This photo was taken in Panjwayi district, Kandahar, on April 28, 2006. The joint Canadian/Afghan National Army (ANA) group i used to be with had surrounded the world while the ANA focused on pushing through to interact the Taliban fighters.
The villagers were having to go away the world as there had already been fighting, and it had been expected to continue.
The ANA soldiers called them forward one by one, patted them down, looked through their pockets, and in some cases insisted that the villagers remove their turbans. all of them complied but the contempt on their faces was hard to miss; it had been there within the way they held their heads, and therefore the way they looked the soldiers up and down.
The Canadian troops told me it had been important that the Afghans were searched by their own, to form them desire it had been an Afghan-led mission, albeit with NATO support.
This was the primary major operation in Afghanistan I accompanied as a photojournalist. it had been Spring 2006 and Canadian soldiers had been deployed to Kandahar, even as British troops were taking up from the Americans within the adjoining province of Helmand.
Before I ever set foot in Afghanistan, I had read widely on the history of the country and its previous wars. i assumed I understood the various tribal and ethnic divisions, and the way these were at the guts of numerous of Afghanistan’s problems. I had learned many Afghans didn’t consider themselves “Afghan” but self-identified as Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, etc.
As I took this photograph, these ethnic divisions played out right ahead of me.
Although the ANA was officially committed to maintaining an ethnic balance, actually , that only appeared to be enforced for the recruitment of officers, not the enlisted soldiers.
This particular ANA unit was from the north of the country, so was almost entirely Tajik. They looked different and spoke a special language. it had been plain to ascertain that the Pashto-speaking Pashtun villagers from the south of the country felt angry at being searched by these Dari-speaking northerners.
I didn’t really know it at the time, but over subsequent eight years i might come to find out that to those residents of Panjwayi district, the ANA soldiers were the maximum amount an invading force because the Canadian, American and British troops.
The locals despised all of them . They often saw Afghans working with the United States-led coalition as “infidels”.
Meanwhile, the Afghans like these villagers and therefore the Taliban fighters were often described as “stupid” by the Western soldiers, mistaking their lack of education for a scarcity of intellect. This endless underestimating of the skills of Afghan partners and therefore the Taliban was, I believe, an outsized think about the last word outcome.
As I covered the war, I spent tons of your time embedded with military units. This gave me an up-close and private view of the soldiers’ lives but I had much less contact with Afghan civilians.
My main exposure to the Afghan people was limited to seeing curious kids and scowling men on the streets; women were rarely seen, and once they were, it had been impossible to ascertain their expressions behind the burqas they wore.
I had learned little Pashto beyond awkward greetings, so even when local Afghans did attempt to engage with me, i used to be reliant on a military translator and gained little insight into the civilians’ view of the war.
Then in May 2006, a Canadian journalist introduced me to an Afghan who wont to run a personal taxi service for Western visitors to Kandahar. He spoke excellent English (I cannot name him for safety reasons).
He had been a successful professional but chose to line up his own business so he could earn extra money .
Over the course of a couple of days, while we drove in and around Kandahar city, I learned more from him than I had within the previous month walking through the streets and fields of Kandahar.
He didn’t believe the Americans would stay long enough for the Afghan government to actually take hold of the country properly. He also helped me understand the opposite great division in Afghanistan, the one that exists between the rich and therefore the poor, between the educated elite within the cities and therefore the illiterate farmers within the villages.
He explained that while educated English speakers like him could make tons of cash from all the contracts and projects on offer from NATO forces, the Afghans who couldn’t were excluded from these opportunities.
Having to believe others to fill out the paperwork in English meant that they either completely omitted on these contracts or were hired for a fraction of the worth of the project, with a serious share of it getting to those that were “helping” them. This led to large amounts of resentment, and it had been not uncommon for the rich contractors to rent security to guard them from their own workforce.
People didn’t skills long the flow of yank money would last, in order that they were determined to urge the maximum amount as they might , while they might .
Over the subsequent years, I covered the war extensively, making 14 trips to Afghanistan, each lasting between six weeks and three months.
I saw the inexorable rise in Taliban attacks and influence throughout the country, and that i also saw the widening gap between the American troops and therefore the people whose hearts and minds they were supposedly trying to win.
It didn’t interest regular Afghans whether the casualties were caused by coalition military blunders or Taliban “human shield” tactics; all they saw was a rising count of their family, friends and neighbours, and no sign of peace.
