Sangin A Glance Through Afghan Eyes

Prologue

June 2007 – In a fleeting moment’s reflection it struck me as ironic that despite fully eighteen months of preparatory training the actual occasion of my first operational patrol seemed all too rushed and fraught with second guessing to feel familiar, practised or comfortable. Two stone of body armour I’d barely worn before pushed heavily upon my shoulders, immediate discomfort just a precursor to the promise of future irritation and pain. My webbing bore the scars of multiple readjustments yet hung in an ill-fitting embrace that felt too low around my hips, desert-issue ammo pouches strapped against the breastplate and overflowing with magazines I couldn’t know I wouldn’t need that night. The air around hung heavy with moisture, damp with particles of sand that tasted sour on the tongue, dusk preceding the certainty of a black sky yet promising nothing in the way of relief from heat the intensity of which I’d never known before. Hands, mechanical and able, passed over personal weapons in the act of loading as faint electronic whispers moved amongst us, confirmation of effective communication between each and all. The helmet I wore, provided just days earlier, replaced an outdated model that had fit with practised ease where now there was a misshapen feel, echoed in the still unbroken boots within which my feet lifted alternately in nervous agitation. The country, the town I was in, the colleagues I stood beside, none I had known before. The atmosphere carried a host of different aromas all of which were alien and indiscernible to my un-acclimatised sense of smell, and unknown yet no doubt everyday sounds carried on the evening breeze were to me clear signals of danger when heard for the very first time. It was though I had been reborn into a different world whose least remarkable realities were like rarefied secrets I knew nothing about, and in those first moments of awakening the infinite possibilities presented before me were almost overwhelming. Knowledge is the key to rational thought and I had none to call on, no previous experience of the environment that now formed my world. It was for that reason, rather than the cloying humidity, that my shirt clung tight to the torso beneath, already drenched in sweat with rivulets of precipitation running the length of each leg to soak into sock and boot. My heart beat with a restless fervour, quickening in anticipation of the activity to come as blood surged to every extremity, my body releasing a first flush of adrenal stimulation too early and too intense to be sustained. My mind raced, mentally retracing the lessons I’d received that had led me to this place, searching for the knowledge that would allow me to affect a professional air in front of my peers and therefore belie the lack of experience I felt so keenly and hoped so ardently to hide.

Initially we marched under the reassuring muzzle of a machine gun, the additional security it provided giving me chance to adjust to the pace of our patrol, muscles protesting against the first strains of physical activity as my body sought to compensate for the extra effort suddenly demanded. Footsteps crunched on a gravel-coated track that led between battle damaged compounds either side, their empty windows and open doorways growing ever darker with the failing light of day into night. There was a stillness to the air, that momentary calm that commemorates each passing of the sun an instant before darkness takes over and natures hunters start to stir, and we joined them in the role of predator whilst ever conscious of our potential as prey. The blackness soon all around impaired my vision, freeing my imagination to see evidence of danger with renewed clarity, the threat further enhanced by each unnatural sound that fell upon my ears. Sweat flowed freely across a face tight with the strain of heightened senses as I stumbled over rubble and fought to remain steady on the brittle logs that provided passage over irrigation ditches half filled with still, mud-hewed water. I cursed inwardly, fighting the imbalance of my top-heavy load, breathing heavily with the effort required to avoid a fall. Suddenly a shot was fired, followed immediately by the staccato report of two more...

... and then silence.

