No Worse Enemy (7 page)

At the patrol base, we were told to get a few hours’ sleep, resting on the sand and gravel outside. At 2 a.m., we got up, crammed what we could into backpacks and walked into the Green
Zone. Within minutes, we heard an explosion. A mine had struck one of the Worcester and Sherwood Foresters’s vehicles but no one had been hurt. It was still dark as the Grenadier Guards crept
through the fields that surrounded Kakaran, talking little, and then only in whispers. As we entered the village at dawn, it was clear that every compound had been abandoned, very recently. Piles
of dried poppies lay all around, their bulbs marked with the rows of diagonal incisions that allowed the opium to ooze out and be scraped off.

‘By and large, because this area has seen a lot of fighting, many families have moved out’, said Major David. ‘This is bad news, because it means we’re not achieving the
effect we’re hoping for, which is to bring security. But hopefully after a few days we’ll have taken this area properly and sent a message that people can move back.’

It seemed to be assumed that the owners of the houses had fled a long time ago and that anyone who’d been there recently was squatting. I didn’t know if this was true or if it just
made the soldiers feel better about rifling through abandoned homes. ‘Either they’re brilliant liars or the whole compound ownership thing is a very fluid concept’, said Captain
Paddy Hennessey. ‘Because whenever you go into a compound, the people there never own that one; they’re always friends of the owners.’ Denial of ownership, he said, usually comes
after weapons, mines or opium have been found. ‘Of course, then, if you say “so you won’t mind if I take this?”, a different story emerges.’

I asked Sergeant Alexander what he thought the Taliban were doing. ‘They saw us arrive last night, they’ve watched us all morning. They’ll pull back to a line and if
they’re determined, they’ll spank us there.’ I asked him if he thought the Taliban could ever be made to give up. ‘No, they won’t, ’cause that’s not in
their nature. That’s Islamic extremists for you. They’ll switch to an Iraq situation, using IEDs. Obviously, the advantage we’ve got at the moment is that it’s a stand-up
fight, which we’ll win every time. We’re better-trained, better-equipped and we’ve got more fire-power. When they start getting the IED technology from Iraq, then you’re
digging in, you’re entrenched.’

As I sat, leaning up against a mud wall, it was easy to forget that the Taliban were probably watching us and getting ready to attack. Water trickled past in sparkling streams, birds sang,
houses shone in the dawn sun and perfectly-ripe bunches of grapes hung from verandahs. Gereshk and the Green Zone were once part of the hippy trail; I could easily imagine Dennis Hopper lookalikes
laughing, smoking weed and listening to Jimi Hendrix on portable cassettes. ‘It’s paradise-like. Lush green vegetation, vegetables and fruit growing in abundance, idyllic little
compounds. It’s lovely’, said Major David.

It was eight o’clock by the time we reached the other side of the village and nothing had happened. The sun wasn’t yet scorching and I was enjoying a ludicrously false sense of
security. Suddenly, a single shot was fired, close by. An interpreter raised his radio in the air. ‘They are about to attack. They are getting ready for attack.’

‘To attack us, here?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘Do you know where they are?’

‘No, their location is not known.’

‘Are they close?’

‘Yes’, he said.

The ANA spotted some Taliban fighters and called for their rocket man; every Afghan unit has a rocket man. This one emerged from the trees and jogged towards us, his rocket launcher slung over
his shoulder in a bright pink sheet. This meant most of the right side of his body was also bright pink. This seemed to strike no one but me as odd, even though he was about to step into the open
and fire a rocket at Taliban fighters thought to be fewer than a hundred metres away.

I followed Captain Patrick Hennessey as one of the ANA led him to the end of a long wall, with piles of harvested poppies stacked against it. The ANA soldier pointed to two men he had spotted
carrying weapons. The rocket man loaded his weapon and got down on one knee. Captain Hennessey told him to wait. From behind the wall, he spoke into his radio.

‘Possible positive identification of two times Taliban. Am preparing to engage with RPG. Can you confirm they are not the friendly forces mentioned earlier? Over.’ He listened.
‘Roger. We’re going to engage with RPG, see if it provokes a response and if so assault that enemy position, over.’

