Ground Truth: 3 Para Return to Afghanistan

In the absence of any intervention from outside Afghan authorities, Williams had little choice but to appear to cooperate. On the evening of 8 April, Zaifullah visited him and told him that an eradication operation was taking place the following day. By now the distict leader had managed to obtain reinforcements from the provincial ANP to support the local police, who, it was increasingly clear, functioned when needed as his personal militia. Williams agreed to position vehicles from his Patrols Platoon near the fields scheduled for eradication but said they would intervene only if the ANP got into trouble. There would also be air support available if needed. As it was, 9 April passed without incident. The dangers of coalition forces being seen to support the nefarious activities of a notoriously corrupt official were obvious. But still nothing was done by the provincial or national authorities to restrain their man in Maywand.

On 11 April the Paras were told that the police would be carrying out a week-long eradication mission in the area of Now-Khar-Khayl, which lay on a bend of the Arghandab river about sixteen kilometres south-east of Hutal. Williams agreed that Patrols Platoon would watch over Afghan policemen involved in the operation but go to their aid only if they were in serious difficulties. Intelligence gleaned from intercepts reported that the Taliban were aware of the operation and were prepared to attack the police once the work got under way.

The operation began the following day. Around noon, Patrols Platoon heard gunfire coming from the fields. Williams ordered it to stay put and await instructions. The district leader, however, radioed his men to tell them to stand and fight, shoring their morale with the news that the British would shortly be coming to their rescue. When it became clear that no reinforcements were on the way he contacted Williams with ever more alarming reports from the battlefield. Just after 1 p.m. he claimed that fifteen to twenty of his men were dead and those remaining were running out of ammunition.

Williams was sceptical. He requested an overflight by a Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) equipped with an on-board camera. The images it beamed back told a less dramatic story. There was no sign of any major clash and the Paras stayed put. The district leader’s appeals had also been relayed back to Kandahar via the ANP. The Americans responded by sending two attack helicopters. They hovered over the supposed battlefield but found nothing to report and returned without engaging. The true story of what happened in the fields of Now-Khar-Khayl never emerged. It seemed probable that any shooting directed at the ANP was as likely to have come from farmers defending their livelihood as from the Taliban. In this instance, the two groups could have been one and the same thing.

Zaifullah’s failure to inveigle British forces into backing him rankled and he complained to the governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khalid, to whom he was closely allied. The governor backed his protégé in Maywand, issuing a media statement claiming that a senior British officer in the district was encouraging local farmers to grow poppies. The row bubbled up the political chain until it reached Kabul and the British envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles. The ambassador dismissed the accusation and declared that the Paras were obeying the government’s own instructions, which stated that the eradication programme did not apply to Maywand. The row subsided, but in the Paras’ eyes the district leader had forfeited all respect.

Zaifullah’s standing with the people he governed was made clear a few days after the eradication debacle. At mid-morning on 14 April, four men turned up at the base at Hutal asking to see the senior British officer. They were representing a group of forty elders from Band-e-Timor who had come with them to the town. Williams was away at a meeting in KAF and they were welcomed by Stuart McDonald, who had moved with his men to the town to change places with ‘A’ Company. The visitors were angry and agitated, complaining about a raid that had taken place in their area the previous night. Men had been arrested, compounds had been damaged and vehicles set on fire. McDonald replied truthfully that it had nothing to do with the British. Later it transpired that it was an American operation that the British had not been informed of, a regular occurrence in southern Afghanistan. McDonald was backed up by an Afghan army mullah, who was as vociferous as the elders. ‘[He] spent about five minutes angrily shouting them down, saying I’ve been with these people for a number of weeks and they’re genuinely here to help you.’ He also emphasised the common religious ground between them, claiming that the soldiers were ‘good Christians’. He assured them that ‘whereas we believe in different gods they do have our respect for religion [and] this isn’t part of some crusade’. The mullah was a valuable ally in the struggle to win trust. ‘His presence was probably the single greatest factor in creating a very amiable atmosphere right from the outset,’ said McDonald. ‘They seemed to be quite reassured by virtue of the fact that he was there.’

As they talked it became clear that anger over the raid was just the catalyst for the visit. They wanted to talk of many things, and most of all about the behaviour of the district leader.

