The real story of the British army in Afghanistan.In April 2006 a small British peace-keeping force was sent to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. Within weeks they were cut off and besieged by some of the world's toughest fighters: the infamous Taliban, who were determined to send the foreigners home again. Defence Secretary John Reid had hoped that Operation Herrick 4 could be accomplished without a shot being fired; instead, the Army was drawn into the fiercest fighting it had seen for fifty years. Millions of bullets and thousands of lives have been expended since then in an under-publicized but bitter conflict whose end is still not in sight. Some people consider it the fourth Anglo-Afghan War since Victorian times. How on earth did this happen?…
"Fergusson was a journalist in Afghanistan with Herrick 4 – the campaign has gone on so long we’re now on about Herrick 14. Fergusson had done all the big interviews with the Defence Secretary and got all that standard block information on the war, but then he started to talk to the soldiers, asking them, ‘What do you think? Why do you think you’re here?’ John Reid was saying the operation in Afghanistan could be achieved without a single shot being fired and yet the soldiers were in the middle of this big fight. How did that happen? He talks to the Taliban too. In the blurb they make out that it’s a big deal but actually they’re everywhere. You go to Kabul and you bump into them – it’s easy. But it is particularly interesting when he talks to the British units. There’s this Lieutenant-Colonel and he sees it as his time to make a name for his unit and win medals – the politics of the media and medals becomes important when you’re there. I’ll give you an example: there was a big media focus on the 16th Air Assault in Sangin. Why? Because that’s as far as the media were allowed to go into Afghanistan. And ITN covered it, but at exactly the same time the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was up at Now Zad where the media weren’t allowed and they fought the biggest trench engagement with bayonets since the First World War! But because the media couldn’t go there the media coverage was all about the paras in Sangin and nobody knew about Now Zad. And so you get the Battalion Command Officer and the Company Commander moaning, quite rightly, that not one of those lads in the Fusiliers got a decoration. As far as the media was concerned, Sangin was the most dangerous place on the planet because the journalists need to be seen to be in the most dangerous place, but it wasn’t! And afterwards the National Army Museum even did a big display about the paras in Sangin. You know, you’re rattling around with the troops and the squaddies are saying: ‘That’s not dangerous! That’s why they were there – because it’s not dangerous!’ And the politics with the medals is funny since John Major brought them all together so that everyone gets the same medal, a campaign medal. People don’t like that! They say: ‘Campaign?! We were in a war!’"
