Ross Kemp on Afghanistan Page 20

  His heart must have skipped a beat. I know mine did. The relief was indescribable when we heard that the wound wasn't serious. In fact, watching headcam footage of the incident afterwards, you'd be forgiven for thinking quite the opposite. ‘Wee Johno’, as he was known, had been shot in the foot – much to the hilarity of his mates. ‘He's not going to be dancing for a while, is he?’ someone joked.

  Nick told me that Johno had been given morphine and that he should be fine. He was loaded into a Mastiff and taken back to Musa Qala for medical treatment. In the meantime the Taliban had been spotted in a nearby compound – Compound 109. Nick ordered his men forward to secure the compound. Delta Company followed his orders swiftly and professionally, but by the time the compound was theirs, the Taliban had done a runner. They were compound hopping, so Nick sent out a forward party to hunt them down while the rest of the company provided fire support in the form of light 51mm mortars and underslung grenade launchers. Accompanying the soldiers were members of the ANP. The camera team and I stayed behind with Nick Calder and the TAC, waiting for news that the surrounding compounds had been cleared. Nick called in fast air support, just in case.

  Not long after the forward team had left, word came through that they had apprehended someone. He was a fighting-age male and was claiming to be an ordinary citizen. The ANP weren't buying it: they were sure he was Taliban and had used their powers of arrest to detain him. They brought him back to us in Compound 109 while I prepared to come face to face with a man who, if the ANP were right, would have no hesitation in killing any of us.

  If this was a member of the Taliban, it was clear he wasn't a commander. He had mascara around his eyes which was moist with tears of fear. His pink-painted nails were short, broken and bitten. His dishdash was stained with food and human issue and his sandals were the only other clothes he was wearing. The fact, however, that he kept pleading in Pashtun, ‘Don't shoot me!’ suggested he had more to fear than an ordinary villager would.

  The prisoner was told to get on to his knees while a member of the ANP stood guard. I asked how sure they were that he was Taliban. The ANP member pointed to an area around the prisoner's left shoulder. It was red, bruised and raised – the kind of bruising that only comes from the kickback of a weapon. The ANP policeman said, ‘PKM.’ The prisoner denied this. ‘My brother fought with me,’ he announced. ‘He hit me with his prayer beads.’

  Prayer beads, hey? They must have been some pretty hefty ones. Prayer cannonballs, more like. The ANP weren't buying it any more than I was. They took the prisoner away for interrogation. There is a spray they can apply to a man's body which, if there is any gunpowder residue on his skin or clothes, will turn pink. Our man turned pinker than a fairy. Sounded like quite a scrap he was having with his brother.

  We left the compound, turned south and zigzagged for another four hours. Our surprise attack had been successful – perhaps a little too successful. The Taliban had clearly retreated in order to regroup. Operation Small Qats was only ever supposed to last twenty-four hours, so just after 13.00 we met up with our Mastiffs, ready to return south to the DC. As we arrived at the RV point, however, the intelligence suggested that enemy forces were preparing to attack. It was a highly alert group of soldiers that climbed into the vehicles ready for the trip back home.

  No matter how many times you experience enemy contact, you never quite get used to it. It felt good to be encased in steel once more – even if it was like an oven – and as I downed a bottle of water, Sergeant McCafferty gave me a succinct précis of the operation. ‘Short and sharp. It was almost like a raid. Straight in, straight out. Job done.’

  Job done indeed, wee Johno's toe notwithstanding. No confirmed enemy kills, but the Taliban on the back foot and a hostage taken. It was galling to find out later that the authorities thought there was insufficient evidence to detain him; either that, or he had friends in high places. Helmand Province – like much of Afghanistan – suffers from corruption at the highest level. Musa Qala itself, as I had already learned, was under the influence of the local warlord, Mullah Salam, and there was little doubt that certain contingents of the ANP fell under that sphere of influence. Despite the rumours that he was deeply entrenched with the Americans, it didn't seem unlikely that he would try to keep his hand in with the Taliban. He didn't know, after all, what the future held for Afghanistan. In truth, I think that Mullah Salam was too far gone: if the Taliban regained power I imagine he would seek some kind of diplomatic immunity.