McDonald invited them to return with the rest of the group later in the day when the CO would be back. The initial plan was to hold a shura in the schoolhouse, but an intelligence tip warned that there was a threat that the meeting would be attacked. They gathered instead, at five o’clock, out of the sun in a large room inside the Paras’ compound. Williams sat with McDonald, Steve Boardman and the ANA mullah at the front, facing the visitors. The first ranks were filled with the most venerable of the elders. Behind them came the younger men, who would move forward to whisper their contributions in the ears of their seniors.

The spokesmen started off by spelling out to Williams the simple facts of their harsh life. ‘They said they were just farmers,’ he recalled. ‘They had families and they simply wanted security for them and their children. They didn’t want to fight us and they didn’t want to fight the Taliban. They just wanted to get on with farming.’ They were disarmingly frank about the source of their livelihood. ‘They told me they did grow poppy but they didn’t care what they grew. It made no difference to them whether it was poppy or wheat—but no one was buying wheat. People were buying poppy. So what choice did they have?’

The men seemed to be between about thirty and eighty, though it was hard to tell precisely. The harshness of life and the scorching sun dried skin and ironed in wrinkles, ageing adults far beyond their actual years. Only a few dominant males spoke. Occasionally, when they made a forceful point, others would jump to their feet in passionate agreement. They told Williams that the Taliban had been active in their area but insisted that none of them was a Taliban supporter, though Williams was disinclined to take this at face value. They certainly seemed to have no reason to have any warm feeling towards the Taliban. ‘They said they take our food and don’t give us any money move into our compounds, beat us.’

The local police, however, treated them just as badly. An old man got to his feet to show off a large bruise, the result of a beating at the hands of the ANP the previous week. Then the elders came to the point. They had come to ask for the Paras’ help. They hated and feared the police. Only the British could provide real security. What they wanted was an army base in Band-e-Timor like the one that was being built in Hutal.

Williams was impressed by what he had heard. ‘I was convinced that they were genuine because it wasn’t all good news. They weren’t saying we don’t grow poppy and we don’t let the Taliban in. They were saying, yes we do, because it’s the only thing we can sell. And we let the Taliban in because we’re scared and how can we not? If we don’t put them up for the night they’ll kill us.’

At the close, Williams promised to hold another shura to which every elder in the district would be invited. He promised to try to secure the attendance of a senior government official from the province as well as a general from the Canadian-led Task Force Kandahar. Local and national media would be invited to make sure that their concerns were given the widest possible airing. If all went well there would be more than a hundred people coming, so to accommodate everyone they would have to meet at the school and a security plan was drawn up to protect against suicide bombers.

The great shura never took place. The meeting would mean little without the presence of the main power broker in the area, Governor Asadullah Khalid. But when the Canadians at the head of Regional Command South approached him to request his presence he flatly refused to attend. A few days before, the Canadian Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, had visited Afghanistan and received briefings from NATO officers, diplomats and Canadian soldiers on the ground in southern Afghanistan. By the time he met Afghan President Hamid Karzai he had formed a low opinion of the president’s representative in Kandahar. He accused Asadullah of corruption and of holding up Canadian humanitarian aid donations to the area. At a press conference after the encounter he effectively called on Karzai to sack him. Bernier’s intervention was presented as a diplomatic faux pas and nothing happened. Asadullah ceased cooperating with the Canadians in protest and the elders of Hutal lost their chance to vent their feelings. It fell to Stuart McDonald to break the news. He found it ‘professionally embarrassing. You tell these people in good faith that you’ll do your utmost to try and help them and then it didn’t happen. There were a few disappointed looks coming across the table.’

After the shura with the elders of Band-e-Timor, McDonald had come to the conclusion that any further operations in their area would ‘do more damage than good given that it [affected] the same people who had come to us and asked for our help’. Williams agreed and a plan for ‘A’ Company to raid some suspected insurgent compounds was called off. Instead they were sent on another mission, in line with the Paras’ role as Regional Command South’s mailed fist.

