Adam Pletts in Afghanistan

Have you heard of 9/11?

2011-09-16T14:46:15Z

By now, I'll guess we've all heard pretty much enough about 9/11, but if you didn't catch a glimpse of the short film I made, entitled "Have you Heard of 9/11?", the link below is to the version that aired on PBS Newshour recently. Similar short edits also aired on Channel Four News in the UK, France 24, Russia Today and during CNN's special coverage of the 9/11 10-yr anniversary from ground zero.

And below is a commentary that I wrote for Executive Magazine in Beirut.

Images of the World Trade Center buildings billowing smoke, as their final minutes counted down a decade ago this month, gave a very different symbolism to the already iconoclastic twin towers — one representing the change of an era and a new geo-political order. Later that afternoon of September 11, 2001, according to the confidential notes of his aides, Donald Rumsfeld, then United States Secretary of Defense, was to instruct: “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not”. And thus followed the two prolonged and bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On top of its tangible tragedy, 9/11 was also devastatingly aesthetic, a mixture which helped to sear the event into our collective memory, so much so that it has become one of those rare occasions for which most can remember where they were when they first saw the smouldering towers.

But what do Afghans who live in some of the places most affected by the fallout of 9/11 recall about that day?

Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan has borne the brunt of the fighting between Taliban and US-led coalition forces. It is also home to Das Mohammad, a farmer who scrapes a living from subsistence crops and opium cultivation. With an expression of some confusion, Mohammad recently took a quick glance at a photograph I handed him of the two metal towers spewing clouds of smoke against the blue sky of that day. When asked whether he knew what it was he shook his head. A small group of locals gathered around him, all of whom examined the picture with curiosity but no sign of recognition. When asked whether they thought the events depicted in the image had any bearing on their own lives the group was unanimous in dismissing them as irrelevant.

From his reactions to the picture it was clear that Mohammad had no idea what 9/11 was, or for that matter why America and its allies originally sent their military forces to Afghanistan. He is not alone; a survey carried out in October 2010 by the International Council on Security and Development found that 92 percent of a sample of 1,000 men in Helmand and Kandahar provinces were “unaware of the events of 9/11 or that they triggered the current international presence”.

Given the extremely poor infrastructure, lack of media and high levels of illiteracy, not to mention 30 years of war and the fact that the Taliban banned television and radio, it should perhaps not be surprising that most Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar have little idea about 9/11.

It should, however, beg the question as to how effective the coalition campaign to win hearts and minds can really be when those very minds, through no fault of their own, cannot place the international military presence within any context. It is one thing to tell Afghans that the Taliban are the “bad guys” — many would willingly agree — but quite another for them to understand why this is the business of foreign military forces.

After the assassination of Osama Bin Laden there is a case to be made that 9/11 itself is no longer a factor in the war in Afghanistan, which has moved on to attempting to create a safe environment where reconstruction and development can take place. These efforts, though, have been painfully slow, and it is likely that, just as the international military forces will leave without a great many Afghans ever having known why they were there in the first place, they will also do so without having adequately paved the way to real stability.

At the end of the day, the lack of knowledge about 9/11 is symptomatic of a far broader failure in communication between the allied forces and Afghanis, be they civilian, political or military. There are of course exceptions, but at every level, from the humble military translator misinterpreting his officer’s questions to an Afghan president who frequently decries the actions of his own international allies, war and reconstruction in Afghanistan is too often a story lost in translation.

Like father like son

2011-02-10T22:45:18Z

I ended up at COP Spera for longer than I had anticipated. On arrival, Lieutenant Corcorain, explained that they had only been told to expect me hours ahead of time and when I replied “don’t worry, I’m only here over night” he shot straight back “I wouldn’t bet on it, that’s what the last reporter thought and he was here over a week.” Sure enough, I was there nearly a week.

While checking in with the lieutenant one morning to find out if he had any patrols planned, one of his men reported that an old Afghan man had turned up at the gate with a bloody head, looking for medical assistance. To be honest, it didn’t sound particularly interesting but with no patrol on offer I decided to tag along in any case. The plot, however, was about to thicken.

As the old man began to explain what had happened, my first thoughts were to question whether he had any idea of the severity of his claims. By his account he had argued with his son who had been high on marijuana and was intent on joining the Taliban to become a suicide bomber. With the help of some of his fellow villagers he had restrained and chained his son up, who later managed to escape and beat his father in revenge.

Realising that the son was also present, the lieutenant called him over for questioning. As the Afghan soldiers led the son towards us, the trust issues between them and the US soldiers flared to the surface as the Americans demanded that the Afghans raised the man’s shirt in clear view of them. The Afghans for their part insisted they had already searched him. One of them clearly felt humiliated and lost his temper, blurting a string of crude expletives at the US soldiers in broken English. The Afghans eventually relented but not before a fierce exchange of threats and insults.

It quickly became apparent that the son had an entirely different story, claiming that it was his father who had taken him to the Taliban. He did confess an argument took place during which his father was pushed to the ground thereby hitting his head, which was concurrent with the wound. He proceeded to supply the names of men he claimed were Taliban members who had chained him up and sent him home when he refused to carry out a suicide attack.

[The Father holds up the keys to his son’s shackles]

At any rate he made no attempt to hide the fact that he smoked marijuana and had been jailed twice because of this in Miran Shah on the Pakistan side of the border. This prompted the Lieutenant to ask whether he was stoned when the Taliban asked him to carry out a suicide attack, to which he replied he was and continued to explain how they had told him he would go to paradise, which, they said, “was surely a better option than jail.” He claimed it wasn’t the first time they had asked him to become a suicide bomber and that he had always refused. When asked what his occupation is, he simply replied “I just find hashish and smoke it!”

[The father (crouching on the far left) and son (on the far right) being questioned. In the background is the Afghan National Army base]

As if not satisfied with the depth of the hole he was digging, the son said that he used to deliver hashish to an Afghan soldier at Spera, named Kaku, whom the other Afghans denied any knowledge of.