  Did our hostage have a hotline to the top man? Were the wheels of injustice greased? I don't know. All I can say is that he was released – ready, if indeed he was a member of the Taliban, to fire another RPG. Might he kill a British soldier? Might some Afghan children be wounded or killed in the crossfire? Impossible to say, but it was an insight into the difficulties of bringing peace to a place such as this.

  We made it back to camp, thankfully without incident. Like many of the men, I was still suffering from the aftermath of the D and V virus; but it would have been a gruelling twenty-four hours even if we'd been at the peak of physical fitness. It felt very good to be back home. I was looking forward to a rest. As I walked back to my bunk, helmet in hand, I passed the RQMS.

  ‘All right, Ross?’ he greeted me cheerfully. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fucked,’ I said. I think it summed things up pretty well.

  16. Going Native

  The base at Musa Qala was home not only to 5 Scots and 2 Scots. As well as the contingent of Americans, it was shared with members of the Royal Irish Regiment and the ANA. The Irish were there as an OMLT. Their duty was to accompany the ANA, instruct them in the techniques of modern warfare and in so doing get the Afghans a step closer to being able to defend their people and their borders against insurgents.

  All things considered, the ISAF forces and the Afghans rubbed along pretty well. That's not to say there weren't big cultural differences between them. There were, and none so great as the rumours of what would happen on a Thursday night. For the Afghans, this was party night, a time for men to get together; on some occasions, the rumour was, they would get closer than others. As was the case in Ancient Greece, ‘man love’ is not stigmatized in Afghanistan. I saw plenty of young Afghans wearing make-up and nail varnish and holding hands. It was just part of the culture. Far from being something to be ashamed of – and even though it would appear to be at odds with their Muslim beliefs – it's an accepted phenomenon. It certainly doesn't make you effeminate and I wouldn't recommend that anyone reading this book goes out and calls an Afghan male a poof – unless, that is, you're getting bored of the company of your teeth and fancy a period of trial separation.

  I never saw any actual evidence that Thursday night was man-love night, but I did witness enough fisticuffs resembling lovers' tiffs between members of the ANA to make it absolutely clear that there was some truth to the rumours. And, of course, it became a bit of a joke for the ISAF troops. ‘What you doing Thursday night, Ross? Going up to spend it with the 'terps? Feeling frisky?’

  Afghans, of course – at least, some of them – have a different view of Western sexuality. Apart from the occasional medic or intelligence officer, they see hardly any Western women and their view of them derives from the centrefolds and porn shots that are plastered over the soldiers' barracks. The streets of Musa Qala are not filled with rampant homosexuals any more than the streets of London are filled with girls getting their tits out, but these preconceptions are good examples of how cultures can be misunderstood and demonstrate the need, if you are occupying a foreign country, to spend time with its people and learn about the way they live their lives – and to control your sniggers on a Thursday night just because all the boys are dancing with each other. It was partly because of this, and partly in order to see just how the OMLT scheme worked, that we decided to go out on the ground with the Royal Irish and the ANA.

  The ANA and the ANP are two very different beasts. The ANP are generally recruited from the
locality of Helmand Province. As a result they have friends and relations in the towns and villages they are supposed to be patrolling. Afghan society being what it is, this leads to corruption. In Kajaki the previous year, there had been a rumour – unconfirmed, I should say – that the head of the ANP contingent there was related to the head of the Taliban at the northern FLET and was passing him information about our plans and movements. Other rumours suggested that certain members of the ANP swapped bullets and weapons for drugs: while they were seeing butterflies, the Taliban were getting tooled up. While it would be wrong of me to paint every member of the ANP with this brush of corruption, it seems unlikely that these rumours were entirely without foundation.

