed bandits.

For our convoy, I decided to employ the same mix of vehicles that had worked so well on our last trip; five low-profile Toyota 4x4s. The only difference was this time Nic needed to bring the live truck, which I was happy to do.
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That boosted our convoy to six vehicles. Despite the addition of the extra truck, we still only required twelve Afghan guards. As before, I wanted them drawn from various Afghan tribes: nine armed with AKs and the other three with light machine guns.

The next morning Nic and the crew were awake and ready to go at 3.15 a.m. All the Afghans were on time as well. I told the sleepy group they must have stayed up all night to make sure they weren’t late – which got a bit of a laugh.

Bearing in mind, however, that neither I nor anyone else in our convoy had got much rest, I began my brief again by reminding everyone of the importance of staying awake at all times during our journey. I told the group our objective was to get to the gates of Camp Solerno no later than an hour before last light.

Next, I gave them the overnight plan: Nic, the crew and I would spend the night at Camp Solerno while Hamid and the rest of the Afghans in our party would stay at a hotel in Khost town. Even though I wouldn’t be joining Nic on his embed, I couldn’t stay in Khost town with the rest of our party. With a $25,000 bounty on the head of any westerner, it would pose a risk to me personally and endanger any Afghan seen with me.