Understanding the Taliban

Stephen Grey
First published 24 April 2008 in the New Statesman

Rethinking the war in Helmand has made the British army revise some of its basic assumptions. Working with "reconciled" Taliban commanders is part of that new strategy

There is a popular slogan seen stencilled on American gun trucks: "We do bad things to bad people." Prince Harry had those words on the back of his cap. In the Afghanistan War, the difficulty is working out who those bad people are. An even tougher question is: which of them to kill, and which to put in positions of power and authority?
Winning the war here is not for the squeamish, and a long way from the "ethical foreign policy" of early new Labour. It all boils down to dealing with those bad men. Some of them are already our allies. Others, including men who are currently trying to kill our soldiers, will have a place as our future allies. As one intelligence officer said to me: "In this country, you get to power because, at one stage or another, you've done something really awful. You can't waste time looking for the good guys."
He was probably exaggerating. But you can still see the problem in Musa Qala, the former Taliban stronghold and opium bazaar, wrested back into coalition and government hands last December. I was present during that combat operation and watched as the Afghan flag was raised in the town centre. I have just returned from a trip back.
If you believe the chief of police of Helmand Province, Brigadier Moham mad Hussain Andiwal, the new district governor of Musa Qala is a "war cri m inal" who was invol ved in the slaughter of prisoners, and is a leading heroin dealer - although, given their past history, he may be overegging things a little. Andiwal is referring to Mullah Abdul Salaam, the Taliban com mander who switched sides and was appointed governor of the town in January by President Hamid Karzai, with British backing.
Karzai also sent back to Musa Qala its former police chief. Known to all as Commander "Coca", Andiwal is remembered by the British soldiers in the town two years ago chiefly for rumours that he and his men were kidnapping young boys from the streets.
Today - however unsavoury their pasts may be - both "Coca" and Mullah Salaam get cautious and qualified support from Britain. They get it because they are doing what the British need: establishing a presence for the Afghan government in a dangerous corner of Helmand, and helping to persuade both ordinary Afghan farmers and one-time enemy fighters that the smart move is to reject the Taliban.
Salaam, as a "reconciled" Taliban commander, has been in many ways a disappointment. When I was in Helmand last year, there was talk of his bringing over a large band of Taliban fighters to the government side. This never happened. But he has proved to be a persuader, travelling from village to village having outreach shuras (meetings) and telling people that the return of British and Afghan forces is the way ahead. He is doing so at great risk to his own life.
"I'm a marked man," he told me. "When you return to Musa Qala, I will most likely be dead."
I had tracked down Salaam while he was out of town, preparing to return to his governor's compound in liberated Musa Qala. The word was out that the Taliban were hoping to greet him or Coca with a suicide bomb.
With his great, bushy, black and silvery beard, flowing robes and curled slippers, Mullah Salaam cuts a striking figure. As his comments were being translated, he kept uttering a strange, rasping noise. He was in a gloomy mood, his head sinking steadily between his palms as he contemplated the gap between promises of redevelopment in Helmand and the grind of reality.
"I have promised the people so much," he said, "but we have delivered so little and people will turn on me. Everything comes so slowly." It wasn't foreigners such as the British he blamed, particularly. "The whole government here, they are all criminals," Mullah Salaam said. "They keep the money for themselves."
Situation report
It is very easy to be critical about British intervention in Afghanistan, particularly for the commentators who rest easy in their armchairs. If you looked at an honest situation report after two years of bloody fighting in Helmand, it would have to include some strong negatives: towns deserted due to fighting; an opium harvest so vast that some suggest only a lack of space prevents it getting any bigger; an enemy that still roams free in great swaths of the cultivated "green zone"; and an electricity supply to the towns which has got worse. Add to that an alliance with "friendly forces" which have proved to be deeply corrupt.
Where is the good news? It certainly does not come from winning the war. Soldiers will tell you that, despite some clear territorial gains, we are nowhere close to it. And yet, among the British, morale is pretty good. It comes not because there is an end in sight, but from a series of tactical successes and a sense that a strategy for a victory of sorts is at last evolving - and the resources to achieve this are gathering on the horizon. Above all, there is a feeling of relief that this is not Iraq.
As I reported in this magazine three years ago, it was hard to find a British officer in southern Iraq who believed the invasion had been a good idea. The aftermath was equally depressing: in Basra, soldiers complained of training Shia militiamen who were policemen by day and planted bombs to kill them at night; officers complained of supporting a Iraqi governor who was stealing oil revenues and in league with death squads. "In Afghanistan, the police may be just as corrupt," one senior officer told me, "but at least here they are on our side. They want to go and kill the Taliban."
For the soldiers, Afghanistan has, at least until now, provided an enemy that shows its face and which can be fought with the weapons soldiers have to hand, from SA80 rifles to artillery guns. At a higher level, however, commanders are less convinced by such logic. But they, too, learned bitter lessons in Iraq - and, after two years of sometimes pointless fighting in Helmand, there is a feeling that a road map of sorts is emerging which could ultimately lead British forces to some kind of success. Working with the likes of Mullah Salaam in Musa Qala is part of that new strategy.
Rethinking the war in Helmand has posed a challenge to some basic assumptions, among the greatest of which is our understanding of the enemy. After the 11 September 2001 attacks, when American and British forces first arrived in Afghanistan, a basic misunderstanding became the doctrine. Because the Taliban had sheltered al-Qaeda, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were wrongly labelled as a joint force.
More than six years later, the mistake is in continuing with those assumptions, imagining that the Taliban who fight British troops are merely proxies for Osama Bin Laden. Instead, as military intelligence officers will tell you, the new Taliban insurgency is a battle not for international jihad, but a struggle by tribes, factions and strongmen against an unpopular Afghan government that appeared to have abandoned the largely Pashtun south of the country.
While religious ideology, madrasas, training camps and volunteering for al-Qaeda have a role in creating the fanatics who come to Helmand to die in large numbers, Taliban commanders in the field, who send young Talibs into battle against the British, are often local men with local grievances, local pride and local ambitions, even if they take advice from the Taliban leadership in Pakistan. "You can't look at him and say that religion or ideology has anything to do with why he is fighting," said one British officer, talking of a prominent Taliban commander around Musa Qala. Tribal allegiance and the Pashtun code of honour, as well as the simple provocation that foreign troops represent, all play a part in motivating such men.
