Ground Truth: 3 Para Return to Afghanistan. Patrick Bishop

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СКАЧАТЬ efforts would be centred on Hutal, the administrative centre of Maywand district. Maywand lay on the border with Helmand. Afghanistan’s main east-west road, Highway One, ran through it, connecting Kandahar with the important southern Helmand towns of Gereshk and Lashkar Gah. Until now ISAF troops had paid only fleeting visits. The idea was to establish a strong presence in Maywand that would act as a link in the chain of ‘development zones’, the bubbles of relative safety that the alliance was trying to form around Kandahar, Gereshk and Lashkar Gah.

      Hutal was a town by the standards of the region. It had a few run-down public buildings, a school, a number of mosques and a population of several thousand—no one knew exactly how many—living in a cluster of mud and breeze-block compounds. It was close to the Arghandab river system, which irrigated a wide swathe of cultivated land. The main crop in the springtime was opium poppies.

      To the south-west of the town was the district of Band-e-Timor. This lay across an important route used by the Taliban to get men and supplies from safe areas in Pakistan to the south to the Sangin Valley in the north, where they had been fighting since 2006. They used the same route to take out opium to Pakistan. It was thought that the absence of foreign troops made Band-e-Timor a potential haven for fighters recuperating from their battles in neighbouring Helmand.

      Hutal, which appeared on some maps as Maywand town, occupied a strategic location on Highway One, which ran through the middle of the town. This was a vital social and economic artery, but driving on it required strong nerves. Travellers ran a high risk of running into Taliban checkpoints where they would be forced to pay a ‘tax’, or bandits who simply robbed them. The road was also studded with IEDs, planted by the insurgents to menace the convoys that supplied Camp Bastion, the large British base in the desert north of Lashkar Gah.

      The mission was code-named Sohil Laram III. All designations were in Pashto now, to give a more ‘local’ feel. The Paras approached the task with enthusiasm. Most of the soldiers who had been there in 2006 felt sympathy and concern for the people they were fighting among. They were moved by the harshness and poverty they saw in the villages and fields. They were contemptuous of the indifference and cynicism of those who supposedly ruled them, and the cruelty of the Taliban, who wanted to take their place. Their experience in Hutal was to teach them that anyone going to Afghanistan with good intentions should expect to be disappointed, not least by Afghans who were supposed to be on your side.

      3 Para had two tasks. They were to secure Hutal so engineers could build a forward operating base (FOB) there. The base would then be taken over by the Afghan National Army (ANA), which would secure the town and the neighbouring stretches of Highway One. The Paras were also to roam the neighbouring district of Bande-Timor, disrupting Taliban operations, fighting them wherever they found them, and preventing them from launching attacks on Hutal. Initially ‘A’ Company were to take charge of the town while ‘B’ Company dealt with the countryside. Later they would swap roles. If the operation succeeded it would establish a centre of stability and security and lay the foundations for growth. The long-term intention was to make the local people friends of the government and their foreign backers, and enemies of the insurgents.

      Sohil Laram was, said Williams, ‘very much an influence operation’. But influencing the people of Hutal and the surrounding countryside was going to be a delicate task. Afghans had grown to mistrust foreigners and their extravagant promises. They had been listening to propaganda prophesying good times ever since 2001. In many places little had happened. In large parts of southern Afghanistan things had got drastically worse.

      The Paras began deploying on 26 March. At first light, ‘B’ Company were dropped by helicopter in Band-e-Timor. ‘A’ Company had set off by road shortly before. It was less than a hundred kilometres from KAF, but the journey took twelve hours. There were ninety vehicles all told, a mixture of Viking and Vector troop carriers, Canadian Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) from the Kandahar Task Force and low-loader lorries carrying the stores. There was also a detachment of ANA troops mounted on Ford Ranger pick-up trucks, the advance party for the force that would eventually man the FOB that was to be built in town. They travelled with a Canadian mentoring team.

      The convoy moved without headlights. The Afghans had no night vision goggles, which made initial progress painfully slow. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before they arrived. They stayed a few miles to the south-east of the town, setting up a camp in the desert on the far side of the highway, a ‘leaguer’ in army parlance, which would be the logistical base for the operation.

      They spent the night there, and the following afternoon ‘A’ Company, the ANA and their Canadian mentors moved into town, travelling along a back route and making many detours to avoid damage to the poppy crop, which was flowering nicely in the surrounding fields.

      The company commander, Jamie Loden, together with the colonel in charge of the Afghan force, went straight to the town’s ramshackle administration centre to meet Haji Zaifullah, the leader of Maywand district, and his chief of police. Zaifullah had a residence in the town but spent only part of his time there, preferring to return to the more civilised surroundings of Kandahar city at weekends. He appeared to be in his late thirties, wore a sleek black beard and seemed friendly and hospitable. ‘He was very charming and he was always very welcoming,’ said Loden. But it was clear from the beginning that behind his smiling manner he was determined to resist any challenge to his authority from the newcomers, British, Canadian or Afghan. Governor Zaifullah was to give the Paras a masterclass in the complexities of local power politics and teach them that dealing with their supposed friends could be as demanding as tackling their enemies.

      The first item to discuss was the site of the proposed ANA strongpoint. The ANA colonel overrode the translator’s efforts to keep up and began talking directly to the district leader, to the bafflement of the non-Pashto speakers. ‘Inside the District Centre there was quite a high tower,’ Loden remembered. ‘We went up there, myself, the district leader, the chief of police, the Afghan colonel and his Canadian mentor. And we got into this sort of pissing contest about where we were going to locate this place.’ Zaifullah bristled at any perceived slight to his authority. ‘The district leader was trying to say you can go there and the Afghan army guy was saying [no] we want to go over there.’ The point at issue was ‘who was the most important’. As the argument ground on Loden’s anxiety mounted. Dusk was falling and his men had nowhere to stay. Eventually they agreed to suspend the debate until the following day. Everyone dossed down that night in a partially built police station located on some waste ground directly opposite the District Centre on the northern side of the town. The police compound, after being properly reinforced, was to end up being the Paras’ base for the duration of their stay.

      The following day the discussion resumed. This time the party made a tour of the town while the colonel and Zaifullah ‘argued the toss about what could and couldn’t go where’. Finally agreement was reached that the FOB would be centred on a series of compounds that lay below an old fort, behind the main bazaar, 250 metres to the west of the District Centre. The colonel departed a contented man. The following day Zaifullah announced that he had changed his mind again. It was only after a further wearying round of talks that he allowed the decision to stand.

      When detailed discussions got under way to award the labour contracts for the project there was more trouble. The Provincial Reconstruction Teams’ standard procedure was to give work to locals wherever possible. But the district leader began by insisting that the contracts would go to his nominees. Once again there was a further bout of wrangling before the matter was settled.

      The Paras began patrolling as soon as they arrived. The locals seemed friendly. There had been no trouble in the town itself for eighteen months. The Taliban’s interest lay in Highway One. Mainly the reaction was one of curiosity. The inhabitants had seen ISAF soldiers from time to time but in small numbers and not for very long. Now there were several hundred troops in town and they were eager to know what they were planning.

      Huw СКАЧАТЬ