Bomb Hunters Read online

  Just fifteen minutes after leaving Camp Bastion we arrive at FOB Shawqat, the British headquarters in Nad-e’Ali. The Army likes to show off Nad-e’Ali because it is one of the few places in Helmand where the British and NATO strategy is flourishing. The Taliban have been forced from the district centre and the whole area is ringed by police and Army checkpoints. When any British VIPs arrive in Helmand, they are routinely shipped off to Nad-e’Ali. Few ever make it into Sangin or other areas where the Taliban presence is more apparent.

  The helicopters touch down in a haze of green smoke on two adjacent landing sites within the base. It is rumoured that Shawqat was built in the ruins of a fort occupied by British troops during the First Afghan War, in 1840. Strange to think that 170 years later the British Army is still fighting over the same ground. The fort’s 40-ft-high walls are made of red-brown clay bricks, probably fashioned by hand for a seventeenth-century Afghan warlord. Some of the huge round turrets are still intact and have been turned into fortified observation posts by the Afghan National Army, who provide security at the base.

  FOB Shawqat has hardly changed since I was here in November 2009, but it does have two important additions: working showers and toilets, crucial for morale. At that time only solar showers were available, but because the water is heated by the sun, a warm shower was impossible in the morning as the temperature then hovered around zero. Soldiers in FOBs were under orders to shave every day but the only means of heating the water was with an ancient ‘puffing billy’ water heater. This device, which was probably in service with the British Expeditionary Force when it retreated from France in 1940, heated enough water for about twenty soldiers on a base which contained several hundred. It was first come first served, and everyone else had to wash and shave in water chilled to almost freezing by the bitter Helmand night. I can still conjure up the agonizing cramps which momentarily crippled my hands when washing and shaving in the icy water.

  The toilets represented an interesting departure in the task of disposing of human waste. Beyond Camp Bastion, apart from at the base at Lashkar Gah, which is home to the brigade headquarters and an infantry company group, plumbing was absent in all the FOBs. Until November 2009 soldiers defecated in foil bags. One of these was placed over a normal toilet, and when the job was done the bag was sealed and thrown into a fire pit. Simple but effective. Before the arrival of poo bags, soldiers were forced to use cubicles which had an open pit beneath them. The stench in the summer was unbearable, but, even worse, the open nature of the pit meant that disease was rife and many troops were struck down with the dreaded D and V, diarrhoea and vomiting.

  Within seconds of our touching down, Lieutenant Colonel Roly Walker, the commanding officer of the Grenadier Guards, appears at the HLS, dressed in full battle rig and clutching his rifle. His eyes are obscured by military-issue wraparound sunglasses, but I still recognize his smiling face. ‘Thought you weren’t going to make it,’ he says, his hand outstretched, before adding, ‘Good to have you back, Sean. Right, there’s no time to waste. You’re coming with me – we’re off on a bit of a convoy up to Chah-e-Anjir. We’ll be staying out overnight, so grab what you need. You’ve got five minutes.’

  Chah-e-Anjir, in the north of the Nad-e’Ali district, is home to Inkerman Company. The base is located at the apex of an upturned triangle which is known by the Army as the CAT – the Chah-e-Anjir Triangle. When I last visited Inkerman Company gun battles with the Taliban were almost a daily occurrence and the FLET was less than 100 metres from the base’s forward position. This position was in an area known as Five Tanks, named after five large storage tanks which were part of the mass of machinery left behind by the Americans when they left some fifty years ago.

  Roly, a white Kenyan educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, is, at 39, one of the youngest battlegroup commanders in Afghanistan. He is passionately committed to the Afghan mission and is fully signed up to the vision of General Stanley McChrystal, who at that time was the US commander charged by President Barack Obama with breaking the stalemate in Afghanistan, until he was sacked and replaced by General Petraeus in June 2010.