What this boils down to is a classic insurgency where some of our most ferocious enemies are potential allies. Few Afghans or Britons now believe that progress can be made without some form of reconciliation process taking place - or without working with those bad men. Most importantly in such an insurgency, as Mao Zedong said, "The people are like water and the army is like fish." Without the tacit support of the population of Helmand, the Taliban would flap around on dry land.
Imposing security
A T-shirt on sale at Kandahar Airport, and worn by some soldiers in Helmand, bears the words "Taliban Hunting Club". In Helmand, there has been plenty of killing. You can measure the rise in violence by the bullets and bombs. Each successive brigade in Helmand, except the last, has expended ammunition in ever greater quantities.
However, the grim truth, as soldiers in Helmand tell you, is that much of the bloodshed has been to no effect. Although a central zone of stability in the province has been gradually expanded, whole parts of the countryside have been "cleared" time and again, only for the Taliban to return. One former British commander bluntly called it "mowing the lawn". A scorecard would read simply: "Many Taliban dead; precious little territory gained."
And yet - as some commentators seem to have missed - the lesson is being learned. Last October, when a new British brigade took command in Helmand, its then commander, Brigadier Andrew MacKay, declared "a concept of operations" where the deaths of enemy soldiers were no longer a measure of success. "The population is the prize," wrote MacKay. A campaign based on counter-insurgency principles, he said, needed operations not so much designed for "kinetic effect" (inflicting physical damage on the enemy), but calibrated to "influence" the population: decreasing support for the enemy and increasing the standing of the Afghan government.
Defeating the Taliban was not the end goal of the campaign, he explained in an interview. Even if thoroughly beaten, they might linger on as a nuisance like the Real IRA "for a hundred years". The tactic was to disrupt them just enough for the Afghan government to be able to re-establish control - and to consolidate its hold with real gains for the local people.
Of course, such "hearts and minds" thinking was always part of the theory. The original British plan for Helmand, taking lessons from counter-insurgency in Malaya, spoke of "inkspots" of security, within which the population could see tangible development gains and in which solid support for the Afghan government could be established. These inkspots would, in theory, expand and then merge.
The reality was different. An understrength British force arriving in the summer of 2006 was spread thinly across the province. With little mobility, it became beleaguered in a series of encircled platoon houses, under constant Taliban attack. Even though the army successfully fought off the attacks, the towns became battlegrounds devastated by fighting. Development went backwards and support for the Taliban grew.
Since then, British objectives have been far more cautious. While UK troop strength has more than tripled (with more than 7,000 deployed to Helmand), MacKay's aim in the past six months was to get away from "mowing the lawn" and concentrate instead on consolidation: creating a lasting presence of British and Afghan forces that not only expands the so-called inkspots of security, but has a "civil effect", making life obviously better for ordinary people.
In practical terms, this has involved a big expansion of the chain of British forts - known as FOBs, or forward operating bases - as well as similar increases in patrol bases and checkpoints for the Afghan army and police, despite ongoing shortages in their numbers.
One example can be found around the market town of Sangin in northern Helmand, which was fought over and reduced to rubble during the first year of British intervention. A ring of new patrol bases has been positioned around the town. They have not halted the fighting, but they have brought a measure of relief to the town centre. The population has returned and some reconstruction has begun. A few bazaar traders even dare fly the Afghan national flag.
MacKay's philosophy of "population is the prize" had its greatest effect during December's military operation to retake Musa Qala, a town that in effect had been handed back to the Taliban just over a year earlier.
The deployment of thousands of British, American and Afghan troops around the target area achieved such an "overmatch" of forces, that, after some initial fierce fighting, the Taliban were forced to flee, allowing the recapture of the town with minimal destruction of property.
But key to the future was the arrival of a team of military development experts - a so-called "stabilisation team" - a day after the Afghan flag was raised. I watched as they unfolded precise blueprints for the construction of a new mosque, for the rebuilding and reopening of a school, and for roads and improvements to local water and power.
Three months later, when I returned, the impact of this strategy could be seen. The mosque project was still being held up by bureaucracy, but a small road had been built, the market had reopened, a health clinic was in operation, the school was up and running, with more than 800 pupils, and a cash-for-work scheme had been set up employing more than 300 people every day.
But if Musa Qala is the success story, it is still clear that fundamental problems remain. Even here - despite the concentration of British efforts - tangible gains for the population are slow in coming.
The most glaring problem is the limits to what the British soldiers themselves can do. While the strategy places "civil effect" centre stage, any kind of reconstruction requires an input from non-military sources, whether from the Foreign Office, from Afghan officials, or from civilian contractors. With the security situation still so unstable, their involvement is proving painfully slow in getting off the ground. "We have got to learn, and learn fast, to deliver aid and reconstruction not only when it's all quiet and peaceful, but under the noses of the enemy - while the mortars are still raining in," said one senior officer.
Yet the slow delivery of aid and reconstruction projects is not just down to security. It is also because British strategy relies on delivering most of its multimillion-pound aid budget by channelling it through the Afghan government in Kabul. For the soldiers on the ground - whose security depends on rapid action to win over the population - such a strategy can be hard to fathom. "All we can do in imposing security is buy time for the Afghan government to step up and do its job," said a British officer. "The problem is that we can't and won't stay here for ever; things have to move faster."
Meanwhile, the situation is getting more dangerous for the British. A softer, more end-focused approach will in all likelihood mean more bloodshed, not less. Getting the "hearts and minds" right means leaving the base and mixing with the population - and thereby facing a daily and increasing threat from suicide bombs, mines and roadside explosive devices.
Even as Helmand moves from blunt conventional war to a smarter counter-insurgency, don't expect a quick fix.

