No Worse Enemy (31 page)

‘They’re a cool family’, said the terp. ‘Many kids. We get permission to come in and use their compound.’ The marines called the terp Rock, because he liked rock
music. In among the marines, Rock looked like the happiest man in Helmand province. He sometimes tried too hard to please. Once, he ran up to me: he’d been ordered to tell the reporter what
the marines were going to do. ‘We gonna fuck right in asshole of Taliban right now. Got it?’ he said eagerly, then turned back to the marines ‘OK?’ Rock was skinny, with
bright, yellowy-green eyes and long eyelashes. Away from the marines, he revealed a sadness, at being away from his family and at seeing the suffering of the Afghans in Helmand province, that was
heart-breaking. He was also sad that the marines and large parts of the rest of the world saw Helmand and thought ‘Afghanistan’. He was from Mazar-e-Sharif, which, he kept telling
everyone, was a beautiful place with no war.

I counted at least fifteen kids, who trailed behind the woman wherever she went and gathered behind her legs when she stopped. The kids were dressed in bright colours; none looked like
they’d yet reached their teens. The woman wore a black veil that almost, but not quite, covered her black and grey hair. The small amount of hair revealed was shocking in a place as
conservative as Sangin. It gave the impression that she was a lone renegade, looking after all those kids and speaking to Rock and the marines.

‘Just tell the kids what we’re about to do, because I don’t want the kids to be scared’, said Zeimus, who had more trees left to blow up. A dozen huge explosions had
already shattered the compound’s few windows and terrified the kids.

‘Everything we do is controlled and they’re not gonna get hurt’, said Zeimus. ‘And tell them that whenever they hear gunfire to go inside. Because sometimes the Taliban
come here and shoot at us, so we shoot back. I’m gonna let the marines know there’s a family in here so we won’t fire in here.’ He thought for a second, then corrected
himself: ‘We’ll
try
not to fire over here. Tell her I’m sorry and I don’t mean no harm to her.’

‘It doesn’t matter’, said the woman, ‘we have no options, God has made us helpless. We have many children here, we are scared.’

‘Let her know that we’re trying to help the country out’, Zeimus replied.

‘God sees all that we do’, said the woman, ‘God is kind.’

‘We need it’, said Zeimus. ‘God is, you know ... the answer, so ... tell her thank you and I’m gonna go back to doing what I’ve been doing. Let her know we’re
just gonna clear some trees, then we’re gonna leave.’

Rock, who looked desperate to offer her something, said that if there were any damage to her home, she would be compensated. ‘I don’t want anything. My son has become martyred and I
want nothing, all we want is for you to leave’, she replied.

The slow, grinding pattern of the blasts, and the headaches they produced, were depressing enough. Now I saw even younger children, who hadn’t dared to come into the courtyard, hiding in
an archway, wincing at each blast. Rock spoke to the woman for some time, then walked towards me and took off his sunglasses. He struggled not to cry. ‘They’re sad because of everyday
blowing up, fighting, shooting ... It’s so hard ... so ... this is life in Afghanistan, see?’ He swallowed and loudly exhaled a breath: ‘I hope one day ... become
better.’

Zeimus walked back and shouted to the marines on the roof: ‘Alright, let’s roll.’

Rock waved at the woman and kids as they walked out of the gate.

‘I can’t hear shit’, said one marine.

‘Neither can I’, said another.

On Christmas Eve, as the calls to prayer echoed across Sangin and everything was painted blue by the last few minutes of daylight, the marines were told that the Taliban number
two commander in the district was about to drive right past their base. Everyone grabbed their rifles and jogged to the gate, putting on body armour and helmets as they went.

Several marines got into firing positions on the road. Others leaned against the wide, gravel-filled Hesco barriers that protected the base and looked through their sights. Zeimus screamed at a
boy walking across the road: ‘Keep going, fucking idiot.’

‘That’s him, that’s him!’ said a marine. ‘That’s his blue sedan right there!’

‘We see it.’

The car slowed, turned right and vanished.

‘He went down the alleyway, man’, said Zeimus.

‘He saw us. That’s why I told you I didn’t want to stand here’, said one of the marines in the road.