  Within minutes of stepping off the Merlin I’m strapped into the back of a Ridgeback armoured vehicle. There are four of us in the rear of the vehicle, each wearing body armour and helmets, so it’s a tight squeeze, but I feel secure. The Mastiff and Ridgeback come from the same class of vehicles and are almost identical, but the Mastiff is larger, with six wheels to the Ridgeback’s four. The Ridgeback is one of the latest British Army vehicles to arrive in Helmand and is packed with state-of-the-art technology. It has an armoured V-shaped hull which should help deflect blasts from mines and IEDs, while bar armour on the sides should protect those inside from RPG attack. It is also equipped with a remotely controlled 7.62-mm chain gun which is mounted on the roof and controlled by the vehicle commander through a pistol-grip control. A camera mounted on the gun gives the commander a crystal-clear 360-degree view on a drop-down computer screen. To engage the enemy he positions the cross-hairs on the target, flicks off the safety catch and presses the red trigger with his forefinger. The commander does not experience any recoil and the gun, which can fire sixty rounds per minute, can kill anything within a range of 1,200 metres. Thermal imagery allows the weapon to be used at night.

  Every now and then WO1 Ian ‘Faz’ Farrell, the regimental sergeant major of 1st Battalion, the Grenadier Guards, and who, for this trip, is the vehicle commander, manoeuvres the cross-hairs onto some unsuspecting target. It’s a pretty awesome weapon – straight out of some hi-tech computer game. I feel detached from the outside world – it is almost a surreal experience, and the various TV screens just add to that sense of dislocation. It’s almost like watching an ‘in-vehicle movie’. Other cameras positioned on the exterior of the Ridgeback allow the troops inside a similar 360-degree view through two Situational Display Units.

  Our vehicle is third in a convoy of six and I should feel secure, but I don’t. At the back of my mind there is a nagging, almost irritating uneasiness. It’s been there since I first arrived in Helmand, and I was hoping by now that it would have disappeared. On previous trips I have happily boarded an aircraft or climbed into the back of an armoured vehicle, but I’m now wondering whether this trip will be my last. All I can do is hope or return home. Rupert Hamer was travelling in a similar vehicle – a US MRAP – when he was killed and Phil Coburn was injured. The MRAP comes from the same family as the Ridgeback but is probably even more protected. So if Rupert was killed on a routine trip, just like the one I am about to undertake, why should I be any safer?

  On previous excursions into Taliban country I have often paid lip service to the array of safety harnesses and seatbelts in the back of an armoured vehicle, many of which don’t even work or fit properly. But this time I ensure that I’m properly strapped in, and this time it’s the sort of seatbelt you might find in a Formula One racing car. I also do a quick check to make sure that everything else inside the vehicle is secured so that if we do hit an IED, nothing, including the passengers, moves around.

  The convoy pushes out of FOB Shawqat and heads north. Turrets swivel as commanders scan the roads ahead for likely enemy fire positions. Ditches, compounds, vehicles, walls – almost anything which offers the insurgents cover – is a potential firing point.

  I’m told the journey is expected to take forty minutes, which comes as something of a revelation. The last time I was in Nad-e’Ali, just some four months earlier, a trip of a similar distance had taken six hours. Every unsecured piece of road needed to be searched for IEDs by soldiers using mine detectors.

  ‘I bet you didn’t think we would have this sort of freedom of movement,’ Roly says with a wide smile on his face. ‘If we had come along here before Operation Moshtarak we would have had Apaches flying top cover and we would have been greeted by the mother of all ambushes. It would have been a very tough fight and there is no way we could have continued, but look at it now’ – he points at one of the displa
y units – ‘it’s pretty benign.’ I ask Roly whether he thinks the Taliban have fled or simply gone to ground. ‘I think it’s a mixture of both,’ he says, hedging his bets. ‘We really won’t know how successful Operation Moshtarak has been until after the summer or even well into next year. I think the local Taliban have probably returned to their farms, packed the Kalashnikov away and will get on with the poppy harvest and wait for us to make the next move. But I think we have sent a very clear message. They know they can’t win here and we’ve got to get them to understand, and the local population, that this is not a short-term exercise. Up until recently the Taliban have seen themselves as the shadow government around here, but now they’ve been evicted. We must make sure that they don’t creep back in. The real test is not now but in the months to come.’