Secrets of Curveball - the spy behind a war

BBC Newsnight broadcast a film by me with new revelations about the spy whose evidence, more than any other, provided the intelligence case for the Iraq war.
We find Rafid Alwan, aka Curveball, in a town in Germany; and discover just how many doubts existed about Curveball - before the war - among both US and British intelligence.

Watch the film

Battle for Musa Qala

Newsnight has just posted the film I made on the Battle for Musa Qala in Helmand in Afghanistan at the end of December.

Click here to watch online

Band of brothers in vigil for fallen Lee 'Jonno' Johnson

First published in Sunday Times.

THE men of B Company gathered in whispers on the hilltop, helmeted silhouettes against a tapestry of stars.

Tonight, until first light, they would take turns at sentry duty � “stag”, as they call it � protecting the body of their fallen comrade. He was lying in our armoured vehicle. No helicopter was available that night to fly him home.

Major Jake Little, 36, the officer commanding, knew that emotions were running high. That morning, in front of us all, Sergeant Lee “Jonno” Johnson, one of the company’s best-loved soldiers, had been killed by a mine. His death came only hours after an afternoon of fierce fighting with the Taliban. Many felt they had just cheated death.

Little, his stubbled face weary with emotion, dug deep to find the right words. “I’m s*** at this,” he confessed to the men. He spoke of the gap Jonno would leave behind and how he had died doing what he loved. “Jonno would have been proud of each and every one of you,” he said.

“It’s a hard thing to be spending the night here with Jonno,” one highly experienced soldier said. “The men are quite bitter that they couldn’t find a helicopter for him.”

The company was from the 2nd Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment (the Green Howards), a regiment that Jonno, 33, from Stockton, Teesside, had joined in his teens. For some, he was not only a comrade but also their best friend.

Important though it was to mourn for Jonno, Little knew the emotions would have to be suppressed for now. “We have to move on,” he said, “but not forget.”

As they stood their watch, the men could see a skyline lit by tracer, flares and the flashes of heavy bombardment. Within hours, they would move off towards this awesome battle for the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala.

The night before he died, Jonno said he had waited 17 years in the army to join an operation like this. He had cancelled his leave so as not to miss out. Back home, after being told of his death, his fiancée Lisa said: “He told me his leave was cancelled earlier this month but I knew he had offered to stay and take part in this operation against the Taliban.”

Jonno, who represented the battalion at boxing and the army at judo, left a son, Ashley, and a daughter, Lilly Rose, who still thinks her daddy is coming home for her third birthday in February. He and Lisa planned to get married on August 1.

