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| On the front line |
WE sit cross-legged in a circle in the dust of an Afghan village, drinking tea... but tasting only fear.
Between sips, soldiers with tense smiles chat cautiously face-to-face with “friendly” elders at this bizarre little rendezvous deep in Taliban country, trying to open up pathways to some far-off peace in Afghanistan.
But there are dark forces at work in the silence between the words in a land where you’re never more than a cup of tea away from a fight.
And where the man who just poured it may be the one who pulls the trigger.
As you sip, over the rim you learn to search the eyes deep in the burnished faces, looking for the tiniest flicker... of betrayal.
BANG! Suddenly we are scrambling for cover amid screamed commands as we leave the meeting. RAT-A-TAT! RAT-A-TAT! Taliban gunfire coming from 50 metres away. Get down! Bullets zing only feet over our heads.
“They’re just spraying and praying.” Coldstream Guardsman Mike Stacey, 21, from Sheffield, tries to reassure us amid the mayhem. Then we move. Fast.
The route to safety is under cover of an irrigation ditch. But look out for any children. They can kill you. Why? Because callous Taliban commanders order the frightened youngsters to walk along the banks pointing out where their mortarmen should fire, says Mike.
“You don’t do that unless you’re happy to accept a couple of those kids dead as collateral damage,” he adds, grimly.
Breathless, scrambling up the muddy bank... then two heart-stopping, bone- shuddering booms make us hit the dirt again. Grenades explode nearby.
Then comes the dreaded spine-chilling cry. “MAN DOWN!” A comrade is hit. It is all too much to take in. We are still trying to come to terms with the enemy using CHILDREN as target markers.
Later we discover the heartless Taliban even FINE farmers the equivalent of £270 — more than they earn in a year — if one of their kids is unlucky enough to step on an IED — wasting a weapon that could have killed a Brit.
The chop-chop of a med-evac helicopter suddenly fills the air above us. As it swoops, soldiers are poised to give covering fire. The chopper lands as the crackle of intercepted Taliban radio chatter commands a rocket attack on it.
Our stricken soldier, hit in the arm by shrapnel, is swiftly plucked aboard as we pull back to a safe compound with our 80 comrades. In 20 minutes the wounded man is at Camp Bastion receiving medical care. In just seven days he will be back on the front line.
For two journalists it’s an unforgettable, terrifying few hours since we were dropped by two Chinook helicopters into the killing fields of Helmand last Monday along with 80 troops.
But for the men of Number Three Company, 1st Battalion The Coldstream Guards, it’s just another working day in the cauldron of southern Babaji.
We’d already made a decoy flight before landing near Torghai, 2km south of Babaji, just before dawn.
“This way we can confuse the Taliban,” said Major James Thurstan, “It gives us precious hours while they’re trying to figure out what’s going on.”
What was going on was a sit-down, or shura in local language, with Torghai’s elders. A meeting the local Taliban would be desperate to stop at all costs.
This region was the stage for last summer’s bloody Operation Panther’s Claw, a massive bid to drive the Taliban back. It saw some of the most intense fighting since the war began in 2001, and claimed the lives of ten British servicemen.
Since coming to Afghanistan five months ago, the Company have been involved in more than 100 FIREFIGHTS, had more than 40 ROCKETS launched at them, and lost FOUR of their regimental comrades.
They put their lives on the line to make inroads with the local farmers — to help remove the poppy from these lands, replacing them with normal crops and cutting off the Taliban’s money supply.
But it is both a dangerous and treacherous business. During their tour, local farmers have warned them of 36 lethal homemade bombs — but unbelievably many of them were planted by the very people who pointed them out.
“A lot of the people here are playing both sides,” says Guardsman Alex Courage. At 18, and only one month into his tour, the baby-faced soldier is already an expert on the idiosyncrasies of the Afghan War. “We were walking through a compound a couple of weeks ago and the farmer told us to mind a freshly dug section of dirt because there was an IED buried,” he says.
“When we asked how he knew, he said it was because HE had planted it there. The Taliban had asked him to.”
But whether the locals planted them or not, the fact they are being pointed out at all is an important step forward, in every sense of the word.
“That’s 36 sets of legs they’ve saved,” says 29-year-old Sgt Craig Guirdham, “And that’s all that matters. I don’t blame the locals. Loads of them hate the Taliban, but it’s going to take years for them to fully trust us.
“Recently we’ve had petrified farmers telling us where IEDs are because they’re terrified of their kids being blown up.
“And they’ve been threatened with a $400 fine if they do. So their kid’s murdered, and they’ve got to pay up more money than they earn in a year for it.
