The Independent
By Jerome Starkey in Lashkar Gah
Their homes have been destroyed, their schools have been closed and all three know friends and family who have been killed in the fighting. Helmand, their homeland, has been transformed in the past 60 years from a beacon of international development into a giant narco-farm controlled by the Taliban.
But the three students I met in Lashkar Gah were strangely optimistic about the future. None of them have gone the way of jihad. All three of them were desperate for change.
I spent four days in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, to get a rare glimpse of what ordinary people think about the increasing violence. It was the first time a British journalist had visited Helmand outside of the carefully managed military “embed” process for almost a year.
Photographer Jeremy Kelly and I flew from Kabul to Helmand dressed from head to toe in Afghan robes to look inconspicuous. It did not work. As soon as our flight was called a fellow passenger sidled up to me. “Are you going to Helmand?” he asked in hushed tones. “It’s very dangerous, especially for foreigners.”
But the three students, like most people we met in Lashkar Gah, were happy to talk to us. “Things are getting worse,” said Mohammed Issaq, an 18-year-old from Now Zad. “We can’t remember a single day of peace.” His town in the far north of the province is one of the most remote settlements in Helmand. The soldiers there can barely venture outside their camps before the Taliban attack. Once garrisoned by the British, it was handed over to the Estonians, then back to the British and finally to the Americans, who call their base there “The Alamo”.
But, he said: “We are optimistic about the future. If the British troops stop surrounding people’s homes and killing innocent people, then the people will sit dow; they won’t fight. But if they do not stop, then people are obliged to join the Taliban, take AK47s and defend themselves.”
His classmate Rafiullah, 18, grew up in Sangin, the town that has become synonymous with British casualties. Mohammed Sabir, 19, came from Garmsir in the south, where 4,000 Americans have just launched the biggest operation in Afghanistan to flush out the Taliban since the Soviet occupation.
“The British troops they come, they bomb the area, and capture an area, then they give it back and the Taliban come back,” said Mohammed Sabir. “The Taliban come back and security gets worse. The fighting begins again and in between the civilians get killed.”
Today, the students live together in a small room above a shop on one of the city’s main bazaars. Lashkar Gah is the only place in Helmand where it is safe enough to go to school. More than 3,000 British troops are involved in a bloody operation a few miles to the north, and 4,000 American marines are fighting a similar distance to the south.
For three years, British troops have battled to convince local people that they are better off shunning the Taliban and supporting the government in Kabul. With the extra troops, British and American commanders have promised to stay in the areas they clear until the Afghan army is ready to take over. But the mood in Lashkar Gah suggests that efforts so far have been hamstrung by civilian casualties and a corrupt and ineffective government.
