3 Para. Patrick Bishop
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up and down the valley.
The possibility of putting a British company in there had been discussed. But Tootal was wary of placing his men in a fixed location where half their energies would go into defending themselves. His preference was to man the base with Afghan National Army troops who had passed through training courses that, in theory at least, had turned them into decent soldiers. They then received further instruction from British OMLTs (Operational Mentoring Liaison Teams) provided by soldiers from 7 RHA. The CO of 7 RHA, Lieutenant Colonel David Hammond, was happy to put an Afghan battalion, under the control of his OMLTs, into Robinson.
That would leave a Para company free to patrol the area, supporting the ANA and carrying out their own operations, engaging with the local people and generating a climate of security. They would spread the message about development and prepare the ground for the PRT, but also fight the Taliban where they found them.
This arrangement would be easier to sustain than a fixed presence. The force’s movements would be unpredictable and, it was hoped, keep the enemy off balance. It required fewer men than the labour-intensive business of garrisoning a fixed base. Above all, the risk of getting bogged down was minimised.
Before the operation could be launched, however, the Taliban seized the initiative. On 18 May, gunmen launched a fierce attack on the district centre in Musa Qaleh, a small but symbolically and strategically important town in northern Helmand. About twenty members of the Afghan National Police (ANP) were killed. Musa Qaleh was 60 miles south of Baghran, which was already in insurgent hands. The attack suggested that the Taliban were now set on a campaign to seize the towns of the north, and use them as a springboard for the conquest of the whole area.
The operation was intended as more than just a challenge to the Afghan government. Mohammed Hanif, a spokesman for the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, boasted to The Times: ‘We are here to destroy the British. We will hunt and kill them. We will not let them go back to England and say that they have defeated the Afghans.’ It was telling that he couched the fight in nationalist terms. For propaganda purposes, the Taliban presented themselves as patriots rather than Islamic warriors. Hanif’s claim that ‘the British don’t have the capacity to fight us face to face’ suggested a degree of confidence that the new arrivals lacked the resources to challenge the Taliban head-on.
Soon after he spoke, the Taliban had an indirect encounter with British troops. The Pathfinders, 16 Air Assault Brigade’s elite reconnaissance unit, had been in the Musa Qaleh area at the time of the attack, scoping out possible landing sights. They were ordered to go and give what help they could to the beleaguered policemen. They arrived in darkness as the battle was dying out. It had lasted eight hours, but eventually the Taliban had pulled back. The next morning the ANP, bolstered by the deputy governor, Amir Akhunzada, and his personal militia, who had arrived from the south, piled into pick-up trucks and set off for Baghran, where the attackers had apparently retreated. The thirty-strong Pathfinder force followed in 2.5-ton Pinzgauer troop carriers and armoured Land Rovers. As they approached, they announced their arrival with a show of force. A coalition aircraft dropped a 2,000lb bomb on a hillside near the town. This prompted the Taliban to flee. The ANP then went into town for a shura with the elders.
The Taliban had not given up, however. Intelligence revealed that they had prepared five bombs along the convoy’s return route. A suicide bomber was also standing by. The convoy avoided these traps but was still caught in an ambush that left two of the Afghan police dead and several wounded. The Pathfinders’ sergeant major, Andy Newell, was impressed by the ANP’s determination. ‘They weren’t shy of getting amongst it,’ he said. ‘One of them was shot through the calf and one through the shoulder and after they were patched up they wanted to get straight back to the fighting which I thought was quite hard of them.’ He had also had a chance to see the Taliban close up. ‘They put up a good fight,’ he said. ‘They obviously had some tactical awareness and knew how to use the country.’ The clash ended when the Pathfinders called in an air strike by American A-10 Thunderbolts. After the Afghan casualties had been evacuated by helicopter the convoy carried on back to Musa Qaleh with no further trouble from the Taliban.
The poppy-harvest lull was definitely over. On 20 May, a four-vehicle convoy carrying Afghan soldiers, their American trainers and French troops was attacked on Route 611, which connected the important towns of Kajaki and Sangin. Initial reports indicated that up to fifteen ANA soldiers and two Frenchmen had been killed. The convoy eventually limped into FOB Robinson and a Chinook with a medical Immediate Response Team (IRT) on board was flown up to Bastion to bring back the casualties.
A number of Afghan soldiers were thought to be stranded somewhere along the route, at the mercy of the Taliban. Tootal was asked to send a force to secure the area and rescue the remaining men. It was a job for his ‘Ops One’ company, who were on permanent short notice to jump off on a mission. It was a rotating task and at the time ‘A’ Company were in the role. They set off in two Chinooks, protected by Apache attack helicopters, which were going into operational service with British troops for the first time. Finding the remnants of the convoy, if any, was going to be difficult. The French survivors, who were badly shaken by their ordeal, gave different grid locations for where the attack had taken place.
In fact there had been several attacks along a long stretch of road and there was no obvious place to put down. Looking down from the Chinook as it scudded at 60 feet over the valley floor, it seemed to Will Pike, the OC of ‘A’ Company, that the rescue plan was ‘enormously difficult and the risk threshold was high’. The road ran along the Helmand river. On either side was a swath of irrigated land, about a mile wide, of orchards, small fields and enclosures, criss-crossed by irrigation ditches. ‘It was all very flat, very, very difficult country to operate in,’ he said. ‘It’s very good for them, but hard for us to get in there in any secure way, or be able to surprise them. It’s a maze and you are facing a threat from three hundred and sixty degrees.’ They carried on a fruitless search until low fuel forced them back to Bastion.
The following day, at first light, they set off again. This time they found three of the four trucks in the convoy. Two were burned out. An Apache fired a Hellfire missile into the last one to destroy any sensitive equipment that might remain.
There was no sign of bodies, but the following day local people handed over the corpses of the two dead Frenchmen and the nine missing Afghans to the troops at FOB Robinson.
Afterwards, the story of what had happened became clearer. A first attempt to drive south had been made on 19 May. Trucks carrying ANA troops, an American team who was mentoring them and the French forces had set off from Kajaki, near the hydroelectric dam that generated electricity for the province, for FOB Robinson and soon came under fire. Two vehicles were lost but no one was hurt. The convoy turned round and tried again the following day. The plan was to take the main highway for the first leg of the route then branch off east into the desert to avoid contact with the locals. Some vehicles appeared to have missed their turning, blinded by the clouds of dust thrown up by the trucks ahead of them. The Taliban had been warned of their approach and proceeded to shoot at them along a 6-mile stretch of road.
When the incident was analysed it revealed some disturbing realities. It underlined the fact that any vehicles moving along the roads of Helmand were liable to attack. The battle group was already aware of the risks from IEDs. But this was a full-on ambush. It made even clearer the value of helicopters over convoys when inserting large groups of men or carrying out resupplies. Local people appeared to have joined enthusiastically in the Taliban attack. According to Pike, the survivors reported that ‘everyone was coming out of their houses and having a go – quite why, who knows – but the valley in that area kicked off’.
The search-and-recovery mission had used up precious helicopter hours. This meant a further delay in establishing the ‘Sangin effect’. As preparations resumed, another emergency blew up, requiring another diversion from the programme. A panicky message from the governor claimed that the town of Now Zad, about 60 miles north of his seat in Lashkar Gah, was in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban. It seemed the Taliban had not been deterred by the setback at Musa Qaleh on 18 May. Daoud’s office claimed that there had been several clashes and the police station in the centre of town had