8 October 2006

Britain pulls back on Helmand reconstruction

By Toby Harnden in Washington

THE GOVERNMENT has quietly withdrawn its senior development adviser from Helmand province, effectively crippling attempts to establish reconstruction projects promised to the Afghan people because of fears that it has become too dangerous.

Only four out of more than 20 British civilian posts in Helmand are currently filled, The Sunday Telegraph has learned, leaving Army commanders angry that the 19 British soldiers killed in the province since June may have died in vain.

When Tony Blair announced Britain’s deployment of 3,300 troops to Helmand in January, ministers said its purpose was to bring security and enable better policing and the building of new schools, hospitals and roads. Military leaders are dismayed that the civilian officials needed to oversee this have retreated from the troubled province - or simply have not arrived.

An Army officer who recently returned from Helmand said the harsh conditions and relative comfort of Kabul meant many British civilians were reluctant to leave the capital.

"If we can’t drag them away from their barbecues and beers in Kabul, then what we are doing in Helmand will be fatally undermined," he said. "We are creating the space for the development work to be done, but there is no one there to do it."

Wendy Phillips, Helmand development adviser for the Department for International Development (DfID), was recalled to Kabul in August and her successor Barry Kavanagh has been told to stay in the Afghan capital.

The senior Foreign Office adviser in Lash Kargah, provincial capital of Helmand, narrowly escaped injury last month when her vehicle was caught by a suicide bomb, but she is expected to return. It takes at least a day and requires a major security operation for an official to travel from Kabul to Lash Kargah, and defence sources said this meant there were delays in authorising key aid projects.

When the deployment was announced, it was said that it would be overseen by a "triumvirate" of the military, Foreign Office and DfID.

"Everything was sold on reconstruction and redevelopment but we were on the back foot militarily right from the start," said the Army officer. "The military are supposed to be working for DfID and the Foreign Office but you are lucky if you can get hold of any of them. They take so much leave that even the ones in post spend more than half their time away."

American officials have also expressed disquiet that DfID has withdrawn, while while United States Aid for International Development (USAid) personnel remain there.

"If you are in Kabul, you might as well be in London because communications are very poor," said a diplomat. "The plan was there for to be a major civilian component in Helmand but that hasn’t happened. There are 4,500 troops there and four civilians. That’s a pretty stark ratio."

Two British police officers each did two six-week stints in Helmand, but four posts for police advisers remain unfilled. A "quick impact projects officer" - a private contractor with an accountancy background - remains in Helmand, but has no authority to approve projects.

A spokesman for DfID, said its senior adviser had been "temporarily relocated" to Kabul. "We need to make a judgement on what our staff can achieve versus the risks they have to take," he said. "The intensity of fighting has meant that it has been difficult to deliver as much on development as we would have liked so far, but... we are only a few months in."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "There are no vacancies in the diplomatic staff, and in terms of advisers some posts have been filled and others are in the process of being filled."

23 July 2006

A translation device for woofs? It's barking...

LEAPING up at the door as we rang the bell, Pepsi, my sister-in-law’s boisterous black Lab – not previously known to be a Clint Eastwood fan – barked: “Go ahead, make my day!”

Clearly confused, my scruffy black mongrel Finn woofed back, “I can’t get my point across”, before adding plaintively: “Please be nice to me. I just want to be your friend.”

Welcome to the brave new world of Bow-Lingual, a Japanese (what else?) device (though it’s made in China) that breaks down the centuries-old barrier between man and beast by translating a canine’s every growl and whimper. Or so it’s makers claim.

Created by Dr Matsumi Suzuki of the Japan Acoustics Laboratory, whose research had indicated that dolphins communicated emotions through sounds, this gizmo records the “voiceprints” of dog barks from over 80 breeds plus “mix/other” for Finn and his ilk.

These doggy utterances are then analysed and divided into six categories – happiness, sadness, frustration, on-guard, assertiveness and neediness – before being translated into one of 200 pre-programmed phrases.

