The potato chipper, p.12
The Potato Chipper, page 12
Matters took a turn for the worse when one of my colleagues sacked a local national driver, principally because he had recently returned from sick leave which didn’t actually exist in Afghanistan but the other drivers covered for him in order that he (and more importantly his family) didn’t lose vital funds which, given that we were in the fourth poorest country in the world was, and still is a strong consideration.
The problem arose because he was expected to make up the lost time by helping the guys who helped him, which he refused to do. I don’t know the exact reasoning behind that but it could be due to his ‘ranking’ in the tribal structure of things and thinking that he was above returning such favours. I think in any culture this kind of selfishness should be dealt with in the appropriate manner and he was given the opportunity to ‘think again’.
He refused and was sacked by one of my expatriate colleagues and seemed hell bent on revenge, so he proceeded to the MOI where he told a senior commander that he had been thrown out of a corrupt company and that the guy who had sacked him was a named manager of the company who the authorities would have an interest in speaking with.
This MOI commander acted on the matter swiftly and arrived at the front gate where prior to entry, he was held for searching and a paperwork check to confirm his credentials, while one of the local guards slipped out of the search area to warn my friend of what was about to occur (namely, a raid of the compound with an arrest of my friend).
I was not on the compound at the time, but sympathetic locals smuggled my friend out the back door into a waiting vehicle, before racing to the airport while London Ops were notified to book him a flight immediately so he could escape as soon as possible. His flight took off within a few hours of the knock at the door. It was a remarkable escape and not the only one to occur during my time. When I returned, I couldn’t believe what had taken place. Vengeful locals can be as much of a threat as insurgents. I had already decided that I was to leave within the next few months. That took place.
Towards the end of August 2010, our company lease on the Shar-E-Naw villa expired and we managed to do a deal with another company, based on the military side of Kabul airfield, to live in their compound. The military authority controlling access weren’t aware of this and we were passed off as belonging to a large US military logistics, supply and reconstruction firm. Although I felt much safer living on the base from a legal perspective, it was like a return to military days that I had long since left behind. Strict driving regulation enforcement on the base of ten km/h in some instances was done, which was generally viewed as akin to being lectured like a child.
I had already resolved that I was going to leave the country but before that, I had a field task with a Japanese contingent to carry out. The Parliamentary elections were due to take place and our Asian friend was to provide part of the monitoring force.
I arrived at the Japanese villa one morning to liaise with old friends, meet the drivers, check the armour strength and break-down equipment, as well as the radios in the Toyota Land Cruisers, pick up weapons, look at route selection, vulnerable points, mapping and head out on task. The difficulty with missions such as these is the suicide bombers. Afghan’ militants and their colleagues from around the world are particularly partial to that tactic. We were carrying weapons of course. However, every corner we turned saw me looking for people observing, people texting/talking on mobile phones, which vehicles were dropping in behind us, closing, or dropping back at the appropriate moment, to show any boy in black that might be imposing covert passive surveillance that we were not messing around.
To be honest, the most difficult part was the static aspect at polling stations. We had no control over who entered these areas, it was a vote after all, and we could only hope that any attack would not ultimately dispatch our clients and that we could extract safely. Thankfully, we were not subjected to any incidents, and it did help that our guys only observed the general procedure to ensure fairness, for approximately thirty minutes prior to departure. If they’d looked to have stayed for four hours’, we would have had to give them some professional advice, like “let’s leave once you’re remotely satisfied.” Elections in Afghanistan were extremely difficult to monitor and part of the reason why the Taliban wanted no part in them was that there was no electoral roll in Afghanistan. This was In conjunction with the mere fact that every village had a ‘jirga,’ basically a tribal meeting in which the tribal chief decided at the end, ‘democratically’ which candidate everybody in his village would vote for and we saw the merits of that, in view of our intention to not risk being blown up while attempting to ensure that the electoral process was entirely fair. As I experienced however, the procedures in the polling stations were as fair as we were likely to see in the country.
I liked working with the Japanese even if they were risk averse. When explaining anything security related to a Japanese client, one must answer in a manner akin to responding to a Barrister in court. State the minimum but enough, end of story. If you said to much, and I did on occasion, the follow up could lead one of five to six different questions which could then head down twenty-five to thirty-six other avenues. I was to subsequently work with the Japanese in Iraq and latterly, Libya and after a year and a half of Afghanistan, it was time to move on. I left the country on September 23rd, 2010, having had several interesting experiences shall we say; and to date, I haven’t returned. I would like to think that if I do visit the ‘Heart of Asia’ again, it is to a country that has a peace, the like of which the country had in the late sixties/early seventies before foreign powers decided to mess it all up. I personally am of the belief that that outcome will have to involve Taliban consultation and that westerners should research what is, and isn’t the truth, regarding the movement’s actual policies.
