On Thursday night I had the privilege of speaking alongside Jonathan Steele, the veteran journalist of The Guardian of London, in a debate on Afghanistan at the University of Birmingham.
Steele told me, and later told the audience, that he had just returned from a stay in Helmand Province in central Afghanistan. The experience had clearly shaped his perceptions of foreign intervention, the prospects for the country's future, and the motion of the debate: "This House Would Negotiate with the Taliban".
The following morning, his lengthy thought-provoking, first-hand account appeared in The Guardian:
Imagine a two-mile journey from Britain's military HQ in Helmand to the shooting range where Afghan police train under UK supervision. Lashkar Gah, Helmand's provincial capital, has hosted British troops for more than four years, so you might think the trip would be an easy commute.
Think again. Wedged into flak jackets with helmets at the ready, Guardian photographer Sean Smith and I sit in the front vehicle of a three-car convoy of armour-plated land cruisers with darkened windows driven by weapon-carrying security guards. The armoured glass in the front passenger's window sports an ominous perforated crack like a star burst. "I see you've taken at least one bullet," I comment after one of the guards finishes briefing us on how to operate the two-way radio in case he and his colleague are incapacitated.
"Actually, it was just a stone," he replies. "Small boys throw them. They take time to aim, so it's better to be in the lead vehicle. You usually get past before they're ready." As we set off on our 10-minute trip he picks up his handset to launch into a running commentary of potential threats for the benefit of the cars behind. "Static tuctuc [three-wheeler] on right. White Toyota, no licence plate, approaching from side road. Multiple pax [passengers]. Tuctuc on left, has eyes on us. No pax . . ."
It's our first morning in Lashkar Gah and I wasn't expecting this. Yes, the 18-minute helicopter ride from the huge transit airfield at Camp Bastion in northern Helmand had ended with swerves and tilts at little more than 15m (50ft) above Afghan family compounds before we reached Lashkar Gah. But I had thought the town itself might be safe.
We reach the shooting range. In light blue, knee-length coats and trousers, the women police look very smart, but what is most striking is the head gear – scarves covering the chin as well as the hair, and wraparound reflective sunglasses, giving them a totally anonymous, ninja-like appearance.
Piles of folded-up burqas lie on the bench beside them where we enjoy soft drinks before they take up the new pistols two British police trainers have brought. "Lashkar Gah has 16 policewomen but only three are willing to wear their uniforms to work," Roshan Zakia, the senior officer, explains. The Taliban sometimes attack people seen as collaborating with the government of Hamid Karzai and foreign forces.
Zakia is one of those who does not hide her job. Three men came to her door recently and beat her up until neighbours saved her. It was not the only case of intimidation we were to hear during our 10-day stay in Helmand.
But it is not easy to report my impressions of Helmand's challenges. I was invited by our own Department for International Development (DFID), but everything I write has to be submitted to the Ministry of Defence and cleared for publication. Britain is trying to bring good governance to the people of Afghanistan, among which I thought was respect for press freedom. But no journalist can travel with the British in Helmand if he or she has not given signed agreement to an annex to the MoD "Green Book" which sets out the procedures for coverage, including the requirement for pre-publication approval of all text, audio, and pictures. A soldier even sits in on my interviews. No wonder American journalists decline to report on the British in Helmand. Their own government makes no such demands of the embedded press. Astonishingly, I learn the Newspaper Publishers Association, the National Union of Journalists, the Society of Editors and the BBC were consulted in producing the Green Book.
Huge insecurity, the persistence of the Taliban and British defensiveness about the story they want the media to tell accompany us throughout our time in Helmand.
The last was strange, given that both the British and Americans can point to progress. Their counter-insurgency strategy of "shape, clear, hold, build, and transfer" aims to bring services to ordinary people within weeks, if not days of the military's advances. Before troops go into an area, the plan is to have a "district delivery package" geared up and ready to follow. Install a district governor and key officials, set up a community council, offer cash-for-work programmes, open health clinics and schools, appoint officials to handle local disputes and get police, judges and prosecutors in place to deal with crime.
Eleven of Helmand's 14 districts now have a governor and some officials, compared with only five two years ago. Schools have reopened with almost 80,000 children enrolled today, virtually double the number of 2007. Police are being trained at the rate of 150 new recruits every month.
British and US forces are trying to pave the way for economic development by removing IEDs, patrolling the main roads and making it possible for bazaars to reopen and commerce to revive. DFID is funding a programme to give farmers wheat seed to replace poppy production. Loans are going to small businesses.
The schemes are supervised by the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Lashkar Gah, a mixed civilian and military enterprise. The US now has more troops in Helmand than Britain, but the PRT is still a UK-run affair of some 150 people, with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the MoD, and DFID all represented. The number includes a growing presence of US civilians, plus some from Denmark.
They live inside a heavily fortified compound of watchtowers, tents and air-conditioned trailers that also houses Task Force Helmand, the UK military headquarters. Overland travel for civilians is confined to armed convoys of the kind that took us to the police shooting range. Travel to any of Helmand's district centres is by helicopter only.
Claims that UK and US forces --- and through them the Afghan government --- now control most of Helmand are exaggerated. Until you visit the area, it is hard to envisage that their presence is actually confined to a few towns in this rural province. They sit in a series of security bubbles labelled "main bases", "forward operating bases" and "patrol bases", each of diminishing size, with the patrol bases home to anything from a dozen to 100 troops. The latest tactic is to set up "line of sight" checkpoints, mainly manned by Afghan police, on the roads between towns so that travellers are always watched. Local government offices are also located in guarded compounds where, for safety reasons, officials often live as well as work.
PRT officials and military spokesmen use various phrases to define success. The government has "extended its reach", or "can now exert influence" or "has a presence" in this or that new district. Every press release makes the same point. The unspoken assumptions are that they are playing a zero-sum game and territory won from the Taliban is territory denied to them. But this is asymmetric warfare and those Taliban – the majority – who are local farmers usually disperse before major operations begin. They pursue the struggle by other means: IEDs and rifle fire from ambush positions; intimidating government officials with assassinations; and "night letters" warning them of the risk of working with foreigners, just as the mujahideen did when Soviet troops were in Helmand 30 years ago.
The latest resistance pinprick seems to be the stoning of Afghan government and foreign vehicles. One day I sat in on an hour-long "Pashtu for Beginners" class for British troops. Offering language tips is an intelligent move and attendance was impressive. On a blisteringly hot afternoon almost 15 young men turned up, perhaps aided by the fact that their instructor, a fellow soldier in combat fatigues, was a pretty blonde. After we had rehearsed several standard phrases – How are you?, I'm not an enemy, I'm a British soldier – one squaddie asked: "What's the Pashtu for 'Stop throwing stones at us'?"
We had a more graphic illustration of the point on a visit to a girls' high school in Lashkar Gah. The school also teaches boys up to the age of 12. Dozens were racing round as our armoured convoy parked under the playground's only trees beyond a sign saying that USAID had helped to rebuild the school. Twenty minutes into my interview with the deputy head, a security guard came in and warned us that we might have to leave soon. Boys were starting to stone the land cruisers. He rushed back five minutes later and ordered us to don our helmets and run to the cars, which the guards had managed to move closer to the building. We beat a hasty retreat while the kids carried on stoning as the convoy moved off.
The stoning may have been spontaneous, but a source told us the widespread scale of it was new and appeared to be a tactic organised by the Taliban. On the local radio stations that they have set up, the British and Americans put out messages urging Afghans not to let their children help the Taliban.