The light was about to fade completely but the marines wanted to go after the commander. Rock was told to call the ANA and get them to come out, in case the marines needed to search the
compounds the car had driven into. They refused, on the grounds that they hadn’t had a report on this mission. ‘Jesus Christ, this just happened five minutes ago we don’t have
time to do reports’, said Zeimus. A motorbike sped towards us. ‘Slow down pal, before you bump into a 203 round’, said Zeimus. The bike, carrying two little boys as well as the
driver, stopped. Next a white estate car pulled up, then another motorbike. ‘Tell them to fucking go’, said Zeimus, ‘they’re not bad guys.’

‘What a nice Christmas Eve, huh’, he said. ‘What’s this guy’s name?’

‘Er .... Mullah Shithead’, said Sergeant Giles, a tall, thin and quiet platoon leader who did yoga every morning. In many ways, he was Zeimus’s opposite.

‘He’s gone by now I bet. If he’s smart he’s walking right now.’

‘Those motherfuckers have got tunnels.’

‘Please’, said Zeimus, waiting for instructions, aching to be told he could go after the commander on foot, ‘we got the A-team out here, know what I’m saying?’

‘Can we go snatch his ass up?’ said another marine into his radio.

‘Negative. We’re on op minimise’, said the voice on the radio. ‘Come back inside.’

‘Roger’, said the marine, ‘request permission to enter friendly lines.’

‘Horseshit’, said another. They trudged back through the gates.

The marines weren’t doing much mentoring of the ANA. Reluctantly dragging a few soldiers with them on patrols was as much as they would do. Even then, they barely
tolerated them. Whereas the British OMLT involved a complete company of Brits living with a complete company of Afghans, the Marines just sent a couple of officers to the ANA base next door for
basic training. I joined the ANA’s first patrol. The two marines went out with them but the ANA were supposed to do everything.

Patrol Base Jamil was at the bottom of a low hill, which sat in front of a second, much bigger, hill. The marines had found almost twenty IEDs in the buildings on top of the bigger hill and been
shot at whenever they were close enough to be visible from the other side. The ANA planned to walk in a small loop around the back of the base, going no further than the small hill. In other words,
they wouldn’t be going where anything was likely to happen.

The two marines clearly hated their job. They looked suicidal with boredom as they slowly explained the basic instructions over and over again. They told the ANA officer to give a briefing in
front of a map, so that everyone would know the route. The ANA map hung next to an old British mural. That first OMLT must have gone through exactly the same process four years ago, although the
goal of their mission – an Afghan Army capable of securing the country on its own – looked as distant as ever.

‘We come out from here and walk this way’, said the ANA soldier who eventually conducted the briefing. ‘We go into this alley this way’, he moved his finger across the
map, ‘and speak to the people in that house. Understand?’

That was just a translation of a script. They were supposed to pick it up from there and complete the briefing on their own. After suffering a few attempts, the marines gave up and delivered the
essentials of the briefing: stay on the line of blue bottle tops or you’ll lose your legs (the marines had supplied the bottle tops); stay at least ten or fifteen metres behind the guy in
front of you; don’t be lazy; don’t leave your weapon on the floor, you need to be ready to fire; if you have to fire, don’t spray, take your time, aim and don’t waste your
shots.

The ANA Executive Officer gave a speech before they left. ‘Today, our own army is in command. When there is shooting, you should not move one step from your location.’ He had
authority and thought deeply between each sentence. ‘Treat people properly’, he demanded, ‘and don’t enter their homes for searches’ – something the marines did
constantly. I told one of the marines that the speech was impressive. ‘He just did that because you were here with a camera’, he said, wearily.

The ANA soldiers were handed tourniquets. They put them into the pockets below the knees of their trousers, still in their plastic wraps. One of the marines approached a soldier, took his
tourniquet, unwrapped it and put it in the soldier’s shoulder pocket. If they were hit by an IED, he explained, and lost their legs, they would also lose their tourniquet. The soldiers took
out their tourniquets, unwrapped them and half-heartedly tried to clip them to their chests. Then quickly put them back in their trouser pockets when the marine turned his back.

