Counter Narcotics Policeman in a soon-to-be destroyed opium field, Trek Nawa. All photos by Jackson Fager unless otherwise noted.
I recently spent a month in Helmand, Afghanistan's most
violent province. Although it has received more attention and resources from
the West than any other part of the country, Afghan Security Forces have
struggled to defend it from the Taliban during the 18 months since the
withdrawal of American and British infantry troops.
This was my eleventh trip to the province, and the situation
is deteriorating rapidly. During my month in Helmand I spent time with four
different armed groups. Each of the groups lost members to shootings or IEDs
within hours or days after I left them. In total, 24 of the people I spent time
with are now dead and at least 12 severely injured.
Our war may have come to end, for Afghans the war is entering its
bloodiest phase.
Three Afghan Local Police fighters in Marjah, aged 10, 12, and 14. The oldest two were kidnapped just days after this picture was taken.
With the Afghan National Security Forces woefully
undertrained and under-equipped to protect its citizens against the Taliban,
local militias—adopted as a supposedly short-term solution five years ago—are
still also heavily involved in the fighting. For instance, when two young
fighters I met in Marjah—one just 12 years old and the other 14—were kidnapped by
the Taliban, their 53-year-old commander, who also happened to be their
grandmother, was forced to kidnap several Taliban family members and organize a
prisoner exchange for their release. At no point was the authorities' help
offered or sought.
Marjah is a small and scarcely populated farming district
that served as the scene of the war's biggest operation, when, in February
2010, 30,000 US and UK forces invaded to oust the Taliban and introduce an
Afghan "government in a box." The start of the operation, and the promises
made, were covered by all the major networks and newspapers, but very few have
been back since. The only evidence that the US was ever here are the few
tarmacked roads that now connect Marjah to Lashkar Gar, the provincial capital.
(At the time of writing, those roads are blocked by the Taliban.) They are some
of the most expensive roads ever laid.
The author with three Afghan Local Police fighters in Marjah, aged 10, 12, and 14. The oldest two were kidnapped just days after this picture was taken.
Before I arrived in Helmand, I spent a few days in Kabul,
which used to be known as "the Kabubble," for its reputation of security,
pleasure and isolation from the realities the rest of the country was facing.
But during my first night, I heard screams. The next day I learned that they
had come from two possible sources: In one, two suicide bombers in vehicles
were shot before they could detonate their explosives. In the other, Matiullah
Khan, the Police chief of Uruzgan province, was killed by a suicide bomber
wearing a burqa, outside of the Kabul hotel he was staying in.
The following day a 27-year-old woman named
Farkhunda
Malikzada
was beaten to death outside the Shah-Do Shamshira
Mosque. She had been arguing with a Mullah about his selling of charms, or
folded pieces of paper with verses from the Quran on them, which some Afghans
believe bring good luck. The Mullah accused
Farkhunda of burning a Quran, and soon
she found herself surrounded by a mob of angry men. They started beating her,
those closest to her putting their arms around each other for support as they
took turns stomping on her. Many onlookers, none of whom made any serious
attempt to stop it, captured the attack on film. Witnesses said that between ten
and 15 police officers were among the large crowd either standing by, or
encouraging the beating. At one point Farkhunda, her face covered in blood, managed
to climb onto a nearby roof, but she was thrown off and knocked unconscious
with a thick wooden plank. Her body was then run over by a car, thrown over a
wall onto the dry Helmand riverbed, and set on fire. (If the order of these
events is incorrect it's because I couldn't bring myself to watch the video
again.)
Several politicians were quick to come out in support of the
murderers, saying the killing was justified. An investigation found no evidence
that
Malikzada
had burned a Quran. I'd seen video of similar violence in the countryside, and
had agreed with a theory that countries like Afghanistan can only reform slowly,
with the liberal cities gradually, carefully dragging the conservative
countryside into modernity. This attack made nonsense of that theory. The
modernizing city of my imagination is more likely a small elite, and not a powerful
and growing block that idealists like myself are often so keen to believe
exists.
Violence is up almost everywhere in Afghanistan, amongst
civilians, soldiers and policemen. Last year saw the highest casualties amongst
civilians since the war began, with overall numbers topping 10,000 (3,188
deaths and 6,429 injuries, according to the UN). More than 4,600 security
personnel were killed during the same year, almost 90 a week. This year will be
far worse. Combine desertion and defection rates among the security forces and
the numbers are simply not sustainable. They also remain entirely funded by
foreign aid (most of it from the US) and there is no sign that the Afghan
government will be able to foot the bill at any point in the foreseeable
future.