The lieutenant succinctly concluded “one of them is full of shit!” and he was spot on; scarcely a single element of their stories matched. As the soldiers questioned the pair further, they proceeded to disagree on how many other sons there were, what they did and how old they were.

[An Afghan soldier explains to the son that he should look directly into the camera to have his iris photographed]

[The son with a wad of Pakistani money - the common currency in this part of Afghanistan]

When the questioning was finished the father casually led his son away on a chain under Afghan army escort. Back in the communal area of the COP, I heard s US soldier explaining what had happened to one of his colleagues, who remarked “For real! These guys have been watching too much Jerry Springer”

In the areas immediately over the border, the Taliban pretty much are the law. I suspect the father had hoped they would resolve a “family problem”, which back fired, leading him to turn to the American’s as if expecting something similar to their local forms of tribal arbitration. I also suspect there was an element of truth to both of their stories and that marijuana addiction was not the son’s only problem; perhaps in another place he may have been able to receive the care that he seemed to need. When I left Spera, the two men were still being detained by the Afghan soldiers in their adjoining compound.

[Father and son in detention at the Afghan National Army outpost next to COP Spera]

The End of COP Spera?

2011-02-08T20:46:22Z

Combat Outpost (COP) Spera is located 800 metres from the Pakistan border in Afghanistan’s Khost province. The platoon section that occupies the COP can only come and go by helicopter as they have no vehicles based here. As the Lieutenant in charge explains “all we've got here is our legs and as you can see everything is higher than us.”

One of the Peaks that occupies the high ground around the COP is code named “New York” and another, “the Taliban Hotel” but the coalition’s enemy here is not actually the Taliban but rather the Haqqani network, who although allied with the Taliban, retain their own identity and considerable influence in the Khost border region and beyond, emanating from their power base at Miran Shah on the Pakistan side.

[The view over COP Spera towards the area nick-named the "Taliban Hotel" by the soldiers based at Spera. Pakistan lies just over the hill line.]

Set up in 2003 and originally used as a Special Forces base, the COP was handed over to regular U.S. army units in 2005 with the intention of controlling insurgent infiltration from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Within my first five minutes on the base the Lieutenant has compared the well established infiltration routes that the insurgents use on a seasonal basis to the Ho Chi Min trail, a comparison which is perhaps more apt than it first seems because stopping the infiltration from Pakistan has proved little more successful than ending the supply from the north was in Vietnam.

In fairness, the border traverses a vast and barren mountain range and since Spera is the only COP for miles along the frontier it is hardly surprising that the insurgents have simply changed their routes. As one officer put it “they just walk around the COP,” another confided “[COP Spera] is kind of a stupid base to have, the enemy attack it simply because it’s there but it doesn’t really serve a purpose”.

With this in mind requests have been made at the Brigade level to have the COP closed down but the U.S. military sees it as a delicate subject in the inevitable propaganda war that would ensue if it is closed; on the one hand the US claiming that they pulled out strategically and on the other the Haqqani network and the broader Taliban claiming that they forced them out, which is perhaps why the approving signature will have to come from General Petraeus’ pen.

You might have thought that the difficulty of controlling borders had been understood following the experience of insurgent infiltrations from Syria to Iraq, not to mention the problems that the U.S. has on its own border with Mexico, or for that matter Europe has with human trafficking from the East and Africa. But the situation here is particularly complex.

The coalition would like to see Pakistan do more to secure the border. The problem, however, is that Pakistan is a volatile ally with mixed motivations and has long been accused of attempting to destabilise Afghanistan, thereby mitigating any risk of being sandwiched between two potentially aggressive neighbours while at the same time maintaining what they think of as “strategic depth” in Afghanistan in the worst case scenario of an Indian land invasion.

[Dashing for shelter following the alert of incoming mortar shells]

Whatever the decision on the closure, those who would be saddest to see it go are, strangely, the very soldiers who are based there and endure regular attacks and mortar shelling roughly twice a week. While I was there, the call “incoming” woke me from a brief afternoon nap, as the mortar rounds were detected by radar, giving a few precious seconds to grab your body armour and take cover. Now I’m not suggesting that anybody likes being fired at but the soldiers I spoke to all said they enjoyed their deployment. A Public Affairs Officer put it this way “at Spera they’re actually doing the job they signed up to do, not stuck in a TOC (Tactical Operations Centre) staring at a computer screen”.

[Returning fire following incoming rounds from insurgents based over the Pakistan border]

It must be said the atmosphere at Spera was one of close comradery and the lieutenant made the point that “here the guy to your left or right is your security – your survival depends on him”. It’s also true that the closer you are to the war, the more some of the rules break down, as one of the younger enlisted soldiers told me “when I leave here I gotta go back to that bullshit saluting”.

[US Soldiers relax in COP Spera’s communal area, resembling something like a log cabin with an open fire place and a Christmas tree in the background – this was late December]

[The “Doc” deals with an in-grown toe nail]

[It's common practice for the Afghan soldiers to stick pictures of singers, actresses or family members on the butts of their rifles]

[I heard a story that the Afghan Soldiers based at Spera once made a purchase of Marijuana from a local farmer who then disappeared with their money. Months later the same guy turned up on their door step and to his surprise they remembered who he was and preceded to bury him naked and neck high a few metres away from the nearest dirt road – you can judge weather that story has anything to do with this picture!]

Parts of this entry were published in Executive Magazine

Kabul street Photography

2011-01-11T22:14:17Z

Some pictures that I took in Kabul. I tried posting this a week ago or so, hopefully it works this time . . . . .

This is a rather big lady, I half suspect John Simpson is under that Burka!

The image on the computer screen isn't too clear: Men watch belly dancers at a street internet cafe near the centre of Kabul.

Kabul, kaboom, kabubble or kabust

2010-12-20T21:40:54Z

So I fell behind on these blog entries. Time permitting, I’ll hopefully fill in some of the gaps but for the moment I want to forge on.