“Hopefully as time goes on they’ll trust us more and more, and at some point we’ll rid this place of the Taliban for good. And I’ve got to believe that — because otherwise all those guys that lost their lives out here died in vain.”
Every young soldier from the Company has a story to tell of being baffled and shocked by the locals’ ability to switch sides in a second. Guardsman Dom Wall says: “We were in a village last week and four farmers walked past. We waved, said, ‘Saleem A’leikum’, they said ‘Saleem’ back.
“When we turned the corner they opened fire on us.” Shaking his head in disbelief, the 19-year-old from Sheffield adds sardonically: “Oh right. Cheers.”
Here, betrayal is an everyday hazard. This time last year — before Panther’s Claw — Babaji was recognised as one of the most dangerous insurgent strongholds in southern Afghanistan.
After the shura ambush earlier in the day, the feeling among many of the soldiers is that one of the elders at the meeting may well have been the man behind the attack.
It is discussed that night as we all rest in the Afghan compound, 500 metres from the village.
The compound is nothing more than a yard the size of two tennis courts surrounded by eight foot walls made of mud, cooked rock hard by the oppressive sun. At the centre is a Biblical looking building in which there are four bare rooms for us to sleep in.
But this is one of the plusher residences in the Babaji area where everything is basic and poverty rules. Infant mortality rates are some of the highest in the world — 165 out of 1,000 children born die in infancy.
And the maternal mortality ratio is just as grim at 1,600 deaths per 100,000 births. People can still be seen farming the land with their bare hands. An ox-pulled plough is new technology to them.
The owner of the compound is offered 1,000 Afghani (£13.50) for letting the troops use his home. Soldiers huddle round listening to intercepted radio chatter, alight with Taliban talk of an attack. “Nearly 80 per cent of the messages are absolute rubbish,” says Gdms Courage. “They know we can hear them and they’re very good at propaganda.” But this one is for real. An hour later shots ring out as Taliban fighters south of us unleash round after round. Amid the crack of bullets Company Commander Major James Thurstan is shouting orders. Guardsman Scott McDonnell was on the compound’s roof just finishing his time as lookout when the rounds rained in.
“One bullet landed to the left of me, then one hit to the right of me... and then one hit between my legs,” said the 20-year-old from Newcastle. “Someone must have been looking after me today.”
Despite being under attack the Coldstreamers wait to return fire until they have positively identified the Taliban shooters. It’s all part of the policy of “courageous restraint” in order to minimise the loss of innocent life.
Within seconds the fundamentalist’s marksmen are spotted and the Guards return fire, the air a hectic chorus of cracks, bangs, and bellows. After five minutes of intense gunfire the insurgents are beaten back.
But the battles aren’t just restricted to when troops are on patrol. On our first night with them, just as everyone is winding down after a hard day out on the ground, the sound of thunder shakes the patrol base.
In no time the night sky is ablaze with tracer fire travelling in both directions, and illumination rounds that turn night into day and make it possible to spot the attackers.
A rocket propelled grenade had been shot at the base, stopped in its tracks by the three-foot-deep walls surrounding the complex. More intercepted radio chatter talks of a suicide bomber in the area destined for the troops’ makeshift home. But this turns out to be part of the 80 per cent “propaganda” Guardsman Courage warned us about.
The point of the attack is to disrupt the Department for International Development’s seed distribution project centred at the base.
The aim is eradicate the growth of poppies by supplying seeds for alternative crops at knock-down prices — such as cauliflower, spinach, aubergines and melons.
This helps create a relationship between the local population and the NATO troops — and strangles Taliban funding.
The mortar attack proves to have no effect on the growing local appetite for food-crop seed and the next morning hundreds of Afghans are queuing to register to be growers outside the base.
Chief Petty Officer Dave Paterson — the only Navy man at the base — is in charge of the project. The 37-year-old from Lincoln has even been allowed to grow a beard so the locals trust him as a NATO “elder”.
He says: “So far we’ve had 3,000 people sign up here, and nearly 40,000 people have signed up across Helmand. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I can see that I’m making a difference. I’m now the one the locals come to when they’ve got problems.”
In all, the UK Government has pumped £8million of support into the project. Come next year it is hoped the number of farmers taking part will have doubled.
But Dave is all too aware the end of poppy growing is many years away. He says: “We’re not naïve, we know not all of the seed taken away will be used to plant. And you don’t even need to walk a kilometre away to find poppy fields. But it’s a start.”
Dangerous operations like the one in which we joined the Coldstream Guards are vital for slowly gaining the trust of the local population and forcing out the Taliban.
As Company Commander, Major Thurstan, observes: “They are small steps — but they’re steps in the right direction.”
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