No Worse Enemy (32 page)

‘Yes, the Taliban are here but who are the Taliban? They are Afghans’, said the mullah, waving his hand at the marines. ‘Who are they? We two have to come together! Because my
orphans will be left to you, yours to me. They ...’, he waved at the marines again, ‘will be leaving.’ ‘Whatever God wills’, said the ANA sergeant, looking at the
ground. The terp interpreted none of this conversation for the marines.

‘God will cause them such problems that they will forget about here’, said the mullah, talking directly to Lindig. But instead of translating the mullah’s words, the terp said:
‘We used to live in the Green Zone but it was dangerous, so now we live here and it’s very good, the children can play.’ ‘That’s good’, said Lindig. His words
and tone sounded patronising; he was unaware how badly he was being misled. ‘We are trying to increase security and I’m happy that you feel safer.’ It was painful when the British
or Americans talked to Afghan people as if they were idiots but this was especially excruciating.

The terp spoke directly to the mullah, explaining why he’d received such an odd response to his complaints. ‘It’s because I told him you said it was very secure here. I
didn’t tell him what you said, I told him the security was good here.’

The mullah argued that the three of them, the ANA sergeant, the terp and he, should unite against the foreigners. ‘Yesterday they killed six people in a house, only two babies were spared.
It was beyond the marketplace. Six metres beyond the bazaar there is no security. Can democracy be created by a cannon? Is that the meaning of democracy? We don’t want this democracy. We
don’t want this law of the infidel. We want the rule of Islam. We don’t want this government. We don’t want the Americans. We don’t want the British. It’s because of
them we have been fighting each other for thirty years.’

The ANA sergeant simply nodded in agreement, occasionally saying ‘yes’ under his breath. Lindig had given up being part of the conversation and was speaking into his radio. Everyone
stopped talking and waited patiently for him to finish. The mullah was clearly annoyed. Lindig finished and asked what had been said. He got a brief translation about the six recent fatalities:
‘Nothing special, the aeroplane come and explode lots of IEDs and three women, two child and one man is killed yesterday in the bazaar’, said the terp.

‘He’s saying the airplane did that?’ asked Lindig. ‘Where did you hear this information?’ he asked, sceptically. ‘I saw it myself, the whole bazaar saw
it’, said the mullah. ‘They dropped a bomb on the house, they killed all the adults, only two children survived. One was breast-fed, the other was three years old. It was yesterday at
eleven o’clock.’

‘Well, we do drop a lot of bombs’, said Lindig, ‘but when we do we are very careful where we drop those bombs and who we are dropping them on.’

‘If you don’t get upset I will tell you something’, said the mullah. ‘Sure’, said Lindig, in a tone that suggested he was willing to endure the mullah’s
words, rather than seriously consider them.

‘Whatever you have brought into Afghanistan, your people are here for killing. Your tanks are here for killing. Your cannons are here for killing. Your planes are here for killing. You
haven’t brought anything that we like. All you have brought are the things for death.’ He motioned towards the ANA sergeant: ‘This man here is my brother and you’ve trained
him. He kills me and I kill him. This doesn’t do any good for us.’

‘Nobody’s here to kill you right now’, Lindig replied. ‘The majority of this patrol is made up of ANA and the reason they’re on patrol right now is to provide
security for you and your family and to come here and to talk to you and see how your day’s going and see what you need and if there’s anything they can do to make your life a little
better.’

‘We want nothing’, the mullah snapped back, ‘we have
Allah
. Is this security that a girl was shot in this house? Can security be established by a gun or by
negotiation?’

For Lindig, this was the first he’d heard of the girl being shot. He said that at the marines’ base, just two hundred metres away, there were medics who could have treated her.
‘That’s something that the Taliban can’t do for you that we can’, he said. ‘I understand that you don’t like us here because we attract bullets and we make a lot
of noise and sometimes people get hurt because of us. But these things are going to have to happen before your country can become peaceful and if you help us and help the ANA and we win,
we’re not going to have to be here in your lives.’