I’m in Kabul, where I’m moving around unilaterally. Having previously spent so long in the city under lock and key and after a solid month embedding, it’s refreshing to be able to explore the place a little.

I already knew Kabul well enough to know where the secure areas are and where it is considered safe to walk around independently. That said, when you have only previously travelled the city in an armoured vehicle and only set foot on the streets briefly and at that, always in a flak jacket and helmet, the psychological effect leaves you subconsciously convinced that there is a very real and ever present danger. Now I don’t want to tempt fate or deny that there is danger out there – yesterday’s attacks proved there clearly is - however, if you follow some simple rules then it is worth taking the calculated risk to explore the city. Among those rules are: don’t frequent the same unprotected places on a daily basis, don’t follow the same route every day, don’t stray outside your comfort zone (know where you are and where you are going at the very least), do remain aware of your surroundings and do keep a low profile.

The last of those is perhaps the most difficult to achieve. Even with my ever thickening beard, if I was to don local garbs and try to amble through town I think I would still stick out a mile away, a problem which although not unique to Brits seems to be something we’ve built a reputation for. I am reminded of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which Jones insists his adversary will never find Marcus Brody: “Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again.” The camera cuts to Brody who is surrounded by the chaos and undulation of an Egyptian market place with a myriad of voices shrieking in high pitched Arabic, while he, dressed all in white à la Man from Monte, is asking ”Uhhh, does anyone here speak English?” Hopefully I’m not as bad as Brody.

At the end of the day though, central Kabul carries relatively little risk. There is a strong security presence with police on most street junctions either attempting to man-handle Kabul’s messy but slow flowing coagulation of vehicles or lounging behind sand bags at ministries, banks or even private residences.

Contrary to what I said above and to what I would have expected, the first thing to strike me was that nobody pays me the slightest bit of attention. Apart from the occasional child begging for a dollar I am left to my own devices unless I stop to ask a question with my Brody like introduction “uhhhh, does anyone here speak English?”

The only exceptions to this are over-enthusiastic policemen who want to see my papers, even though their chances of reading, let alone understanding, anything in my passport are probably about the same as those of rolling a double six. They nonetheless seem happy to have the opportunity to show they are doing their job and in return I smile gratefully as if I feel much safer thanks to their intervention. Over enthusiasm, however, is hardly the curse of your average Afghani police man.

For anyone who has travelled in the Middle East (and I’m not confusing South/Central Asia with the Middle East but just for comparison’s sake), the level of attention is about what you might expect in Syria, which is to say a thousand times less than Egypt and several times less than the Dahia, Hizbullah’s strong hold in Southern Beirut, where loitering too long with a camera will have you well on your way to a day’s worth of questioning unless Miss Wafa, Hizbullah’s Press Officer, can vouch that you have gone through the proper channels.

I suspect the reason why there is so little fuss is because, as in Ethiopia, the people are too proud to pay any attention to you, or at least this is what I will believe until convinced otherwise. Ok, I know, I know, these are broad strokes but there is I’m sure some truth in it, something in the fact of being able to say “try and try as you did, you were never able to keep us under your control for more than a few measly years and no, we never gave up”.

All of this is of course based on wandering around the centre of town and I’m sure that in other suburbs there could be quite a different story. Above all else, Kabul is a large city, and like so many other cities that have undergone vast expansion and upheavals it has its cosmopolitan side that will embrace you and it’s under belly which is likely to be suspicious of you.

Ah, I forgot there is one other group which display a little more interest and I willing admit this is probably my fault not theirs, namely those Afghans who have a light complexion, leading to a momentary glance of mutual recognition and curiosity.

Among the other unexpected things I’ve noticed is that pizza is all the rage! In some parts of the new town - Share Nau - with its sprinkling of shiny new buildings, you would think it was the national dish. This must be a recent development though, since an adventurous Kiwi friend who simply turned up in Kabul some five years ago and got herself a job as a waitress for a few months, recently sent me a message saying I should try one of the sausages that they sell in local bread and call “hamburgers.” Nowadays hamburgers are every bit as ubiquitous as the pizzas and not at all bad at that. Oh, the endless march of progress.

But let me remove my tongue from my cheek before my foot follows it. There may be Pizza shops and DVD stalls with Britney Spears flashing at you from a dozen different covers but the streets are still heavily populated by bearded men who look as if they might just have wandered in from a meadow with a staff in their hand and whose very appearance conveys a kind of wisdom that everyone everywhere else might well be in danger of losing. I have on several occasions had the feeling that I am being assessed and that the verdict would be delivered in Yoda like tones “When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not”.

At a guess, I’d say a little more than half the women you see in the central parts of town wear the Burka. It also seems a good portion of those who do will happily lift it up so as to talk face to face when they enter a shop or bump into a friend in the street – doubtless the latter is harder if they are both wearing burkas.

Considering the endless restrictions (and worse) that took place during the Taliban years, walking around Kabul nowadays could lead you to believe that a lot has changed for the better. Perhaps the fact that Afghan men don’t have to wear a beard and that women don’t have to wear the burka is merely superficial but they clearly don’t want to be forced to again. On the other hand there is still much to complain about and although the rich may be very comfortable in their “poppy palaces” - as the exuberant walled residences that have gone up in the affluent areas are known as – most of the population must have serious concerns about what is coming in the future and whether their city can adjust to its new size and provide the opportunities it’s people would like.

In one open market I walked past heaps of dubious pink DVDs with scantily clad women on their covers piled on the floor. Things like this may leave you resigned to the fact that you have to take the good with the bad and that you should remember Soho is all of two minutes from Piccadilly Circus but they are nonetheless good indicators. They mean that the guys who openly sell such things have very little fear of being taken aside for some kind of medieval punishment.

Along the most open roads an ISAF convoy occasionally parts the traffic to remind you that in the background there is a very powerful military machine that is more than capable of securing Kabul and its surroundings but leaves you questioning whether the atmosphere will change after they are gone. Will the afghan forces be able to keep the Taliban at bay? It only takes a couple of strict verdicts from a Taliban Sharia court to dole out the kind of punishments that will have compulsory beards and burkas back on pretty quickly.

