Spoken from the Front (20 page)

However, this is not your hero's only scrape with certain
maiming in the past week. No, sirree. After being holed up
here for the best part of 4 weeks, trying all I knew to find a
reason to get out on the ground (I offered to cook dinner for
the governor, unblock the questionable Lashkar Gah plumbing,
sleep with a variety of members of the local hierarchy,
you name it) finally I was unleashed for a trip to see two new
bits of road, one that has been built, one that is being built.
However, upon visitation, the first road was in no way
similar to anything you, I or next door's gerbil would call a
road. Having said that, most major paths of transport have
a closer resemblance to the bottom of a gerbil's cage,
hardened and then smashed into lumpy pieces before being
doused in more lumpy stuff, with extra lumps in, and
hardened again, so any improvement that possesses the basic
property of simply being flat is a considerable bonus. This
road had that going for it – it had little else. It was a raised
dirt/gravel track not much wider than a car's width, which
fell away steeply for about 2 metres on either side; a field on
one, a river on the other. So we stopped at this road, which I
expected to be a bit of a bustling country route, and instead
saw ... one old chap come bobbing along on his rickety old
bicycle. And possibly a goat in the distance, though it was
some way off so we couldn't be sure.

The man agreed to talk to us. It didn't look as though he
had much else to do that day. Abdul was his name, and he
told us he was 55 but he could have easily passed for 85. Nice
bloke, but turned out not only did he not have much to do, he
didn't have much to say either.

We bade him farewell as the traffic began to build up and
two men in the distance rolled up on a motorbike. They were
a bit more enthusiastic telling us how this road had cut their
journey time from 1 hr 15 mins to 30 mins as this chap had to
go to the doctor and it had been very useful, etc. (See how my
sophisticated tactics of subliminal messaging is seeping the
MoD mantra into your feeble minds without you knowing.
You are all under my power, yesss, under my power. These
aren't the droids you're looking for, ooooh.)

After this peak of excitement our convoy of three Land
Rovers rolled off along this road heading back to town. I was
in the front vehicle, looking out the back, when slowly but
unmistakably, the middle vehicle veered gently off course. Its
front left wheel went over the edge of the gravel road, slowly
followed by the left back wheel. As if in slow motion, the
vehicle leant slightly before it found itself on the bank of the
road, and decided the best course of action was to roll over
onto its side. I tapped gently on the gunner who was sticking
his head out of the roof keeping top cover.

'Um, the vehicle behind has rolled.'

'RTA [road traffic accident]!' he shouted.

Oh, the irony. Here we were coming to see a new road to
benefit the Afghans and the first time we use it we roll a
military vehicle and block it for all the Afghans. Ace. But the
irony didn't stop there. Oh, no. Thankfully no one was
injured bar a bump on the head for the driver. Anyway,
standard procedure here is for all to leap out and form a
protective cordon while the emergency response team is
called to get us out of here before the Taliban get wind of it
and come and get us – or if you're a civilian, huddle down in
the back and keep well out of the way. Yoicks.

However, your hero couldn't stay low for long and he
clambered out to get a good view, and essentially to take
some pictures. We ended up being there for about half an
hour, the busy local traffic of a couple of battered 4x4s, a goatherder
and some raggedy children creating a devil of a
bottleneck. Until along came a chap in a tractor and, irony
upon irony, he kindly offered to pull the Land Rover out of
trouble. Phew, dangerous stuff, hey?

In fairness I came closer to facing death a few weeks ago
when the chefs decided Friday night should be fish-and-chip
night and served up such an artery-busting deep-fat-fried
menu, including deep-fat-fried Mars bar (which, incidentally,
tastes better than the real thing) that I'm not sure if their
intention was to feed us or kill us.

(Nearly there, not long to go now, into the home straight ...
Yes, all right, I do go on, yes, I know.)

A few weeks ago I sent some of you the fantastic website www.alemarah.org,
otherwise known as the Taliban website Voice of Jihad. Most of this esteemed
organ and bastion of exemplary journalistic principles is involved with concocting
fantastical stories of Taliban victories over the infidel. (Not unlike my
job in reverse you might say. Yeah? Well bog off.)