As we stood by his body, the photographer Nick Cornish and I worried that as journalists we were intruding into these men’s grief, but they asked us to stay. “So many times, deaths like this go unreported,” said Little.

The mine had exploded in a wadi, or dried-up watercourse, last weekend, just 25 yards away from us. Jonno and three others were travelling in a Vector, a new six-wheeled armoured vehicle. It was commanded by Captain Nick Mantell, 26, who coordinated the rescue afterwards, his face streaked with blood from a gash on his forehead.

The vehicle had struck the mine as it passed a broken-down Afghan army lorry. and was thrown down a slope. Jonno, who was killed instantly, was pronounced dead by an American special forces medic.

The next morning, a helicopter finally came for his body. After the truck and the Vector were cleared of ammunition and secret technology, B Company drove a couple of miles across the desert plateau and waited until a jet had dropped a bomb on each vehicle.

“This is also about closure for everyone,” said Royal Marine Warrant Officer Neil “Brum” Warrington.

We returned to camp, where a 12-mile convoy of Afghan and Nato troops was ready for battle. The commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Simon Downey, drew the Green Howards into a huddle. It was his farewell to Jonno. “He’s a man whose death will leave a huge hole in the regiment,” he said. A two-minute silence followed, interrupted only by the sounds of warplanes.

Later, Little gathered his men around him again to test their mettle. “Whatever the situation now is, it doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a s*** lot of fighting. Put your fear to one side � be aggressive, fellas � go for it!”

In the hours before battle on Tuesday, the men had risen from their bivouacs and cleaned their kit for the final time. Little went round and shook every man’s hand. Then the cry went up: “All on Fong.” Private Fong, a Fijian, is the company’s unofficial chaplain. His prayer was spoken in a language that no one understood, but everyone knew its purpose and all said “Amen”.

Just before we left, one of the survivors from Jonno’s vehicle, Private Lee Bellingham, came up to say he could not believe he had emerged unscathed from that twisted vehicle. He described trying to save Jonno.

“I knew in my subconscious that he was dead already,” he said, “but I just felt I ought to do something. I didn’t want to let go.”

Bellingham had said a prayer the morning of Jonno’s death. “I never normally pray,” he said, “but I said something that day. And I feel someone looked after me. I’ve said a prayer again this morning.”

Was Jonno’s sacrifice worth it? “Nothing that’s happening here makes his death worthwhile,” said one soldier that first night. Others were more philosophical: “You know, it’s a risk in what we do. We know death may happen, and there’s no way to really calculate what one man’s life is worth.”

As it turned out, the men arrived at Musa Qala to face not a bloody battle but a ghost town. After seven days of bitter fighting, the Taliban had fled.

But all know that the danger has not yet passed.

“The enemy’s still out there,” said one officer, “and the war continues.”

Terror on road to Taliban stronghold

From The Sunday Times, December 9, 2007

Stephen Grey in Musa Qala, Helmand

First there was a loud bang; then we were enveloped in dust that descended like a shroud. “Mortars!” someone shouted.

In a panic, we scrambled for the relative shelter of our vehicle on a hill opposite Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold under siege this weekend by Nato and Afghan forces, and dived inside.

Sand thrown up by the explosion swirled through the hatches and we reached for our helmets, keeping low in case of incoming fire.

Only when the dust had settled was the horror revealed: the blast had been caused not by a mortar, but by a mine that had been detonated when a British vehicle passed over it. One of the men with whom we were travelling was killed and two others wounded. The dead man’s next of kin were informed last night.

It happened as a British convoy passed along a wadi – a dried-out watercourse – in the desert near Musa Qala. We were standing at the top of the pass and stretching our legs as we waited for troops to recover an Afghan army truck that had got stuck in the sand 25 yards away.

The mine, probably one left by Soviet occupiers in the 1980s, exploded as the British vehicles steered past the truck.

Helplessly, we watched as British and US medics crawled across the Afghan truck to retrieve the casualties from their vehicle, its armour plating twisted by the force of the blast.

The photographer Nick Cornish and I were embedded in the biggest British-led operation staged so far in the Afghanistan war. The aim is to reconquer a swathe of territory that the Taliban has dared to call its own.

Amid heavy fighting, British, Afghan and American forces had been advancing all week towards Musa Qala, a town of 15,000- 20,000 inhabitants in Helmand. The British and Afghans advanced from the south and, on Friday night, the US 82nd Air-borne Division landed with troops to attack from the north.

Yesterday the US soldiers were closing in on the suburbs of the town, backed by Apache attack helicopters and A-10 Thunderbolt jets.

British forces were concentrated on the southern side. Warrior armoured vehicles of the Scots Guards, backed by A-10 air strikes, attacked the village of Deh Zohr-e-Sofia, southwest of Musa Qala, where we had witnessed a violent gun battle on Friday.