The attack that hit Kabul yesterday (there was a simultaneous attack in Kunduz) took place on Jalalabad Rd, which is where my old compound was based. It is also the location of a string of military bases starting in the fortified “green zone” around the US embassy and stretching eastwards to the outskirts of town. Between the two attacks 13 people were killed and there will be more attacks and some of them may well be focused on the areas in the centre of town that I have just described, as has been the case in the past.

A first batch of Pics

2010-11-30T21:37:28Z

These are a few pictures that I took during my first week long embed in Nangarhar Province . . . . I’ll add a short selection like this once in a while.

Meanwhile, I'm off to COP Wilderness and then COP Spera both in Khost Province . . .

Monkeys, Demons and the Dude

2010-11-30T14:40:33Z

It wasn’t much of a surprise when the words “we’re taking indirect from the mountain” burst over the radio. The day had been long and so perhaps the threat had slipped to the back of my mind but as the message crackled over the interference I realised I’d spent the whole day anticipating it. Those few words had the effect of taking us from a Woman’s Institute tea gathering to a Rammstein concert in one fell swoop. At once I was being thrown around the back of the vehicle, still trying to scribble down what was going on, as we accelerated into the dust cloud being kicked up by the heavy-set tires of the vehicle ahead of us. Looking out the window I realised the view wasn’t making much sense and all I could really make out was an earth coloured fog with brief glimpses of mountain tops that were swaying viciously from side to side as if we were on a small boat caught in a storm but in fast motion.

In spite of the fact I was concentrating hard to try and copy the radio communications word for word, I wasn’t catching a lot except for the repetition of “Demon 26 this is Monkey Six” which didn’t seem like it was getting a lot attention. The first thing I clearly made out was “we’re still taking indirect three o’clock at three hundred metres” and then from one of the guys in my vehicle on the internal only channel “well if you know where they are then fucking shoot them” and before I know it we’re all genuienly laughing out loud albeit with brovado.

To begin with I was struggling to understand where exactly the action was taking place and then as the voices became clearer I recognised that it was the Commanding Officer who was calling-in the incoming and that he was some way down the valley ahead of us and moving at speed as we in turn were trying to catch up on him to provide assistance. We began to settle into what seemed like a rhythm or perhaps I just regained my calm or there was a moment or two’s radio silence which allowed me to break from my note pad. At any rate, I asked the crew whether we were still heading towards the contact, doing my best to use the right military language and being conscious of considering whether it should instead have been “towards the indirect”! The reply was a resounding “hell yes”.

We were moving at such a fast speed for the terrain, with such poor visibility that I wasn’t sure how we would know when we got there and without realising how silly it must have sounded to the guys hauled up with me in our bouncing bullet proof cubicle I blurted my question out loud and received the bloody obvious answer “don’t worry you’ll hear it”, accompanied by more laughter but this time with a hint of the cynical.

“Their indirect is effective, get some rounds up there” came over the radio in a no-bull-shit-tone and it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure what was being fired at us, in fact I wasn’t sure anybody was sure. After the first explosions I’d heard “IED” somewhere in the communications but as the explosions continued there seemed to be confirmation that they were mortars. Up until this point I’d been so carried away by the sudden shift in tempo that those first words had prompted, as if setting of a chain reaction or a natural sequence of cause and effect, that I really hadn’t taken in the fact that we might be in any danger. It was as if the vehicle had an environment of its own, like a war room, isolated from any bombardment behind the safety of its armour. But I knew fine well that a direct hit from a mortar round would most likely be end game and for the first time I had to tell myself to concentrate on what was going on around me.

Outside the terrain continued to look as if it was trying to dizzy me and my enthusiasm to catch up to the fight was not what it had been, instead the possibility of the fight catching up to us without us even trying to reach it cropped into my thoughts. What was to stop them lobbing the damn things in our direction? I think I can thank the call signs Demon and Monkey for stopping me trying to answer that rather pointless question. They were again demanding attention on the radio and somehow surreal enough to be sufficient distraction.

As if I wasn’t already entertained enough by the radio, the next snippet left me wondering exactly how much effort the military puts into sounding cool under any circumstances: “I need you off the net for a second . . . we’re calling in the dude”. For the last portion of our journey towards the attack’s epi-centre I mostly noticed updates on the dude’s progress, is the dude here, isn’t it, where is the dude, what is the dude?

At last we came to a stop towards the rear end of the column of vehicles and took our place facing into the hills as our gunner joined in the hunt for the insurgents on the mountain side, vigilantly scanning his screen, which showed the view from a camera mounted alongside the gun above us. The ANA claimed they had spotted bodies scrambling up the mountain but since they were looking at a point 960 metres away in the fading light of dusk and nobody else could confirm the sighting, they weren’t taken very seriously and I heard someone chirp “I think they just want to fire the RPG for the thrill”. By now the Dude was in place (I’ve yet to figure out what kind of plane this is) and whoever was up on the mountain had pulled of an effective disappearing act.

The last communiqué that could really be directly linked to the attack was “anybody who’s got their lights on, turn them the fuck off, cos you’re about to get shot up like that”. Everyone sat in calm for a good five minutes or so while the dude made its last passes and the gunners searched the rocky slopes of the west facing mountains for any movement. There was no more incoming.

In the still after the attack I turned my attention back to the tiny window at my side and noticed several camels calmly chewing on what little foliage the valley offered. They didn't look the slightest bit distressed by anything that had taken place. The mountains were now silhouetted in varies shades of pastel pinks and orange and as I went to take a picture through the window, I noticed the RPG netting blurred in the foreground very much like a cage around us and was reminded of the lyrics of a Pink Floyd tune: “And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”

I later learnt in conversation with the CO and the Lieutenant that some 25 mortars - which strikes me as a lot - were fired on the CO’s QRF together with machine gun fire, probably from a PKM. The mortar team apparently knew what they were doing and were bracketing the CO’s vehicles, firing first ahead of them and then behind to try and calculate a bearing in the middle along which to fire. To this extent the QRF was lucky to be moving across the mortars' range rather than towards or away from them, as lateral bracketing is far harder and based more on judgement, especially with a moving target. Had they been moving away from the mortar along a confined path, such as a valley flaw, then the bracketing comes down to trajectory alone which is simple maths.