PART 1 – THE PLACE

Chapter 1 – Sangin

Maybe it was the silence, complete and all-encompassing of the like my body hadn’t known for much of the previous seven months. Probably it was the fatigue, full-on like only a first-light end of night will ensure. Undoubtedly it was the alcohol, still washing through me in dangerous quantity and there to stay for hours to come. The glow emitting from my wrist highlighted mid-afternoon as confusion reigned. Where was I? Where had the day gone? What happened to the evening previous and my part in it? I placed my location as the family home sometime soon after, sometime after that the phone rang, bringing news from my night via a woman with electronic tones. Her voice was too harsh to be alluring, even to a man whose recent existence had been so completely devoid of female company, and she rolled off a series of two and three figure numbers without passion or feeling which only served to increase the shock of my reaction to the full financial cost of celebration. I had arrived home just seven days prior, and was recovering from only my second night out in that time, supposedly rejoicing in the completion of another operational tour to Afghanistan. People talk of praise for soldiers and the work they do whilst deployed, that as men and women of the Armed Forces they can be justifiably proud of their endeavour and achievements, often in the most testing of circumstance. Correct of course, but barely one week after leaving the heat and dust of Helmand’s desert plain behind my hard-work of March to early October was forgotten, replaced by disappointment founded in an over-excessive reintroduction to the relative empty pleasures of alcohol and bright-light living. Cause for reflection certainly, and subsequent motivation for a more concrete collection of my experiences in that extraordinary country during 2009. A summer spent acting as mentor to Afghan National Police, working to build their capacity, capability and effectiveness to operate as both security force and police investigators, and attempting to increase communication, by encouraging better cooperation, between all Afghan security forces and Government officials employed alongside me. An incredible opportunity therefore to exert some small influence on the development of a much maligned but ever-adapting international strategy aimed at eventual success in Afghanistan. However you choose to define ‘success’ of course. For me, an Afghanistan with sufficient, and sufficiently trained, civil police and military forces capable of ensuring the levels of security required to allow for the development of effective governance, economic and social freedom, and reconstruction of essential services for the benefit of all. Only then could there be realistic talk of an army coming home.

By way of context, and as alluded to above, my stay in Afghanistan that year did not constitute the first trip I had made there. In 2007 I was deployed to Helmand Province for short of four months; my first command appointment as a commissioned Officer in HM British Army and more specifically the Corps of Royal Engineers. As a Troop Commander I joined with elements of my command in theatre, and embarked on an intense period of work centred on the towns of Sangin and Kajaki, but taking in much of the Upper Sangin Valley along the difficult and dangerous way. In the ensuing prose I won’t dwell much further on personal experiences of this time – the tone of which has been documented previously elsewhere - other than where it adds value to descriptions of events from my return. I mention it now by way of highlighting that I arrived back in Helmand eighteen months on with some experience of the ground, and in particular a good knowledge as to my home for the duration of that summer, the town of Sangin; a name now all too familiar with the British public after several years of soldierly ‘hard-pounding’ in and around there following our arrival in 2006. In the intervening time since much national (Afghan) and international (British, Fijian, South African, Australian, American, Estonian, Danish and more) blood has been spilt along the narrow, high-walled alleys, open, loose-dirt fields, and rocky, sand-blown desert of the town and its immediate surrounds. It sits on river-valley plain 900m above sea level, dwellings small when set against rolling hills and soaring mountain range casting ancient shadow to the north, west and south-east. In powerful parallel the Helmand River bores a wide expanse on its passage south, fattened by an ample yield from the snow-topped mountain ranges of central Afghanistan. An ancient trade post it acts as gatekeeper for money made in all directions, straddling the Route 611 road to Gereshk - vital link to the Provincial Capital Lashkar Gar - and controlling all access north to the fertile Upper Sangin Valley and beyond to Baghran.