  The ANA were a different matter. There were rotten apples, of course, but then that's true of any group of people. The Afghan army was recruited from all over Afghanistan and was much freer of the complicated cords of loyalty that bound the ANP in Helmand. And there was no doubt about it: the ANA was being slowly turned into a formidable fighting force. They were equipped more and more with American weapons and, as Officer in Command Major Dave Middleton explained to me, they were crucial to the ISAF forces' activities in the region. ‘There are not large numbers of ISAF ground-holding troops here. It's the ANA that carries out a lot of the operations to push the enemy back. And the enemy has been pushed back.’

  I wondered whether being part of an OMLT was a bit of a chore in British Army terms. One of Dave's lads answered me in a broad Irish accent. ‘Babysitting. That's what I thought straight off. We're coming out here to babysit these people.’ And when you've been on the front line as these guys have – Bosnia, Iraq and a previous tour of the Stan – I can see that this might not be a tempting prospect. But the Irish had come to a different point of view. ‘When you start working with them and have some craic with them, ninety-eight per cent of the time you'll just fall down laughing. They're just crazy. But they're a good bunch of lads.’

  I wanted to find out for myself if this was true and so it was that I prepared to go out on patrol with them into the bustling streets of the Saturday morning Musa Qala bazaar. The streets were, in general terms, off limits to all troops apart from the Royal Irish and the ANA, and for good reason: two suicide bombers had already hit the bazaar that year; during the previous year in Afghanistan as a whole there had been 140 suicide bombs, and many civilian casualties as a result. The OMLT patrolled twice daily, but they had two advantages. Firstly they varied the times of their patrols so that suicide bombers wouldn't know when to expect them in town; and secondly they had the ANA with them. The presence of Afghan troops was a distinct plus. It meant that the villagers were a little less hostile to the presence of the occupying force; perhaps more importantly, the ANA were well attuned to the atmospherics among the population. In short, they could tell far better than the ISAF forces when things were likely to kick off – a useful asset somewhere as volatile as Musa Qala.

  I was looking forward to the trip. Sure it was dangerous, though probably not as dangerous as a full-on attack on a Taliban position. But it would be the first time I had put myself in the middle of a real, working Afghanistan town, to see the sights and meet the people. It promised to be quite an experience.

  As we approached the main street of Musa Qala, the ANA went first, sensing the atmospherics before the Irish arrived. I guess the locals knew what to expect, however, because as soon as we followed up the rear, all their attention was fixed on us. The Afghans are world-champion starers and as we walked up and down their street, they put their skills to good use. Some of the locals – young kids mostly – looked at us with smiles on their faces. But overwhelmingly we received stares that made me feel as if I'd just stepped out of a spaceship. Hardly surprising, I suppose, given the uneasy peace that existed there. John the cameraman and I attracted even more attention than the troops, probably because he was carrying a camera and we were dressed a little differently.

  Old cars, motorbikes, tractors, donkeys with carts and men with wheelbarrows made their way along the street, which was lined by rickety buildings with makeshift canvas canopies. One of these buildings housed an opium den – everyone hanging around outside that place looked extremely relaxed. Another housed the bank: little more than a man with a wooden box full of notes. It looked kind of medieval, but in the final analysis I suppose that's all banks are. All manner of goods spilled out on to the pavements: hats, clothes, kitchen appliances, crates of fizzy drinks and, most temptingly, fruit and vegetables harvested from the fertile green zone. It was a thriving provincial market, noisy and bustling – in many ways no different to any market town in any country in the world. Given that all this fresh food was piled high so close to the DC, it struck me as faintly ridiculous that the British soldiers should be fed on tinned spam and rice. The ANP and ANA had a good business opportunity of which they took full advantage. They would buy crates of fizzy drink in the bazaar for a handful of Afghanis, and then sell them on at the DC. I'd be the last to begrudge someone the opportunity to turn a profit, but it seemed strange to me that the villagers themselves weren't given the chance to sell their wares directly to the troops. The Afghans are born businessmen and if anything is likely to build bridges between the locals and the occupying force, it's the prospect of a bit of trade. There are security issues, of course: fresh food can be poisoned, traders can be disguised suicide bombers. But it seems to me that these issues are not insurmountable in the battle for hearts and minds.