  Moshtarak, which means ‘together’ in Dari, the language of Afghanistan, was devised to remove the Taliban from central Helmand in areas not previously cleared by ISAF forces. Success would mean that the writ of the government was extended, ISAF would have greater freedom of movement, and a major Taliban stronghold would be destroyed. Unlike previous ISAF operations, prior to Moshtarak the Taliban were given plenty of warning. General McChrystal, the US commander of ISAF forces, wanted them to leave rather than stand and fight. By telling Taliban commanders that the largest NATO operation in Helmand was about to be launched, it was hoped that they would see sense and flee. Less fighting would mean fewer civilian casualties, which was central to McChrystal’s strategy. The operation had two key objectives: the US Marines would seize the district of Marjah, while a combined multinational force led by the British would seize a series of objectives around Nad-e’Ali and in the Babaji area of central Helmand. Preparations started as early as September 2009, when members of the Canadian Army began training some 400 members of the ANA.

  Shaping operations began in mid-January, and by D-Day, in the hours before dawn on 13 February 2010, the first of ninety helicopters left Camp Bastion to seize a series of objectives in an operation which would eventually involve up to 15,000 ISAF troops. Most of the British objectives were seized almost immediately, and opposition was light. But Marjah, farther south, was proving to be a tougher fight. Marjah was one of the most important areas to the Taliban. It was their key stronghold in the region and a centre of IED production and development. But it was also crucial to the production of opium, the sale of which was helping to fund the insurgency. The US Marines had by far the tougher challenge and the fighting, albeit on a small scale, continued for many months, and, by late July 2010, British soldiers were again being killed in areas from which the Taliban had supposedly been cleared.

  While Operation Moshtarak was successful in the short term, the jury is out on whether it has achieved its long-term aims. At the time of writing, the end of July 2010, Operation Tor Shezada has just been launched to clear the Taliban from the southern area of Nad-e’Ali close to and around the town of Sayedabad, which was one of the last large Taliban strongholds in the area. As with Moshtarak, the Taliban had already fled, not surprisingly, by the time the British troops moved in.

  As our convoy trundles through a small kalay en route to Patrol Base Shahzad there is a loud clang against the vehicle just behind where I’m sitting. WO1 Farrell turns to the driver and, with a wrinkled brow, says, ‘Was that an RPG?’ He is more curious than concerned. The driver shrugs and responds, ‘Dunno, sir.’ The sergeant major swivels the turret over to the left and using his display unit searches the terrain for Taliban fighters. ‘Probably just a kid throwing a rock,’ he mutters. I’m now waiting for all hell to be let loose, thinking that we have just driven into Roly’s ‘mother of all ambushes’. I turn to Roly. ‘Was that an RPG?’ I ask, trying not to appear nervous. He seems not the least bit bothered. ‘If it was, it didn’t detonate. Pretty good shot, though,’ he says admiringly. ‘It must have been at least 100 metres away. Could have just been a stone being flicked up.’

  The convoy pushes on without stopping to investigate further and within a few minutes we are crossing a shallow river several hundred metres from the outskirts of the PB. On the right are rows and rows of traders selling everything from motorbikes to fizzy drinks. It is a scene of typical Afghan chaos, but business is clearly booming. ‘Last time you were here this market was dead. Now look at it, it’s flourishing,’ Roly tells me. ‘The locals had to change the markets’ days because some were being run on the same days and they were “stealing” trade from each other. That’s a real measure of success – that’s how you counter the insurgency, it doesn’t have to be all done by fighting.’ He’s really giving me the hard sell about what has been achieved since my last visit. And why not? His battalion has worked relentlessly for almost six months, they have taken casualties, and several of his men have received life-changing injuries. So they should feel proud of what they have achieved. But it would be a mistake to think that success in Nad-e’Ali is the beginning of the end for the Taliban.

  Minutes after arriving, we are ushered into a large tent for a pre-lunch shura with the district governor, Habiullah Khan. Mutton haunches and rice is the menu of the day, along with what the soldiers call ‘toenail’ bread, joking that it is made with the feet of the locals. There are no knives or forks and, sitting cross-legged on a carpet the size of a squash court, we all tuck in, cupping the fingers of the right hand to scoop up the greasy but delicious rice. I’m amazed at the vast size of the portions, with the standard for consumption being set by the governor, who is famed for his large appetite. After lunch a steady stream of locals arrive and begin to fill the tent. They have come to listen to the governor and Roly. The message is one I have heard many times before, except this time the circumstances are different. For the first time in years the locals in this part of Helmand can live their lives in the knowledge that the Taliban no longer rule. Yet rather than jubilation there is suspicion, for the insurgents’ parting message was ‘We’ll be back’ and the locals believe it.