The town’s economic heart is its main Bazaar, running through the centre on either side of the 611 for some 500m, a succession of narrow, ramshackle, open front mud-brick stores interspersed with temporary, rough-hewn displays set amongst bomb-damaged buildings and flanked by dusty side-roads. Men sit in the shade of canvass awnings and sip on endless shots of chi, white-hot water tainted brown but clear through the glass containers as kids call on foreign faces to forever part with their pens, the written word hopeful currency for a generation almost wholly illiterate. I have patrolled that market on many occasions during eight months spent working in Sangin and seen significant changes during the two years which encompassed that time. In early 2007 it was unkempt and empty, a victim of sustained and often savage fighting that drove shopkeepers far from the source of their income. Yet by the time of my last visit I could walk with confidence on a recently sealed road between brightly coloured products piled high in anticipation of each morning’s consumer rush, new police checkpoints visible in both directions, evidence of a flourishing economic development conducted by a community growing ever-more confident of their security. At its busiest the Bazaar would be crowded with shoppers, motorbikes swaying through the spill-over as Afghan soldiers and police conducted resupply on their regular patrols. So busy in fact that our own safety during these times was effectively compromised by the success of a combined security and economic development strategy we sought to guarantee; suicide bombers being our greatest threat when operating amongst any local population, and the greater that population’s presence in any one area the more difficult it becomes to recognise a minority threat within the majority friendly throng. However, by taking these calculated risks – risks which were absolutely necessary if we were to most effectively mentor the policemen under our charge – we were working entirely in line with an over-arching country-wide policy of integration among the people, in order to better our understanding of those people, and likewise their knowledge of us. Sangin’s Bazaar represented the kind of thriving regeneration so sought after by International Security Assistance Force senior officers, international development chiefs, and political paymasters the western world over as evidence of the progress being made across Afghanistan. And progress had clearly been made, but it was not spectacular, it had not happened quickly, and every slight success had been founded in the blood and suffering of Afghan civilian and coalition soldier alike. For if I walked with confidence along a few hundred metres of black-top so I would tread lightly and with reluctant trepidation in any other part of town not so obviously secure from the threat of underfoot explosion. By 2009 improvised explosive devices had become the highly effective, often extremely sophisticated weapon of first use by an insurgent force growing ever-more reluctant to take on professional soldiers in face-to-face fights they could never win. Far better to sow the poppy fields and pot-holed tracks with a seemingly endless supply of home-made bombs, growing fear in the minds of those whose task it was to develop security across what had effectively become an area of unmarked, unrecorded, unknown and highly unstable minefields. For the insurgents it was an entirely sensible means of waging their war; the promise of maximum damage with often no real risk to their own. These devices were hugely effective in slowing down coalition movements, and at times prevented access to large areas of land freely patrolled just two years prior when that particular threat had been relatively minor.

Governance for the District of Sangin was delivered from a white-washed new-build situated halfway along a poorly sealed road that cut from a curve in the central Bazaar through farmland, and on towards canal and riverbank beyond. The double-storey Government Offices, opened in mid-summer of 2009, overlooked a part of town where memories of close-quarter fighting echoed amongst irregular concrete pillars and basic mud-brick ruins, all-encompassed by a protective perimeter wall within which it was hoped the machinery of good governance and effective rule of law would come to operate without external interference from insurgents intent on disrupting development. Adjacent to these offices a health clinic had been constructed in tandem, completed at the same time and subsequently left to stand empty for the months that followed whilst a willing and qualified occupant was sought to run this critical service for an unconvinced populace. Afghan police provided the first face of governance as far as locals could see, permanently placed at the road’s end, open to the Bazaar and bustle beyond. They stood guard throughout day into night and fought a boredom that would often lead to an easy addiction to drugs, a means of breaking up monotonous hours standing, sitting, sleeping on Sangin’s security front line. A few men in blue and bearing AK arms was often all that stood between Sangin’s Governor and the men who would do him harm, yet day after day these unlikely guards would complete their work without allowing any insurgent incident to occur within the confines of that thin, barricaded strip of hopeful land.