Williams passed a report of his meeting with local elders up the line. The truth was there was nothing he could do then and there to meet the elders’ concerns. No matter how cautious Williams had been with his promises, the Paras’ presence had raised expectations that, owing to the dearth of men and resources, they could not fulfil. ‘We weren’t about to expand down there and I wasn’t going to build a base,’ he said. There were many other places that demanded ISAF’s attention before they reached Band-e-Timor. It would be another four months before the Paras returned to the region.

Nonetheless, as they prepared for their withdrawal on 25 April, they could feel some sense of achievement. The FOB was finished and ready for the arrival of a company of ANA soldiers, who would patrol the town and secure the neighbouring stretch of Highway One. More than $200,000 had been spent on reconstruction. School attendance figures had gone up fourfold. The reactions of the local people suggested they could be persuaded to see the British as potential friends rather than aggressive interlopers.

The Paras could also claim that their stay in the area had hastened the end of Haji Zaifullah’s colourful political career. At one of the shuras organised by McDonald, the district leader had been left in no doubt about how people felt about his rule. They made some pretty strong accusations’, said McDonald. They were pointing at him, saying, “You’ve done nothing for your people. You’re here to line your own pockets.”’ The police present carefully noted the names of anyone who spoke out against their boss.

Zaifullah, though, seemed unconcerned by the criticism. He told McDonald afterwards that his accusers were ‘all Taliban’. Jamie Loden had had plenty of time to study Zaifullah. He felt that he had learned something important from their encounters about the subtleties of local power structures and the fluidity of interests and allegiances. ‘He wasn’t noticeably anti-government and he wasn’t pro-Taliban. He was just concerned with improving his own lot in life. In many ways what that operation illustrated for those who hadn’t appreciated it was the complexity of the Afghan problem.’ Anyone involved in development had to understand that ‘individuals in power will be corrupt to varying degrees, and their interests will be dictated by furthering their own influence or power’. There was a lesson there for everyone. ‘Perhaps some of the people and particularly the young soldiers thought that when you get to Afghanistan [the people you come across] are either good people or enemy. This made them appreciate that it is actually far more complex than that.’

Nonetheless, the Paras’ reporting of Zaifullah’s activities and attitudes had emphasised his unsuitability in the brave new world of good governance and accountability that they were there to promote. The stories also added evidence to the dossier piling up against his patron, Asadullah Khalid. Although the Canadian Foreign Minister’s candour concerning the Kandahar governor was interpreted in the media as a blunder, his remarks could not be ignored. Four months after the Paras left, Khalid was sacked and Zaifullah was fired with him.

The Paras got back to KAF to a warm welcome from Major General Lessard. For a while Sohil Laram III was talked of as a model influence mission. But long-term success required continuity of commitment and energy. The British were replaced in Hutal by soldiers drawn from Portugal’s contribution to the ISAF force. There had been some uncertainty about the date of their arrival following discussions about the terms and conditions of their deployment. The Portuguese had requested the same standards of comfort that they were used to in KAF. They included canteen-quality food and an ice-cream machine. They also wanted air-conditioning units for their accommodation and a cash dispensing machine. The requests were all rejected.

On 24 April the Portuguese arrived in Hutal. ‘B’ Company under Stu McDonald were there to conduct the handover. The new arrivals went to the now almost completed FOB. The Portuguese commander announced that he and his men belonged to a crack unit, a claim that was met with some surprise by the Paras. ‘They were overweight, sweaty and wore very tight uniforms,’ said one. ‘They did not look like serious soldiers.’ The commander sought confirmation from McDonald that the Paras patrolled in vehicles. McDonald replied that they patrolled on foot. The commander said that they would be operating mounted patrols as they were ‘only a company strong’. McDonald pointed out that the Paras were only in Hutal in company strength themselves.

Later that day a convoy arrived bearing the Portuguese stores. The Paras watched them unloading the containers. ‘When they cracked the first one open it was full of booze,’ said one surprised onlooker. That night the newcomers strung up lights and held a party. In the morning the Paras waited at their base to formally hand over to their replacements. At the appointed hour no one had appeared. After twenty minutes, a platoon commander arrived who seemed the worse for wear from the previous night’s revelry. McDonald left ‘with a twinge of sadness…we genuinely felt we were making a difference in the latter stages’. At least some of the local people would agree with that assessment. As always in southern Afghanistan, the question was: how long would it last?

