ianstone
10-01-2010, 03:44 AM
29 September 2010 9:47 PM
LIFE IN A WARZONE TOWN (http://druryblog.dailymail.co.uk/2010/09/life-in-a-warzone-town.html)
It's dusty and hot, the mercury rising over 30’C. But as well as sporting sunglasses, we are sweltering in heavy protective body armour and helmets.
Photographer Jamie and I have joined a British Army convoy through the streets of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province.
The UK effort to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of local people and persuade them to reject the Taliban is plotted in this ramshackle town.
But earlier this year the insurgents launched a ferocious attack against the Sharwali barracks, home to an Afghan National Army ‘kandak’, or battalion.
Seven machinegun-touting suicide bombers were finally repelled by Afghan security forces, supported by UK and U.S. troops, following a battle lasting several hours.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b65b52970b-800wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b65b52970b-popup)
Yesterday, we climbed aboard a 23-tonne Mastiff armoured vehicle to join a group of soldiers from 1st Battalion the Mercian (Cheshire) Regiment and 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland leaving the safety of the coalition base – known as going ‘outside the wire’.
At first glance, head poking through a turret in the truck's roof, Lashkar Gah - or 'Lash’ as it is known to troops - resembles any number of bustling 3rd world town.
It is difficult to imagine that this is actually a warzone where thousands of people have died.
Inhttp://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b6f7e3970b-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b6f7e3970b-pi)deed, the centre of a roundabout boasts a monument to peace - a globe held aloft by the wings of three white doves. Amazingly, vandals have not sullied the shapes representing the countries of America and Britain, felt by many to be unwanted occupiers.
On a long street through the town, crowds of people are milling around market stalls selling fruit, vegetables, chicken carcasses hanging upside-down on hooks, cheeping budgeriegars, brightly-coloured clothes and carpets, and building materials.
It seems strange that barely a single woman is in sight. But this is another indication of the deeply conservative, deeply traditional nature of society here. Women are subordinate and shopping might bring shame on the family.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b66077970b-800wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b66077970b-popup)
Battered cars, lumbering lorries and rusty motorcycles, horns blaring angrily, struggle for space in the narrow two-lane road. Many of the trucks are decorated brightly with rags, flags, spoons, balloons, streams, scraps of metal and soft drink cans. Most of these have come across the border from Pakistan to sell their wares.
Other wagons hint at how the livestock trade in Britain might have looked in the early years of the 20th Century: farmers carrying flocks of sheep, goats and herds of cows for sale in the back of open-topped trucks.
More still are piled high with bulging bags of cotton, for it is picking season in the sun-baked fields around Lashkar Gar.
Little motorised rickshaws, painted burgundy and emblazoned, curiously, with the words ‘I love you always’, weave along the carriageway. They contrast sharply with the so-called ‘Taliban taxis’ – the anonymous gleaming white Nissans used by members of the hard-line movement.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d5c0fb970c-800wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d5c0fb970c-popup)
Like many towns in the developing world, buildings stand in a state of half-construction, or possibly half-demolition. Contractors - often targeted by insurgents - work to blacktop the main route north-west to Nad’e Ali and continue to build the Lashkar Gah Ring Road, although progress is so slow so far it suggests this highway will not be open to relieve congestion any time soon.
Nevertheless, there are signs of progress. Despite the suggestion that Helmandi people have little concept of nationhood, especially under the notoriously weak and corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai, dozens of the country’s red, green and black flags wave on top of buildings and stalls.
Members of the Afghan National Police (ANP), newly-trained by British forces and Ministry of Defence police, patrol on street corners, direct traffic and man vehicle checkpoints.
Even visitors who were in the province a year ago say the patrolmen, in their grey-blue uniforms, are now infinitely more professional.
And there remain an extraordinary number of political posters attached to telegraph poles and scaffolding that have not been taken down after the recent elections to the provincial government.
It is another sign that local people are finally beginning to grip democracy and turn away from the Taliban, nine years after the U.S.-led mission began. As the coalition and Afghan forces improve security to protect people against intimidation and attacks by insurgents, so more people have been prepared to stand as election candidates or vote at the ballot box.
Other indicators of the coalition’s influence are apparent. One poster depicts a woman in a headscarf, pointing an AK47 machinegun. It is a part of a recruitment drive to encourage people to join the ANP.
Another ISAF banner shows an image of a poppy crop, which creates opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, inside a broken heart. Next to it, a picture of a heart in good health contains a picture of wheat.
Not only do the Helmand poppy fields lead to Class A drugs flooding the towns and cities of the UK, the cash raised funds the insurgency.
Local farmers are being urged by the UK-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, which consists of members of the military, the Foreign Office and Department for International Development, to switch to wheat production.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d654ad970c-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d654ad970c-pi) There are other more surreal sights. Over-looked by an old mud-walled fort, the Helmand River, the lifeblood of the province, wends past the town. In the water, up to their wheels, are a dozen or so cars. It is, strangely, an old-fashioned car wash.
And to our amazement, on the outskirts of the town, stands an amusement park dominated by a Ferris wheel and helter-skelter. It is not being used today, but it is there. Several people we pass smile, wave or give a thumbs-up.
But some snarl or stick up a different finger – an indication that there remains hatred against UK troops, there is support for the Taliban and, rather than being in a bustling 3rd world town, we are slap-bang in the middle of a warzone.