Route 611 ran roughly parallel to the Helmand River, with a vast and largely dry wadi interconnecting the two on its pebbled path west to east, curving in an expansive arc away from the river’s edge through the main Bazaar and out into desert beyond. The wadi was an important part of daily life for the people of Sangin, linking in with man-made crossing points over the water, providing a transport link into town and suburbs as well as the fertile, farmed land which straddled the eastern bank. It was also a seemingly endless source of loose rock fill, broken down by the entrepreneurial into any grade ordered, harvested for little or nothing just to be sold, often to the foreign dollar, for exorbitant but readily paid prices. Every day overloaded motorbikes ferried people and supplies across a network of barely seen tracks as locals went about their business along ancient routes, movement informed by the shifting nature of a platform alive with the nurture of Helmand’s seasonal extremes. In summer the whole expanse acted as a great conductor of heat, haze shimmering barely beyond touching distance as temperatures soared to their maximum among the broken stone basin, where distance seemed to double into visibly curving pockets of rising hot air.

North of the wadi the land sloped sharply upwards to a narrow plateau with commanding views over town centre, fields, and river below, foot-hills and mountain beyond. At its peak neat small blue tiles hinted at a once impressive mosaic floor set in stark contrast to red desert dust and reduced concrete walls of the bomb damaged former Governor’s residence, the still superb view sole survivor of a modern war then framed by nature’s window alone. The town’s suburbs lay as a patchwork of large irregular rectangles, the parched partitions of thick mud walls solid in old age under the setting of an ancient sun. Space was a private commodity taken at the expense of communal walkways which tracked the narrow gaps between dwellings, a claustrophobic system of social interaction so dense as to discourage the very movement it was designed to empower. Much of the town was single-storey, Sangin’s few social climbers able to provide a literal display of their status in the form of second, sometimes third floors on their place of business or home. For most however subsistence was the system of survival, parents content to have the product and wares required at any one time to trade or sell for the food to feed their family and fund a sheltered sleep. Relative fortunes were made in Sangin but only by the powerful and connected few, many of whom fled their homes for fear of the fighting that had taken place there and the threat from Taliban shadow governance. The insurgents operated a system of government in parallel to the officially sanctioned version that permeated from the District Centre, small circles of influence swiftly fading to nothing where no Government security existed to uphold the values and promises they promoted. Local Taliban leaders offered a ‘justice’ system based on sharia law that would provide almost immediate redress on a whole array of disputes from the minor to allegations of murder and other serious offences. It was at times an attractive option for the individual who considered himself wronged yet had no trust in the official systems of conflict resolution, nor patience to unravel the accompanying layers of bureaucracy. By providing this service, much more in-keeping with the religious traditions and tribal culture of this most conservative part of Afghanistan, the insurgents could win influence amongst parts of the population which Government forces were barely able to affect because their presence was only ever minimal at best.

From a military standpoint the town was no natural fortress for those stationed within. It wasn’t easily defendable against external threat nor did it allow unobserved egress when planning more offensive measures from a base inside. For most of the year dense foliage and high growing crops could reduce fields of view across irrigated areas to just metres, whilst an undulating geography hindered those looking out and hid movement of potential foe. Any walls there were interlinked in a warren-like honeycomb without external support, a permeable perimeter enabling easy access into the town’s centre from myriad different directions. High ground abounded in all directions allowing easy observation for those with an interest in events below, and enabling the coordination of attacks hidden from view in woodland further north or over hills rising in irregular fashion to the west. Much of the local country, whether urban or rural, was close and channelled, forcing movement down pre-determined paths or across easily identifiable routes, making ambushes simple to set and difficult to avoid. From the defenders point of view it was a landscape that rewarded constant presence and continual oversight at all times, for the moment you turned to look another way so your enemy would ensure danger greeted the next discerning glance. There was of course no possibility to place a boot on every pace of grass, dirt or track, so the opportunity would always exist for insurgent exploitation of the gaps which occurred when land one moment occupied, was reluctantly, inevitably rescinded the next. The insurgents would utilise these gaps and the darkness to dig and place the bombs which waited as long as required to change a life forever, or end one forever more.

