The Circuit (38 page)

Insurgents had engaged US forces in some very serious incidents in Nuristan. In 2006, fighters led by the Taliban Commander Ahmed Shah attacked a squad of US Navy Seals, killing three. Shah’s fighters then shot down a helicopter full of US reinforcements, killing a further sixteen. If elite soldiers were getting hit like that, what kind of obstacles were the PRTs encountering? I concluded that the embed had the possibility of being quite hairy indeed.

Nic was told to report to Bagram Airbase the night before the embed for departure to Nuristan early the next morning. The main US base in Afghanistan, Bagram is approximately a one-hour drive north of Kabul city. In 2007, the dangers involved in making even that short journey underscored just how organized the insurgency had become in and around the Afghan capital.

The route I selected to Bagram would take us along the infamous Jalalabad Road. Before departing, I ran the drivers and crew through the SOPs including a new one I’d introduced since returning to media work. I instructed the CNN crew to put away their BlackBerries until we reached a secure environment. A combination mobile phone, email, SMS device and web browser, BlackBerries are a tremendous asset to journalists on the go, but in a hostile environment they can be a serious liability. It’s impossible to be fully aware of your surroundings when your face is buried in a BlackBerry, and for the drive to Bagram I insisted all eyes be on the lookout for trouble.

We arrived at Bagram without incident but, as always, I refused to relax until my clients were safely inside the camp. A month earlier, a suicide bomber had killed more than a dozen people at Bagram’s gates. The attack was staged during a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney. The bomber managed to penetrate an outer cordon of security manned by Afghan police and strike at an inner checkpoint manned by American troops. Both the timing and execution of the attack revealed a lot about the Taliban’s operations in Kabul. Cheney’s visit was not pre-announced, which meant that the insurgents were able to get the bomb and driver to Bagram almost on a whim. It was the clearest evidence I’d seen that the Taliban had well-trained, organized cells in the Afghan capital.

A member of the PAO’s office was waiting for us inside he gates. Luckily, he’d brought a minivan. Between Nic, Scotty, Susan and me, we had fifteen items of gear. Driving through Bagram is like driving through a small town in America. It has all the amenities of home: Burger King, coffee bars, pizza place, the best hospital in Afghanistan, a PX with great items at bargain prices. Most of the troops stationed in Bagram never see an angry char wallah and many are as good-natured as they are polite. You’d never guess you were in a hostile environment were it not for the signs on the perimeter reading ‘Danger Mine Field’.

We were taken to the PAO’s office for a quick brief on Bagram and an overview of our embed. We learned that our embed would last approximately six days and take us to three forward operations bases to observe three separate PRTs in action: two in Nuristan and one in Kunar. The PAO didn’t have a tremendous amount of detail about the PRTs though he did warn us that there were few amenities at the FOBs and we should be prepared to rough it.

The PAO ended the brief by handing us reams of paperwork to sign. We were given form after form in triplicate; disclaimers stating that we understood the dangers involved in the embed and that we wouldn’t hold the US military liable should we get injured or killed. I had not been required to sign anything on previous embeds. Then again, I hadn’t been on one for over two years. I took it as yet another sign of how dangerous Afghanistan had become.

After the brief, the PAO showed us to our accommodation: a building the size of a garden hut kitted out with cots, air conditioning for the summer and heating for the winter. Clean, modern washing facilities were across the way and half a mile up the road was the best food in Afghanistan. You would never guess there was an insurgency raging all around us. We took the PAO at his word that we’d be in for some hardships in Nuristan and sat down to a dinner that really could feed an army. I tucked into a T-bone steak the size of a frisbee, crab, veggies and half a gallon of ice cream. I was well fed and mentally prepared for anything Nuristan had in store.

Then, it started to rain. Military transport in Afghanistan is seriously overstretched and if your flight is cancelled due to poor weather conditions, you can wait around for weeks to get another one. If our flight to Nuristan was grounded, the embed would be off.

By early morning, the rain had stopped and the skies had cleared. It seemed we’d be on our way. I roused the crew at 5 a.m. sharp to drive ourselves and equipment the short distance across the road to the helipad. I wanted to be sure we were the first in line to board our aircraft.