</SPAN>
Photography by Jamie Wiseman for The Daily Mail
LIFE IN A WARZONE TOWN (http://druryblog.dailymail.co.uk/2010/09/life-in-a-warzone-town.html)
It's dusty and hot, the mercury rising over 30’C. But as well as sporting sunglasses, we are sweltering in heavy protective body armour and helmets.
Photographer Jamie and I have joined a British Army convoy through the streets of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province.
The UK effort to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of local people and persuade them to reject the Taliban is plotted in this ramshackle town.
But earlier this year the insurgents launched a ferocious attack against the Sharwali barracks, home to an Afghan National Army ‘kandak’, or battalion.
Seven machinegun-touting suicide bombers were finally repelled by Afghan security forces, supported by UK and U.S. troops, following a battle lasting several hours.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b65b52970b-800wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b65b52970b-popup)
Yesterday, we climbed aboard a 23-tonne Mastiff armoured vehicle to join a group of soldiers from 1st Battalion the Mercian (Cheshire) Regiment and 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland leaving the safety of the coalition base – known as going ‘outside the wire’.
At first glance, head poking through a turret in the truck's roof, Lashkar Gah - or 'Lash’ as it is known to troops - resembles any number of bustling 3rd world town.
It is difficult to imagine that this is actually a warzone where thousands of people have died.
Inhttp://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b6f7e3970b-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b6f7e3970b-pi)deed, the centre of a roundabout boasts a monument to peace - a globe held aloft by the wings of three white doves. Amazingly, vandals have not sullied the shapes representing the countries of America and Britain, felt by many to be unwanted occupiers.
On a long street through the town, crowds of people are milling around market stalls selling fruit, vegetables, chicken carcasses hanging upside-down on hooks, cheeping budgeriegars, brightly-coloured clothes and carpets, and building materials.
It seems strange that barely a single woman is in sight. But this is another indication of the deeply conservative, deeply traditional nature of society here. Women are subordinate and shopping might bring shame on the family.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b66077970b-800wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef0133f4b66077970b-popup)
Battered cars, lumbering lorries and rusty motorcycles, horns blaring angrily, struggle for space in the narrow two-lane road. Many of the trucks are decorated brightly with rags, flags, spoons, balloons, streams, scraps of metal and soft drink cans. Most of these have come across the border from Pakistan to sell their wares.
Other wagons hint at how the livestock trade in Britain might have looked in the early years of the 20th Century: farmers carrying flocks of sheep, goats and herds of cows for sale in the back of open-topped trucks.
More still are piled high with bulging bags of cotton, for it is picking season in the sun-baked fields around Lashkar Gar.
Little motorised rickshaws, painted burgundy and emblazoned, curiously, with the words ‘I love you always’, weave along the carriageway. They contrast sharply with the so-called ‘Taliban taxis’ – the anonymous gleaming white Nissans used by members of the hard-line movement.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d5c0fb970c-800wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d5c0fb970c-popup)
Like many towns in the developing world, buildings stand in a state of half-construction, or possibly half-demolition. Contractors - often targeted by insurgents - work to blacktop the main route north-west to Nad’e Ali and continue to build the Lashkar Gah Ring Road, although progress is so slow so far it suggests this highway will not be open to relieve congestion any time soon.
Nevertheless, there are signs of progress. Despite the suggestion that Helmandi people have little concept of nationhood, especially under the notoriously weak and corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai, dozens of the country’s red, green and black flags wave on top of buildings and stalls.
Members of the Afghan National Police (ANP), newly-trained by British forces and Ministry of Defence police, patrol on street corners, direct traffic and man vehicle checkpoints.
Even visitors who were in the province a year ago say the patrolmen, in their grey-blue uniforms, are now infinitely more professional.
And there remain an extraordinary number of political posters attached to telegraph poles and scaffolding that have not been taken down after the recent elections to the provincial government.
It is another sign that local people are finally beginning to grip democracy and turn away from the Taliban, nine years after the U.S.-led mission began. As the coalition and Afghan forces improve security to protect people against intimidation and attacks by insurgents, so more people have been prepared to stand as election candidates or vote at the ballot box.
Other indicators of the coalition’s influence are apparent. One poster depicts a woman in a headscarf, pointing an AK47 machinegun. It is a part of a recruitment drive to encourage people to join the ANP.
Another ISAF banner shows an image of a poppy crop, which creates opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, inside a broken heart. Next to it, a picture of a heart in good health contains a picture of wheat.
Not only do the Helmand poppy fields lead to Class A drugs flooding the towns and cities of the UK, the cash raised funds the insurgency.
Local farmers are being urged by the UK-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, which consists of members of the military, the Foreign Office and Department for International Development, to switch to wheat production.
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d654ad970c-320wi (http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef013487d654ad970c-pi) There are other more surreal sights. Over-looked by an old mud-walled fort, the Helmand River, the lifeblood of the province, wends past the town. In the water, up to their wheels, are a dozen or so cars. It is, strangely, an old-fashioned car wash.
And to our amazement, on the outskirts of the town, stands an amusement park dominated by a Ferris wheel and helter-skelter. It is not being used today, but it is there. Several people we pass smile, wave or give a thumbs-up.
But some snarl or stick up a different finger – an indication that there remains hatred against UK troops, there is support for the Taliban and, rather than being in a bustling 3rd world town, we are slap-bang in the middle of a warzone.
</SPAN>
Photography by Jamie Wiseman for The Daily Mail