For the foreigner looking in, Sangin’s geography was clearly discernible and its economic characteristics easily defined, yet there was a social construct to the town and its surrounds - based on ancient tribal affiliations and cultural traditions - that could never be fully understood by those of us who passed through for just a relative few months. Absolutely ingrained into local conscience were the complexities of tribal affiliation that seemed never ending to an outsider and often excruciatingly frustrating and incomprehensible when it came to their affect on efforts at development or reform. Local loyalty could go in several different directions at any one time for reasons that may be significant, were occasionally trivial, and often rooted in acts which took place many years before. Respect would be paid to figures of authority whom most often repaid that courtesy by using their particular position of influence as justification to take from the majority beneath them, and most would accept such behaviour with a resignation borne of a familiar acceptance of corruption passed from one generation to the next. It’s just the way things were done because it’s the way things had always been done. Tribal connections would often determine who held sway in a particular part of the District or on a specific area of expertise, and matters would only be decided definitively if the appropriate tribal representatives were present to provide an acceptably official level of endorsement. In Sangin near all of the most important tribal leaders were in exile by 2009 after their attempts to combat Taliban infiltration in the town went unsupported by higher authority and left them open to the threat of execution. Settled in Kandahar or Lashkar Gah they were to a man reluctant to return home when their current domestic conditions were considerably more secure than a life in the town of their birth could offer. Left in their stead were the infinitely less influential second and third tier leaders, whose influence over their respective communities was correspondingly poor, and as such attempts to engage with a naturally reluctant civilian population on matters of security or social and economic development went unreported by anyone with the tribal standing to ensure they were heard and acted upon. Deals would be done between Afghan powerbrokers with barely a nod of the head or stroke of a beard, an unspoken determination of how things would be that eluded all but the local few who seemed to have an innate understanding as to their respective social position in life, and an acceptance that those able to profit from theirs should and would do exactly that.

In a part of the world where illiteracy is commonplace spoken words or visual symbols are the only effective means of communication, particularly when seeking to impart a message across communities District-wide and beyond. Sangin was not unusual in Afghanistan for having been ruled by a Governor who could neither read nor write, and one who had not the slightest inclination to learn. Literacy was a rare skill, most often found in a ruling generation only where individuals were schooled as members of the Russian backed communist regime. Those who fought as mujahedeen had the commanding confidence of fighting men and victors, but they were lacking in the basic skills a formal education would have provided. Theirs was a world of touch and feel rather than numbers or written word. So it was that such men could walk blindfolded every step of the way for kilometres back to a family home they hadn’t seen in a lifetime, yet they could no more point to its position on a map than count the number of steps they had taken or record that journey so that others may later follow. It was this lack of administrative capability that ultimately held back the development of government, police, and to a lesser extent military institutions. Too much was decided by word of mouth alone without the proper dissemination of proposals or accurate recording of decisions made. There was therefore a lack of accountability when things went awry, with investigations taking the form of an untidy series of verbal claim and counter-claim by the protagonists, generally followed by behind-the-scenes agreements mutually beneficial to the primary aggressors without ever extending those benefits to the community as a whole. Education was chronically lacking in towns such as Sangin where the Taliban had effective control over the opening of schools, with teachers intimidated by violent threats to the point where they no longer desired to risk their lives in pursuit of their vocation. For most of 2009 the main schools in town lay disused, the future of a generation at the mercy of Taliban leaders who could determine the levels of educational access across the District entirely at their will. That they cared little for the interests of Sangin’s local community was never more evident than when insurgents took advantage of a change in police routine to plant a bomb inside the main school, built with development money and finished not long before. In order to protect the site ANP had maintained a permanent presence on the perimeter as deterrent to potential attackers, however with another established police checkpoint not fifty metres away enjoying overwatch of the school and its grounds, the temporary position was vacated in order to re-task vital manpower to more strategically important locales. This proved to be a mistake, the insurgents finding a way to place their IED unbeknownst to the police protectors, subsequently exploding it inside the entrance hall to devastating effect. Thankfully no people were caught in the blast, but there was considerable structural damage and the event was a cause of some personal soul-searching, for it was I who had advised the ANP Chief of the need to move his men elsewhere. There was some guilt, but ultimately the