We were scheduled to fly out on a CH 47 Chinook helicopter. As much as I was looking forward to the embed, I was nervous as hell about flying to it, especially in a Chinook. Chinooks are very old workhorses, having first come out in 1966 when I was only twelve years old. As I’ve said, I’m not a keen flyer in ideal circumstances, and I was well aware that in both Iraq and Afghanistan these huge, tandem-rotored monsters were falling out of the sky at an alarming rate; some downed due to mechanical failure and some shot down by insurgents.

For that reason, Chinooks operating in hostile environments are mounted with three 7.62 mm medium machine guns, one on either side of the fuselage, and a tail gunner who sits on the open ramp during flight. Chinooks also fly in pairs for mutual support. Even with the precautionary measures, though, operating a Chinook is among the most dangerous assignments in a theatre of war. The crews who man these helicopters are incredibly brave.

Our Chinook was full to the gunnels with troops and equipment all bound for the same destination: FOB Kala Gush, Nuristan. I braced myself for a stomach-churning flight but once airborne I found myself pleasantly distracted by the views sweeping past. We climbed out of Bagram through the saddle of two bald mountains, dropped into a desert valley, climbed into another mountain range and back down into a lush green valley. When you drive through Afghanistan the scenery changes every twenty minutes; from the air, it’s every twenty seconds. The colours swirled underneath us like a shifting kaleidoscope: pale and tawny browns, emerald and deep moss greens.

The tree-lined, snowy-peaked mountains of the Hindu Kush rose in the distance as we approached our destination. FOB Kala Gush is at the top of a very flat valley and when approached by air it feels as if the mountains are literally closing in around you. The helicopter dropped us in the LZ (Landing Zone), and took off again. As the dust cleared I was dismayed to discover that the FOB was positioned right at the base of a two-thousand-foot mountain. I couldn’t believe the Americans built a base so barefaced and open to attack. It wasn’t as if the compound was large and imposing enough to deter insurgents; it was barely big enough for the two Chinooks to land.

I took a quick walk around to assess the base’s defensive capabilities. I saw two 155 mm howitzer artillery pieces, which made me feel a bit better. The base also had a mortar pit and sentry posts with machine guns positioned at various points around a perimeter circled in blast walls and barbed wire. Unfortunately only two of the sentry posts were manned. It was just like the US base in Samarra, Iraq, only worse because Kala Gush was overlooked by a two-thousand-foot peak. It was really scary.

My discomfort was heightened by the sight of a dozen local Afghans holding court in the middle of the camp. Again, it was a repeat of the same mistakes I’d seen in Samarra, except these locals were guests and not detainees. Any one of them could have been an insurgent or a tout.

When I asked one of our military hosts about the group of Afghans, I was told by a captain that they were village elders who’d been invited there for a meeting. I asked him why the base hadn’t set up a secured location outside the camp; one that would allow them to conduct meetings with locals without compromising security. The captain’s answer was a familiar one: ‘That’s not how we do things here.’ He explained that they wanted to show the locals that the US was on their side. I felt like saying that in due course he’d find out which side the locals were really on. But I’d only just arrived and I didn’t want my big mouth reflecting badly on Nic and his crew.

Later that evening, the elders were invited into the cookhouse for a meal. I couldn’t help but recall an attack in December 2004 in which a suicide bomber walked into a cookhouse in the middle of a US base in Mosul, Iraq. The attack killed twenty-six soldiers and wounded sixty. Nothing seemed to have been learned from that episode. I could only conclude that there’s little to no cross-pollination of ideas between the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there is, then the lessons are quickly forgotten.

Given the poor security at the base, it was vital that I keep the team close together. Should an incident occur, I didn’t want them scattered. This presented a little mini-drama upon our arrival because it is US military policy to segregate the sexes into different tents. Nic and I had to fight tooth and nail to keep Susan with us. Finally our hosts relented after Nic argued that he needed Susan to help him cut stories late into the night.