Commander Abdali, former Counter Narcotics Police Chief of Helmand (in shades), Trek Nawa
My first trip in Helmand was with the Counter Narcotics
Police, who were destroying a few poppy fields in Trek Nawa, an area not far
from Marjah that was recently in the hands of the Taliban. The commander, an
educated, honest, and dedicated man named Mohammad Abdali, was admirably
upfront about his work, and wondered aloud what he was actually achieving. He said that in 2014, 100,007 hectares of
poppy were cultivated in Helmand, but only 860 were destroyed. In 2015, between
115,000 and 120,000 were cultivated, but only 4500 were destroyed. The opium harvest in Afghanistan has gone up
almost every year since the invasion, despite the US spending over eight
billion dollars on eradication. If the aim had been to make the Afghan poppies
bloom, this would be one of the few success stories of the entire war.
As local men employed by Abdali drove tractors back and
forth, annihilating what is the only source of income for many, locals sat on
the edge of their fields, looking at Abdali and his men with hatred.
Counter Narcotics Police destroying poppies in the same fields
Two days later, I was sitting with Abdali in his
headquarters when he got a call saying his men had been struck by an IED in the
same fields. We raced outside to his unarmored pickup truck and with his
security detail of just two armed men, sped through the streets of Lashkar Gar,
toward Trek Nawa. We arrived just in time to see two of his men being carried
into the back of a truck, their faces ripped apart by shrapnel and covered in
blood. The main victim, who had spotted the IED and bent down to inspect it, was
killed instantly and had already been loaded onto the truck and covered with a
blanket. Someone had been watching them, and detonated the IED with a mobile
phone after he crouched down to look at it.
"One person is dead," said Abdali as we raced back to Lashkar Gar,
following the truck with the casualties on board, "he doesn't have a head."
The two survivors were taken to a hospital run by an international
NGO called Emergency, illustrating that despite the billions spent, there are
nowhere near enough facilities to treat wounded security force members or
civilians. Nor does the government have the ability to transfer the wounded,
especially from the areas that are being fought for.
Afghan Local Police fighter, Gereshk
A few days later, Abdali drove me to Gereshk, the second
largest town in Helmand province where his friend, an Afghan National Police Commander
named Hekmatullah Barakzai, had built up a reputation as a fearsome and brave
Taliban killer. Hekmatullah had visited the counter narcotics police headquarters
once while I was staying there. During a dinner on the roof, his right-hand man
had shown me pictures of Taliban corpses they had tied to the hoods of their
cars for display, smiling eagerly as he flicked through each one. One picture
showed a man whose head was intact but sat on top of his skin, which was spread
out beneath him like a bear rug. I asked if he had been skinned or if he was a
suicide bomber, but I didn't get an answer, just a delighted laugh.
I first went to Gereshk in 2007, when British forces had
been in Helmand for just over a year. They were declaring victory then, saying
that the Taliban had been pushed out, that the local community was embracing
them and the Afghan government, the latter of which was ready to move in and
start providing services. I had even been taken to building sites, where
courts, a prison, and a governor's compound were being built. Today, Gereshk
appears ready to fall. White Taliban flags appear in almost every direction you
look. We were driving a Humvee that had been adapted to work more like a cattle
truck. The front two seats remained, but on the back was a large armored cube,
which could carry roughly six men, one of whom held my knee as a gesture of
affection or re-assurance. US and UK forces stopped using Humvees outside their
forward operating bases in 2009, when the much better-armored and expensive
MRAPs started arriving. Humvees didn't offer anywhere near enough protection
from the Taliban's IEDs. The one we were traveling in was the only one the police
had, and the cube we were sitting in was roofless, so if we'd hit an IED we
would have been thrown into the air and almost certainly killed. The Humvee
left as soon as we were dropped off, so that when we wanted to leave, we'd be
traveling like the rest of the police, in a basic Toyota Corolla.
Afghan Local Police fighter, Gereshk
Commander Hekmatullah took us on a walking tour of three of his
patrol bases, spread out just a hundred meters or so apart, on the edge of the
green zone, the fertile strip of land that flanks the Helmand river. The bases are just abandoned homes, no more
than two- or three-room mud huts, surrounded by head high mud walls, with small
firing holes smashed into each side. Looking through those holes, I could see
more white Taliban flags, often just 200 or 300 meters away. Every time I
looked through a hole a policeman would grab me and pull me away, saying it was
too dangerous.
One told me he had been shot three times already, and showed
me the scar tissue on his chest and leg. He then pulled his fringe back. "One
time, see, bullet here," he said, pointing to the right side of his forehead, where the bullet had entered, and then, "out here," pointing to the other. He was one of the few men to be
wearing a uniform and said he had been injured six times. "Seventh time maybe
finished," he said, laughing.
