SANGIN
A
Glance through Afghan Eyes
Toby Woodbridge
AN M-Y BOOKS EBOOK
© Copyright 2011
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Contents
Chapter 1 – Sangin
Chapter 2 - Mohammad Juma
Chapter 3 - Colonel Abdul Rahman
Chapter 4 – Colonel Wadood
Chapter 5 – Major Mohammad Naim
Chapter 6 – Faisal Haq
Chapter 7 – Politics and Political Shuras
Chapter 8 – Elections
Chapter 9 – Security First
Chapter 10 – Civilian Casualties and Officers Down
Chapter 11 – Friends All Around and the Enemy Within
Chapter 12 – A Fight for Every Last Man
Chapter 13 – Mentor to a Leader and Friendly with Thieves
Chapter 14 – Cover from Fire, Cover from View
Chapter 15 – To Leave Without Leaving Behind
Chapter 16 – The Price for a Life won’t Come Cheap
Chapter 17 – A Race to go Absent on Leave
Chapter 18 – So Long Sangin, Fare the Well
Chapter 19 – First Contact to Final Parade
Prologue
June 2007 – In a fleeting moment’s reflection it struck me as ironic that despite fully eighteen months of preparatory training the actual occasion of my first operational patrol seemed all too rushed and fraught with second guessing to feel familiar, practised or comfortable. Two stone of body armour I’d barely worn before pushed heavily upon my shoulders, immediate discomfort just a precursor to the promise of future irritation and pain. My webbing bore the scars of multiple readjustments yet hung in an ill-fitting embrace that felt too low around my hips, desert-issue ammo pouches strapped against the breastplate and overflowing with magazines I couldn’t know I wouldn’t need that night. The air around hung heavy with moisture, damp with particles of sand that tasted sour on the tongue, dusk preceding the certainty of a black sky yet promising nothing in the way of relief from heat the intensity of which I’d never known before. Hands, mechanical and able, passed over personal weapons in the act of loading as faint electronic whispers moved amongst us, confirmation of effective communication between each and all. The helmet I wore, provided just days earlier, replaced an outdated model that had fit with practised ease where now there was a misshapen feel, echoed in the still unbroken boots within which my feet lifted alternately in nervous agitation. The country, the town I was in, the colleagues I stood beside, none I had known before. The atmosphere carried a host of different aromas all of which were alien and indiscernible to my un-acclimatised sense of smell, and unknown yet no doubt everyday sounds carried on the evening breeze were to me clear signals of danger when heard for the very first time. It was though I had been reborn into a different world whose least remarkable realities were like rarefied secrets I knew nothing about, and in those first moments of awakening the infinite possibilities presented before me were almost overwhelming. Knowledge is the key to rational thought and I had none to call on, no previous experience of the environment that now formed my world. It was for that reason, rather than the cloying humidity, that my shirt clung tight to the torso beneath, already drenched in sweat with rivulets of precipitation running the length of each leg to soak into sock and boot. My heart beat with a restless fervour, quickening in anticipation of the activity to come as blood surged to every extremity, my body releasing a first flush of adrenal stimulation too early and too intense to be sustained. My mind raced, mentally retracing the lessons I’d received that had led me to this place, searching for the knowledge that would allow me to affect a professional air in front of my peers and therefore belie the lack of experience I felt so keenly and hoped so ardently to hide.
Initially we marched under the reassuring muzzle of a machine gun, the additional security it provided giving me chance to adjust to the pace of our patrol, muscles protesting against the first strains of physical activity as my body sought to compensate for the extra effort suddenly demanded. Footsteps crunched on a gravel-coated track that led between battle damaged compounds either side, their empty windows and open doorways growing ever darker with the failing light of day into night. There was a stillness to the air, that momentary calm that commemorates each passing of the sun an instant before darkness takes over and natures hunters start to stir, and we joined them in the role of predator whilst ever conscious of our potential as prey. The blackness soon all around impaired my vision, freeing my imagination to see evidence of danger with renewed clarity, the threat further enhanced by each unnatural sound that fell upon my ears. Sweat flowed freely across a face tight with the strain of heightened senses as I stumbled over rubble and fought to remain steady on the brittle logs that provided passage over irrigation ditches half filled with still, mud-hewed water. I cursed inwardly, fighting the imbalance of my top-heavy load, breathing heavily with the effort required to avoid a fall. Suddenly a shot was fired, followed immediately by the staccato report of two more...
... and then silence.