Once we’d sorted the sleeping arrangements we were shown to our tent. Far from the ‘rough’ conditions advertised by the PAO in Bagram, our accommodation contained an abundance of cots and an air-conditioning unit. In fact, the Americans had managed to cram all sorts of amenities into FOB Kala Gush: showers with hot water, flush latrines, a cookhouse serving real food as opposed to just army rations, a laundry tent with huge washing machines and industrial driers, a small running track around the LZ and even a gym with Olympic weights. The US military didn’t seem to know much about securing bases in an insurgent-rich environment but when it comes to making troops comfortable, the Yanks wrote the book.

Once settled, we went for a briefing with the commander of FOB Kala Gush. The commander was in good condition for a man of his age and spoke in a very mild-mannered tone. It was the complete opposite of the in-your-face bravado I’d experienced with some other US commanders. The commander had only been in his post a few weeks, and when he spoke of his PRT he did so with all the freshly minted enthusiasm one would expect from the uninitiated. The commander was assigned to his post for a year, during which time he was utterly determined to lay a road from Kala Gush all the way to the centre of Nuristan. If the flight to Kala Gush were any indication of the province’s general topography, achieving that would be one incredible feat. Throw in the security issues – the proximity to the Pakistan border and the al-Qaeda foothold in the region – and the task seemed completely unworkable.

But the commander had absolute faith that his PRT would prevail. Prior to his deployment, he completed a six-month course in the States covering counter-insurgency tactics and other roles which he believed would enable him to produce a successful mission. He truly believed he and his men would build their road and secure the loyalty of the local population. He may have thought otherwise had his course included a lesson in recent Afghan history. The Soviets built brilliant roads all over Afghanistan – roads which they used to run back to Moscow with their tails between their legs. Yet, despite all the historical evidence, the US and NATO were convinced that PRTs held the key to defeating the insurgency.

The commander’s commitment was genuine and quite touching. But for all his passion and preparation he spoke of his PRT as if there were no security hurdles to clear first. Rather than set his sights on completing the road, in my view it would have been far more realistic for him to spend his year laying the security groundwork for the project and then hand things over to another officer. I wondered if the commander had the energy to maintain his enthusiasm over the coming months. If he did encounter delays with the project, would he put the safety of his troops first or would he, like so many fofficers, allow himself and his men to be pushed to the limits by a senior echelon demanding results within an unrealistic timeframe?

As the sun dropped below the mountains, we moved into our tent and switched to red lights; white lights were banned after dark because they’re visible from a distance and can act as bull’s eyes to insurgents trying to target the base. The crew and I bedded down with the war looming above and beyond us. I fell asleep to the sound of fighter aircraft heading towards the Pakistan border to take out enemy positions deep within the mountains.

CHAPTER 38

We passed the night in relative peace, with the exception of one incident. Around 3 a.m. I woke to what sounded like the thump of a mortar round coming in to our tent. I thought the base was under attack. I sprang to my feet, ready to rouse the crew. It was then that I realized that the thump wasn’t a mortar round but the sound of Nic’s cot collapsing underneath him. I must have looked completely startled because Scotty, the cameraman, had a good laugh at my expense.

For our first full day in Kala Gush the commander invited CNN to join a half platoon on a clearance patrol in the mountains surrounding the base. I was very interested to see how the soldiers would perform. Clearance patrols, as the name suggests, involve clearing an area of possible hazards, such as IEDS and insurgents.

Before going outside the wire the troops asked us to take part in a ‘rehearsal’: a drill involving various patrolling scenarios. It sounded great to me, especially as I’d never seen, let alone participated in, a rehearsal on any of my previous embeds with the US military.

The half platoon was commanded by a very young first lieutenant. Although he had a captain and some seasoned sergeants on hand to guide him, the lieutenant was keen to establish his authority. He had obviously gone through his aide-memoire – sort of an idiot’s guide to commanding – the night before to ensure that his patrol literally went by the book. The rehearsal was held in an open vehicle area where the unit’s Humvees were parked. It was meant to simulate a withdrawal from a contact to the front. For the next three minutes the crew and I watched as the troops lifted their feet in double time while the lieutenant barked incomprehensible orders. None of the soldiers knew who was covering whom and the back of the patrol seemed completely lost as to how they should be responding.