“Repeating yourself doesn’t help,” said Finn, somewhat cryptically, after I had fitted a small transmitter onto his collar. I pressed my hand-held receiver again. Woof: “I wish you made sense!”

According to Dr Suzuki, “sad” barks are in the 3000 to 5000 hertz range with no harmonic component while an angry bark concludes with a clear harmonic wave of up to 8000 hertz lasting 0.8 to 1.5 seconds.

Digitally recording bark samples in Japanese home, he took video footage of the dog’s behaviour and the context of what the dog was, er, saying. The result is a gadget that purports to unlock the deepest secrets of what we assume is a man’s best friend.

Finn, eight, seemed sceptical as I encouraged him to say more. His right ear pricked up, indicating – and eight years of perfect synchronicity between us means I am sure of this – something along the lines of: “What the hell are you doing?”

The Bow-Lingual begged to differ. “I’m strong, are you?” Finn was asking. He rolled on his back (owner’s translation: “I love you, I’m comfortable, let’s play”) before informing me: “You just don’t get it.”

Hmm. After all these years, does this dog simply not like me? Do all those walks, seaside holidays, pig’s ear treats and a comfy wicker basket count for nothing? And I thought it was cats that were the treacherous, on-the-take ones.

My nine-year-old American nephew Carter urged me not to be despondent. After all, he pointed out, Finn’s tail was wagging contentedly while he said all this. I looked into my hound’s limpid brown eyes; “It’s OK,” they said, I know it.

Being considerably more proficient with technical devices than his uncle, Carter was discovering some additional Bow-Lingual features. There was a “Home Alone” mode, he pointed out, that could record and translate your dog’s barks over the course of the day.

A “Medical Check” function dispensed “Top 10 Health Warning Signs” as well as “10 Signs of Cancer”. There were also training tips to be had.

We decided that maybe Finn was having an off day. So next we tested the Bow-Lingual on Pepsi and his sidekick Kramer, a 12-year-old Beagle-retriever cross. 

Now, I don’t need a Bow-Lingual to get the measure of Kramer. He’s an ailing, grumpy old man whose sole approach to life can be summed up as: “Food, now.” We fitted him up with the receiver. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” he said. “Careful who you mess with.”

But hang on a minute. This device was created using Japanese dogs and any fule kno, as Nigel Molesworth would have pointed out, that animals don’t speak the same language. British rosters, for instance, cry “Cock-a-doodle-do” in the morning while French ones call out: “Coquerico”

Communication, moreover, works both ways. We may have the Bow-Lingual but how do dogs work out what we’re saying? There is a Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoon that shows a man scolding his dog, saying: “Okay, Ginger! I've had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!?"

The second panel, titled "What they hear", shows the same scene but this time the word balloon says: “Blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah."

Finn, of course, is cleverer than that. Like many dogs, he has dedicated much of his life to intensive study of his master’s behaviour, with a sub-specialisation in “signals of an impending walk”.

Very occasionally I can trick him but he has come to know how close I am to going out and whether he is coming along too. There is something in my pre-evening-out ritual that persuades him it is not even worth coming to the door when I depart.

Finn instinctively knows my moods. Some years ago, when I returned home after several days covering a horrific bombing in Northern Ireland, I sat motionless on the sofa and reflected on what I had seen and those who had died. As the tears welled up in my eyes, I felt Finn’s head resting gently on my thigh in a gesture of comfort and understanding.

“This thing is pretty ridiculous,” pronounced Carter as my wife Cheryl made barking noises into the Bow-Lingual receiver that were variously translated as “I might bite!” and “Pay attention to me!”

Finn had had enough. He gave out a low growl at Pepsi that was translated as: “#$%&!!!!!”. OK, I concede that he might have heard me swear once or twice.

Out in the park, Finn was full of beans. The new game of making him bark and then laughing what he had said had worn rather thin. “I’m feeling a little odd,” he said, as I threw him a stick.

He wasn’t the only one. I was getting some strange looks from people no doubt wondering why I seemed to be communicating with my dog via walkie talkie. Finn came bounding back over to me with the stick in his mouth. He leaned against me as I crouched down to stroke him. Silently, he leaned against me and looked up.