PART 1 – THE PLACE
Chapter 1 – Sangin
Maybe it was the silence, complete and all-encompassing of the like my body hadn’t known for much of the previous seven months. Probably it was the fatigue, full-on like only a first-light end of night will ensure. Undoubtedly it was the alcohol, still washing through me in dangerous quantity and there to stay for hours to come. The glow emitting from my wrist highlighted mid-afternoon as confusion reigned. Where was I? Where had the day gone? What happened to the evening previous and my part in it? I placed my location as the family home sometime soon after, sometime after that the phone rang, bringing news from my night via a woman with electronic tones. Her voice was too harsh to be alluring, even to a man whose recent existence had been so completely devoid of female company, and she rolled off a series of two and three figure numbers without passion or feeling which only served to increase the shock of my reaction to the full financial cost of celebration. I had arrived home just seven days prior, and was recovering from only my second night out in that time, supposedly rejoicing in the completion of another operational tour to Afghanistan. People talk of praise for soldiers and the work they do whilst deployed, that as men and women of the Armed Forces they can be justifiably proud of their endeavour and achievements, often in the most testing of circumstance. Correct of course, but barely one week after leaving the heat and dust of Helmand’s desert plain behind my hard-work of March to early October was forgotten, replaced by disappointment founded in an over-excessive reintroduction to the relative empty pleasures of alcohol and bright-light living. Cause for reflection certainly, and subsequent motivation for a more concrete collection of my experiences in that extraordinary country during 2009. A summer spent acting as mentor to Afghan National Police, working to build their capacity, capability and effectiveness to operate as both security force and police investigators, and attempting to increase communication, by encouraging better cooperation, between all Afghan security forces and Government officials employed alongside me. An incredible opportunity therefore to exert some small influence on the development of a much maligned but ever-adapting international strategy aimed at eventual success in Afghanistan. However you choose to define ‘success’ of course. For me, an Afghanistan with sufficient, and sufficiently trained, civil police and military forces capable of ensuring the levels of security required to allow for the development of effective governance, economic and social freedom, and reconstruction of essential services for the benefit of all. Only then could there be realistic talk of an army coming home.
By way of context, and as alluded to above, my stay in Afghanistan that year did not constitute the first trip I had made there. In 2007 I was deployed to Helmand Province for short of four months; my first command appointment as a commissioned Officer in HM British Army and more specifically the Corps of Royal Engineers. As a Troop Commander I joined with elements of my command in theatre, and embarked on an intense period of work centred on the towns of Sangin and Kajaki, but taking in much of the Upper Sangin Valley along the difficult and dangerous way. In the ensuing prose I won’t dwell much further on personal experiences of this time – the tone of which has been documented previously elsewhere - other than where it adds value to descriptions of events from my return. I mention it now by way of highlighting that I arrived back in Helmand eighteen months on with some experience of the ground, and in particular a good knowledge as to my home for the duration of that summer, the town of Sangin; a name now all too familiar with the British public after several years of soldierly ‘hard-pounding’ in and around there following our arrival in 2006. In the intervening time since much national (Afghan) and international (British, Fijian, South African, Australian, American, Estonian, Danish and more) blood has been spilt along the narrow, high-walled alleys, open, loose-dirt fields, and rocky, sand-blown desert of the town and its immediate surrounds. It sits on river-valley plain 900m above sea level, dwellings small when set against rolling hills and soaring mountain range casting ancient shadow to the north, west and south-east. In powerful parallel the Helmand River bores a wide expanse on its passage south, fattened by an ample yield from the snow-topped mountain ranges of central Afghanistan. An ancient trade post it acts as gatekeeper for money made in all directions, straddling the Route 611 road to Gereshk - vital link to the Provincial Capital Lashkar Gar - and controlling all access north to the fertile Upper Sangin Valley and beyond to Baghran.
The town’s economic heart is its main Bazaar, running through the centre on either side of the 611 for some 500m, a succession of narrow, ramshackle, open front mud-brick stores interspersed with temporary, rough-hewn displays set amongst bomb-damaged buildings and flanked by dusty side-roads. Men sit in the shade of canvass awnings and sip on endless shots of chi, white-hot water tainted brown but clear through the glass containers as kids call on foreign faces to forever part with their pens, the written word hopeful currency for a generation almost wholly illiterate. I have patrolled that market on many occasions during eight months spent working in Sangin and seen significant changes during the two years which encompassed that time. In early 2007 it was unkempt and empty, a victim of sustained and often savage fighting that drove shopkeepers far from the source of their income. Yet by the time of my last visit I could walk with confidence on a recently sealed road between brightly coloured products piled high in anticipation of each morning’s consumer rush, new police checkpoints visible in both directions, evidence of a flourishing economic development conducted by a community growing ever-more confident of their security. At its busiest the Bazaar would be crowded with shoppers, motorbikes swaying through the spill-over as Afghan soldiers and police conducted resupply on their regular patrols. So busy in fact that our own safety during these times was effectively compromised by the success of a combined security and economic development strategy we sought to guarantee; suicide bombers being our greatest threat when operating amongst any local population, and the greater that population’s presence in any one area the more difficult it becomes to recognise a minority threat within the majority friendly throng. However, by taking these calculated risks – risks which were absolutely necessary if we were to most effectively mentor the policemen under our charge – we were working entirely in line with an over-arching country-wide policy of integration among the people, in order to better our understanding of those people, and likewise their knowledge of us. Sangin’s Bazaar represented the kind of thriving regeneration so sought after by International Security Assistance Force senior officers, international development chiefs, and political paymasters the western world over as evidence of the progress being made across Afghanistan. And progress had clearly been made, but it was not spectacular, it had not happened quickly, and every slight success had been founded in the blood and suffering of Afghan civilian and coalition soldier alike. For if I walked with confidence along a few hundred metres of black-top so I would tread lightly and with reluctant trepidation in any other part of town not so obviously secure from the threat of underfoot explosion. By 2009 improvised explosive devices had become the highly effective, often extremely sophisticated weapon of first use by an insurgent force growing ever-more reluctant to take on professional soldiers in face-to-face fights they could never win. Far better to sow the poppy fields and pot-holed tracks with a seemingly endless supply of home-made bombs, growing fear in the minds of those whose task it was to develop security across what had effectively become an area of unmarked, unrecorded, unknown and highly unstable minefields. For the insurgents it was an entirely sensible means of waging their war; the promise of maximum damage with often no real risk to their own. These devices were hugely effective in slowing down coalition movements, and at times prevented access to large areas of land freely patrolled just two years prior when that particular threat had been relatively minor.