We had walked in silence towards the village, two columns of British and Afghan soldiers nervously wondering whether the Taliban would be lying in wait for us behind the high, mud-brick walls. They were.

A burst of gunfire erupted in front and we dived into a shallow ditch for cover. It was no protection, however, and we had little choice but to run. Bullets slammed into the ground around us as, feeling horribly exposed, we raced for the sanctuary of an armoured Humvee.

“We’d be dead by now if they could shoot straight,” said an officer from 2nd Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, as we took cover, sweating heavily in our flak jackets.

The latest battle for Musa Qala, one of the most fiercely fought-over towns in southern Afghanistan, had begun in earnest and was about to have horrific consequences for a group of refugees attempting to drive through the maelstrom to safety.

Terrifying in its intensity, Friday’s firefight was just one engagement in what officers have described as one of the biggest British military operations since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with hundreds of troops embroiled.

Held briefly last year by British forces and defended with the loss of seven soldiers, Musa Qala was recaptured by the Taliban in February after UK troops had pulled out during an ill-fated truce.

Last week, in a shift of strategy, Nato forces were moving back into the area, creating a “zone of security” to help win the hearts and minds of the locals. A British officer said: “Our aim now is to take control of no town that we cannot hold on to, unless we can deliver development for the people who live there.”

However, events in Deh Zohr-e-Sofia demonstrated how difficult it is to keep families safe, let alone make friends, in this treacherous corner of the world.

As we got our breath back behind the wheel of the Humvee, we noticed a white car, upturned on the road behind us, blood streaking one of its windows. Nearby, people had gathered around a truck, shouting and gesticulating. Two bodies lay in the dust.

British troops went forward to offer their help, but were turned back by angry bystanders shouting, “Go away,” in English.

Amid the confusion, it took some time for the sequence of events to become clear. But in the end there was no doubt that the two civilians had been killed by American gunfire.

As we had approached the village, the Taliban had fired at us from five or six positions.

Once the shooting began, the refugees in the truck and car tried desperately to escape and had driven past us at high speed. Their flight took them directly towards two US Humvees parked by the side of the road.

The Americans, thinking they were under attack from a suicide bomber, opened fire, killing the driver and a passenger in the truck. Three others were injured: a woman with a bullet wound in her face, a boy who was shot in the arm and a girl with a serious gash in her side. The children were both about five years old.

At first the families were too enraged to let Corporal Phil French, a medic with the Yorkshire Regiment, anywhere near the wounded. Eventually, he gave the woman and children first aid. The British tried to arrange a helicopter to take them for treatment. None was available.

Soldiers tried to make sense of it. “Americans have been the victims time and again of suicide attacks,” said one. Another argued that the civilians had in effect been “human shields” and had been “deliberately forced to drive towards us – probably against their will – and used as a screen to attack”.

Another felt sorry for the men who had pulled the triggers. “They will have to live with this for the rest of their lives,” he said.

The battle went on all afternoon. Later, the British would be thankful to the Americans. As a Humvee kept up a steady barrage in answer to enemy gunfire, American F16s swooped down from above to strafe the compounds in which the Taliban fighters were sheltering.

At one point, an aircraft believed to be a B1 bomber dropped a precision-targeted bomb onto an area where the enemy was gathering for an attack.

It was expected to be a long and bloody battle. For the Taliban, the British attack on Musa Qala had come as no surprise. Leaflets had been dropped on the town, warning residents that Nato forces were coming.

The movement began on Tuesday at first light when Royal Marine commandos stormed across the Helmand river in amphibious vehicles near the town of Sangin. They were soon fending off rocket and machine-gun attacks.

In a manoeuvre nearby, Trooper Jack Sadler, of the Honourable Artillery Company, was killed and two soldiers were injured when their vehicle was caught in an explosion.

British forces had been encouraged in the days before their assault by the public defection to the government side of Mullah Abdul Salaam, a key Taliban commander. He brought with him up to one-third of the fighters who had been defending Musa Qala.

On Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai, who had encouraged Salaam’s defection by pushing for negotiations, sent several dozen militia to the area to help protect the mullah from reprisals. Bizarrely, they arrived at the British lines in school buses that had brought them from Kabul, the capital.

On the same day, a British patrol was attacked near the Kajaki dam northeast of Sangin, resulting in a firefight that lasted several hours and prompted the deployment of RAF Harrier jets to push back the enemy.

To the west, near the town of Now Zad, a company of Estonians backed by Royal Marines came under sustained attack. American special forces were also involved. One heavy Taliban attack was driven back only after a bomb had been dropped on their position from an American B1 aircraft.

RAF helicopter pilots flew two rescue missions, despite heavy rocket fire, to recover two wounded Taliban fighters. “We had British and Estonian lives risked to save the life of two enemy,” said Major Alex Murray.