The Bow-Lingual was still in its “waiting for a bark” mode. “Don’t worry - it’s you and me together, through life,” Finn seemed to be telling me, via ESP. Then, and I swear this was not my imagination, he whispered: “Ditch that funny plastic thing.”

The Spectator, 4 February 2006

Waiting for the British

Lashkar Gar , Afghanistan; In a dusty clearing on the outskirts of Helmand's capital, the US army's Provincial Reconstruction Team had set up a mobile aid station. As we approached, a Humvee gunner swung his machine-gun towards us and shouted angrily, 'Get back, get back!'

We were clad in shalwar-kameez and sporting scrubby beards. We may not have fooled many locals but to the American soldier, viewing the world through his wraparound sunglasses, we looked like Afghans.

Moments later, Captain Alan Dollison strode over to welcome us. 'There's some good stuff going on here, ' he grinned, pointing over at his colleagues - squarejawed doctors from California treating Afghans for their ailments and veterinarians with buzz cuts worming a sorry collection of sheep.

'The biggest change in Helmand is we've got a new governor and he's got some really good ideas, wants to root out corruption, stop poppy-growing and get rid of whatever enemy there is here, ' he said. Helmand, where the British troops are to be deployed, was 'nowhere near as bad as people want to make out'. In eight months, he had experienced only one Improvised Explosive Attack, and his 70-strong unit had suffered no casualties.

It did indeed seem like a benign scene - the enthusiastic, cando soldiers and the grateful natives queuing to be examined. But Hamid, a lean man with piercing blue eyes and a beard as black as his turban, could only giggle when asked what he thought of the American efforts. 'These guys are Taleban, ' he said, pointing to the men being treated by the doctors. 'They will take the free American medicine today and go off and plant a bomb tomorrow.'

According to the few Western aid and contract workers brave enough to have remained in Helmand, the American Provincial Reconstruction Team had made little impact. 'Whenever they are engaged [by insurgents], they just break contact and leave the area, ' said one. 'Then the next day the Taleban strikes at a soft target in the same place. Those kind of tactics cost lives. Only strength is respected here.'

Whether the 2,000 or so British troops who will be stationed in Helmand as part of Operation Herrick will be allowed to project strength is a moot point. The Blair government has been at pains to emphasise that British troops will not be engaging in 'search and destroy' missions. Instead, we have been told, our boys will be engaged in anti-drugs operations, supporting the Afghan government and providing a reassuring presence for the law-abiding population who are sick of thuggery and intimidation.

On the ground, however, the mission is viewed somewhat differently. Colonel Gordon Messenger, who led 40 Commando into Basra during the Iraq invasion and is now heading the 260-strong 'Prelim Ops' team for Helmand, said that 'intelligence-led operations' against the enemy would indeed be carried out, while Lt Col Henry Worsley, based in Lashkar Gar, insisted that anti-drugs operations were 'not something you'll see the military getting involved in at all, other than taking a grid reference and passing it on'. He added, 'It's much better all the effort goes into stopping farmers growing it in the first place than to eradicate it.'

In this, he is undoubtedly correct. But preventing large numbers of farmers from growing opium poppies, if it is ever achieved, is going to take decades. Corruption is so rife that most diplomats and aid workers - not to say Afghans - are convinced that it goes right up to Cabinet level. In the villages outside Helmand, I was told that the money given to community leaders to distribute as compensation for eradicated poppy crops was promptly pocketed.

One shop sold biscuits donated to Afghan children by the UN World Food Programme; their teacher had joined forces with the shopkeeper to make a bit on the side. A contractor confided that a large house being rented at vast expense by an American aid firm was owned by a local drugs lord. And no one disputes the crossover between tribal war lords, drugs lords, Taleban and insurgents - some of whom also hold official positions, which makes them British allies, on paper at least.

While the beleaguered Westerners in Lashkar Gar are eager for the British to succeed in transforming Helmand, they are bracing themselves for carnage.