Governance for the District of Sangin was delivered from a white-washed new-build situated halfway along a poorly sealed road that cut from a curve in the central Bazaar through farmland, and on towards canal and riverbank beyond. The double-storey Government Offices, opened in mid-summer of 2009, overlooked a part of town where memories of close-quarter fighting echoed amongst irregular concrete pillars and basic mud-brick ruins, all-encompassed by a protective perimeter wall within which it was hoped the machinery of good governance and effective rule of law would come to operate without external interference from insurgents intent on disrupting development. Adjacent to these offices a health clinic had been constructed in tandem, completed at the same time and subsequently left to stand empty for the months that followed whilst a willing and qualified occupant was sought to run this critical service for an unconvinced populace. Afghan police provided the first face of governance as far as locals could see, permanently placed at the road’s end, open to the Bazaar and bustle beyond. They stood guard throughout day into night and fought a boredom that would often lead to an easy addiction to drugs, a means of breaking up monotonous hours standing, sitting, sleeping on Sangin’s security front line. A few men in blue and bearing AK arms was often all that stood between Sangin’s Governor and the men who would do him harm, yet day after day these unlikely guards would complete their work without allowing any insurgent incident to occur within the confines of that thin, barricaded strip of hopeful land.
Route 611 ran roughly parallel to the Helmand River, with a vast and largely dry wadi interconnecting the two on its pebbled path west to east, curving in an expansive arc away from the river’s edge through the main Bazaar and out into desert beyond. The wadi was an important part of daily life for the people of Sangin, linking in with man-made crossing points over the water, providing a transport link into town and suburbs as well as the fertile, farmed land which straddled the eastern bank. It was also a seemingly endless source of loose rock fill, broken down by the entrepreneurial into any grade ordered, harvested for little or nothing just to be sold, often to the foreign dollar, for exorbitant but readily paid prices. Every day overloaded motorbikes ferried people and supplies across a network of barely seen tracks as locals went about their business along ancient routes, movement informed by the shifting nature of a platform alive with the nurture of Helmand’s seasonal extremes. In summer the whole expanse acted as a great conductor of heat, haze shimmering barely beyond touching distance as temperatures soared to their maximum among the broken stone basin, where distance seemed to double into visibly curving pockets of rising hot air.
North of the wadi the land sloped sharply upwards to a narrow plateau with commanding views over town centre, fields, and river below, foot-hills and mountain beyond. At its peak neat small blue tiles hinted at a once impressive mosaic floor set in stark contrast to red desert dust and reduced concrete walls of the bomb damaged former Governor’s residence, the still superb view sole survivor of a modern war then framed by nature’s window alone. The town’s suburbs lay as a patchwork of large irregular rectangles, the parched partitions of thick mud walls solid in old age under the setting of an ancient sun. Space was a private commodity taken at the expense of communal walkways which tracked the narrow gaps between dwellings, a claustrophobic system of social interaction so dense as to discourage the very movement it was designed to empower. Much of the town was single-storey, Sangin’s few social climbers able to provide a literal display of their status in the form of second, sometimes third floors on their place of business or home. For most however subsistence was the system of survival, parents content to have the product and wares required at any one time to trade or sell for the food to feed their family and fund a sheltered sleep. Relative fortunes were made in Sangin but only by the powerful and connected few, many of whom fled their homes for fear of the fighting that had taken place there and the threat from Taliban shadow governance. The insurgents operated a system of government in parallel to the officially sanctioned version that permeated from the District Centre, small circles of influence swiftly fading to nothing where no Government security existed to uphold the values and promises they promoted. Local Taliban leaders offered a ‘justice’ system based on sharia law that would provide almost immediate redress on a whole array of disputes from the minor to allegations of murder and other serious offences. It was at times an attractive option for the individual who considered himself wronged yet had no trust in the official systems of conflict resolution, nor patience to unravel the accompanying layers of bureaucracy. By providing this service, much more in-keeping with the religious traditions and tribal culture of this most conservative part of Afghanistan, the insurgents could win influence amongst parts of the population which Government forces were barely able to affect because their presence was only ever minimal at best.
