Ground Truth: 3 Para Return to Afghanistan. Patrick Bishop
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leaders. But the apparent separation of structures did not greatly simplify operations for ISAF and the British. America was the senior partner in NATO and insisted on following its own instincts and methods, even when these clashed with the approach that the British were trying to pursue.
The lines of command inside ISAF itself were complex, an inevitable result, apologists would say, of the number of nations involved in the alliance. There would be occasions on 3 Para’s tour when they suffered as a result of the friction caused by the machine’s numerous moving parts. A bigger problem was the differing degrees of commitment that the participants brought to the mission. Most countries were anxious to keep their troops out of the firing line, and all operations were subject to ‘national caveats’, which meant that governments held a veto on the use of their troops in missions that they regarded as unsound or too risky. The fighting was essentially done by the Americans, the British and the Canadians, with gallant support from small nations including Denmark, Holland, Romania and Estonia and special-forces contributions from the likes of Australia and Poland.
In the spring of 2008, ISAF’s Regional Command South (RCS) was under the command of a Canadian, Major General Marc Lessard, who arrived at his post in February. Lessard had more bureaucratic than operational experience. He had seen no combat, unless you counted a spell commanding a UN Protection Force battalion in the comparatively quiet arena of Croatia in 1993 and 1994. He was regarded by the Paras as pleasant and capable with a managerial approach to leadership. He had responsibility for an enormous swathe of Afghanistan, made up of the four provinces stretching from Zabul in the east on the Pakistan frontier, across Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand to Nimruz on the Iranian border in the west. He had only 12,000 troops at his disposal. As the RCS Reserve Battlegroup, 3 Para were to provide an emergency force that could be helicoptered in anywhere to do anything. Their task was described as ‘full-spectrum’. It involved, according to John Boyd, ‘addressing the threat as it matured, going wherever the enemy decides to raise its profile’.
They would also be used to try to stretch the thinly spread ISAF presence more widely across the RCS domain. ‘If there was an area that we hadn’t managed to influence because troops had not been there for some time,’ said Stu McDonald, ‘we were all clear that that’s where we were likely to be sent.’ Given the scale of the military task in southern Afghanistan, it was clear that the battalion was going to be kept very busy.
Towards the end of March, the Paras set off on their first mission. They were going to a place that carried dark historical associations for the British Army. Maywand, in the far west of Kandahar province, was the site of an ignominious defeat. On 27 July 1880, on a sun-baked desert plain during the second Anglo-Afghan war, a British and Indian force was smashed by an army of Afghans. Nearly a thousand of the 2500 troops were killed. The battle was still remembered locally. According to legend, among the victorious fighters was a woman called Malalai, who was killed in the battle. The Taliban, overcoming their habitual, murderous misogyny, revered her as a heroine.
Now the British were back and little had changed, physically or culturally, since their last visit. Maywand was a good place to expand ISAF’s area of operations in Kandahar province. Until now, the Canadians, who made up most of Major General Lessard’s combat troops, had concentrated on Panjwaii, a densely cultivated area west of Kandahar city. It had been infiltrated by the Taliban, whom successive operations had failed to dislodge. The arrival of a substantial British force would allow Lessard to broaden his horizons. The insurgents were believed to have a presence in the Maywand area. But the operation was less concerned with fighting than ‘influence’, persuading the local population that their best chance for a secure and prosperous future was to lend their support to the government of Afghanistan. It was a perfect opportunity for the Paras to show that, contrary to the assertions of their critics, they were comfortable with the ‘warm and fuzzy stuff.’
Their efforts would be centred on Hutal, the administrative centre of Maywand district. Maywand lay on the border with Helmand. Afghanistan’s main east-west road, Highway One, ran through it, connecting Kandahar with the important southern Helmand towns of Gereshk and Lashkar Gah. Until now ISAF troops had paid only fleeting visits. The idea was to establish a strong presence in Maywand that would act as a link in the chain of ‘development zones’, the bubbles of relative safety that the alliance was trying to form around Kandahar, Gereshk and Lashkar Gah.
Hutal was a town by the standards of the region. It had a few run-down public buildings, a school, a number of mosques and a population of several thousand—no one knew exactly how many—living in a cluster of mud and breeze-block compounds. It was close to the Arghandab river system, which irrigated a wide swathe of cultivated land. The main crop in the springtime was opium poppies.
To the south-west of the town was the district of Band-e-Timor. This lay across an important route used by the Taliban to get men and supplies from safe areas in Pakistan to the south to the Sangin Valley in the north, where they had been fighting since 2006. They used the same route to take out opium to Pakistan. It was thought that the absence of foreign troops made Band-e-Timor a potential haven for fighters recuperating from their battles in neighbouring Helmand.
Hutal, which appeared on some maps as Maywand town, occupied a strategic location on Highway One, which ran through the middle of the town. This was a vital social and economic artery, but driving on it required strong nerves. Travellers ran a high risk of running into Taliban checkpoints where they would be forced to pay a ‘tax’, or bandits who simply robbed them. The road was also studded with IEDs, planted by the insurgents to menace the convoys that supplied Camp Bastion, the large British base in the desert north of Lashkar Gah.
The mission was code-named Sohil Laram III. All designations were in Pashto now, to give a more ‘local’ feel. The Paras approached the task with enthusiasm. Most of the soldiers who had been there in 2006 felt sympathy and concern for the people they were fighting among. They were moved by the harshness and poverty they saw in the villages and fields. They were contemptuous of the indifference and cynicism of those who supposedly ruled them, and the cruelty of the Taliban, who wanted to take their place. Their experience in Hutal was to teach them that anyone going to Afghanistan with good intentions should expect to be disappointed, not least by Afghans who were supposed to be on your side.
3 Para had two tasks. They were to secure Hutal so engineers could build a forward operating base (FOB) there. The base would then be taken over by the Afghan National Army (ANA), which would secure the town and the neighbouring stretches of Highway One. The Paras were also to roam the neighbouring district of Bande-Timor, disrupting Taliban operations, fighting them wherever they found them, and preventing them from launching attacks on Hutal. Initially ‘A’ Company were to take charge of the town while ‘B’ Company dealt with the countryside. Later they would swap roles. If the operation succeeded it would establish a centre of stability and security and lay the foundations for growth. The long-term intention was to make the local people friends of the government and their foreign backers, and enemies of the insurgents.
Sohil Laram was, said Williams, ‘very much an influence operation’. But influencing the people of Hutal and the surrounding countryside was going to be a delicate task. Afghans had grown to mistrust foreigners and their extravagant promises. They had been listening to propaganda prophesying good times ever since 2001. In many places little had happened. In large parts of southern Afghanistan things had got drastically worse.
The Paras began deploying on 26 March. At first light, ‘B’ Company were dropped by helicopter in Band-e-Timor. ‘A’ Company had set off by road shortly before. It was less than a hundred kilometres from KAF, but the journey took twelve hours. There were ninety vehicles all told, a mixture of Viking and Vector troop carriers, Canadian Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) from the Kandahar Task Force and low-loader lorries carrying the stores. There was also a detachment of ANA troops mounted on Ford Ranger pick-up trucks, the advance party for the force that would eventually man the FOB that was to be built in town. They travelled with a Canadian mentoring team.
The convoy moved without headlights.