'They'll get hit on the roads, ' said one veteran Afghan hand in the town. 'It will stir things up because the folks who aren't friendly to us will see it as another wave of Western control, ' said another.

In Kabul's Chicken Street, dozens of Victorian bayonets and Lee Enfield rifles are on sale. The tombstones in the bleak, snow-covered British cemetery nearby recall the men who carried them into battle and, in the words of Kipling, 'left on Afghanistan's plains' to go to their 'Gawd like a soldier'.

Soon there will be memorials there for brave young men cut down in Helmand. The ultimate tragedy will be if the lack of anything more than vague political optimism underpinning the mission means that those deaths have no long-term impact on Afghanistan at all.

29 January 2006

'If the British do bad in Helmand, they will return home in coffins'

TOBY HARNDEN in Changir, Helmand province

Kneeling in his field, Ahmadjan Barich pointed at his crop with a calloused finger, its tip stained pale green from stripping poppy bulbs and its nail a deep red from soothing henna.

"This is my life," he said, indicating the tiny green shoots that in three months' time will yield milky white, oozing opium. "It would be better to fight and die than let the British take this from me."

Behind him, a sputtering diesel pump extracted water from a well 65 yards beneath the pebble-strewn field and fed it into a foot-deep irrigation ditch. "If they kill the poppy then they will kill the economy and kill me."

In the summer, 3,300 troops from the Parachute Regiment and the 16th Air Assault Brigade will arrive in Helmand, an anarchic, volatile province in southern Afghanistan riven by tribal feuds and carved up between warring drug lords and Taliban loyalists.

By then, a bumper harvest on Mr Barich's land should have produced nearly five kilogrammes of opium, earning him about £400 - a tiny fraction of Afghanistan's drugs output, which is equal to 50 per cent of its gross domestic product. The UN estimated that drug exports were worth £2.7 billion last year.

Much of the opium is turned into heroin bound for Europe. Warlords will reap the main profits from the fields around Changir, just outside the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, but corrupt officials, the police and Taliban fighters will also seek a cut.

Security officials fear that British troops will become a magnet for al-Qaeda operatives, drawing them in from the mountains around the Pakistan border.

It was 126 years ago that British forces last had a significant presence in Helmand. Then, just to the east, on the road to Kandahar, 962 were killed and 161 wounded in a bloody defeat at Maiwand that was immortalised by Rudyard Kipling.

Many lived only because the Afghans chose to loot the baggage train rather than pursue the soldiers as they retreated across the desert.

The wounded were piled on to gun carriages "suffering the tortures of the damned", according to a surviving officer, Captain, later General, John Slade, who chronicled events. The bodies of the dead were thrown into drainage canals by the Afghans.

Standing beside the ruins of Qala Bost, a fort established by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Lt Col Henry Worsley, part of a British advance party which has shadowed US Army units since November, reflected on the task his men will face.

They would be dealing, he said, with enmities "thousands of years old" and "the tactics of some groups of terrorists will probably be the same set of tactics" as those used in the 19th century. However, these "won't be a match for what we're bringing here" as part of a total British deployment in Afghanistan of 5,700 troops.

British aims, he said, were more modest than in colonial times, and local people craved security and stability. "We're not taking on the entire Afghan nation and 90 per cent of the people are pro us being here."

Identifying the enemy, however, would be difficult. "You can't really separate the groups. They're all interlinked. You hear of an incident and you don't know whether it's Taliban, al-Qaeda, a drug spat or a tribal feud."

Since the overthrow of the Taliban government after the September 11 attacks four years ago, the situation in Helmand - 400 miles from the capital, Kabul, and largely beyond the writ of Hamid Karzai's government - has steadily deteriorated.

Its opium crop, which makes up three quarters of Afghanistan's total output, is expected to increase 90 per cent this year, according to an aid contractor working from a heavily guarded base in Lashkar Gah. The Taliban has burnt down schools because they were teaching girls, contrary to Sharia law. Last month, a headmaster was dragged from a classroom and shot dead.

Weeks later, an Afghan aid worker was shot dead as he prayed in a mosque; the Taliban had already killed two mullahs there. His crime was to have been a contractor on a Bangladeshi project.