From a military standpoint the town was no natural fortress for those stationed within. It wasn’t easily defendable against external threat nor did it allow unobserved egress when planning more offensive measures from a base inside. For most of the year dense foliage and high growing crops could reduce fields of view across irrigated areas to just metres, whilst an undulating geography hindered those looking out and hid movement of potential foe. Any walls there were interlinked in a warren-like honeycomb without external support, a permeable perimeter enabling easy access into the town’s centre from myriad different directions. High ground abounded in all directions allowing easy observation for those with an interest in events below, and enabling the coordination of attacks hidden from view in woodland further north or over hills rising in irregular fashion to the west. Much of the local country, whether urban or rural, was close and channelled, forcing movement down pre-determined paths or across easily identifiable routes, making ambushes simple to set and difficult to avoid. From the defenders point of view it was a landscape that rewarded constant presence and continual oversight at all times, for the moment you turned to look another way so your enemy would ensure danger greeted the next discerning glance. There was of course no possibility to place a boot on every pace of grass, dirt or track, so the opportunity would always exist for insurgent exploitation of the gaps which occurred when land one moment occupied, was reluctantly, inevitably rescinded the next. The insurgents would utilise these gaps and the darkness to dig and place the bombs which waited as long as required to change a life forever, or end one forever more.
For the foreigner looking in, Sangin’s geography was clearly discernible and its economic characteristics easily defined, yet there was a social construct to the town and its surrounds - based on ancient tribal affiliations and cultural traditions - that could never be fully understood by those of us who passed through for just a relative few months. Absolutely ingrained into local conscience were the complexities of tribal affiliation that seemed never ending to an outsider and often excruciatingly frustrating and incomprehensible when it came to their affect on efforts at development or reform. Local loyalty could go in several different directions at any one time for reasons that may be significant, were occasionally trivial, and often rooted in acts which took place many years before. Respect would be paid to figures of authority whom most often repaid that courtesy by using their particular position of influence as justification to take from the majority beneath them, and most would accept such behaviour with a resignation borne of a familiar acceptance of corruption passed from one generation to the next. It’s just the way things were done because it’s the way things had always been done. Tribal connections would often determine who held sway in a particular part of the District or on a specific area of expertise, and matters would only be decided definitively if the appropriate tribal representatives were present to provide an acceptably official level of endorsement. In Sangin near all of the most important tribal leaders were in exile by 2009 after their attempts to combat Taliban infiltration in the town went unsupported by higher authority and left them open to the threat of execution. Settled in Kandahar or Lashkar Gah they were to a man reluctant to return home when their current domestic conditions were considerably more secure than a life in the town of their birth could offer. Left in their stead were the infinitely less influential second and third tier leaders, whose influence over their respective communities was correspondingly poor, and as such attempts to engage with a naturally reluctant civilian population on matters of security or social and economic development went unreported by anyone with the tribal standing to ensure they were heard and acted upon. Deals would be done between Afghan powerbrokers with barely a nod of the head or stroke of a beard, an unspoken determination of how things would be that eluded all but the local few who seemed to have an innate understanding as to their respective social position in life, and an acceptance that those able to profit from theirs should and would do exactly that.
