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Thursday 4 December 2008

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore reflects on his trip to Afghanistan

Outside the Joint Support Unit HQ here stands a cross rising from a mound of cobbles. On each of the four sides of the mound is set a brass plate for the names of those British soldiers who have died in Afghanistan. The second of the four plates is almost full. At the precise moment that we walk past it, the Union flag is being adjusted to half-mast — the 96th man has just died, killed by a mine. The CO has told us that the camp will take from seven to ten years to complete. So, at the present rate of death, by then the memorial will need at least eight plates — for which there is no room. Although the camp is well organised and neat, the place is unutterably bleak. The landscape has almost no features at all. ‘The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

Our little party, led by Andrew Mitchell, the shadow secretary for International Development, is trying to find out what is happening in Afghanistan. But first we have to find the helicopter to take us on to the British camp at Lashkar Gah. While we wait, we are introduced to the camp’s dog section. We are taken into a yard in the full sun — the temperature in the shade is about 110˚F. An Alsatian is getting further training. In England, he has been taught only to bite the arm, but here he must go for the legs. So one man holds him on a lead; a second, dressed in a long, black Afghan shirt, so that the dog does not learn to bite British uniforms, beats the air with a swagger stick to provoke him; a third, quite stout, climbs into a grotesque suit made of stuff like the lagging on a boiler. He staggers around in the dust until the maddened dog sinks its teeth into his thigh and pulls him down. When it is all over, the man’s helmet is pulled off. He has gone deep red and is plastered with sweat. ‘We call it the fat stripper,’ says the happy corporal from Wallasey, who puts the interests of dogs before those of people.

Helicopters have to come in and out fast to give as little time as possible to present a target. You rush to them, bending against the wind from the blades, and scramble up beside a man training his machine-gun on the surrounding landscape. As the engine gathers pace, it somehow scoops in the exterior air and heats it some more, so you feel like bread being put into an oven. Away we go, over the poppy fields, everywhere visible, which have just been harvested to extract opium.

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