One ANA soldier took off his backpack, complaining that the rockets in it would explode if he were shot. That thought had occurred to him exactly as he lifted the backpack and realised how heavy
it was. ‘These are mines’, he said in protest and dumped the bag on the floor, with an expression of pain on his face, as if he’d been carrying it for hours. One of the marines
lunged towards him, leaning his face forward in perfect position for a head butt. He stopped, took off his sunglasses, managed to contain himself and said, ‘This is the world that you live
in. Marines carry this stuff every single day, you have to accept the risk to do your job outside the wire.’ The ANA soldier wouldn’t look at him; instead, he looked at the terp,
waiting for him to interpret.

‘If something happens to me, will you take the responsibility? They will explode if I’m hit by a bullet!’ he said. The ANA discussed whether or not the rockets would explode;
eventually, he was persuaded to put the bag back on, reluctantly. As he clipped the shoulder straps together across his chest, he looked back at the marine and said, ‘Fuck your mother’,
in Pashtu. That wasn’t translated. ‘You’re gonna be fine, it’s not gonna blow up’, said the marine.

Eventually, the ANA lined up and walked out of the front gate. An ANA sergeant, Samad, led the patrol. He waved a metal detector over every inch of ground as he walked slowly forward. Two
children were so bewildered as he walked by, followed by a US marine laying a trail of blue bottle tops, that one only just avoided falling off his bike. The other froze, his right hand on his hip
and his mouth hanging open.

As the ANA swept through an alleyway, two more boys approached, ignoring the bottle top trail. They crouched and helped scrape the surface earth away from where a trace of metal had been
detected. Further down the alley, the boys’ father came out. One of the marines, Second Lieutenant Martin Lindig spoke to him. ‘These guys’, he said, pointing to the ANA,
‘are having a
shura
on Friday and they’d really like you to come.’ The man expressed interest and the marine nodded to the ANA sergeant, asking him, ‘Do you have
anything you want to say?’ The sergeant shifted shyly, looked at his feet and said, ‘You told all of the things.’ Lindig sighed and shook the father’s hand: ‘have a
good day.’ He told the ANA to walk on.

We walked halfway up the first slope and waited for Sergeant Samad to clear a path ahead. An ANA soldier with a long bullet belt wrapped three times around his body approached me and posed for a
picture. He was wearing strange, World War II-style, flying goggles but had pulled the head strap underneath his ears and across the bottom of his neck, so that the lenses pointed up into the sky,
making him look demented. We waited a long time. We could see down into several families’ compounds, effectively depriving them of their privacy. They looked up at us with contempt as they
broke thin twigs for firewood.

As we walked back down the slope and towards the main road we passed a small, well-built mosque, with smooth, flat plastered walls and a new metal gate. The marines sent the ANA to knock on the
gate and ask to speak to the mullah. A man emerged, wearing a bright white turban and with a huge white cloak slung over his shoulder. His sideburns were also white but his long, thick beard was
black. The marines told the ANA sergeant to start a conversation but he just shuffled nervously and looked at his feet.

The man had no patience for training exercises but plenty he wanted to say. He started the conversation by saying his daughter had been shot in the shoulder by a stray bullet the day before and
was now in hospital in Lashkar Gar. The family had taken her there themselves, with no help either from the marines or the ANA. This should have focused the marines’ attention but the terp
translated only a fraction of what the man said, saying only that everyone was scared of the fighting and the bullets, especially the women and children.

‘Abduleem, why don’t you talk to him about some of those things’, said Lindig, nodding to the ANA sergeant, who still stared at his feet. He looked away, mumbling that he
didn’t speak Pashtu and the man didn’t speak Dari.

A car pulled up. The man said it was his uncle, the mullah, who should be allowed through. The mullah approached, shaking everyone’s hands, sizing them up as he went. He also wore a white
turban and a long white cloak but with a dark green army jacket on top. The mullah looked unsympathetic as the conversation continued. Lindig said that civilian casualties were the Taliban’s
fault, because they used civilians for cover. He added that this was a good sign, because it meant they were losing control in Sangin and becoming desperate. It also meant that the marines and ANA
were improving security.

The mullah smiled contemptuously, as if his suspicions had been confirmed, then spoke directly to the ANA sergeant. ‘There is no security beyond the road. They are just saying this to make
themselves happy. The Russians did the same. God willing they will suffer the same fate as the Russians.’ The ANA sergeant started to look really uncomfortable. ‘The Taliban are laying
mines here and there’, he said, without conviction.