Danish forces under UK command were attacked in the town of Gereshk; and intelligence suggested the Taliban were trying to move two large explosive devices south to be used for suicide bombs in British-controlled towns.

On Thursday, a big Afghan army column began an advance, backed by British and American special forces, while diversionary attacks were launched on Taliban positions in other parts of Helmand.

Yesterday, as America’s 82nd Air-borne Division advanced on Musa Qala, thousands of civilians were believed to be trapped in the town. The emphasis was on trying to persuade Taliban leaders to flee Musa Qala or defect to the government.

“The prize in this insurgency is the people,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Eaton, a spokesman for the British forces in Helmand. “What we need to do in Musa Qala is persuade the people they will be better off under the government.”

British officers said the whole operation – backed by an Afghan brigade, numerous special forces and more than a battalion of American troops – was so big that some aircraft were redeployed from combat in Iraq.

The Afghan forces were said to be proving their mettle in the latest combat. “These guys have no hesitation in killing the Taliban,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Simon Downey, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, which is “mentoring” the Afghan troops.

The arrangement was not without frustrations. The Afghans were supposedly fighting under their own command. Yet they could barely function without Nato’s protection and Nato had to cajole them to move forward.

Another complication was the use of cannabis by Afghan soldiers. “Hashish is part of our culture,” said an Afghan officer. “It is just like whisky and wine for you.”

ends

The Guantanamo Airlift: how Europe helped transport the prisoners

By Stephen Grey / additional research Natalia Viana.

For more information, including breakdown of Guantanamo prisoner flights, see www.ghostplane.net / and www.ghostplane.pbwiki.com



THE secret flight plans of American military planes have revealed for the first time how European countries helped send prisoners, including British citizens, to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Despite widespread criticism of alleged human rights abuses and torture at the US base in Cuba, a Sunday Times investigation has shown that at least five European countries gave the United States permission to fly nearly 700 terrorist suspects across their territory.

Three years ago, The Sunday Times published flight logs of CIA civilian jets in Europe, setting off a controversy over the whether countries across the continent have been secretly involved in America's rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that carry out torture.

The row is now set to be reignited. Inquiries by Ana Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European parliament, have uncovered not only more CIA flight logs but also more sensitive military flight plans, which until now have remained a closely guarded secret.

The logs show how most prisoners changed planes at a Turkish military airbase and flew across Greek, Italian and Portuguese airspace. Others reached Cuba after touching down in Spain, whose governing socialist party once expressed indignation at conditions in Guantanamo.

The flight logs show that three Britons — Shafiq Rasul, Jamal Udeen and Asif Iqbal — were flown across Europe to Cuba on January 14, 2002. Moazzam Begg, another Briton, was taken by the same route to Guantanamo on February 2, 2003; and Binyam Mohamed, a British resident whose release the British government is now trying to negotiate, arrived in Cuba after crossing Europe in a special flight in September 2004.

According to the flight plans, the first 23 prisoners to arrive at Guantanamo — including another British citizen, Feroz Abbasi, then 21, and an Australian, David Hicks — had arrived at the American naval base in Cuba after flying from the Moron airbase in Spain.

Abbasi has claimed in a statement that prisoners were abused within hours of arriving. "We were made to sit on our heels, one foot over the other, supported by one foot's toes alone, for hours. Some of us were old, weak, fatigued, and injured — they were the ones to drop first in the searing Caribbean heat."

Described by the Pentagon as the "worst of the worst" from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the images of prisoners such as Abbasi dressed in orange jumpsuits, their heads shaved and shackled by their wrists and ankles, shocked the world. Within a day, Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, announced that the Geneva conventions would not apply to what were now called "enemy combatants".

Last week, Europe's leading watchdog on human rights alleged that European countries had breached the international convention against torture by giving the US secret permission to use its airspace.

Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, said: "What happened at Guantanamo was torture and it is illegal to provide facilities or anything to make this torture possible. Under the law, European governments should have intervened and should not have given permission to let these flights happen."

Gomes added: "It's clear to me that Guantanamo could not have been created without the involvement of European countries."

Methods used at Guantanamo Bay, condemned by Britain's Court of Appeal as a legal "black hole" and as a "monstrous failure of justice" by one law lord, have included the prolonged use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and use of stress positions. "These are methods that have been declared as unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights," Hammarberg said.

The military flight plans show that all key flights arriving in Guantanamo had come across European airspace either through Spain or the Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey. The Sunday Times compared the military flight plans against a database compiled by Reprieve, the British-based charity that represents Guantanamo prisoners, of when prisoners first weighed in at the camp.

The investigation, cross-checked against other Pentagon documents, shows for the first time which prisoner arrived on which flight at Guantanamo, and by what route. At least 170 other prisoners flew over Spanish territory, more than 700 crossed Portuguese space, and more than 680 were transshipped at Incirlik. Most flights also crossed Greek and Italian airspace, according to a source in European air traffic control.

