3 Para. Patrick Bishop

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СКАЧАТЬ mood, the Taliban promised to suspend fighting so as not to disrupt the harvest. In return they could call on local chieftains to supply them with reinforcements from their private militias. They also imposed an opium tax which raised tens of millions of dollars to fund their supply and armaments needs. Until the opium had been sold, it seemed the Taliban were content to watch and wait.

      Support for the eradication of the opium trade had been one of the stated aims of the British deployment. It was never explicitly said, though, that the military would be used to destroy crops. None of the senior commanders involved in the operation had any intention of doing so. Creating stability for reconstruction to take place depended on winning the consent, or at least the tolerance, of the local population. Burning poppy fields was a sure way of turning potentially friendly farmers and their dependants against the latest batch of foreigners in uniform to descend on the province. Tootal believed it was completely unrealistic to tackle the opium problem without providing an alternative livelihood that came close to matching the income local farmers made from the poppies. The problem had been around for decades. No one had yet come up with a viable solution. However desirable it may have appeared to politicians in London and Washington, the folly of busting up the local economy was fully appreciated by every soldier in Afghanistan, from the Toms all the way up to the incoming ISAF commander, General Richards.

      3 Para’s area of operations was the ‘Triangle’. This was the district bounded by Camp Bastion, the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah and the market town of Gereshk, the second largest place in Helmand, which lay about 20 miles to the north-east of the base. This was considered a relatively benign environment. It was the most developed region of the province, where there was sufficient existing infrastructure for the reconstruction programme to build on. Both towns lay on the Helmand river. Most of the province was barren. The area around Bastion was called Dasht-e-Margo, the Desert of Death. But the waters of the river were channelled into a web of ditches and canals, creating a broad band of fertile land that sustained life along the valley.

      The central Afghan government controlled the two towns but had little authority in the villages. There was a belief that the Taliban regarded the area as something of a sanctuary and chose not to draw attention to themselves. ‘The level of enemy activity was low because actually there wasn’t a lot for them to fight and they were really being allowed to do their own thing,’ said one officer.

      The original plan was for the Paras to begin patrolling in the towns and the surrounding areas, advertising their presence and creating an atmosphere of stability. It was classic ‘ink spot’ strategy. According to Martin Taylor the intention was ‘to go into small villages and say “Are the Taliban operating here? We can offer you this, we can offer you that.” If they tell us what their problem is – say that they don’t have running water – then we would get the guys in who could bring them running water. If there were no schools then we would get engineers in to build them schools.’ ‘A’ Company saw its job as identifying what needed to be done. It was then the task of the civil servants of the DfID to come in and make it happen. This, as it was to turn out, was a very optimistic expectation.

      The Paras approached the task with genuine enthusiasm. In its short life, the regiment had become a much more flexible and subtle organism than in its early years. Its suitability for any task less than full-scale war fighting had been called into question by the events of 30 January 1972 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, forever known as Bloody Sunday. The Troubles were at their height and 1 Para had been brought into the city to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who were policing a protest march. The demonstration was organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. By now, though, it was the gunmen and bombers of the Provisional IRA who controlled the direction of the Catholics’ struggle for equality.

      The march was illegal and the Paras had been given the job of arresting the leading ‘hooligans’. As expected, the gathering quickly turned into a riot. In the confusion the Paras opened fire. When the chaos subsided it was revealed that they had killed thirteen males. Six of them were seventeen years old.

      The deaths gave the IRA a propaganda coup and cast a long shadow over the reputation of the Paras. The charge against them was that they had indiscriminately killed unarmed innocents. These accusations were taken seriously by audiences in Britain, America and Europe. An inquiry under Lord Justice Widgery found that none of the dead or wounded had been shot while handling a firearm or bomb. It also judged that there was ‘no reason to suppose that the soldiers would have opened fire if they had not been fired upon first’. Their training had, however, made them ‘aggressive and quick in decision and some showed more restraint in opening fire than others’.

      The charge of mindless violence was to hang around for years. Despite the controversy, the Paras continued to serve in Northern Ireland throughout the period. They were sent in as peacekeepers to Kosovo after the NATO deployment in 1999. By the time they arrived in Afghanistan they had millions of man-hours of experience handling the complexities of operating among civilian populations against a hidden enemy and a fine-tuned understanding of when to shift emphasis. ‘Yes, we have a reputation for being very aggressive,’ said Stuart Tootal. ‘That’s absolutely right. Sometimes we need to be. But we also have soldiers who are very self-reliant. They’re bright, they think things through and they respond well to challenging circumstances, which includes having to decide when it’s appropiate to adopt a non-aggressive posture. They’re very good at it.’

      But even after thirty-four years the events in Londonderry were still remembered. As he set off at the head of Patrols Platoon, the battalion’s reconnaissance unit, Captain Mark Swann was aware of the need to make decisions that ‘not only benefit your soldiers but will also reflect on you in the best way possible. People will say, “This bad thing happened in this village. Typical Parachute Regiment soldiers,” regardless of how we behaved before then. One incident would very quickly give us a bad reputation’.

      ‘A’ Company were fully committed to the mission. ‘We went there believing that this was a winnable situation,’ said Martin Taylor. ‘Yes, be prepared for very significant contact with the enemy. But we thought the vast majority of people would be on our side and we could win their trust and they would think perhaps the Taliban can’t help us and the British can.’

      It was in Gereshk that the first attempts were made to reach out to the local population, and it was ‘A’ Company which was given the task. Gereshk was relatively prosperous by Afghan standards. In the calm that followed the overthrow of the Taliban, the UN had installed pumps that provided clean, fresh drinking water. There was also a hydroelectric plant that supplied energy to about five thousand legal subscribers and an unknown number who simply hooked up a line to the main cable. There was a thriving market and shops on the main street. In its time, it had seen foreign armies come and go. The dominant building was a crumbling fort where the British had held out for sixty days during the First Afghan War. The Paras would be operating from a Coalition base on the outskirts. When ‘A’ Company got there they found that the camp was still being built and they would, initially at least, have to function without an ops room. They were also unimpressed by the state of the sangars – the base’s defensive fire positions. ‘We set to work for the next month tearing things down and building things up,’ said one of the new arrivals. ‘The message was, the Parachute Regiment is here and we are going to start establishing our authority.’

      The compound was on the north-west outskirts of Gereshk and was known as Forward Operating Base (FOB) Price. To get into the town meant crossing a major road, Highway One, which loops through southern Afghanistan from Kabul. ‘A’ Company started patrolling immediately. Troops were taken to the edge of town by vehicle and then continued on foot. Walking was considered safer than driving. You were mobile and presented a smaller target. The streets were narrow and if you were stuck in a Land Rover you were vulnerable to the suicide bombers who, it was thought, could be preparing to descend on the town. It also reduced the risk from IEDs, which had already been discovered on surrounding roads.

      Stuart СКАЧАТЬ