Carleton-Smith was charming and intelligent. He had a winning ability to translate his thoughts into pithy, inspirational language. In the pre-deployment preparations he devoted time to going around his units, explaining what he thought they should be doing and how they were going to do it. He talked to everyone, from majors down to privates fresh out of the depot.
He made a real point of articulating what he saw as the strategic direction, said Huw Williams. He talked to all of us, the soldiers as well. Where we were going, not just in Herrick 8 but where we were on the path and where that path ultimately led. We didnt have any of that last time. Then it was really a case of well, lets go out and see what happens.
Carleton-Smith started his talks by stating that violence was not a measure of success. He said that we actually wanted to be coming back saying we hadnt fired that many bullets or had that many contacts and we didnt kill that many people, Huw Williams remembered. His line very much was that we were not going out to fight at every opportunity and should consider sometimes withdrawing from a battle which we could win but which would have no strategic effect. We hadnt got that sort of direction before.
Among those sitting in the planning meetings was Major Ben Howell, of 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, who would be commanding the batteries providing fire support to the Paras. Howell was clever, well read and had a sceptical and enquiring mind. He thought he recognised the source of some of Carleton-Smiths ideas. He talked in Rupert Smith terms, he said, a reference to a recently retired and famously intellectual senior officer who had produced a mammoth study of modern warfare entitled The Utility of Force. The people were the prize, the battleground was not the fields of the Green Zone. It was actually the minds of the Afghans. So thats where we should be focusing our attention, and that pouring blood and treasure down the Helmand river really wasnt the way forward.
In his first statement after taking over Carleton-Smith made barely any mention of fighting. The task was, he said, continuing to improve the sense of security for the peoplenot just physical security but their human security in the round. Its all about effective governance, rule of law and the provision of the basic necessities of life.
If he made no mention of war, it was because in his mind the army was not engaged in one. What I wanted to avoid was this sense of 2006, he said later. The intensity of the fighting in Helmand, he felt, had caused people to lose sight of the nature of the campaign they were there to prosecute. There was an inevitable tendency among the soldiers to reason that if it looked and smelt and sounded like war fighting, then for Gods sake, we must be fighting a war. In his view, however, were not fighting a war. Were supporting a democratically elected government to prosecute a counter-insurgency campaign, the nature [of which] is much more political than it is military.
From this perspective, the core of the matter was not the Taliban. It was the Afghan people and what they thought was happening. The prize was the human security of the people. The Taliban were to be marginalised and isolated, not made the absolute focus of the operation.
Carleton-Smith had more resources than any of his predecessors with which to carry out his plans. There had been about 3600 soldiers in the 3 Para Battlegroup. 16 Air Assault Brigade, with all its attachments and additions, numbered around 8,000. Nonetheless, this was still nowhere near enough to exert control over more than a fraction of Helmand. He decided to recognise the relative limits of our resources on the locals, and [that] there was no point getting ahead of ourselves. Rather than extend their area of operations beyond what they were able to hold, the intention was to try and deepen the governments control and influence and authority in those areas where we actually have the capacity to bloody well hold the ring, and not find ourselves stretched further.
The British were now effectively fixed in four places, Lashkar Gah, Sangin, Musa Qaleh and Kajaki, with a presence in the outposts of Now Zad in the north and Garmsir in the south. Carleton-Smith had no intention of expanding out of these places or trying to join them up. To do so would simply mean displacing the Taliban to another location and spreading their contagion to a previously benign area. The intention was to deepen the mission in Helmand, not to broaden it.
Carleton-Smith also had a civilian plan to work to which laid out in fairly concrete terms what the British presence was hoping to achieve in Helmand. The overall framework for the UKs efforts was set out in the Helmand Roadmap, which pledged support to programmes in seven core fields: politics and reconciliation, governance, security, rule of law, economic development, counter-narcotics and strategic communications. The plan began with the idea that attention should focus on the few areas where there was some fragmentary infrastructure and the ghost of governance and laid down some milestones to mark progress over a two-year period. In that time, it was hoped, Lashkar Gah would develop into a centre of sound government and administration. Gereshk, 80 kilometres to the east, would be promoted as a financial centre. The focus would then switch northwards to Sangin and Musa Qaleh. If possible a fifth centre would be developed, either at Kajaki or Garmsir in the south. None of this thinking was new. The 3 Para Battlegroup had arrived in Helmand in 2006 with much the same ideas. But now these had solidified into a design for action. Coordinating the activities of the army, the Foreign Office and the DfID was to turn out to be complicated, however.