Last year, five and then six Afghans working on a US-funded anti-drugs programme were killed in attacks outside Lashkar Gah on successive days. More than 20 police officers were killed in another ambush.

Helmand 's governor was replaced recently, at British insistence, because he was a drug lord whose only interest, according to one British official, was "destroying the poppy crops of his opponents".

The Sunday Telegraph set off along the road to Helmand at dawn to avoid reported Taliban road blocks. Bomb craters marked sections of the route, which is flanked by minefields and the carcasses of Soviet tanks. An hour after we had passed through, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle was apprehended by the Afghan army - another indication of the growing al-Qaeda influence in the province.

"It's getting worse in Helmand," said a Western contractor with long experience in Afghanistan. "The areas where we used to roam freely have really degraded. It's sad."

The drugs trade, he said, had corrupted the government at all levels. While there was little genuine support for the Taliban, intimidation was rife. "If the people had to choose, they wouldn't choose the Taliban. But they daren't oppose them."

Another problem was that American forces had focused almost exclusively on offensive operations and ignored the drugs issue, despite its intimate connection with insurgents and the Taliban, which levies a zakhat or tax on opium.

On occasion, drug lords had operated with impunity because they were helping US forces against the Taliban. "The drugs thing has never been dealt with and expediency is probably the biggest reason."

If British forces were to become closely linked with the counter-narcotics programme, which is led by Tony Blair on the G8, a major backlash could be provoked, swinging ordinary people back behind the Taliban.

In Lashkar Gah, Abdul Hakim Jan, a legendary mujahadin fighter, and his entourage of 30 men, armed with colourfully painted AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, sauntered into the Ariana Super Café for a kebab lunch.

Hakim Jan was sacked as police chief of Maiwand because of his alleged links with the drugs trade. British officials said he was responsible for an assassination attempt on his successor in Maiwand before being placated with a government job in Kandahar.

"If the British do good here, they will go home alive but if they do bad then they will return home in coffins," he smiled. "I hope they have learned from their grandfathers."

Back in the fields of Changir, the sun beat down on Ahmadjan Barich as he served tea, toffees and boiled sweets to his visitors, sitting cross-legged in the poppy field. "A person who gives us a loaf of bread is our friend," he said.

"True," interjected his kinsman Jumagul Noorzia, wearing a green turban. "But if the British come and destroy our bread then we will kill them."

29 January 2006

British troops 'will stir up hornets’ nest’ in Afghanistan

TOBY HARNDEN At Qala Bost, Helmand province

BRITISH TROOPS being sent to Helmand province will “stir up a hornets’ nest” and provide “plenty more targets” for insurgents, according to a senior officer in the advance party in Afghanistan.

Helmand, in southern Afghanistan, is a Taliban stronghold that produces 70 per cent of the country’s opium. Suicide bombings and murders of aid workers are increasing and al-Qaeda is active.

Generals have privately expressed concerns about the vagueness of the British mission and the difficulties of establishing stability and helping reconstruction in an area where tribal feuds, drug production, corruption and intimidation are endemic.

The three-year deployment of 3,300 troops to Helmand will be the main element of 5,700 British soldiers in Afghanistan by the summer, compared to 1,100 now. Nato is stepping up its contribution from 9,000 to 16,000 as the US, overstretched in Iraq, draws down.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph at the ruins of Qala Bost fort, established by Alexander the Great and destroyed by Genghis Khan, Lt Col Henry Worsely, described the security situation in Helmand as “pretty poor” with “no military power” there.

An American aid contractor warned that there would be casualties. “They’ll get hit on the roads,” he said. On Friday and American convoy was attacked by a roadside bomb on the edge of Helmand and two policemen were killed in another incident.

Indicating the US Army soldiers he was accompanying, who had set up a mobile medical clinic to help Afghans, Col Worsley said there had been a power vacuum in Helmand and the British would take a fresh approach.

“We would probably try to encourage the NGOs to come and do this sort of thing. We want to create a stable security situation so that we can stand off and let them get on with it. That’s the British way.”