One of our Land Rovers gets a puncture, they say they've
blown up seven tanks and killed five foreign invaders. It
really is a cracking read. Most of it is in Pashtu, but for those
not versed in the local lingo, one section is in English, or
rather the most comic attempts at
'Allo 'Allo!
-style 'Good
moaning' English you will ever read.

A particularly fine example of this garbling of Eengleesh
was 12 February when, following an attack on a Taliban
leader, the website denied their man had been 'martyred'.
Instead it said: 'In airstrike only civilians including women
and Chileans martyred.' Which seems a bit unfair on the
Chileans.

And finally, this week's instalment of Marine-speak is a
short yet suggestive affair. It has become common to hear in
the evening briefings (you remember those, full of absolute
nonsensical military shag-pile) reference to: 'The Marines left
Charlotte this morning before moving onto Beatrice and
Annabelle tonight. They will take up positions in Frances on
Friday.'

Fnar, fnar. This, though, is not a reference to sexual
deviancy, but the naming of certain areas of the AO (that's
Area of Operations) by giving them girls' names. Thus, one
large irregular shape of land approximately 10 sq km is called
Beatrice, another is called Annabelle, and so on. One curious
observation. Should the Marines continue their journey, they
will come to AO Thrush. Sounds painful. Perhaps it is sexual
deviancy after all.

Titty bang.

PS I have a month to go. Therefore you stinking weasels
who have yet to write to me have a month in which to redeem
yourselves. Get to it.

Captain Dave Rigg, MC, The Royal Engineers

Letter from Afghanistan

Shortly before I departed Afghanistan, two Artillery men
were killed, Lance Bombardier Ross Clark and Lance
Bombardier 'Paddy' McLaughlin. They had both been
through training together and were good mates. The day they
died was another fine, clear one in northern Helmand. As the
sun set over the Helmand river, the observation post that they
were manning was targeted with a rocket-propelled grenade.
The rocket penetrated the fortifications around their position
and ripped them apart with exploding shrapnel. They had no
chance of survival. They died together. I had previously
worked with Lance Bombardier Clark: he was the sort of
bloke that would have done well in any environment, a
genuinely decent bloke.

Having spent the previous seven months working on the
reconstruction and development effort in Helmand province,
I have been disappointed and frustrated by the lack of
balanced reporting within the press. Not surprisingly, the
majority of the world's press seem only interested in generating
sensational stories: the plight of the poor Afghan farmer
who, when not caught in the crossfire, has to stand and watch
while his poppy crop, his only source of income, is burnt to
the ground. The deliberate ISAF [International Assistance
Security Force] operations, which are conducted to flush out,
and kill insurgent forces. These are stories that have to be
told, but on their own they have no context, and do not do
our soldiers the credit they deserve.

The events outlined below are not quite as headline-grabbing,
but when viewed against the complexities of
rebuilding a nation that is teetering on the brink of anarchy,
they are far more newsworthy.

We are told that Helmand province is the most dangerous
place on earth. There are certainly lots of people in the
province intent on killing us; our soldiers get shot at from
Garmsir, in the south, to Now Zad in the north of the
province and everywhere in between. When we are out of
contact with the enemy and moving through the desert or
patrolling up the valleys, we are vulnerable to mines and
other improvised explosive devices. Generally the large
towns are more permissive, enabling us to patrol with
relative freedom, but this is when we are most at risk to a suicide-bomb
attack.

Barricading ourselves in our bases would be far safer, but
would achieve nothing, and ten years down the line we
would still be peering out from our sangars, wondering
where the next rocket was going to come from. We have to
venture out in order to develop a rapport with the local
people; to understand what it is that makes the process of
establishing a stable system of governance so difficult.
Once we understand the issues we can start to address
them.