5 Hunting the Hobbit (#ulink_655c2420-8e4c-5012-ac15-c2d01fe0f1a2)

A successful influence operation brought its own satisfaction, but so too did a good fight. It was a prospect that the soldiers looked forward to. No one joined the Parachute Regiment who did not relish the chance of combat. The news that they were to be sent on a risky daylight mission to grab a Taliban commander who had so far eluded the grasp of special forces snatch squads was very welcome.

The operation required exhaustive planning and crisp timing and coordination if it was going to come off. The target was Haji Sultan Agha, code name ‘the Hobbit’. The ID mugshot issued to the troops revealed that, unlike his Tolkien namesake, he had a glossy black moustache and grey beard, thick eyebrows and warm brown eyes. His guru-like appearance belied his reputation as the number-one bomb-maker in the Zari district, a bucolic stretch of vineyards and poppy fields that lay along the Arghandab river near Highway One. His activities had placed him on Regional Command South’s wanted list.

The task was given to ‘A’ Company, who had finished their tour of duty in Hutal and were in a holding pattern following the decision to suspend search operations in Band-e-Timor. The RCS planners were hoping that their luck would change with Operation ‘Sur Kor’ (‘Red House’). Specialist teams had launched several missions to collar the Hobbit and his men, who were believed to build the IEDs that were found constantly along Route Fosters, a track that led south off Highway One into the Green Zone.

The raiders had been dropped at a distance from their targets and tabbed in on foot, hoping to surprise them. Instead, when they reached the target compounds their quarry had disappeared. Once they found a group of males of fighting age still in their beds. But there was nothing to link them to any insurgency activities and the conclusion was the men had received a tip-off in time to clean up any evidence.

The Paras’ plan was based on boldness rather than stealth. According to Jamie Loden, ‘the idea was that we were going to go in in daylight and instead of putting down some way off to give them loads of warning time, we were going to land right on top of them and give them no chance of getting away’.

The hope was that they would be able to catch the Hobbit in the act of making his bombs. Intelligence reports said his IED factory was in a compound, one of a cluster that lay by a fast-flowing irrigation canal in the middle of some vineyards not far from Route Fosters. The location was named ‘Gold’. Three hundred and fifty metres to the west lay compound ‘Silver’, which was also believed to be connected to the Hobbit’s operation. Beyond that was ‘Bronze’, home to the band’s wives and children.

The site presented many practical difficulties. Landing on top of the target sounded like a good, if potentially dangerous, idea. The Taliban had so far managed to shoot down only one helicopter in southern Afghanistan, but it seemed only a matter of time before their luck improved. The immediate difficulty, though, was the terrain, which made landing a Chinook very difficult. The land to the south of the compound was more promising, but it was bounded by a canal. It was 6 feet deep and 5 wide and there was no question of even the most athletic soldier being able to jump across it burdened with body armour, weapon and the usual mountain of kit.

The only way across was via three footbridges which it was prudent to assume were mined. Clearing the route would take time, giving the Hobbit and his men the chance to escape. The pathways leading away from the compound were sheltered by trees which gave good cover. The problem facing Loden and his men was ‘how were we going to isolate these three compounds simultaneously to prevent anyone getting away and also land relatively close, given the limitations we had on landing zones?’

Finding a solution was complicated by the restrictions that the different elements taking part in the action placed on their men. Like almost every major operation in Afghanistan, Sur Kor was a multinational effort. The political benefits of having many nations engaged in the coalition to stabilise Afghanistan were often cancelled out by the military disadvantages as each contributing country imposed its own caveats on what its troops would and would not do.

In this case it was the British who were causing difficulties. The policy of the joint force command that controlled the RAF, army and navy helicopters was different to that of the pilots, who Loden had always found to be ‘fantastically willing and wanted to do everything we wanted’. British helicopters, though, were providing only part of the lift. Another two Chinooks were being supplied by the Dutch. Their commanders were willing to let their pilots land as close as physically possible to the compound walls.

The British imposed another condition on daylight assault operations. They insisted on especially thorough surveillance. These preparations took time, delaying the start. In the leaky atmosphere of KAF this was plenty of time for news of the operation to trickle out.