In a part of the world where illiteracy is commonplace spoken words or visual symbols are the only effective means of communication, particularly when seeking to impart a message across communities District-wide and beyond. Sangin was not unusual in Afghanistan for having been ruled by a Governor who could neither read nor write, and one who had not the slightest inclination to learn. Literacy was a rare skill, most often found in a ruling generation only where individuals were schooled as members of the Russian backed communist regime. Those who fought as mujahedeen had the commanding confidence of fighting men and victors, but they were lacking in the basic skills a formal education would have provided. Theirs was a world of touch and feel rather than numbers or written word. So it was that such men could walk blindfolded every step of the way for kilometres back to a family home they hadn’t seen in a lifetime, yet they could no more point to its position on a map than count the number of steps they had taken or record that journey so that others may later follow. It was this lack of administrative capability that ultimately held back the development of government, police, and to a lesser extent military institutions. Too much was decided by word of mouth alone without the proper dissemination of proposals or accurate recording of decisions made. There was therefore a lack of accountability when things went awry, with investigations taking the form of an untidy series of verbal claim and counter-claim by the protagonists, generally followed by behind-the-scenes agreements mutually beneficial to the primary aggressors without ever extending those benefits to the community as a whole. Education was chronically lacking in towns such as Sangin where the Taliban had effective control over the opening of schools, with teachers intimidated by violent threats to the point where they no longer desired to risk their lives in pursuit of their vocation. For most of 2009 the main schools in town lay disused, the future of a generation at the mercy of Taliban leaders who could determine the levels of educational access across the District entirely at their will. That they cared little for the interests of Sangin’s local community was never more evident than when insurgents took advantage of a change in police routine to plant a bomb inside the main school, built with development money and finished not long before. In order to protect the site ANP had maintained a permanent presence on the perimeter as deterrent to potential attackers, however with another established police checkpoint not fifty metres away enjoying overwatch of the school and its grounds, the temporary position was vacated in order to re-task vital manpower to more strategically important locales. This proved to be a mistake, the insurgents finding a way to place their IED unbeknownst to the police protectors, subsequently exploding it inside the entrance hall to devastating effect. Thankfully no people were caught in the blast, but there was considerable structural damage and the event was a cause of some personal soul-searching, for it was I who had advised the ANP Chief of the need to move his men elsewhere. There was some guilt, but ultimately the pressures on a poorly manned police department meant they couldn’t be everywhere I would have liked, and at that time they were needed elsewhere. It was an assessment of risk based upon a belief that there were enough police in the immediate area to ensure that school’s security without the need for men to sit wasted inside. All of which relied on the police involved doing their job correctly, which on that occasion was an assumption too far. Coming as this event did in the first few months of my tour it served as a valuable lesson for the planning of future security operations, particularly the August elections; I learnt that, given the ANP’s capability at that time, the only way to guarantee the security for any one location was to have patrolmen placed there at all times. Next door was too far away. Ultimately however, the incident served as an indictment of insurgent policy towards the people they sought to control, and strengthened all our resolve for the fight with which we were enjoined.
The climate in Sangin is rarely ever less than extreme, and deserves mention for the effect it could have on local way of life throughout a year, the impact it had on insurgent activities, and the way it could shape security force operations in response. On arriving in April 2009 it was into an Afghanistan unfamiliar to the one I remembered. When I first visited Helmand it was already June, a month when the summer heat is set with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius on a daily basis and remaining so for many months to come. During this time the skies remain clear but for a dusty haze of scorching heat hanging heavy in the air from dawn to sundown, replaced overnight by a cloying humidity bringing barely a few digits decline on the thermometer and ensuring no respite from an ever-present, debilitating, personal precipitation. Early spring was different; cold at first but also at times perfectly fresh and clear, fine conditions to enjoy the often stunning geographical surrounds. Throughout March, April and into May the weather is unpredictable; beautiful blue-sky days are quickly subsumed by sandstorms which seem to suck all colour from the world around save for pallid washed-out yellows, pinks and browns; starlight succumbs to black-storm backgrounds casting silver shadows on the land below with every spectacular flash of electric white and blue. Invariably the worst will be done by the darkest hours of night, moon rise and set complete to leave a silent vacuum devoid of noise and light, before the passage of time brings sunshine to the start of another day. Initially I found the clement conditions unnerving; the daily realities in fighting a war or counter-insurgency are so alien to any western understanding of a normal working routine that I found it easier to adjust where the extreme nature of the job was complemented by climatic conditions unheard of back home. The temperature during those early weeks was too normal, and it made it that much harder to leave home behind, and mentally adjust to the state of mind necessary for an operational deployment in Helmand Province. For locals however these months signify a welcome transition from the sub-zero weeks of winter, when downpours turn dusty tracks and dirt compound floors into reservoirs of mud and grime. As respite it is brief, for by mid-May the clouds and cooling rains have gone, replaced by an ever-increasing heat that comes to dictate most every aspect of Afghan daily life. Locals adapt as the conditions require, rising early in the relative pre-dawn cool and completing essential tasks in time to retreat into shadow and shade for a restorative slumber during the heat of each day. Early evening brings a second wave of activity in the remaining hours of light before dinner at dusk and then sleep. Only mad dogs and military sought out the black of night and searing mid-day heat in which to work, as efforts were made to maximise efficiency and gain any advantage over the insurgent enemy available. This policy took its toll on the well-being of soldiers who often struggled to achieve a full and balanced diet, and who were required to operate at their physical and mental limits, and beyond, day after day for months on end. During the height of summer not even night brings respite or relief, with temperatures dropping barely a few degrees from the daytime maximum and extreme humidity making for a restless and dehydrating sleep. The effect was to cause an ever increasing debt of effective rest, which when compounded by the relentless physical hardships of each day resulted in a steady degradation of individual performance well past the generally advisable. For their part the Taleban operated a varied and unpredictable routine, one not so much predicated on daily variations of temperature as it was seasonal changes and their resultant impact on agricultural activity. It is fair to say that they would generally avoid the more extreme ends of each twenty-four hour cycle, but unencumbered by the weight of equipment carried by a coalition soldier they would fight throughout daylight hours when required, and if an advantage could be gained by using the night that is what they would do. The realities of an Afghan winter significantly restrict cross-country freedom of movement and make basic survival that much more difficult away from reliable sources of shelter and warmth, all of which ensured that insurgent activity slackened somewhat country-wide during these months, although less-so in Helmand than elsewhere. More pertinent perhaps was Taleban policy in respect to the poppy harvest, from which they generated substantial fiscal resources to further fund their fighting aims. In order to protect this source they would significantly decrease their offensive operations for fear of causing conflicts which could subsequently damage the crop. The lower the harvestable yield, the smaller the taxable gains to be made, so the pursuit of money took precedence over the prosecution of attacks. The weather therefore was unavoidably linked to considerations of security in Sangin, and its effect at any one time of year would influence all parties involved to a greater or lesser degree.