If I was being cynical I’d say 100 personnel, 27 vehicles, a specially requested RCP, many hours waiting in the valley and taking the risks of an attack was a high price to pay for a ten minute conversation with three old men in a small village down an obscure valley used by the Taliban to smuggle weapons. But then from the other angle, how else can it be done? The other objective though was simply to let the Taliban know that they can’t move with impunity in the area. The CO told me there were at least two confirmed hits on the Taliban positions and he believed at least two KIA and probably many more wounded among the Taliban’s number.

Virgin Territory

2010-11-29T13:00:00Z

Day two in Lal Por and something more substantial was planned. Building on the same idea as the day before, the unit wanted to probe the area that they believed insurgents are regularly passing through. North of Lal Por is a village called Saray that coalition forces haven’t been to yet, which can hardly be unusual in a place like Afghanistan. Since this is where we planned to visit, there was a fair amount of talk about “coalition virgin territory”. The village is about ten kilometres north of Lal Por in a valley parrallel to the one we entered the day before but along the kind of roads, or more to the point river beds, that don’t make for easy travelling.

This expedition was going to be larger in scale and the Route Clearance Package (RCP) had also been called in. The RCP is a unit specialised in IED clearance, which has some pretty strange looking vehicles with extendable arms and fold out platforms. All together we were a total of 27 vehicles, including nine from the RCP, five from a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) led by the company’s Commanding Officer and a further four ANA trucks. Needless to say we didn’t exactly look subtle.

Shortly after the RCP had rolled into Lal Por, a white kite was spotted flying on its own towards the fringes of the town, higher than the kites usually reach. There was speculation that it was signalling that we had “force multiplied” and one of the RCP guys added “there’s too many vehicles now for us not to be up to something”.

The journey up the valley would have been slow at the best of times but two vehicles were demobilised, one due to a broken steering column and the other to unknown engine problems, causing us to stop several times. In the end four vehicles were left near the mouth of the valley protecting one of the broken down vehicles, the RCP stopped short of the final destination and the QRF was holding back at some distance, so that we were eventually eight vehicles that pulled up to the sleepy village of Saray.

Having been in the last vehicle I was late on the scene and by the time I turned up Lt Schenck was in the process of conducting a KLE under the cover of some trees on the edge of the village and had already promised a well to the elders. I don’t know how he gathered the three elderly men who were with him, whether they knew in advance about our arrival or whether they were representative of the village. He questioned them about their connection to the district administration and what they felt might be improved, although the honest truth would be that they avail of next to nothing, if anything whatsoever, by way of government/district services and so there was little room for manoeuvre in the conversation other than to reaffirm that the well was theirs if they wanted it. He also questioned them about the Taliban and if nothing was lost in translation they seemed to genuinely share his concerns about their presence.

The problem for these villagers, like so many others in Afghanistan, is that they’re between a rock and a hard place, if they talk with the Americans, then the Taliban may take revenge but if they harbour the Taliban, as may be demanded of them, then they may soon find their doors being kicked down. Either way suspicion falls on their shoulders. To be honest, unless real change could be effected, meaning at the very least proper education and opportunities, you can’t help but think they might be better off if everybody left them alone to harvest their crops and wait for a radio station to occasionally break through the static.

The stay in Saray was short but I would have loved to spend more time there. I imagine nothing much has changed for centuries, well apart from the truck which they were busy overloading to the point of absurdity which is de rigueur in Afghanistan. Ok, ok, so there were probably also some mobile phones and half the village probably prefers smoking Marlboros. But, minor details aside, it looked like it might have been unchanged for centuries.

Turning back to base it should have been obvious what was about to hit us, and then, the words came crackling over the radio, right on cue . . . “we’re taking indirect from the mountain” . . .

Hill 911

2010-11-27T19:18:58Z

Lal Por nestles up against the Pakistan border bounded by mountains to the north and the Kabul river to the south. It is the capital of the district of the same name, which is sparsely populated apart from along the banks of the river that forms its southern limits. Although a bridge is under construction that would link the town to Afghanistan’s Highway One, at the moment there is no tarmac road leading to it or in military lingo “no hard ball”. The bridge is funded by the Provincial Reconstruction Team on a work to build programme, meaning that they pay Afghans to build their own projects in a scheme that is intended both to rebuild the infrastructure and pump money into the local economy. That said it may take a long time to finish, if it’s finished at all – think back to this story from the last entry. Even if it is finished it may just be a quicker way to get IEDs in.

The mountains north of the village are a known transit route for insurgents crossing in from Pakistan who then head north to resupply the insurgency in Kunar. They use the villages of Reneh and Parchaw located in an inaccessible valley that runs along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a staging post. Technically the villages sit on the Afghan side of the border but they might as well be in no-man’s land. Part of the company’s mission is to extend the coalition/government influence into these areas and stomp out these supply routes by strengthening the Afghan Border Police who are currently in no real position to stand up to the insurgents.

Lal Por was the destination of my second excursion out of COP Garcia. The mission included the usual meetings with local leaders and the police (KLEs). I found it amusing that the school principle asked for barbed wire, not to keep “bad guys” out but to keep the school kids in, a request that was prioritised.