On February 7 2003, for example, a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster plane took off from Incirlik with 27 prisoners on board for Cuba. The same day, prisoner number 558 weighed in at 136lb (62kg) at the camp. He can be named as Moazzam Begg, now 39, from Birmingham, who was released in January 2005, and has never been charged with a crime.

Interviewed by phone last week, Begg recalled: "Inside the plane there was a chain around our waist, and it connected to cuffs around my wrists, which were tied in the back, and to my ankles. We were seated but it was so painful not being able to speak, to hear, to breathe properly, to look, to turn left or right, to move your hands, stretch your legs, or anything." At the time flights were landing in Spain and crossing Spanish airspace, socialist leaders there were expressing "indignation" over conditions in Guantanamo. Now the socialists are in government after winning an election in March 2004 just after the Madrid train bombings and they are being asked to defend Spain's continued collaboration with American operations. Under international law, government and military planes can cross another country's territory only with diplomatic permission.

In a statement to the European parliament on the visits of CIA planes to Spain, the foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has testified: "Our territory may have been used not to commit crimes on it, but as a stopover on the way to committing crime in another country."

Spain, it has now emerged, had a specific agreement with the US to allow flights and visits to Spanish airbases for American planes.

In Portugal, the foreign minister Luis Amado has said flights across his country's airspace took place "under the aegis of the UN and Nato and that Portugal naturally follows the principle of good faith in the relations with its allies". Nato's role in Guantanamo stems from a secret agreement made in Brussels on October 4 2001 by all Nato members, including Britain. Although never made public, Lord Robertson, the former British defence secretary who was later Nato's secretary-general, explained that day that Nato had agreed to provide "blanket overflight clearances for the United States and other allies' aircraft for military flights related to operations against terrorism".

Today, Nato is more coy about its role in helping send prisoners to Guantanamo.

In a letter to Gomes, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the current secretary-general, said no Nato planes had "flown to or from Guantanamo Bay" and that Nato "as an organisation has no involvement or co-ordinating role in providing clearance or overflight rights for other flights". Turkey, meanwhile, has declared that its agencies had "reached no findings regarding any unacknowledged deprivation of liberty conducted by foreign agencies within the territory of the republic of Turkey or any transport by aircraft or otherwise of the persons deprived of their liberty".

In London, Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, said, with America threatening that Guantanamo prisoners faced the death penalty, European governments had made "pious statements" that they would never send prisoners to the US without obtaining assurances they would not be executed.

Stafford Smith added: "Some European governments, it's now clear, systematically assisted in clandestine flights and illegal prisoner transfers to Guantanamo Bay. We need a full investigation and Europeans need to face their responsibility for these crimes."

See flight logs and complete list of prisoners at www.ghostplane.net

Additional reporting: Natalia Viana

Abandoned by Britain, the interpreter fleeing from Iraqi death squads

By STEPHEN GREY - first published Mail on Sunday on 11th November 2007

A senior British Army officer has hit out at the lack of protection given to his former translator after the man was forced to go on the run when Iraqi insurgents murdered his brother-in-law and kidnapped his wife.

He says the Iraqi interpreter, who also worked for the Foreign Office, was turned away by British officials and told: "Make your own way to safety."

Last night, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer, who was head of the Army's legal service in Iraq, said Britain had an obligation to help Haider Samad.

He said: "We owe this man an enormous debt – we can't abandon him and his family."

Lt Col Mercer said Samad had been crucial to his work in establishing law and order after the British took over in southern Iraq. "We couldn't have done it without him," he said.

The news comes despite Foreign Secretary David Miliband's promise to protect former employees of UK Forces in Iraq and allow them to settle in Britain.

Last night, Haider Samad was on the run in Basra and in desperate danger after he was turned away from the British base at the city's airport.

Armed militias behind a terror offensive against British troops in the region have launched a manhunt for him, and have already launched a murderous attack on his family.

Other former translators who worked for British Forces say the situation is serious. The Foreign Office's own figures suggest that 40 ex-employees of the British have been killed so far.

Many in the Army believe there has been insufficient care taken to remember those who have died a manhunt for him, and have already launched a murderous attack on his family.

Other former translators who worked for British Forces say the situation is serious. The Foreign Office's own figures suggest that 40 ex-employees of the British have been killed so far.

Many in the Army believe there has been insufficient care taken to remember those who have died.

Samad had worked for British forces since they first arrived in 2003; he had been held for the previous four years under house arrest by Saddam because of his pro-democracy work.

In March 2007, he left his final job as an interpreter for ArmorGroup, a UK firm running a Foreign Office contract to train local police, after death threats from Shia militias.

In September his brother-in-law Ali was captured and killed by the militias. They left a note on his body urging Samad to give himself up.

Samad then fled to Iran but his wife and children and his wife's uncle, Ahmed, were kidnapped last weekend.

