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Authors: Christian Hill
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want to go in the front vehicle,” said one of the soldiers. “That’s the one that always gets blown up.”
He was joking, apparently, but then again he wasn’t. Ali and I squeezed into the back of the third Jackal.
We rolled out of the front gate, straight into the traffic of Highway 1. The tarmac road was arguably the most important in Afghanistan, covering over 2,000 kilometres, connecting Kabul to Kandahar. Nearly half of the country’s population lived within fifty kilometres of it. As we sped through the town of Gereshk, we overtook countless tractors, buses and flatbed trucks. The squadron had been conducting regular patrols along a seventy-kilometre section of the route for the past five months, deterring insurgents from laying IEDs. Security incidents had dropped, and the number of road users was growing steadily.
Two kilometres to the east of Gereshk we turned off Highway 1 and parked up alongside a building site. Dozens of Afghan males ranging from boys to elders were constructing a bazaar, laying the bricks for a series of shops. They’d only just finished the foundations, but it still gave us plenty of decent photo and filming opportunities. We all climbed out of our Jackals and patrolled through the dusty site on foot, following Lieutenant Charlie Talbot, the troop commander. He was a photo and filming opportunity in himself, his fierce eyes, sculpted cheekbones and shock of blond hair giving him the look of a soldierly Billy Idol. With the help of his Afghan interpreter, he talked to the builders as they went about their workin the morning sunshine. Russ followed him closely, recording for posterity their stilted chats about building schedules and security.
After half an hour we left the site and headed out into the greenery of the poppy fields. We patrolled in single file (the “Afghan snake”, as we called it), careful to follow in each other’s footsteps, even when crossing through the streams. We passed the occasional farmer along the way, tending to his poppy crop, but otherwise it was quiet.
We stayed out in the fields for an hour before returning to the Jackals. As we climbed back into our seats, we heard over the radio the ANA coming under fire about two kilometres to the south-east. They had been destroying a field of poppies – part of a programme known as Government-Led Eradication (GLE) – when they came under attack.
GLE was not something we got involved in. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai had given the initiative his full backing, but it was hugely unpopular with the Afghan people. No compensation was offered to the farmers, many of whom were forced to grow poppy by the Taliban (who had little sympathy for farmers with destroyed crops). ISAF was highly critical of the initiative, but reluctant to intervene. Afghanistan was supposed to be governing itself, and we were supposed to be taking more of a back seat.
Still, Charlie thought it wise to maintain a presence in the vicinity of the contact, just in case it spilt out onto Highway 1. We started up the Jackals and took off east down the road, weaving in and out of traffic for another ten minutes before arriving at an ANA checkpoint. It was a pitiful compound, right on the side of the road, with barely any shade and hundreds of flies. A handful of grim-faced Afghan soldiers watched us closely as we parked in the yard and dismounted. Charlie went inside to speak to thecheckpoint commander, while the rest of us took off our boots and wrung out our socks, still wet from the earlier stream crossings. It was 1 p.m. now, and getting uncomfortably hot. I sat on a low wall in the brutal sunlight, watching the steam rise from my empty boots, trying to ignore the growing number of flies buzzing around my pale feet.
Eventually Charlie finished his chat with the ANA commander. He emerged from the commander’s “office” – a murky room in a corner of the checkpoint’s headquarters – looking unimpressed.
“What a miserable
He was joking, apparently, but then again he wasn’t. Ali and I squeezed into the back of the third Jackal.
We rolled out of the front gate, straight into the traffic of Highway 1. The tarmac road was arguably the most important in Afghanistan, covering over 2,000 kilometres, connecting Kabul to Kandahar. Nearly half of the country’s population lived within fifty kilometres of it. As we sped through the town of Gereshk, we overtook countless tractors, buses and flatbed trucks. The squadron had been conducting regular patrols along a seventy-kilometre section of the route for the past five months, deterring insurgents from laying IEDs. Security incidents had dropped, and the number of road users was growing steadily.
Two kilometres to the east of Gereshk we turned off Highway 1 and parked up alongside a building site. Dozens of Afghan males ranging from boys to elders were constructing a bazaar, laying the bricks for a series of shops. They’d only just finished the foundations, but it still gave us plenty of decent photo and filming opportunities. We all climbed out of our Jackals and patrolled through the dusty site on foot, following Lieutenant Charlie Talbot, the troop commander. He was a photo and filming opportunity in himself, his fierce eyes, sculpted cheekbones and shock of blond hair giving him the look of a soldierly Billy Idol. With the help of his Afghan interpreter, he talked to the builders as they went about their workin the morning sunshine. Russ followed him closely, recording for posterity their stilted chats about building schedules and security.
After half an hour we left the site and headed out into the greenery of the poppy fields. We patrolled in single file (the “Afghan snake”, as we called it), careful to follow in each other’s footsteps, even when crossing through the streams. We passed the occasional farmer along the way, tending to his poppy crop, but otherwise it was quiet.
We stayed out in the fields for an hour before returning to the Jackals. As we climbed back into our seats, we heard over the radio the ANA coming under fire about two kilometres to the south-east. They had been destroying a field of poppies – part of a programme known as Government-Led Eradication (GLE) – when they came under attack.
GLE was not something we got involved in. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai had given the initiative his full backing, but it was hugely unpopular with the Afghan people. No compensation was offered to the farmers, many of whom were forced to grow poppy by the Taliban (who had little sympathy for farmers with destroyed crops). ISAF was highly critical of the initiative, but reluctant to intervene. Afghanistan was supposed to be governing itself, and we were supposed to be taking more of a back seat.
Still, Charlie thought it wise to maintain a presence in the vicinity of the contact, just in case it spilt out onto Highway 1. We started up the Jackals and took off east down the road, weaving in and out of traffic for another ten minutes before arriving at an ANA checkpoint. It was a pitiful compound, right on the side of the road, with barely any shade and hundreds of flies. A handful of grim-faced Afghan soldiers watched us closely as we parked in the yard and dismounted. Charlie went inside to speak to thecheckpoint commander, while the rest of us took off our boots and wrung out our socks, still wet from the earlier stream crossings. It was 1 p.m. now, and getting uncomfortably hot. I sat on a low wall in the brutal sunlight, watching the steam rise from my empty boots, trying to ignore the growing number of flies buzzing around my pale feet.
Eventually Charlie finished his chat with the ANA commander. He emerged from the commander’s “office” – a murky room in a corner of the checkpoint’s headquarters – looking unimpressed.
“What a miserable
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