Huw Williams reinforced Carleton-Smiths message as he prepared his men psychologically for the new deployment. He found that most of them were receptive to the constructive mood abroad in the brigade. The response may have surprised some observers of the regiment. The Paras reputation is based on their fighting prowess. It was won during the Second World War in Normandy and Arnhem, then reinforced at Suez and in the Falk-lands. The Paras genuinely believed themselves to be the best soldiers in the British Army, by which they meant the best in the world. Their exploits in Helmand appeared to justify that claim.
About four hundred of the six hundred men in the battalion had been in Afghanistan in 2006. The new members had arrived from other units or were raw young Toms straight out of training. Many of these eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds had been inspired to join up by what they had heard about the last operation and were, in their commanders words, keen to prove they were the same as the guys last time, that they matched their stature.
But among the older men and the young veterans of 2006 the attitude was more considered. They knew the reality of combat. Many of them had relished the chance to test their skill and courage. But the thrill of fighting had faded. It was something you endured rather than enjoyed. Jamie Loden had taken over command of A Company during the defence of Sangin in June 2006, one of the most intense passages of fighting of the tour. Now he was taking the company back again, supported by another veteran, Sergeant Major Steve Tidmarsh. Their attitude, according to Loden, was that although they were more than happy to deal with whatever we came across, at the same time we werent going to go out of our way looking for trouble.
It was shared by the corporals and lance corporals and senior private soldiers who had been there before, who were very content with doing their job. They knew what they had to do, they had the right resources and equipment to do it, but equally there was an element of be careful what you wish for. The mixture of cautious veterans and newcomers determined to get their share of action, in Lodens opinion, made for a very balanced company group.
It was shared by the corporals and lance corporals and senior private soldiers who had been there before, who were very content with doing their job. They knew what they had to do, they had the right resources and equipment to do it, but equally there was an element of be careful what you wish for. The mixture of cautious veterans and newcomers determined to get their share of action, in Lodens opinion, made for a very balanced company group.
Those who had served in the 2006 tour were pleased that this one would be different. It was not only because they did not relish the thought of another six months spent in static positions slogging it out with the Taliban. The Paras are more thoughtful than their public image, and the picture painted of them by their army rivals, might suggest. At every level of the unit there were those who felt that the concept of excellence embraced more than just fighting prowess. It meant demonstrating the ability to carry out the non-kinetic, influence operations aimed at persuading local people of the soldiers good intentions that were vital for the ultimate success of the campaign.
Im sure, said Huw Williams, that there were some people who thought, Oh, 3 Para. Theyre just going out there to see how many bullets they can fire. Its all going to be kinetic. But a lot of us wanted to prove we could do all sides of itWe were very keen to show we could do influence, we could do reconstruction, stabilisation, anything we were asked to do. We could bring security without wielding the big stick. Even so, it was clear to everyone that at some stage during the six months we would still have to show that we carried the big stick.
The Paras were setting off to war in a domestic political climate that was much altered from the one that existed at the start of 2006. Then, Iraq was the dominant issue in British foreign policy. Few Britons knew much about events in Afghanistan. Two years of conflict had changed that. Afghanistan replaced Iraq as a staple of the news bulletins and almost all the stories emerging from there were depressing. A perception was growing that going to Afghanistan was a bigger mistake than going to Iraq.
The governments faith in the mission, though, remained, outwardly at least, unshaken. Ministers continued to claim progress was being made and was worth the cost in effort, expenditure and lives. On the death of the 100th British soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002, they reached for old-fashioned words to justify the losses. The soldiers, claimed the then Defence Secretary, Des Browne, were engaged in the noble cause of the twenty-first century.
As the Paras began boarding the buses at their barracks in Colchester for the drive to Brize Norton for the eight-hour flight to Kandahar their mood was very different from the excitement and anticipation that had gripped the battalion when they had set off two years previously. They were on their way to fight an unpopular war in a faraway place where progress was measured in centimetres, to face death, injury and constant discomfort. It seemed to some of them that the campaign had reached a point where real progress would have to be made or the enterprise would sink into a pointless and demoralising test of endurance. The next six months would answer the question that was echoing in many heads. Was it all worth it?