The second part of the day’s activities was a patrol down a valley towards the insurgent’s known staging posts. There was authorisation to proceed east to a certain grid line along the sides of the mountain so as to get a view down on the routes that the insurgents must be using in and out of the valley. The grid line coincided with a steep bend in the valley’s path so that we wouldn’t actually be within sight of the villages. We dismounted from the armoured vehicles some two or three kilometres from the villages and regrouped with the ANA, bring our total to some 20 hats, roughly split equally between the US and Afghans. There was a certain tension in the air and when I asked if we were being watched the reply came “they’re always watching us – they count the vehicles out of the COP, they count the dismounts out of the vehicles, they know our fire capability, they know the works” after which a young soldier called over to me “I sure as hell wouldn’t be going up that valley without a gun”. My first thought was that I must have heard this in a movie and wondered who was imitating whom.

I would say I was too busy contemplating how beautiful the pictures across the valley to Pakistan could turn out but I was also a little rattled, or perhaps I was just excited. I’m sure that if I continue embedding “contact” is a strong possibility at some point but I wasn’t entirely sure that this was when I wanted it, not this soon and not on such a beautiful day with the sun throwing golden light across the valley. I thought about it a little harder and began to speculate “What if I’m about to be immersed into the deafening confusion of RPG explosions and bullets tinging past my ears?” Would my veins even be able to cope with the pressure that I anticipated on them as my heart would probably leap into the high 180s in a fraction of a second? I felt a rush rise up through my stomach, but no different to the one that you’ve felt before a track race, the start of an exam or interview or phoning a girl up for a date for the first time. I dealt with it by lighting up a cigarette and was annoyed to notice that that left me only one and decided to save it for the peak of wherever it was that we were heading to.

Climbing up the hills the valley floor began to reveal itself as a series of interlinked channels glistening in the evening sun, separated by islets, some of which supported thick vegetation. On the opposite side of the valley, the Pakistani sky line was already sinking into a darker blue and the Afghan’s pointed out the Pakistani observation posts perched on the crests of the highest mountains. It was the first time I’d been out in the open like this for a while and it was such a contrast to Beirut’s clogged arteries that nature’s tranquillity overwhelmed any thought of eyes that might have been prying down sights on the mountain slopes.

Looking down on the valley, you could clearly make out where vehicles had been coming and going to the village – although nothing said that they were anything other than innocent grocery runs.

The aim of the short patrol was to get a better idea whether the unit would be able to approach the villages through the valley. Having reached the specified grid line and satisfied that they had pictures of the valley and a better idea of whether they could make it in, the Lieutenant turned to me and said “OK, business over, now it’s facebook time”. We climbed inwards taking the high road on the way back over a hill top where the American’s stopped to take pictures that would later be “tagged” and the Afghan’s phoned friends and family to tell them where they were. The hilltop was the natural place from which to defend the valley and was fortified with dry stone walls in trench-like dugouts rising up a whole side of the hill. Some of the Afghan’s set about kicking them down with surprising venom. As we paused briefly the lieutenant realised that the hill rising behind us was hill-top 911 and the irony was lost on nobody. Looking out over the valley towards Pakistan I enjoyed one of those rare little moments of pleasure built on nothing much more than coincidence but which seem so much more significant.

Even as we descended the hill somebody commented to me “if they’re gonna attack it would be as we’re going downhill” but the brief sensation of fear that I had felt as we grouped before departing now seemed distant and unnecessary; I even questioned whether they hadn’t been pulling my leg.

Dinner that evening was a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) which is still enough of a novelty to me so as to be looked forward to. I slept on the ground in the cold open air in what turns out to be a very bad sleeping bag. Surrounded by hescos and armoured vehicles I had the sense of being in a bubble, disconnected even from Kabul, let alone further afield, and unsure what was going on anywhere beyond the hescos.

Little America

2010-11-27T18:56:50Z

To be clear right from the start, this is the first time that I’ve officially embedded with military forces. I say officially, because I’ve traipsed around in various places with a bunch of militia, guerrillas, terrorists, freedom fighters or paramilitary of one kind or another depending on your opinion and even found myself caught up in a gun fight and other similar situations. I have not, however, willingly put myself in a position where I’ve been so acutely aware that the aim of the game is not to scare, intimidate or put on a show of might but rather to kill or maim the enemy – and to the insurgents the US military is very much the enemy. With this in mind, and having heard from friends just how hairy it can get in some parts of the country, I wanted to proceed with caution. To this end my first embed experience was pitched at exactly the right level.

Command Outpost Garcia lies in a scarcely populated valley about 40 kms west of the Pakistan border. It’s manned by a company from the 101^st airborne division, many of whom had previously been stationed in the Pech Valley in Northern Kunar Province, into which the infamous Korengal Valley runs. The korengal had been the seat of fierce fighting until the US pulled out in April 2010, preferring to attempt to pin the insurgents into the valley than continue suffering heavy casualties. The Pech Valley, though, is still an area of high “kinetic activity”, the preferred military term for any bang bang. In contrast, COP Garcia is ostensibly secure.

Several of the soldiers I spoke to even expressed surprise that a COP had been set up there at all, since the US military strategy is to try and control areas of high population density, from which they can run civilian programmes and get on with the business of winning hearts and minds. Garcia’s original purpose was to provide support for the Afghan Border Police (ABP), who are spread thinly like sitting ducks along the border in isolated observation posts (OPs). This only came to the attention of the current deployment when they came across old documents relating to Garcia’s set up – which isn’t to say that they hadn’t been carrying out work with the ABP, Afghan National Police (ANP) and Afghan National Army (ANA), it’s just that they were apparently almost as miffed as I was about why the COP was built quite where it was.

Garcia’s area of operation is from Kama District in the far North West of Nangahar Province to Lal Por District on the border with Pakistan, some 60 km as the crow flies from one boundary to the other and about 25 km deep. The COP itself sits pretty much squarely in the middle of this area. My first excursion “behind the wire” was on an overnight mission to Kama.