As adherents to the Islamic faith the requirements of that religion placed additional demands on Afghan locals and insurgents fighters alike that further affected the way they would operate. This was particularly so during Ramadan, the month-long fast where Muslims refrain from taking any food or drink during daylight hours, and all other excessive or ill-advised activity is replaced by an increased spirituality and more overt displays of devotion to God. For the Afghan security forces there was an inevitable drop-off in offensive operations, with the forfeit of food, water and sleep during some of the hottest days of summer taking its toll on the physical capabilities of soldiers and police. Potentially a security concern, the impact of this reduced capability was negated by a corresponding reduction in insurgent attacks within the District, very much welcomed during 2009 after the intensity of Taliban assaults over the recently completed election campaign and vote. These few weeks of late-summer respite came to an end with the full moon signifying Eid ul-Fitr, the breaking of the fast much anticipated after a month of self-sacrifice, bringing happiness and joy summed up by one ANA Warrior when he bear-hugged his mentor in unashamed relief exclaiming; “It’s over!” That night the stars mingled with tracer fire, shooting green and red bursts of colour in criss-crossing angles as firecrackers popped all over town, locals commencing celebrations that would continue for days. My interpreter, Javeed, made what seemed to be a bold statement claiming with a smile that there would be no more trouble during Eid; “All the enemy go away to see their families, put on new clothes and celebrate. There is no problem during the four days of this festival.” After a total of almost eight months in Sangin it was a statement that made me ponder on the shame that Eid didn’t last for a year.
So describes the setting for what is to come; an account of people, politics, problems, some positives, but mostly a story about Afghans and Afghanistan, told through the eyes of a foreigner granted but one not wholly unfamiliar with the people and their land. It is an attempt to better inform on issues which most affected the day-to-day clarity of local life in one small part of a much bigger political and security picture. It is also a record of my own experiences whilst working alongside Afghan counterparts on a daily basis over a significant period of time, informed by the knowledge gained from ten months in Helmand, eight of which were spent in a small but significant town set at the tribal heart of Afghanistan’s most troubled province, where the fight for security was arguably most acute at that time. I will focus on the main Afghan personalities involved in order to highlight the impact of local leaders and the effect their often competing interests could have on progress overall. Equally I will consider the problems which most often impacted upon the achievement of localised progress, and the frustrations that could arise in district-level attempts to overcome these problems too often unsupported by the kind of provincial or national influence required to ensure enduring positive change. But there will also be accounts of individual courage and selflessness that highlight a genuine desire amongst some to work for the good of community rather than personal gain, and hint at a development strategy which had developed sufficiently over the few years prior so as to finally suggest a path to ’success’ that could survive the inevitable setbacks of an imperfect security solution.
PART 2 - THE CHARACTERS
Chapter 2 - Mohammad Juma
The hessian sacks stacked overlapping on three sides were faded brown and degrading slowly, inevitably, under the heat of a Helmand summer, their seams straining against the sand and stone inside. They sat atop a simple one-storey concrete construction; building blocks once set hard and strong under the same sun that now gently eroded their integrity beneath a render gun-metal grey. At the pinnacle a tin roof on timber frame cast shadows between the sandbags, shade from the elements and a soothing fantasy of protection overhead from all that might fall from on-high. Beneath it a lone policeman sat, watching and waiting, his world restricted to the perspective of a heavy-weapon barrel and sight. On the roadside below five of his colleagues remained, resting and awaiting their turn as relief, occasionally rising to search locals who had business requiring them to pass the checkpoint that day. And around them all builders shaped the next generation of security; police protecting contractors providing long-term protection for them. The post they manned was School Sangar, an English name become so familiar as to be spoken by Pashtu tongue without translation. It sat at the open end of Sangin’s Governance Zone, and its presence along with the Afghan police placed there provided security to the fledgling, yet developing, machinations of effective Government within Sangin District. One of three checkpoints positioned in strategic locations around the town, the police who secured them answered to a man called Mohammad Juma, their experienced, respected, some-time Acting District Chief.