10. (Not) Richest Man in Babylon – Spiritually Broken in Iraq
Less than three weeks after finishing in Kabul, I put myself down on a ramshackle collection of seating in Queen Alia airport in Amman, Jordan. It reminded me of a run-down Spanish Airport in the early eighties; the only difference being that the scroll on the shops was mostly in Arabic writing. I had a seven hour wait before my next flight, the Royal Jordanian service into Basra. I had the good fortune to have a window seat on the approach into Southern Iraq and the approach was totally different to Kabul. The flat terrain permitted visibility for miles, and I was struck by the numbers of flares blasting flames into the sky as the de-gassing stations pumped the atmosphere full of hydrocarbons.
The landing immigration process was the most ridiculous, incompetent bungling procedure that I had ever experienced, and I was beginning to wish that I was back in Kabul before I’d even officially entered Iraq. I had already had my HIV check done in London prior to signing my contract and even that was a profit-making stitch up. Only being told that I needed a medical with a blood check twenty-four hours before I was due to arrive in London and being provided with a local surgery that could handle it should our own doctor not be able to resolve this summed up the greed of these fuckers. I had come in expecting that but was beginning to regret my dealings with this company before I’d even started. However, I wanted Iraq oil and gas experience on my file, so I stuck with it. The HIV check is common for work in Muslim countries and was something that Saddam had brought in during his reign. Personally, I think it’s a very good idea as any right-thinking country does not want to ‘welcome’ visitors from other shores that wish to burden another country’s health system with their ailments; not to mention the potential spread of this deadly disease. Western countries don’t seem to comprehend this and some years before, I had carried out some contract support, assisting the immigration services of an unnamed country that was deporting failed asylum seekers. On one occasion, I remember dragging a Togolese guy along with me who was declared HIV positive up the steps leading to an Air France jet. All the while, this guy was trying to bite us, spit at us and cause such a disturbance because he had been deported.
The operation I had been recruited for was to be completely different, I was to contract to a company with a very military ethos, more military at times than an army and our client was a well-known Italian oil company charged with operating an oil field called Az Zubayr to the south-west of Basra City. The role that I was to fulfil was a Paramedic/Second in Command role, as part of a Medical Emergency Response team. The dual role primarily revolved around the medical, with a very experienced UK Special Forces Senior NCO who had permission to carry out this role; effectively acting as the Deputy. I was to meet the rest of the team, all British. The Team Leader, was an Ulsterman, who had seven years plus of Iraq experience and had survived a lot of shit. I respected him immensely and I certainly learnt a hell of a lot about moving around Iraq in a tactical manner from him. We didn’t just drive around the roads, we navigated excellently across desert tracks and looked for all manner of routes that were not marked or tracked, in order to stay off the radar.
Of the two other members of the team I haven’t mentioned, one had a Royal Marines Commando background and the other hailed from the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment that formed part of the Special Forces Support Group. He also had many years of experience within Iraq, both in the military and private sectors, and was the TV Presenter Cat Deeley’s cousin.
My arrival on to the Basra Contingency Operating Base exposed me to a thorough checking of badges, retina scans by Ugandan Security Contractors, under vehicle checks with mirrors, lest a vehicle bomb had been attached and when I finally arrived at the company HQ Administration (or G1) Office, I had already passed a number of hardened, concrete shelters used for taking cover (basically where you dive in to for protection) in the event that rockets were fired in and the presence of sandbags and the stale, coal/mustard like smell of military hardware was ever-present. I had also passed an American looking fire-truck and the whole environment smacked of contractors everywhere; people who were addicted to this kind of shit. I felt immediately out of place to be honest; but I was determined to make of it what I could and the following morning, I would arrive at the training HQ for an introduction to an Iraq training package where I and three other guys ran through a number of lessons over three days with an Irishman we nicknamed Gary ‘Fuck-Fuck,’ because every other word was a profanity.
In the AK Weapons variant drills, two of us would stand up in front of Gary FF as he would bark out a variety of commands, with a magazine of thirty rounds, “LEE-OAD! – MEEEK REDDDY – AT YURE TARGETS IN FRONT, GOOAH ONNN … WEAPON FIRIN ALL REYT, WEAPONS STOPSSSSSS …” This was the call to rapidly drop on to one knee cock the weapon open to expose the chamber and then examine the area for the cause of the stoppage. Usually, this is precipitated by one of three reasons ranging from simply that the operator is out of ammunition, which denotes that a magazine change will be sufficient. At the more extreme end, a round has not extracted correctly from the breech. This can be cleared by shaking the rifle to free up the round; although at times, the magazine can require removal to free up the offending article and it goes without saying that when under fire, this is a must avoid! and can be the difference between life and death. We covered these drills with an Eastern European version of the Kalashnikov, as well as the Glock pistol. In truth, we had to be versatile in our weaponry – I ultimately used an AMD sixty-five which was a Hungarian derivative rifle with a folding stock and was very user friendly.