They were all later released but Ahmed is in an intensive-care unit with four bullet wounds in his chest.

Samad said: "I appeal for anyone with a conscience to help me. This is a question of life or death for us."

A Foreign Office spokesman said officials were 'keeping closely in touch' with Samad and doing their best to help him.

Frontline World - Extraordinary Rendition -Trailer

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The agonizing truth about CIA renditions

Published on Salon.com

The fate of prisoners secreted away under the Bush administration is in some ways worse than even Hollywood has portrayed.

By Stephen Grey

Nov. 05, 2007 At 3:44 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2004, a luxury Boeing 737 business jet operated by the Central Intelligence Agency landed at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan. Onboard were its flight crew, eight members of a CIA rendition team and a blindfolded prisoner who was shackled by his wrists and feet.

The behavior of the prisoner, a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri, concerned the CIA team leader onboard. According to an agency insider, the leader sent word to Washington that "there was something strange about el-Masri. He didn't behave like the others they'd captured. He was asking: Is he the right guy?"

Within days it emerged that el-Masri was indeed the wrong man. It was a "100 percent case of mistaken identity," said another former agency official. Yet, despite this discovery, el-Masri spent 18 weeks in solitary confinement in a CIA "black site," or secret prison used by the United States in its war on terror. He is still waiting for an apology or an explanation.

The case of el-Masri -- whose lawsuit against the CIA has been dismissed by U.S. courts on the grounds of protecting "state secrets" -- caused a huge controversy within the CIA at the time of his capture. A five-month standoff between employees at the Counterterrorism Center and others in the clandestine service led then director George Tenet to step in. "On at least this occasion, Tenet made the right choice," a source told me. "He ordered the release of a man who was clearly not a terrorist."

The current Hollywood movie "Rendition" looks at a fictional case of a wrongly identified terrorist. It calls to public attention the CIA program of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of nabbing terrorist suspects abroad and transferring them without legal process to a third country -- often one where torture is commonplace -- for detention and interrogation.

In the course of investigating the rendition program for the past four years, I have interviewed victims, CIA pilots, case officers who have actually carried out renditions, senior CIA officers who directed such operations and officials at the White House who were involved in authorizing such measures. All of these sources told me in private or on the record that repeated claims by the White House that we "don't send people to countries where they will be tortured" are plain lies.

As Tyler Drumheller, head of CIA covert operations in Europe from 2001 to 2005, said in an on-camera interview, the assurances obtained from countries like Egypt that prisoners would not be tortured were hardly treated as serious. "You can say we asked them not to do it, and they do say that, but you have to be honest with yourself and say there's no way we can guarantee they are not going to do that."

Hollywood's "Rendition" makes some mistakes. It is not true, as the movie depicts, that CIA officers stand by in some Egyptian or Syrian torture room while a prisoner is electrocuted. Most CIA officers would find that abhorrent, and it would breach the CIA's own rules and be a clear violation of U.S. law.

But in some ways the truth about rendition is worse than what is depicted in the Hollywood film. When prisoners are handed over to countries like Egypt or Syria, CIA officers keep well clear of what happens next because agency rules prevent them from witnessing any strong-arm interrogations. But keeping their eyes wide shut, in effect, allows for much darker, more immoral things to occur, and for the U.S. government to preserve plausible deniability.

Inside its own "black site" prisons, the CIA uses interrogation methods that -- while falling short of the medieval techniques used in the Arab world -- still, in the eyes of many within the agency, amount to straightforward torture. It is not only the physical methods like waterboarding (simulated drowning), but also refined techniques of sensory deprivation, that can cripple a prisoner psychologically.

One witness to such abuse was Bisher al-Rawi, a longtime British resident who was snatched by the CIA and held for more than four years, first in Afghanistan, then in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a recent interview he told me about the "dark prison" where he was held in solitary confinement while being bombarded with strange music. It was freezing cold and so dark, he said, "you couldn't see the end of your nose." Physical torture, like the beatings he later endured, could be overcome, he said, but psychological torture "lives with you all your life."

The Bush administration now acknowledges its program of rendition and the existence of its black sites. But much remains a deep secret. Most of the terrorist suspects involved remain in custody and cannot talk. And we know the fate of just a small fraction of the thousands of prisoners captured by U.S. forces around the world since 9/11.

Recently, by refusing to hear the lawsuit of Khaled el-Masri, the U.S. Supreme Court has added to this veil of secrecy. It left standing a judgment by the circuit court that however bad el-Masri's treatment, the objectives of national security outweighed the public interest in airing the truth about his arrest and detention in a public court of law.

As long as a terror suspect remains a "ghost prisoner" whose location and fate can only be guessed at, then a prison guard or interrogator need feel little fear of the consequences of what he or she might do. Secrecy is a friend of the torturer.


-- By Stephen Grey