The operation was eventually slated for the morning of 16 April. Loden had 150 men in his group. As well as his own company platoons he could call on the heavy machine guns of the Fire Support Group (FSG) and a mortar team carrying three barrels. They were supported by explosives experts from the Royal Engineers, a Royal Military Police team, and an Afghan anti-drugs team. The force also included Corporal Sainaina Wailutu, a twenty-nine-year-old Fijian company clerk who had joined the British Army seven years before, to search any women they detained. Loden planned to fly one of his platoons in Sea King helicopters to the west of the compounds to cut off anyone fleeing in that direction. The others would put down in the Dutch helicopters next to objective ‘Gold’, where, it was hoped, they would find the Hobbit at work. Loden, his headquarters team and the mortar men would land in the British Chinooks in an open field several hundred metres to the north-east of the target, to mop up any fugitives and give indirect fire if needed. A reserve platoon of Canadians would be waiting to the south of the canal, providing a blocking force. The Canadians had a special interest in the operation. Route Fosters was one of their main access roads to the fighting area and they had suffered several casualties as a result of the Hobbit and his IEDs.

They took off from KAF at 7.30 a.m. Half an hour later the Chinook carrying the headquarters group settled on what looked like a firm, dry poppy field. The Paras scrambled down the ramp, high on adrenaline and excitement, and immediately sank up to their knees in mud. Next off was a quad bike, used to carry ammunition around the battlefield and extract casualties, which stuck fast in the glutinous soil.

At the same time, the Dutch helicopters were touching down inside Gold compound only 33 metres from the main building. 8 Platoon, the company point men, bundled out of the back door, crouching and levelling their rifles as soon as they hit the ground, bracing for the first gust of AK47 rounds. But if anyone was inside the house they were holding their fire. As the Chinooks lifted off, they advanced cautiously towards the silent, mud-walled building. The platoon commander, Lieutenant Lev Wood, approached the door with an Afghan anti-drugs officer and peered into the dark and stuffy interior. ‘The place was completely bare,’ said Wood later. ‘It was as if it had been stripped of everything.’ They moved on to the outhouses. Several of them were piled to the roof with bundles of dried marijuana, which in an area awash with opium was considered hardly worth mentioning.

The Paras pushed on rapidly to Silver compound, leaving the engineers and military police team to go through the house. At the second location they found about twenty women and children but no fighting-age males. It was the same at Bronze. The adrenaline fizz subsided. The soldiers resigned themselves to a day of combing through the grape storage sheds and numerous mud-wall enclosures that dotted the fields and vineyards, searching for weapons and stores. It was a delicate task. The Canadians, who had been operating in the area since 2006, warned them of the risk of booby traps in the grape houses. They were also on the alert for IEDs laid along the pathways, covered by innocuous-looking cooking pots. The insurgents had developed a technique by which they waited for a patrol to approach then buried a small plastic anti-personnel mine just below the track surface and near the hidden bomb. The pressure of a footfall would set off the mine and detonate the bigger charge.

But just as they were about to begin the search, the Taliban announced their presence. Back at the helicopter landing site (HLS), Company Sergeant Major Andy Schofield was supervising the effort to extract the quad bike from the mud. At 8.45 a.m. their work was abandoned as bullets began to buzz around them. The fire was coming from the fields to the north but no one could see the gunmen. The HQ group and mortar team who had set up near by began shooting back. Corporal Wailutu was caught in the open next to the quad bike when the firefight began. Normally her duties kept her behind a computer in the company administration office in Colchester. She had been sent to Afghanistan for a one-month tour; now she was flat on her stomach in the middle of a soggy poppy field with only the stranded quad for cover while rounds whipped over her head. ‘I’d never been in a contact before,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t help feeling that one of the rounds was going to get me. I didn’t want to risk putting my head up to see what was going on. I just lay there with my face down in the mud waiting for it to stop.’ Eventually, when the firing faded, she ran over to the treeline to join the others.

Loden had moved down to Gold compound. He was on the roof of the main building when the shooting started. Amid the flat crack of rifle fire he heard a sound he remembered only too well. The Taliban were engaging with RPGs. ‘It reminded me immediately of Sangin,’ he said. ‘There was the old pop and whizz and this thing went flying over the top. Everyone ducked. We heard the bang behind us and that was that.’