Rocket man walked forward, knelt, and fired. We looked for any signs of movement. A few ANA soldiers were ordered to run beyond the wall, into the trees, to provide cover for an assault on the
Taliban position. The terp heard a Taliban commander telling his men to stay in position and wait for the advance. ‘
Glea-
ming’, said Captain Hennessey, as he was given permission
to call an air strike on to the fighters. Rocket man reloaded his launcher, eager to fire again.

The Taliban were in a ditch, in front of a building about sixty metres to our right. Captain Hennessey struggled to identify the building on his map. ‘See this tree? Taliban is
behind’, said Sergeant Syed Meeraj, a small, lean man with slightly oriental features, a moustache and a sparkling skullcap. Even when he smiled and joked he had an unmistakable seriousness;
he was easily the most capable Afghan soldier I’d seen.

The ANA were brilliant at spotting anything slightly strange: an odd movement, a displaced piece of earth, or a suspicious piece of cloth hanging from a window. The Brits couldn’t see what
he was pointing at and still weren’t sure which building they wanted to call the air strike on.

We heard two massive explosions on the far side of the field, nowhere near the Taliban position. Then a bullet crackled past. ‘OK, that’s us, that’s contact’, said
Captain Hennessey. The explosions were RPGs, set to explode in the air above us. Soon, more bullets rattled towards us, in an accelerating rhythm, as if someone were winding a machine into life.
The bullets weren’t coming from the men we’d spotted but from directly ahead, making the wall we’d ducked behind useless.

‘RPG fire?’ asked rocket man, pointing to the gap at the end of the wall. Someone nodded. He almost skipped forwards, knelt and fired. Straightaway, he got up and ran back, only to
fall to his knees, holding his ears in pain.

Sergeant Syed knelt just beyond the wall, firing single shots at a ditch, almost ninety degrees to the left of where rocket man was aiming. Captain Hennessey spoke into his radio:
‘That’s us now being engaged by RPG and small arms. If you could put air on it that would be lovely. Over.’ He sounded as if he were about to invite the pilot over for tea and
biscuits. The pilot said he could see four men in the building, identified on everyone’s maps as Kilo. Rocket man slapped his ears, shaking his head to show that he was now deaf, which seemed
to make him very happy.

‘Five hundred pounder inbound now, everyone get their heads down’, shouted Captain Hennessey.

Beyond the wall, Sergeant Syed knelt and fired a few more shots, trying to keep the Taliban where they were until the bomb landed. But the bomb wasn’t dropped. ‘Some muppet has
decided we’re too close’, said Captain Hennessey.

The muppet, it transpired, albeit for the wrong reasons, had actually made the best decision of the day. Everyone had forgotten that less than two weeks earlier, twenty-five civilians had been
killed when a bomb had been dropped on a compound that the Taliban were firing from. They hadn’t checked then if civilians were inside the compound, because they couldn’t. Just as they
couldn’t check now.

Sergeant Syed fired more shots, now aiming directly ahead. He stopped firing, saw movement; everyone pressed closer to the ground. The Taliban had moved into the building in front of us. We were
totally exposed.

Rocket man was ordered to fire but, still deaf, didn’t skip forward until Sergeant Syed pointed to the next field and the building the Taliban had moved into. Rocket man knelt to fire,
forgetting we were standing behind him and would be burnt by the back-blast. Luckily, the abuse screamed by the British soldiers was so loud even he could hear it; he moved a little further
away.

The soldiers were ordered to use mortars. Then a helicopter was supposed to be doing a gun run. So they were told they couldn’t use mortars because they might hit the helicopter. Then they
were told to use mortars first and the helicopter would follow. It seemed as though every request was denied or changed as more senior officers, further away and thinking of the bigger picture,
intervened.

An explosion came from just beyond the trees in front of us. The soldiers thought it was an incoming grenade or rocket but it was actually their own mortars. Rocket man fired again, sideways.
Another mortar landed uncomfortably close.

Over the terp’s radio, I could hear the Taliban commander screaming. Two of the Taliban fighters had been hurt. They seemed to be still in the ditch they’d been in when we first
spotted them. The mortars, fired from four kilometres away, were adjusted. They started landing closer to the injured Taliban. ‘If it’s within fifty metres it will pretty much rip them
to pieces’, someone said. They weren’t landing much further than fifty metres from us.