Juma wore his dark beard short but full, not yet flecked through with the grey of advancing age and part-concealing the mature yet boyish features of an angular face, traditional to those parts in the hawkish, hunter style of a Pashtun male. Lines of shadow crossed his brow, giving context to a river-brown skin inclined to expression, often conveying a smile genuine and inclusive in its warmth, the depth of feeling echoed in opaque green eyes still bright despite the harsh, hard life. He stood taller than the average for his world without being exceptional, height enhanced by a body lean and limber in the mid-year heat, and though he moved with a sense of purpose he did so in a style of slow, side-to-side rotation, a smooth cadence. When speaking his voice oscillated in octave bounds, the use of pitch integral to the conveyance of emotion, his words delivered in a soft, measured manner that ensured an audiences’ attention. On most days he dressed in the obvious blue trousers and shirt of Afghanistan’s National Police, his own uniform bleached by solar glare, evidence of long-time wear by an owner not new to its feel. The right shoulder bore a green, red, black flash of national identification whilst a badge fixed proud to the cotton above his heart. It depicted him as a man trained in his trade, a professional set above those colleagues who had yet to achieve as he had.
Occasionally he could be caught out of this blue and at rest, the flowing expanse of his washed-out green or shimmering white dish-dash providing cool relief during the hottest hours of daylight. Once he’d arrived back at camp in the dying light of day into night with a ragged face of the insurgency in tow, his AK slung across just such baggy robes and shemagh wrapped in casual excellence around his head, looking every part the majestic Afghan mujahedeen of twenty years before and more. It was a Friday, their day of rest, when an attack was initiated on Juma and his men at a static security post; his reaction left no time for appropriate dress, and without thought for personal safety nor professional etiquette Juma tracked down the perpetrator with lethal effect. Having delivered the body, the exalted relief of one who has survived a deadly combat was clearly evident alongside the no-less genuine shame that such work had been conducted out of formal attire.
He was born in Babaji, a one-time area of arid land brought to reluctant life by nature at the urging of man’s helping hand, irrigation ditches providing ingress for nurturing waters salvaged from the Helmand Rud expanse that flows as a permeable yet impenetrable barrier to ease of movement south and east. It’s a birthplace he had grown to see rarely, his work requiring near absolute commitment to Sangin and allowing little respite from the challenge of policing that town; not even a few hundred kilometres away it may as well have been nowhere for all that he was able to access that home by Afghan means alone. Juma’s effectiveness as an insurgent foil was cause of his notoriety to those he took on; they knew him, they despised what he did, they had him as a target always. It is for these reasons that he was unable to travel further than the width and depth of security he himself helped to ensure. And yet less dedicated men had left whilst Juma remained, an enduring embodiment of sanctuary in Sangin, often selfless, and steadfast in his loyalty to a place not his own. Asked why he stayed when so many others did not, Juma’s response was pragmatic; “This is where I have been sent by my HQ, so this is where I do my work.” He had done that work in Sangin for more than three years, providing security to a largely untamed part of Afghan land that had seen often savage fighting throughout his time there. Climbing up through the ranks, operating at the forefront throughout, his approach to the hard-won position of leader was literal in the extreme; where Juma went so his men followed, he took ‘point’ without exception. So it was that the Southern Mast arrest came to be.
The ancient tribal and economic crossroads centred on Sangin’s town centre were reflected in the modern world by a system of four communication towers, positioned not more than a couple of dusty kilometres apart on each axis of the compass points. A stark red and white striped juxtaposition to the mountain shades they set against, these metal columns rose tens of feet skywards, stories above and centuries ahead of all other man-made structures that sat in their wiry shadow. Together, technically, they formed an omni directional system of communication designed to channel mobile telephone calls around the District and beyond. Together, in actuality, they no longer worked – sabotaged by insurgents intent on further disrupting Afghan Government influence in the region. But while they still stood, so they provided excellent points of reference and aids to navigation, their respective names imaginatively mimicking the relative direction in which they faced. Juma’s attention was inevitably drawn to the Southern Mast, for it was via routes going north either side of this feature that he knew his enemy infiltrated the Bazaar and set up attacks on outlying Patrol Bases. On any given night an ambush would be set without success but never in the absence of hope; Juma subscribing to the adage that luck required just once is preferable to the need to be lucky every time. She arrived shortly before dusk one evening in June, embodied in the form of three fighting age males driving the ubiquitous white pick-up along a dirt-road surrounded by hidden shades of blue. As they approached Juma simply stepped onto the track before their vehicle, rifle raised to the cab, and informed the young, startled insurgents that they could, from that moment on, consider themselves under his arrest. He brought them to me the next morning, all smiles with important evidence in toe, and thankfully no sign of any harm to those newly detained. His actions that night, again at the forefront of his men, proved to be a huge coup for the police in Sangin, the three men eventually put before a court in Lashkar Gar and sentenced to ten-years apiece just two months hence – proof that adherence to the rule of law was possible at all levels in the Afghan justice system, and evidence that where due process was followed, convictions could be brought to bear in a remarkably quick timeframe. Juma was understandably thrilled to hear the news of their sentence and rightfully proud that his professionalism and courage were a direct cause of that outcome. Characteristically understated at best, as I informed him he took my hand in his, smiled, and simply said, “Good.”