Loden’s initial thought was that the Taliban were preparing to attack. Something was hidden in their base that was so valuable to them they were prepared to launch a full-on assault to recapture it. The pilot of an Apache attack helicopter that had been on station overhead since the start of the operation reported seeing men entering and leaving what appeared to be a bunker system. It was some distance away, however, 1500 metres to the north of Gold compound, and too far to pose an immediate threat.

The shooting began to fade but Loden was concerned that the HQ group and mortar team, who had not yet had time to set up their barrels, might come under attack again. He ordered Lev Wood to stop searching the compounds and to take his men over to the HLS.

More reports were coming in from the Apache. At 9.04, nearly twenty minutes after the initial contact, the pilot picked up further activity around the bunker. Eight men were moving around outside. He described seeing ‘a guy walking away from it, going a certain distance out, putting something in the dirt, coming back’. Loden surmised that he was laying a mine and that the inhabitants of the bunker ‘were preparing themselves for a fight’. Eight minutes later the pilot spotted six men entering the bunker through a hole in the wall. The pilot was eager to engage. Instead of requesting permission from the company commander on the ground, however, he asked for clearance from Kandahar. The killing of innocent civilians by Coalition forces had soured relations between President Karzai, America and ISAF, and the president was insisting greater care be taken, particularly in air attacks. The helicopter had to wait while the request was passed up the chain of command. Eventually the message came back that the pilot was not to engage.

As Loden absorbed this, Kandahar passed on an intelligence alert, stating that the Hobbit was still in the area and was holed up at a location 800 metres to the north. The report gave a rough location. British troops operated with maps taken from aerial photographs on which all the features were numbered. The trouble with the map in Loden’s hands was that the imagery had been captured eighteen months before at the start of the Afghan winter. In the meantime foliage had grown, compounds had been built up and knocked down and the reality in front of him sometimes differed markedly from the representation. Eventually he matched the reference to the landscape and made his next move. It seemed clear that if the Apache was not going to take out the bunker they would have to do so themselves. By pushing forward they were also moving towards where the Hobbit was said to be lying up. Loden decided to order an ‘advance to contact’.

He would need all his men. He called the Canadians and asked them to cross the canal and secure the compounds, freeing up his two platoons to come forward. They gathered for a conference at the HLS. The bunker would have to be dealt with before they could move on to the Hobbit’s supposed location. To reach the bunker meant passing through a straggle of compounds connected by a long alleyway.

The lead section had gone only a few dozen metres when a gunman popped up from behind a compound wall ten metres away and sprayed AK47 fire in their direction. ‘How the hell he missed I have no idea,’ said Loden. ‘He was that close that he really should have hit someone.’ The Paras hit the ground. After a few minutes, Sergeant Shaun Sexton from 2 Platoon took one of his men, raced forward to the door of the compound and flung in a grenade. When the smoke cleared they peered in. The only thing visible was a tethered goat, which looked up calmly from its feed to check out the intruders.

The advance continued. The Paras came to an irrigation canal, part of the web of arteries and capillaries that channelled the waters of the Arghandab into the vineyards and poppy fields. It was too wide to jump. As they waded across, someone noticed a plastic disc glinting on the stream bed. It looked like an antipersonnel mine. Everybody hopped rapidly on to the opposite bank.

The landscape was empty now. The workers who had been dotted about the fields when the helicopters first arrived had all disappeared. Occasionally a head would pop up on a distant rooftop as a Taliban dicker tried to spot the Paras’ movements. Each time he would be scared away by a volley of rifle fire.

The Apache had gone back to KAF to refuel, taking its devastating Hellfire missiles with it. Loden halted the company 400 metres south-west of the bunker. He told Lev Wood to take his platoon forward while the rest provided covering fire. They set off across the fields until they came to a wall and ditch. One section ‘went firm’ behind the cover while the other, led by Corporal Shane Coyne, set off on a crouching run straight towards the low, humped structure that merged almost invisibly with the surrounding earth and mud. They hurled grenades at the firing slits and doorways and threw themselves down to avoid the blast. When they raised their heads there was no returning fire. Coyne closed on the bunker and ducked inside. The place stank of cordite from the explosion. As the smoke and dust subsided they could see that the place was empty.