Kama is the kind of place where the kids really do stand in groves by the road side waving enthusiastically back at the US convoys, probably hoping that in due course they will get their very own pen or perhaps a lollipop. During the recent parliamentary elections it was the first district in Nangahar to return its counted ballots and it suffered no significant security threats. The last serious security incident in Kama was over a year ago when two IEDs were found but locals reported them to the police who in turn informed the US military. The infrastructure is reasonably good with tarmac roads handling a steady trickle of traffic and the occasional tractor in the fields. The area is densely populated with a string of villages some of which run into one another and people stroll carelessly down the roads beneath the shade of trees and stop to chat at small crafts or goods shops. Kama’s inhabitants even refer to it as “Little America” in joking conversations with US officers. Nonetheless, in spite of its relative prosperity and development in Afghan terms, when you strip away the vehicles, mobile phones and abundance of South-East-Asian-sweat-shop-t-shirts in the markets, as you drive through the mud wall villages with their extended family compounds that resemble fortresses you can’t help but feel like you’ve stepped several hundred years into the past.

The mission in Kama is essentially to build good relations with the locals and to train the ANP and ANA. As part of the task the Lieutenant in charge of the section meets with the Police Commander and local leaders as needs be in a series of Key Leadership Engagements (KLEs). There is some substance to these but a large part of the conversations involve requests from the Afghan’s for money, equipment or assistance. The Lieutenant then patiently explains (time after time seemingly) that he has to work with the local government and his superiors to approve most of the requests and that there’s a process which will take time; the aim, he will re-iterate, is not to hand things out willy-nilly but to get Afghan involvement. I’ll cover what I saw of the police training in a separate entry as I can have a fair old rant on that based on previous experience.

There had also been intelligence that a local man was recruiting for the Taliban, leading us to stop at his supposed village to ask around with the locals but nothing came of it. As the Lieutenant explained to me “we just can’t go around kicking doors down in an area like this”.

It’s difficult to say how much, if any, of the “success story” in Kama is attributable to the reconstruction effort which is carried out by the US military. In fact there is good evidence that nationwide many of these programmes are abandoned, leaving half built schools, police stations and the like dotted around the county. One officer willingly conceded that local politics and rivalries – the enemy of my enemy kind of thing – combined with the natural agricultural prosperity of the place are just as likely reasons for the calm.

But the trip didn’t pass entirely without incident. During the night, the US sentry guards stationed on towers at the corners of the police station where we were staying found themselves following laser beams across their chests and then took several rounds from a BB gun. They brushed it off as kids playing pranks on them but were still visibly aggravated. Now, if I was a kid in that village I would seriously think twice about pointing a laser at a US infantry soldier with an M240 heavy machine gun, who may or may not have seen action before and may or may not be nervous as hell or mentally re-living some much worse episode or attack – let alone firing at him, with anything, even a BB gun.

And now, since I promised . . . . .

2010-11-25T17:26:34Z

. . . . here's that shooting incident.

Well yes, I admit I may have used the cheapest of soap opera tactics to entice you to this second entry, and although it was hardly a cliff hanger, if you were expecting bullets ricocheting from walls as I ran for cover with a cacophony of explosions ringing in my ears . . . then relax. Nonetheless, it was a minor close call which elicited the concern of anyone who saw it and left more than a few brows with a bead of sweat or two. The incident took place not more than an hour after my arrival at Kabul International Airport (KAIA).

Usually – when I was working at EUPOL - I would have been met at KAIA by a close protection team, comprising two ex-military guys who would drive me off in the safety of an armoured vehicle. They were familiar faces and most were Brits with whom I was on first name terms. There was a certain routine to it all, the greetings, donning my body armour, a quick check as to whether I was still happy with the safety brief or a mandatory run through it if there was someone new. The chat that followed was nearly always the same, a catch up on anything that might have happened while I was away, any attacks or IEDs in Kabul, the current security situation and any lock downs or travel bans that were in place. Then, inevitably, we’d move onto compound gossip. To the Close Protection (CP) guys - who had all served at least two combat tours in either Iraq or Afghanistan as well as more demanding private security jobs elsewhere – the Kabul detail was something of a holiday and they frequently mocked that it was glorified taxi driving. However, the truth is they were friendly and professional and they instilled a sense of confidence that was much appreciated when you emerged from the airport a little dozy and jet lagged.

On this occasion, however, there was no CP waiting, instead I simply had to catch a taxi from the civilian to the military side of Kabul airport, which is not much more than a five minute ride. I quickly hooked up with another journalist who was also trying to make his way over to the military side and we took a “government taxi” from next to the police checkpoint at the gate into the airport proper. As it was Eid al Adha, the Muslim celebration at the end of the Hajj to Mecca, it was quiet and there wasn’t exactly a wide range of drivers to choose from but ours seemed friendly, if a little elderly. He clearly knew where we wanted to go and after some compulsory bartering we set off on the short journey.

As you approach the gate to the military side there is a slalom set up with concrete blocks that leads to a control light where vehicles are expected to stop and wait for the light to turn predictably from red to green. Beyond the slalom is the main check point, which is currently manned by Belgium soldiers who have a heavy machine gun trailed on the slalom to defend against Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devises (VBIEDs) - essentially a suicide bomber in a car rigged with explosives.

On entering the slalom our driver slowed down, perhaps overdoing what caution might have required. As we dawdled towards the red light all seemed well and a few metres ahead of it I turned to the driver expecting him to pull up but as he continued to creep forward it become apparent that he might not understand the system or that he was so blind he couldn’t see the light. Both myself and the other journalist started telling him to stop – as best as we could that is with gestures and somewhat alarmed expressions – but he just slowed down a notch and continued crawling forward. The closer we got, the more adamant our requests to halt became until we heard a shot ahead of us and I turned to see a puff of smoke rising from a barrel pointing towards us but overhead . . . .

Now that the driver still hadn’t stopped and the red light was drawing in line with the back passenger seat I could only assume he must be deaf as well as blind and by this time I was close to begging him from the front passenger seat, hands outstretched waving desperately up and down with splayed fingers. He turned to me with peaked eye brows and the corners of his lips pursed in a plaintive pleading expression, which said some combination of the following: “What have I done wrong?” – “I’m trying to help” – “I don’t know what to do” and “I’m not sure what’s going on”.

