BritainsThirdOpiumWar

These April 21, 2012 photos show my first ever view of a conflict frontline, looking out from the top floor of a concrete guard tower on Camp Bastion's airfield perimeter. It was my first guard duty on my first operational deployment with the British army and I spent it protecting opium harvesting and processing just 200-metres from our perimeter fence. Our duty briefing was as follows:

Afghan security forces (ANDSF) were harassing the farmers in the valley next to the airfield. At first the RAF Regiment guard commander told us that if we saw any such harassment we were to radio for the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) to intervene; he then revised that order and said to alert the QRF if we saw any ANDSF even enter the valley. He didn't mention the poppies or opium, but as the duty progressed it soon became apparent that's what the farmers were growing and harvesting.
We were not to use flares to illuminate the valley at night because, and I quote, "It disturbs the neighbours" . Our neighbours were the Afghans who'd moved into the valley after we'd established the NATO main operating base there in 2006. We were assured the neighbours were 'friendly' because the valley was controlled by an Afghan ally called Daoud Mohammad - a vague but authoritative explanation.
He said we'd probably heard of guards who'd been caught sleeping on duty going unpunished, but the guard commander assured us that if he caught us neglecting our duties, he would deal with us personally and in the most severe manner. He was clearly very frustrated about previous infractions going unpunished by senior commanders but the normally court-martial offence was going unpunished in order to maintain morale apparently.

The panoramic image below shows a wider view of the valley on April 22, 2012. The poppy fields and opium harvesting are on the right-hand side. The opium processing (cooking) was being done outside the adjacent compound, below the white sheet attached to the nearside wall (where scorch marks are visible in the subsequent photo taken on May 2, 2012).

View from tower 11

The right hand images clearly show the opium harvesting and its proximity to our airfield defences. Before deploying to Helmand we were told that the summer 'fighting season' only began in earnest after the opium harvest was complete because the Taliban fighters were busy harvesting the opium. It was a truly surreal experience - protecting possible Taliban fighters from our ANDSF allies on my very first operational duty. I pointed out the opium harvesting to the guard commander when he visited the tower on April 22 and he nodded and said, "Yeah, I know". It appeared to be a situation that aggravated him as much as the sleeping guards, but was again beyond his control, something his senior commanders knew about but failed year-upon-year to do anything about. On December 17, 2013, whilst giving evidence to a British parliament inquiry into the Taliban's September 14/15, 2012 attack on Camp Bastion's airfield, British Lieutenant General David Capewell had the audacity to say:

"I think it was a minor tactical error to allow that poppy field to grow...
It was a minor contributing factor to the enemy's success."

Two weeks after his shameless statements and lies made before Britain's parliament, Lt Gen David Capewell became Sir David Capewell when Britain's old queen knighted him. On the other side of the Atlantic, in a nation that freed itself from such monarchic rule in 1776, there was far more honesty about and accountability for the Taliban's audacious airfield raid. When giving evidence to the US military's August 2013 inquiry into the airfield raid, US Marine Corp Major General Sturdevant said:

"We literally had poppy growing right up against the perimeter fence. That was another thing that Major General Gurganus tried to take action on, but he wasn't able to accomplish that. It was because the Afghans had to do it. We weren't allowed to. The biggest external threat to the base came from there."

The scorch marks visible on the compound wall in the right -hand photo is where the opium was cooked 10-days earlier. That village on Camp Bastion's south-eastern corner, where the poppy fields & opium kitchen were, was known as Now-Abad which is Pashtu for 'new buildings'.

And so it appears neither Major General Sturdevant or Major General Gurganus were aware of the orders being given to British guards to stop the ANDSF from interfering with the opium production besides our airfield. Both of those US Marine Corp (USMC) Major Generals were forced to retire early and in disgrace for their perceived failings, the greatest of which to my mind was trusting the British army to be able to secure a chain-link fence. It must also be noted that the USMC was only in Camp Bastion (or Camp Leatherneck as they called it) for one reason - to support British forces in the task we'd failed to do ourselves - secure Helmand province. The USMC's misplaced trust in their British allies cost them dearly. The fifteen Taliban attackers of September 14/15, 2012 managed to decimate an entire squadron of USMC Harrier Jump Jets, cause a total of $400-million of damage, and kill two US Marines, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Raible and Sergeant Bradley Atwell who were both killed-in-action defending the NATO main operating base that British forces had failed to secure.

You may be thinking at this point that British complicity in opium harvesting and its consequences couldn't get any worse, but it does. It's almost beyond comprehension but is proven beyond doubt by analysed satellite images that the poppy fields we were protecting were irrigated with water sourced and purified inside our base, as per the images below. Another circumstance that's literally beyond my comprehension but is again proved beyond doubt by publicly available evidence. On the exact same day I was ordered to protect farmers who were harvesting opium 200-metres from Camp Bastion's fence from our ANDSF allies, our commanders sent 170-British soldiers 15-kilometers south of Bastion to assist the ANDSF destroy poor farmers poppy crops on Operation Shafuq. That operation was immediately nicknamed Operation Sure-fuck and it was only by the grace of God that none were killed, either by IEDs or green-on-blue insider attacks by our Afghan allies. That criminal duplicity by British commanders is illustrated in the image below and in this short youtube video of the mission. And my final point here will link in to Part-II, The Coverup. As stated, I was visited in guard tower 11 by the RAF Regiment guard commander who I raise the matter of opium harvesting with. I was visited later on that April 22 duty by my Battalion second-in-command and his side kick, a Major and a Captain I think. They were very friendly, almost jovial, as I repeated our orders to protect the farmers from ANDSF harassment but their mood altered the moment I pointed to the opium harvesting and asked if they could see it. Both officers turned on their tails and exited the tower as fast as their legs could carry them. Their jovial mood hadn't changed, in fact they were laughing as they were descending the ladder and proclaiming "We can't see anything". I still consider that my second scariest moment during my six month tour in Afghanistan. My scariest moment was in that same guard tower seven days before the Taliban's airfield raid when I was told twice over the radio not to worry so much about the figure I was watching probing and testing our defences. To give my fears some context, I spent about sixty hours over five separate patrols outside Camp Bastion acting as top-cover for the force protection element of resupply convoys, also known as Combat Logistic Patrols. Ours was the last vehicle to drive over an IED before it exploded one time (they missed us), but that didn't scare me - that's just shit that happens in my book. But hearing my commanders laugh about our complicity in opium production (ignoring the threat that presented) and telling me over the radio 'don't worry so much' (about our defences being probed) was absolutely terrifying to me. Our commanders' criminally corrupt gross incompetence presented a far greater threat to our lives than the Taliban ever did, and there was nothing I could do about it.