The Haji Nismadeen Road ran west, south-west from a join with Sangin’s main Bazaar transit. Open at its easternmost end a police check-point overlooked the off-white shale as it swiftly narrowed into winding track, wide enough for people and two-wheels only, shouldered by ancient mud-walled compounds that rose to block observation either side as an individual moved along its length. From the Bazaar that road slid into the area of Gumbatty; compounds, gardens and sun-baked walls gradually merging into an ever more lush landscape of green before dwellings all but disappeared and fields, ditches, trees gave way to the rushing mass of Helmand’s river. Irrigated, fertile land with its myriad man-made trails and natural cover provided concealment and a perfect means of approach for insurgent boots on ground, whilst Haji Nismadeen and the dust-covered tracks which echoed its path allowed targeted IED emplacement on the only obvious routes around. For this reason Sangin’s ANP came to maintain a permanent presence at the point where bitumen Bazaar road met loose-rock track, their remit to block all suspicious traffic – man or machine – from an area they didn’t control into the one part of town which they did. The outpost was isolated, southernmost of all police locations in Sangin and set to a business guaranteed to rile their enemy for as long as it, and they, remained. And it was Juma’s primary place of work, his presence there alone helped to shore up the courage of less willing men; a base from which he conducted patrol, ambush and raid, from where he rebutted the recurring, sustained insurgent assaults, and a location that served as collection point for the succession of IEDs he alone had dug from the ground along and around Haji Nismadeen.
It was a business risky in the extreme, absolutely un-recommended by anyone with a sense of responsibility and the authority to offer such advice. These devices were ever-more sophisticated in the manner with which they released their deadly force, and those who emplaced them ever-quicker to adapt their methods of manufacture in order to exploit the techniques observed in removal. Yet there are men whose moral conscience won’t allow them to leave something so harmful in a place they know when they know all too well the potential consequences should it remain. Juma’s experience made him “very aware of the dangers in removing IEDs from the ground, but if I leave them in place then they may explode under a family or child, and having not done all I could to prevent that would be very shameful to me.” He was a man who could be taught, someone who had for years now watched and learned from those sent to teach him, and over time he had seen the way experts would deal with an explosive device concealed underground and set to main and kill; “I will lie on my chest, my face close to the ground, an arms-length away from the bomb, and I will gently brush away at the device until it is clear for me to move.” There was real courage there, at times evidence of a man crazily, maybe dangerously brave, yet he admitted that “sometimes I get scared when I go to lift the bombs from the ground.” Reason behind the reckless daring of a man whose actions often merited an exasperated admiration – he did things differently, on occasion in a manner the less fatalistic man would balk at, yet no-one could ever have doubted the existence of a personal bravery that would frighten most others, and Sangin was a better place for his continuing presence, would be a better place for as long as men such as him remained.
One morning he’d passed on information about the locations of some devices near his southern check-point – intelligence which I thanked him for and asked that his men maintain a watch over that area until the opportunity arose to clear them. That evening, long after the sun had set and our living quarters were shrouded in the deep bruised black of a starless night, sirens and sharp flashes of blue light raised the first thoughts of alarm as I jogged outside, Medic in toe to await what I felt sure would be an ANP casualty as two police Rangers slid to standstill across the dust-covered gravel floor. Metres away and with several police excitedly exiting their respective vehicles my relief at the obvious lack of any injury soon subsided as the first shout of “bomb, bomb!” echoed around me, smiling Afghan faces delivering their prize with a flourish of open doors that revealed two IEDs strewn casually across the second Ranger’s back seat. In response I was less than grateful, turning on instinct and walking purposefully away, intent on creating as much space between myself and the offending items as possible, only to be frustrated in doing so by the wall directly at my rear. “They’ve brought two IEDs into camp...” was about all I could muster by way of bemused speech, spoken to no-one in particular, as my mind struggled to comprehend this latest unplanned and unwanted break from the norms of my life pre and post-Afghanistan. With nowhere else to go I turned back to a place that I hoped was somewhere short of the bang, throwing forth a series of angry exhortations by way of futile protective shield as I sought out Juma and some sanity amid the shock. His was, as ever, the face of a man composed and in control, clearly keen to share the success of this latest courageous act with the Officer sent to pass judgement on his actions. No doubt he wondered once again what all my upset was about, our eventual fate was after all “inshallah” and therefore not something an individual should concern themselves with in too great detail. The smile could only be shared and softened my initial concern as we discussed how best to deal with the highly unstable high-explosive shrapnel-filled containers now just outside my room. “No problem Captain I will put them over by the wall,” Juma agreed as I explained my thinking, “and I promise not to bring any more IEDs to camp.” His dish-dash creased in the breeze as he carried each bomb to a position of relative safety, the patrolmen taking turns to capture their prey on camera before disappearing into the night.