Other subjects included education as to the rules of engagement and etiquette while driving in traffic, which had drastically evolved since the post US/UK occupation of the country. In the early days, Military and Private Security convoys could barge their way to the front of the queue; and in areas where suicide bombers were a risk, particularly in vehicles, certain dispensations were given by commanders to display warning signs on vehicles, to the effect that all civilian vehicles would have to remain at least one hundred metres from convoys or risk being fired at in an escalation of force which involved shots being fired in front of the offending vehicle, which, if not heeded would lead to rounds then being fired into the bonnet/hood and ultimately into the windscreen with obvious potentially fatal consequences.
During my time in Iraq, all this changed as we had entered the reconstruction phase and we were to remain in traffic, not push other vehicles off the road or block out civilian vehicles on the highways if locals attempted to overtake us.
This did not mean that we had to leave ourselves open as sitting ducks; just that we had to move with the times. One of the most frightening issues that we had to reckon with in this part of Iraq was a powerful anti-armour improvised explosive device that was laid or concealed about ten metres along the roadside, called an explosively formed projectile (EFP). These were more deadly than a more conventional IED as these could, as their name suggests, cut through the armour on our vehicles and incinerate the vehicle occupants. Trying to detect these things was nigh on impossible and the only real defence was to vary your routes/speeds, take cross country routes on the desert tracks and avoid vulnerable points such as entry/exit slip roads onto motorways and in heavily congested traffic and I was to learn much about this ability over the coming months.
Training was complete and I ultimately joined my team for operational taskings towards the end of October 2010. The US military were still carrying out defensive clearance patrolling in the Basra area, and statistics were showing occasional EFP strikes against them. More surprising to me, was that very close to the main American Contingency Operating Base at the airport it could be seen that a full grasp of control of the territory hadn’t been achieved, and was never to be assumed. Daily, security teams carrying engineering clients that we were working in support of were passing these devices and generally, we were the secondary targets, with the US troops being clearly the primary targets.
We moved out in a three vehicle convoy, I worked in the second vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban in which the back had been converted to fit a stretcher, a small defibrillator, medicinal drugs and my seat was reversed to face the rear so I would affect anti-surveillance tasks and pass on my comments to the Vehicle Commander of the Third/Rear vehicle to remedy such matters. In this part of Iraq, this would involve looking over vast distances to adjacent roads for stationary cars and for isolated individuals that might be the initiator for IED/EFPs. These guys could be sited up to a thousand metres away and they would use landmarks such as power lines to trigger the bomb. The insurgent would often target the second or third vehicle in a convoy as they passed by a telegraph pole, the first vehicle often carrying the Team Leader of the Security Detail and therefore not such a prized target as the client VIP.
The first couple of days just involved familiarising us with the territory and getting used to the terrain. Navigating to a finite point was not easy as the Az Zubayr oil field had well head locations dotted all over a seven hundred square mile expanse and with no major landmarks on a flat desert expanse, GPS tracking systems were a convenient fall back, but we did like to maintain our map reading skills to cover contingencies. As I alluded to earlier, we were a Medical and Emergency Response Team to an Italian client that were carrying out a whole range of tasks. There would be up to nineteen different Close Protection teams, some with three vehicles, some with four that would carry between two and six clients on tasks that ranged from visits into Basra City on Liaison visits to Local Government officials, to engineers working for a full day at a degassing station, to others that would be bouncing around thirty-five well heads for fleeting five to ten minute inspections of pipelines, taking readings and checking the serviceability of valves, flow lines etc …
We were however using some basic mapping at times and one other aspect of our role that I wished to get to grips with were the spot codes and route names for the major highways. Every junction, or major road crossing would be annotated by this and known to our operations room under a colour code, together with a number classification. Therefore, the junction between the turnoff for the airport was known as Orange 93, not just ‘the airport turn off junction’. The main road from the airport to the city was called Hexagon and was given the frequency of use by all manner of call signs which would stand it out for insurgent treatment. We would often navigate on dirt tracks on departing the COB to steer clear of these roadside devices. Basically, this would be out of the gate and then literally turn right or left immediately, to follow the fence line along the canal. We enjoyed this luxury principally because we didn’t carry clients. We were not too sure that wine & calcio loving Italians would have enjoyed being bounced around on dirt tracks but better late than never is my motto when in such places.
There were some interesting assignments during this initial bedding-in stage. One was a ‘Heart and Minds’ visit to an Iraqi Parachute Battalion to teach them some advanced first aid. We had already been operating in this fashion with locals and children over the preceding weeks, treating ailments of all sorts, ranging from psoriasis all the way to packing some insipid spider bite related wounds that would not heal and the obligatory use of temporary fillings for locals with dental issues. This is rife in the Developing World and sanctions had not helped these guys over the years. On occasion, if we were short of equipment, even chewing gum was an option.
Returning to training the Iraqi Paras, we were well received at the Shaibah Camp, but I have to say, as the Senior Medical person on the team, along with the MERT Director who was present (an ex-Navy Operating Department Practitioner) I had three ideas for training but hadn’t ultimately decided on what I was going to lead with. I wanted to teach something original, not just the usual sterile basic life support package that doesn’t include the fact that the person is down in a ditch, or on the bathroom/toilet seat with vomit coming out of their mouths.