Despite the war, I did manage to report on aspects of lifestyle in Afghanistan. I photographed skateboarders in Kabul, graffiti artists in Mazar-i Sharif, I rode during a Ferris wheel in Herat, and that i watched jugglers and acrobats perform in Jalalabad. The common theme altogether these interactions was educated youth – everywhere I met these children , all of them dreaded the return of the Taliban.
My last foot patrol
In 2013, I walked my last foot patrol in Afghanistan. I knew it might be my last embed because the US troops were fully drawdown mode. The then-US President Barack Obama had stated they were to cease all involvement in combat operations before 2014 and transition to an observer-mentor role, which was why I had arranged to urge back to where it all started on behalf of me – a return to Panjwayi district in Kandahar.
This was where I had been shot at for the very first time in Afghanistan in 2006. Over the years I came under attack repeatedly , even getting shot through the chest, an injury that nearly ended my life also as my coverage of Afghanistan. On this last patrol, too, I almost got shot, a particularly close shave on what ended up being a brutally long day.
It was April 30, 2013. I accompanied a US platoon of roughly 25 men as they met with an Afghan local police unit to conduct a joint patrol. These Afghans weren’t really police, just a gaggle of boys and men – some as young as 15, the oldest about 30.
They had been tasked with defending their local area from Taliban fighters, employment they were doing with no uniforms, body armor or medical supplies. and that they carried minimal ammunition, so would have stood little chance of defending their own building, including the encompassing fields and orchards.
Their leader, Abdul Jalil, was keen to use the might of the US military against the Taliban.
Within minutes of our meeting, we were ambushed by Taliban fighters. There was gunfire from a treeline to pin us down, then potshots from the other direction cracked on the brink of our heads. Shouts rang bent await improvised explosive devices (IEDs). It had been a favoured Taliban tactic to shoot at troops to force them to run cover to a location that they might have already found out with a booby trap.
However, this point we didn’t need to dodge any, and helicopters were overhead, checking out the Taliban fighters. But the gunfight still lasted on and off for the remainder of the day. No US or Afghan troops were injured or killed, which is sort of astonishing, given how intense the initial fight had been.
Later within the day, a Taliban fighter popped up from behind a wall, about 10 feet from where i used to be , and opened fire. i used to be facing the opposite way but an American soldier shot him. The patrol didn’t even look over the wall to ascertain if he was dead as they were rushing to urge out of there. it had been very typical of the fast-moving and confusing nature of an ambush.
I was physically exhausted by the time we walked back inside the bottom . I realised I had been doing this for too long. Most of the soldiers were almost half my age, and even the US captain was over a decade younger than me.
‘Looking at a dead man’
At the top of that day, the US platoon decided to go back to base. As they did, I saw a glance of resignation in Jalil’s eyes. The Americans were finished with the fighting, and now the local villagers were on their own.
It was clear that Jalil and his men didn’t stand an opportunity against the Taliban without the Americans. i used to be literally watching a dead man as we left, and that i knew it. it had been awful. a couple of days later, I heard Jalil had been killed during a gunfight with the Taliban.
Over the previous couple of weeks, watching the autumn of Afghanistan to the Taliban from afar, I even have been struck again and again by the jarring incongruousness of it all.
I have been overcome with emotion repeatedly . I’ve even cried, which is indeed a rare thing on behalf of me . I can’t stop brooding about all the people I met over the years, people that told me their stories, shared their food, advised me, protected me, and were kind to me.
The men in Shahr-e Naw Park in Kabul who huddled around me to cover me once they saw someone they thought was a Taliban scout. The local official in Paktika province who gave me shalwar kameez as a present so I could wear it to travel with him to an area Shura without the protection of the US soldiers. The ANA deserters who met me at great personal risk to share their stories of ill-treatment. All the Afghan interpreters who helped me interview residents in remote parts of the country where few journalists went. and therefore the elders who spoke the hard truth to me about their feelings towards the coalition soldiers, under the gaze of these exact same soldiers.
But most of all, i feel about all the children who believed within the West, who studied and worked hard and grew up in what was, however dysfunctional, a fledgling democracy. I cannot stop brooding about all the cash , all the trouble , all the lives lost. All that blood and treasure, wasted. All those promises, broken. All those dreams, crushed.