It would be far simpler if we could just go in search of the
insurgent and kill him. This is an insurgency: the vast
majority of the fighters in Afghanistan are from abroad –
Pakistan, Iran, Chechnya, Turkmenistan and any other nation
that provides disillusioned young Muslim men who have
little to lose and a violent urge to prove themselves. There are
local fighters, but generally their allegiances are questionable
and they fight for the highest bidder.

The vast majority of the Afghan people simply want to feed
their family, send their children to school and generate a little
income through trade or farming. Sadly, this majority is
dominated by a minority who are motivated by a variety of
conflicting causes. There is a highly complex array of interwoven
dynamics that make the matter of uniting these
people under one government a hugely challenging problem.
Tribal feuds, the blossoming narcotics trade, a despised local
police force, a system of governance that struggles to produce
literate ministers, 30 years of conflict, a civil infrastructure
system that is medieval, and, of course, the Taliban and the
associated insurgency.

So, with all of that in mind, where do you start? Being
military, it is not surprising that we focus much of our
resources upon finding and defeating the enemy. Where we
can isolate and engage the Taliban without causing substantial
collateral damage, we do. Before doing so we spend
a great deal of time and effort positively identifying targets
and developing our knowledge of who the key individuals
are and what their weaknesses are. Then we hit them hard.

However, despite the careful targeting process our activity
inevitably results in the destruction of innocent people's
homes and sometimes their death. The enemy often move
into local houses or mosques to fire upon us and we retaliate.
The Taliban then exploit these incidents; their propaganda
campaign is generally more persuasive than ours. It is therefore
extremely difficult to avoid the undesirable second order
effects of our war fighting operations.

As it stands, the majority of the Afghan people do not
support the Taliban; they are generally as foreign to them as
we are, and certainly a lot less merciful. They want NATO
forces to provide them with security and it is vitally important
that we capitalize upon this local support. This is
where the classic 'hearts and minds' stuff comes into play. In
a place as primitive as Afghanistan, it is not difficult to
impress or win the consent of a local. Maintaining that
consent is a greater challenge.

In the last 6 months we have invested over $4m on reconstruction
and development projects, our engineers have been
involved in building police stations, roads and maternity
wards to name but a few. We do not actually build them; we
identify the need, recce the task, design it and then contract
the project out to a local company. Giving these projects an
'Afghan face' brings a number of benefits. It generates the
impression that it is Afghan led, which builds consent for
the local government, helps to develop the capacity of local
industry, provides employment and fuels the local economy.
The building piece is not difficult. There is no shortage of
demand, plenty of international funding but, more surprisingly,
a surplus of capacity within the local building industry.

The Americans are very good at building stuff: they don't
mess about, they just get it done. They have plenty of
experience, having been engaged in multi-million-dollar
projects all over Afghanistan since the early 1950s. However,
what they seem less proficient at is ensuring local buy-in.
Unless the new infrastructure can be manned and maintained
by the local system, it soon ends up as a decaying memorial
to foreign investment. Southern Afghanistan is a graveyard of
failed reconstruction projects.

Afghanistan has been in turmoil for so long that the people
live for today and perhaps tomorrow. Planning beyond that is
seen as futile; investing in next year is simply incomprehensible.
Therefore nothing gets maintained. The fortunate
few who hold the purse strings perceive their time to be
limited and therefore why invest in something that may not
bear fruit for some time and bring them little benefit when
they could invest in their family now? This short-term mindset
breeds corruption, and it permeates every strand of
Afghan society. Unfortunately this psyche is probably too
well engrained in the average adult Afghan and therefore the
next generation are seen as the key to providing a secure and
stable Afghanistan.

We recently completed the construction of a school for an
orphanage in Lashkar Gah. When we returned to the school
to visit what we hoped to be satisfied customers, we were
surprised to discover that all of the children were now living
in the classrooms. Metal beds, most without mattresses, had
been crammed into the new school buildings, there was urine
on the floor, and the Asian-style toilets that had been provided
were covered with excrement. The patrol commander
quizzed the director of the orphanage about the unexpected
findings and it became clear that he had moved the children
out of the orphanage in order to provide himself with more
spacious living accommodation.