‘The Taliban will be here half an hour after you leave’, said the mullah, smiling. ‘They don’t kill us. You have brought the things for killing. With them, we don’t
worry about going outside. They don’t touch us. We don’t touch them. Wherever you go you never leave us alone, whether we are inside our home or outside our home.’

It was difficult to tell if the mullah was on the verge of laughter or rage. ‘Thousands of people have died in this area. As you can see, it’s empty. All you have done is build one
and half kilometres of road in the bazaar but against that, more than five thousand people have lost their lives: men, women and children. Now you can compare these two things against each other,
which one of these do you say is better?’

The terp translated this as five to ten thousand people over the last ten years killed by marines. ‘The marines have only been in Sangin since last August’, said Lindig, suddenly
buoyed by what he thought was an open goal: ‘We’re the first Americans that have been here. It was Europeans. The Taliban tell you these things and they’re not even true.
They’re not even based on facts.’

‘It makes no difference’, said the mullah, barely pausing for breath, ‘if it’s Pakistanis, Iranians, Americans or Japanese. Any foreigner is our enemy. They have
destroyed us.’

Lindig was incredulous. Only someone insane, or brainwashed, could suggest that he’d come to Helmand with anything but the noblest of intentions. He was a modern-day Paladin. And yet here
was an intelligent, articulate man, living in the shadow of an American base, expressing ingratitude. It pained him that anyone, especially one of the people being helped, could hold that view.
Lindig seemed to shrink as the argument went on. ‘We’re not here to murder your people or to harm your family. We’re here to make security and peace. If that wasn’t true, I
wouldn’t be standing here today, talking to you, with a bunch of ANA soldiers providing security around your compound while I do it.’

‘Do you have binoculars?’ asked the mullah, equally disbelieving. ‘Look at this area, where are the inhabitants? They have been killed, imprisoned or have fled. This revolution
has brought no good for Afghans, it has just caused death.’ Lindig tried to invite him to the Friday
shura
but the mullah continued regardless.

‘I’m angry because if you look at my heart it’s bleeding. The dangers I have faced during this revolution have not been seen by many. The truth is, as long as this government
is there, I would never go to any of their events under my will, unless they force me.’

Lindig tried again. He said there were fifty people at the last
shura
and they needed men like him to come and share information and help them build a better community.

‘But as soon I come outside the gate there is no security’, said the mullah.

‘That’s why the
shura
is inside the gates’, replied Lindig, accidentally confirming what the mullah had said about the lack of security everywhere else. The mullah
laughed.

The ANA sergeant finally stepped in and spoke to the mullah in Dari. ‘Even if you’re not going, tell him you’ll come.’ The mullah stroked the long hair under his jaw and
smiled derisively. ‘I’m never going to tell a lie with this beard. Even if it meant getting killed I’d be the same. I just rely on God.’

While Lindig wrote down everyone’s names, the mullah spoke again. ‘I have lost two of my sons. One was killed inside his shop in the bazaar by the British, the other was killed by
the NDS [Afghan intelligence]. Will I go to this
shura
? Even if my brother stands for this government, I will see him as an enemy.’ The debate over, the mullah softened slightly. He
said there was a small guesthouse inside the mosque and he invited everyone in for a cup of tea. Lindig looked at his watch: ‘I would love to drink tea with you today but unfortunately
I’m all out of time and I need to continue my patrol. But the next time we come down here I would be more than happy to sit down with you and drink tea and discuss things.’

If counter-insurgency (and Afghan hospitality) were reduced to a short list of pithy mottos, one of them would absolutely be ‘never say no to a cup of tea’.

The mullah’s smile turned back to a snarl. He gave up on whatever he thought talking could achieve. He shook my hand and asked where I was from. When I said ‘
Englestan
’,
he was surprised. He’d thought I was with the marines. I told him I worked for the BBC; he smiled, gave me a little wink, turned and walked away.