To our great relief at this point he stopped, I think mostly out of shear confusion. We explained that he should reverse out and we navigated to a safe distance clear of the slalom. To some extent though, this was only the beginning of it.

The other journalist approached the checkpoint by foot and negotiated a second run for us which pulled off smoothly except that we had to give statements to the MPs to account for the fired flare. Now I won’t go into details from this point onwards but in the confusion that ensued we were admitted into the base in an unescorted taxi and drove right the way up to the central HQ building, managing to inadvertently breach security. The officer who we met was dumfounded that we had made it inside with a taxi and regarding our close call, he remark “you’re damn lucky they didn’t open up on you” and then as if to reassure us “but don’t worry they would have fired at the bonnet” which didn’t strike me as a wide margin of safety. Another guy who saw it, an Afghan who worked in one of the Kitchens and was waiting at the gate as the shot was fired, came over to us exclaiming how lucky we had been and then to top it off, one of the junior officers in the Public Affairs Office commented that he reckoned we’d “already used our luck up”.

For the rest of the day I worried about our poor taxi driver and pictured him driving alone on his way out at two miles an hour into a line of bright red lights and guns, completely oblivious to what he was doing. Fortunately there were no other incidents that day and if he was stopped on the way out, the officers that we spoke to were aware that he was on his way and that it wasn’t his fault, so I can only assume he made it out safely, probably sometime just before sunset as he rumbled along at a snail’s pace.

All joking aside, there were some serious lessons to be learnt, mastering a few words of Dari, for instance “stop”, might come in handy even for the most trivial of journeys/tasks. I have the British Army Dari/Pashtu Phrase Booklet somewhere, which definitely includes “stop” and if I recall correctly also has the useful phrases “don’t shoot” and “where is the toilet?”

This took place over a week ago, since when I’ve been at Command Out Post (COP) Garcia in Eastern Nangahar Province and have been out on my first embed proper in what is one of the safer areas of Afghanistan. There will be more to follow on this soon but I’m juggling entries with spending time “behind the wire” and trying to find adequate computer access. I hope to start providing a little more substance, not just personal anecdotes, although I’m sure there will be more of those too.

Meanwhile, in Kabul, official election results have been announced for the Parliamentary Elections to the Wolesi Jirga. As with the Presidential elections of last year, the process has been mired by irregularities with votes from an entire province - Ghazni - having been withheld. Again, I’ll have more to say about this later.

The picture below was taken in a Huey helicopter as the light was breaking from the clouds not far from the Khyber Pass, which was one of the stops on the regular chopper shuttle services between the military bases here.

Hardly an auspicious start - fired upon on the first day . . . . surely not!

2010-11-19T16:04:28Z

Before I get onto the matter of the title, I should just explain a little about why I’m in Afghanistan and what brought me here.

Over the next month(s) I’ll be writing stories and shooting pictures on a freelance basis, starting with commentary and articles for Executive Magazine, based in Beirut. If all goes well after the first month, I’ll stay on, particularly with a view to do as much photography as possible. However, I have another motivation beyond my work as a freelance journalist . . .

Starting in late 2008 I spent 18 months working for the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL) as an Analyst and Reporting Officer. I lived on a compound in Kabul which was not much larger than a football pitch, into which the offices, much of the living accommodation and the leisure facilities - including two bars, which seemed quite unnecessary for such a small space with under 300 residents - were squeezed. The work could be challenging and from a personal perspective I learnt a lot – whether about Afghanistan itself, police reform in specific or the broader mechanisms of reconstruction efforts in a conflict environment and their endless complications and contradictions.

However, while the job certainly had its rewards, it also had its downfalls. Anyone who has had an opportunity to travel even modest portions of Afghanistan’s rugged terrain will tell you two things; firstly that the scenery is spectacular and, secondly, if they’ve had any opportunity to meet them, that the people are among the most proud and hospitable that you could meet anywhere on earth.

Now imagine yourself full of curiosity about this beautiful and intriguing country, sitting at a desk in the middle of its capital working on issues related to its development and yet rarely able to leave the compound on which you live (at least that is to more than a handful of security cleared locations) and therefore scarcely seeing anything of the place. In a word, it was frustrating.

In fairness, there are good reasons why much of the international community in Kabul lives under such conditions and I’m not criticising the difficult decisions that security officers and protection teams make that necessitate such measures; it’s just that personally I don’t feel I can really say that I’ve even been to Afghanistan until I’ve walked a little of its land and met some of its people, other than the few Afghans who worked at EUPOL and became my friends.

My saying this is probably compounded by the fact that prior to working with EUPOL I was a freelance journalist and photographer who took his liberty pretty seriously and wasn’t entirely devoid of an adventurous streak . . . so the obvious solution was to return to Afghanistan but this time in my usual guise as a freelancer. So here I am, which to be more precise right now is on an embed with the US military currently at Forward Operating Base Fenty, near Jalalabad in Eastern Afghanistan.

Some of you may be thinking to yourselves “embedding with US forces is hardly experiencing Afghanistan” and I’ll give you that as granted, but it is a way, and in large parts of the country where there is still a very active insurgency, which may be gathering steam, it is the only way.

In the coming month(s) I’ll be embedding with Task Force Bastogne in Nangahar Province, starting tomorrow for ten days, followed by two weeks with Task Force Rakkasan in Paktika Province. All going well, I’ll continue to Helmand to join the US 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, who recently took over control from the Royal Marines in Sangin. Between embeds I’ll spend time in Kabul following the civilian side of the equation.

I’ll also try and upload pictures as I go along. The first one I’ve added is simply because it was the first picture that I’ve taken in Afghanistan. It’s taken on a Hercules C-130 military flight from Bagram Air Field (BAF) on route to Jalalabad Air Field (JAF). For those of you who have spent time in Afghanistan and feel entirely cheated by the lack of acronyms that you’ve encountered in this entry, this one is entitled “BAF to JAF by AJP in AFG”.

But what about the shooting? Was I joking? Certainly not! But it looks like you’ll have to wait until the next instalment for that.