We walked quickly between each base because we were exposed
to snipers whenever we weren't behind the high mud walls. At the last patrol
base I finally managed to get Commander Hekmatullah to stop and answer a few
questions. He shuffled from leg to leg, looking in every direction except mine,
almost never making eye contact. He was unable to remain still, or relax, even
for a second. "The Taliban have surrounded the area," he said. "This is the
last police post." I asked how much
support he was getting from the Americans. "There is none," he said, bluntly.
"In the past year and a half, there has been no help." He said that the Taliban
had much better weapons than he did. Sometimes he exhaled loudly and looked
away, as if there were no point even discussing how bad things were. "The
Taliban are much stronger. They shoot at us and we have nothing." As we spoke,
a nearby patrol base came under heavy fire from a Taliban Dushka gun.
Hekmatullah listened to the Taliban on his radio, communicated briefly with the
men being attacked and then said that we had to go. When the Taliban attacked
one base, they usually attacked them all. This happened two or three times
every week.
Afghan Local Police Commander Baz Gul, with four of his sons, Marjah
We all walked quickly back to the main patrol base and sat
down to eat some lunch. Hekmatullah was telling me how strategically important
the area was for the Taliban when a sniper's bullet cracked through the
building, probably just six or so feet behind our heads. He didn't even seem to
notice, and kept talking like nothing had happened. When he paused, I asked,
"That was a sniper shot to this building?"
"Yes, it was a sniper shot," he said, as if I had just
pointed out that his hair is brown. "This is a very common thing, we are used
to this."
After saying our goodbyes we walked outside and climbed into
one of the Toyota Corollas. There was a fresh bullet hole just behind the rear
passenger window.
A few days after our visit, another of the patrol bases came
under attack. Hekmatullah rushed to help, but on his way there drove over a
buried cache of explosives the Taliban had planted. He and 21 other men were
killed in the blast. Commander Abdali attended his funeral, and is still
posting pictures of the two of them working together on his Facebook page. Not
long after that, Abdali was inexplicably fired from his job. He was very
diplomatic, saying that after Hekmatullah's death, he had lost the ability to
focus. But I also heard rumors he was fired because he had ignored politician's
demands to free some convicted opium traffickers.
The quickest way out of Helmand is a hazardous drive to
Kandahar, the neighboring province. Abdali arranged for us to be picked up at
the border by a team of men belonging to the infamous police chief
General Abdul Raziq. The list of
accusations against him is long, and includes torture, murder and involvement
in the opium trade, but that gave me the feeling that he'd at least be able to
provide us with some serious security. Which was good, because we'd be
traveling
through a vast border area largely controlled by the Taliban.
When we pulled up at the meeting point I saw another of
those roofless Humvees waiting for us. The front two seats were already taken,
and as we loaded our bags into the back, three men appeared, wearing a few
pieces of uniform, but with all kinds of additions that made them look more
like circus performers than the fighters I had expected. One had a haircut
exactly like the Monkees: a perfect, shiny bowl. He was wearing a brown leather
flying jacket and a bright yellow scarf. Another had emptied several bags of
Cheetohs into his pockets, which spilled out whenever he moved. He would scoop
out handfuls at a time and offer them to me.
One of Raziq's policemen, with the Monkees haircut, who would be shot an hour after this photo was taken. Photo by Ben Anderson
It was 10 AM on a Sunday morning, and the men passed around
several joints, and a bottle of the worst homemade liquor I have ever tasted. They
smelt as if they hadn't washed in months, and their teeth were rotting.
Everything was hilarious to them. They posed for pictures, pulled things out of
my bag, urged me to sip from their bottle, and pretended to fire maniacally at
the buildings we passed, most of which had white Taliban flags flapping above
them. This went on for hours. If I ran out of things to do to amuse them, which
I often did, they just went through everything we had already done again. They
were clearly men who knew they could die at any moment, and had stopped
worrying about it.
I was relieved when we finally made it to a police base on
the outskirts of Kandahar City. I hugged the men goodbye, which also made them
cackle loudly, and we loaded our bags into the cars that would take us to the
airport. The men drove straight back to the border where we had met them. When
they arrived, their colleagues were being ambushed, and when they jumped out of
the cube on the back of the Humvee to try and help, two of them were shot in
the chest. The last I heard, they were both in comas.
For more on the security situation in Afghanistan after American troop withdrawal, watch Ben's full report, "Afghanistan After Us," tonight on VICE on HBO at 11 PM. Watch the trailer below.