The next day, I followed Sergeant Giles and his platoon on patrol along the same route. There was no sign of the mullah but as we waited for the sweeper to clear a stretch of path, Giles
motioned towards the mosque. According to what he’d been told, the guys inside ‘were all Talibs’.

On Christmas Day, hundreds of welfare packages arrived at Patrol Base Jamil. They were stacked in shed-sized piles by marines, some wearing Santa hats. The company walked
through the boxes, labelled ‘to our American heroes’ and ‘America Supports You’, searching for their names. Most of the boxes contained the same sweets or toiletries as they
did every week. These were emptied into huge crates outside the main door and left for people to help themselves. Only when someone found smuggled porn or a few drops of alcohol was there a little
burst of excitement.

Sangin was a hard place to celebrate Christmas anyway but Lima Company had also woken to the news that Lance Corporal Corzine, who’d had both legs amputated after stepping on an IED three
weeks earlier, had died. He was the battalion’s twenty-sixth fatality. Some of the marines speculated that he’d pulled the wires out of his life support machine. They said they’d
do it, if they were in his position.

Next to the welfare packages, six dog tags hung from a cross, with the insignias of dead or wounded marines on its central column. Someone had placed a laminated card bearing Corzine’s
name and blood group at the base of the cross. Outside the front door, under a Christmas tree, a fluffy reindeer had been positioned to look like it was having sex with a toy puppy.

Zeimus, high on Rip It
^®
, tried to cheer everyone by demonstrating exactly how he was going to teabag his wife when he got home. Although those nearest to him laughed a little,
they soon went back to what looked like lonely, dark thoughts. Piles of ammunition boxes, rockets and explosives were dropped off at the gate, preparation for an operation that would start in a few
days. That finally got everyone out of their morbid haze. For many, thoughts of revenge were the only remaining motivation.

Three days after Christmas, Lima Company left their patrol base to begin Dark Horse II, an operation to take Wishtan, an area of central Sangin. If I thought most of Sangin was bad, the marines
kept telling me, Wishtan was much worse. It was the last piece of ground in Sangin where the Taliban had free rein. Where they’d had months to prepare defences and booby-traps.

Before they moved, marines from 2/9 arrived from Marjah to take over Lima Company’s patrol bases. Within their first few days there, I was told, they shot at least three civilians dead.
Two of the dead were well known to the men of 3/5: one had given them valuable information about IEDs, another often brought them chickens and cigarettes. Because of this relationship, the men were
relaxed about digging in their fields, within clear sight of the base. The newly-arrived marines hadn’t been told about them, thought they were planting IEDs, and shot them.

A few months before they handed over Sangin, the British had cleared exactly that area the Marines now aimed at. It had cost them dear. In one incident alone, five British
soldiers had been killed by a daisy chain of IEDs on Pharmacy Road, the main road through Wishtan. That was the biggest single loss of British life since the war began. Olaf Schmid, a bomb disposal
expert and posthumous recipient of the George Cross, cleared thirty-one IEDs in twenty-four hours there, only to be killed soon afterwards.

The British had established three patrol bases along Pharmacy Road but these were abandoned by the Marines. This had given the Taliban several small valleys and a maze of alleys and compounds to
disappear into if they attacked the remaining bases in the north and west.

The night before the operation, Lima Company travelled to the nearest remaining patrol base. It was the one I’d been in three and a half years earlier, when the Grenadier Guards were
attacked with rockets and machine-gun fire. The plan was to slowly clear Wishtan before re-establishing the old British patrol bases. Pharmacy Road was to be cleared by ABVs (Assault Breacher
Vehicles): ‘super-tanks’ carrying huge claw-like ploughs instead of gun barrels. These would be followed by armoured bulldozers, to flatten everything a hundred metres either side of
the road. ‘If it casts a shadow, it gets flattened’, said Captain Peterson. ‘I’d rather have a headache that costs money at a
shura
than one that costs blood.’
If a house were occupied, he said, he would risk letting it stand, although the surrounding walls would have to go. He expected most buildings to be abandoned.