  First to speak to the 200-strong audience is the governor. Habiullah Khan has a kind, friendly face, but he is also cunning and has acquired a good grasp of modern politics. He knows that in the audience he has both supporters and detractors, as well as members of the Taliban who are on an intelligence-gathering mission. The people of Chah-e-Anjir have always seen themselves as a class apart from the rest of Nad-e’Ali. In the 1950s US aid groups pumped millions of dollars into southern Afghanistan under the Helmand River Project, which was, somewhat ironically, responsible for the growth of the Green Zone – now regarded by the Taliban as its territory. Various ethnic groups moved into the area and today, with its thirteen different ethnic groups, it is one of the most ethnically mixed parts of southern Afghanistan. Even after the US pulled out, the good times continued, until Afghanistan descended into thirty years of self-inflicted chaos. There are still elders living in the area who can remember when Chah-e-Anjir was a thriving, almost autonomous community, and they have no interest in being ‘ruled’ by what in their eyes amounts to an ‘outsider’. So the governor was also doing the hard sell.

  ‘What have the Taliban done for you?’ he asks the all-male audience, but his question is met with silence. ‘You could not trade without being taxed, you had no freedom, your children couldn’t go to school, life was not good. But now, now you can trade and you keep your money and your children can get an education, and that is good for our society. You must tell your children that the Taliban offer us nothing, only misery.’ The governor’s speech rambles on for almost an hour and I begin to feel that I am losing the will to live. The lack of sleep, the heavy lunch and the rising afternoon temperature are beginning to take their toll. I look over at Roly, who stifles a yawn. I’m glad I’m not the only one suffering.

  Then it’s Roly’s turn to address the shura. Speaking through an interpreter, he begins by thanking the audience for allowing him to speak and for attending the meeting. He is slick and smooth, but, most importantly for the locals, sincere. He explains why O
peration Moshtarak was needed and apologizes for any inconvenience it caused, speaking in the knowledge that collateral damage in this area during the kinetic phase of the operation was nil.

  Roly then turns to the insurgency. ‘I have no argument with the Taliban. If I could speak to the Taliban commanders, I would do it today. We would then sit down like grown men and discuss our differences and in the way of the world we would solve our problems by talking, not fighting. But I have offered and no one has come to my door. We are not here to fight the Taliban. We are here, at the invitation of your government, to protect the Afghan people. But if the Taliban attack us, we have a right to defend ourselves.’

  The speech goes down well and afterwards there is a long queue of elders ready to thank Roly and shake his hand. ‘That seemed to go well,’ I told him afterwards. ‘Hope so,’ he said. ‘Only time will tell. We’ve got to make the most of this transition period, we’ve really got to show the elders that there is an alternative to the Taliban, but, more importantly, we’ve got to convince them that we are not going to pull out any time soon.’

  After the meeting I join Roly’s headquarters party, together with Major Ed Boanas, the officer commanding Inkerman Company, on a patrol beginning at Five Tanks and going across the FLET into a beautiful village called Abdul Washid Kalay. Up until Operation Moshtarak, crossing the FLET would have immediately provoked a full-blown firefight and British casualties would have occurred. Dense vegetation makes this ‘close’ country where the field of view is limited to about 100 metres at most. It’s classic insurgent country, made for ambushes.

  When I last visited Five Tanks, in November 2009, I was spotted by a Taliban commander, primarily because of my blue body armour. An Afghan interpreter monitoring Icom communications heard a commander call for a sniper to be brought forward to engage two people dressed in blue. The blue body armour, which was supposed to identify me as a journalist, had merely made the Taliban assume that the photographer, Heathcliff O’Malley, and I were VIPs. This time I’m wearing khaki body armour in the hope that I won’t be so obvious.