We were ordered to get low, as another air strike had been called. Again, there was nothing. Captain Hennessey spoke into his radio, saying there was a compound south-east of our position that
wasn’t on his map; he thought the five Taliban were there. Four or five bullets whistled past. Sergeant Syed jerked his head backwards and to the side, like a boxer slipping a punch.
‘Whoooah, where the fuck are they coming from?’ said Hennessey. They certainly weren’t coming from anywhere the Taliban were supposed to be. Two soldiers fired at random into the
trees.

Captain Hennessey wanted two squads to charge the tree line and another two to attack the compound to our right.

‘Lloydy, are you happy with the plan?’ Behind us, Ryan Lloyd had arrived with two squads of British and Afghan soldiers.

‘No’, said Lloyd, who hadn’t heard a word Captain Hennessey had said. The plan was explained again.

One group of Brits and Afghans ran forward. Another ran around the end of the wall and towards the compound on our right. There was a furious exchange of gunfire. Eventually, the sounds changed
to regular bursts, coming only from the British. Then a few bullets zinged over our heads. The soldier manning the radio said there was now a third Taliban firing position, to the left of the
trees.

We looked at the building from where a new group of Taliban fighters seemed to be firing. A series of rapid thuds came from the field directly to our left, nowhere near any of the suspected
firing positions. ‘What the fucking hell was that?’ said one of the soldiers, as a large chunk of twisted metal hit a British soldier’s hand. An Apache helicopter had strafed the
field next to us, nowhere near any of the possible Taliban positions. If anything, the Apache made me more nervous than the Taliban. The ANA in the trees ahead took it in turns to run out and fire.
They seemed to be posing for each other as they fired, rather than actually aiming at anything.

The Taliban fire kept coming back.

I looked around the edge of the wall, to see what the Brits who had run to my right were doing. They were crouched against the outside wall of a compound, trying to call an air strike on to the
Taliban position. The Apache came closer. I heard the whoosh and bang of a Hellfire missile. But nothing happened to any of the Taliban positions. I looked around the wall again. The British
soldiers were staggering in different directions, almost completely obscured by dust. The compound they were leaning against had been hit, right where they were.

I heard shouting from up ahead, where the ANA were attacking the hedge. Angrily gesticulating towards the compound, they walked towards us. ‘Do you speak Farsi? Tell the pilots not to bomb
here. The Taliban are over there. What are the fucking British doing? They are giving me a headache. They are killing my guys’, screamed Rocky, the ANA Captain, into his radio. He thought six
of his men, those who had followed the Brits to the compound wall, had been killed.

I decided to join the soldiers who were about to run across the field and see what had happened.

I squatted in a ditch until there was enough covering fire to make me fairly confident the Taliban would be ducking, not shooting. But as soon as I climbed out and started running, I heard the
fire-cracker sound of bullets breaking the sound barrier. Something chopped into the mud and grass around my feet. My leg disappeared into another ditch and I fell, face first, on the ground. I
bounced back to my feet and ran, focusing on the compound walls ahead and the ANA soldiers behind them, waving me in, screaming: ‘Come, come, come. Fast, fast, fast.’ I ran as quickly
as I could, imagining the impact of bullets hitting me, knocking me sideways.

I made it safely across the field. The entrance to the compound led into a small, walled garden, shaded by vines. The floor was carpeted with harvested opium poppies, in piles several feet high.
Then I saw something that made my heart sink and my throat tighten. The compounds in Kakaran were supposed to be abandoned. Next to me, I saw a family of seven crouched up against the wall: an old
man and six children. Three of the kids were toddlers and one was just a baby. The man seemed to be begging for mercy but no one paid him any attention. The kids were covered in dust, apart from
wet patches around their mouths and eyes and tear tracks running down their cheeks. They must have been right next to the explosion when the Hellfire missile hit. It didn’t matter that it
could have been worse; things could always be worse. One of the interpreters did his best to calm them and tell them they were now safe. They got no reassurance from the ANA soldiers, who helped
themselves to the family’s grapes and lit up spliffs.

There were no ANA casualties. A single wall had separated them, and the British, from the missile strike. Close enough to make the ANA think that their colleagues had been killed.