  Back on the street, it was about to become uncomfortably clear to me why it was important that this battle was won. At the top of the street was Musa Qala's best-known landmark, a tall white monument that had taken a bit of a battering and was now surrounded by wooden scaffolding. The rumour was that the Taliban used to hang people from this structure. I couldn't find anyone who would confirm this; but I couldn't find anyone to deny it either. In order not to be targeted, we were told to keep moving; but it was difficult not to attract attention and I found myself chatting to a small group of children. Behind us was what was left of the old DC. It had been bombed to fuck when the Royal Irish and the Paras had had to defend it from the Taliban just a couple of years before. To one side of the bombed-out building was a hospital, newly built by the ISAF forces. Lovely building – shame it was totally empty. The Taliban had made it clear that any doctor who dared work there would lose his head. On the other side the foundations were in for a new mosque.

  The kids were an appealing bunch, inquisitive and with broad grins on their faces. I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. ‘A doctor,’ one replied. Well, that, at least, was hopeful.

  Feeling like an alien, I wondered if they thought I looked much different from them. The kids shook their heads, although they confessed to being bemused at my lack of beard. All in all it was an amicable chat with some bright kids. Unfortunately, it was brought to a rather abrupt halt. Dave Middleton approached. His voice was tense. ‘We know a suicide bomber has moved in to the western edge of the bazaar,’ he told me. ‘It's believed he's going to come across and target the bazaar.’

  I turned to camera. My voice dropped a few octaves. ‘Let's go,’ I said.

  In an instant the whole atmosphere changed. I started noticing things I hadn't seen before, like the group of men on a nearby balcony staring at us. They didn't look as if they were queuing up to be our best mates. In the past the bombers had predominantly been adults, but of late the Taliban had taken to using children as young as six. Even more disturbingly, these child bombers are often followed by another kid armed with a radio-controlled detonation device, just in case the suicide bomber has second thoughts.

  The Irish and the ANA started to perform a hasty withdrawal from the bazaar, and who could blame them? As Dave Middleton explained to me, their continued presence in the centre of town was not only dangerous for us but dangerous for the locals too. The Taliban would like nothing better than to take out a couple of British troops; if it meant that they killed thirty or
forty Afghans to do it, that was an acceptable loss.

  It was with genuine relief that I walked back into the safety of the DC. Fighting an enemy that had guns, mortars and RPGs was one thing. What I had just tasted in the bazaar of Musa Qala, however, was a very different sort of fear, caused by the prospect of a very different kind of attack: that of the suicide bomber, driven on by religious fervour or blind terror, an invisible weapon whose presence was often known only when he or she exploded their hidden package.

  In many ways, that kind of attack was more terrifying than what happened in the thick of the green zone. And the people of Helmand Province have to live with the threat of it every day of their lives.

  Having been out on patrol with the ANA, I wanted to meet some of their number. So later that day Dave Middleton arranged for me to have a chat with their senior officers. We met on the roof of the DC and I was immediately impressed by the resolute attitude towards the Taliban of Colonel Shadil, who was in charge of the ANA forces in Musa Qala. ‘All of Musa Qala is under our control,’ he said with the air, frankly, of a guy not prepared to take any shit. ‘Our security posts are active. We won't let the enemy take Musa Qala.’ No ifs. No buts.

  It was clear that they liked working with the Irish and Dave Middleton returned the compliment. He singled out one of the officers in particular. ‘We've been on some big operations together and he's a very brave man, I have to say.’