Whereas “the poor old Americans have suffered because they haven’t had the troops on the ground” when the British contingent was complete “the good old Tommy will be our greatest asset” in winning over the Afghans.

“The British squaddie is the best in the world at engaging with the locals. That’s been built up in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. The young officers and NCOs are very in tune with taking tactical level decisions.

“A lot of the soldiers com from big cities, they’re streetwise, they’re not afraid of engaging.”

He insisted that anti-drug operations were “not something you’ll see the military getting involved in at all”, though it was an overall British priority.

“We are not going to be ploughing through fields and eradicating it [opium crops]. It’s inevitable we’re going to come across it but we’re not going to do anything about it other than taking a grid reference and passing it on.”

“It’s much better all the effort goes into stopping farmers growing it in the first place than to eradicate it.

The American aid contractor said British troops could make a major difference. “The highest and best use of a British soldier is to be a constructive and visible presence.

“Getting out with the beret instead of the helmet, learning about the culture. That will definitely help turn the tide.”

Col Worsely, a former Royal Green Jacket, said that troops would be braced for determined attacks against them in Helmand. “You talk about stirring up a hornets’ nest and that probably will happen.

“We’re going to move in many more forces here than they’ve had before. You’ll have plenty more targets in the province.”

But the danger would be far outweighed by the good the troops could do. “It’s a tough province but we don’t need to get too hysterical. We all know what the objective is and we’re just dying to get on with it.”

29 January 2006

Airborne trump card takes off

TOBY HARNDEN in Kandahar

WHEN BRITISH troops in Helmand province come under fire from Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters, the most potent weapon they will be able to call on will be the Royal Air Force’s Harrier jet.

Stationed in Kandahar, about 75 miles away – or about a minute’s flight time– from central Helmand, the eight harriers of the RAF’s 1 (Fighter) Squadron are always on standby to be scrambled or diverted to act in “close support” of coalition forces anywhere in Afghanistan.

They have already been in action during a number of US Army and SAS operations against fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden. In September, 14 rebels were killed and 44 captured after Harriers fired a barrage of five rockets into a hillside cave complex in Kandahar province.

Supplementing the eight Army Air Corps ground attack helicopters due to be stationed in Helmand, the Harriers will be a potentially devastating asset should a major firefight develop.

The harriers also have a reconnaissance role. Last week, Wg Cdr Martin “Sammy” Sampson landed at the base, where CIA Predator drones and an SAS squadron are stationed, after a mission to the south in support of Dutch special forces.

“It was a massive expanse of nothing,” he said. “And then I saw a convoy of five new vehicles moving very fast towards so I took some imagery with the reconnaissance pod.” They were probably smugglers, their cargo likely to be opium, heading for the Pakistan border.

The pilots, who navigate and fire missiles as well as fly the single-seat aircraft, said that it was these missions and those where they provide overwatch for troops dropping off food, building bridges or protecting medical aid convoys.

When they do use their awesome range of armaments – from 1,000lb and 540lbs to pods of six and 19 rockets – they measure each strike against the “criteria of necessity, proportionality and legality”, explained Sqn Ldr Dave Haines, firing the smallest weapons first.

“We’re not out here just dropping bombs willy-nilly on a whim. Sometimes just the noise we make is enough to calm the situation. Even when we expend munitions, we still give the enemy the chance to stop or surrender.

“We’re not going to wipe them off the face of the earth at the first opportunity. I don’t think any of us enjoy going out and just wreaking havoc. It may sound like that’s fun but it’s not fun.”

They face danger each time they take off. “We’d be quite arrogant if we were to fly over Afghanistan and think al-Qaeda and the Taliban didn’t have the potential to down an aircraft,” he said. “They have AK47s, Sam-7s and RPGs. The threat is a credible one.”

But Sqn Ldr Fin Monahan(CORR), who flew over Bosnia and Kosovo in the mid-1990s, said that supporting the Afghan people, rather than getting shot down, was the main thing on his mind when he was flying. “It makes us feel we’re making history.”