HEARTS, MINDS AND GUNS IN AFGHANISTAN

“If anything happens follow me and keep up. I may be short but I can run like hell,” a military commander warns The Economist's Defence and Security correspondent. The battle for public support in Afghanistan remains a very dangerous business ...

From ECONOMIST.COM

A soldier on the eve of war single-mindedly checks and rechecks his weapon, but the journalist preparing to write about the soldier at war faces indecision over his kit. Before heading off to Afghanistan, I gather on my bed all that I might sensibly need: passport, cash (dollars), a stack of think-tank reports, pens, notebooks, laptop, satellite and mobile phones, assorted cables and plug adapters, Swiss Army knife, map, compass, sleeping bag, towel, thermal underwear, boots, mess tin, a tube of laundry soap, toiletries, drugs for every eventuality, water purifier, spare needles, plasma bags, trauma dressings…

I begin to feel like William Boot in "Scoop", Evelyn Waugh’s novel about a hapless war correspondent who sets out for Africa with carriage-loads of gear, including cleft-sticks to carry his dispatches. It is not just fear of ridicule that restrains my packing, but a sense of self-preservation.

In a warzone you want to carry as little as possible so you can run for cover. The flak-jacket and helmet alone are heavy enough to leave you panting after a hundred yards. So the pens and notebooks are thinned out (I’ll write in smaller handwriting); the half-decent shirt, trousers and shoes are sacrificed (too bad if I get an interview with President Karzai); the toiletries are pared back (better not to shave in Taliban country); the battle dressings are abandoned (the Americans will patch me up if I survive a bomb).

The bulky sleeping bag is the most obvious target for pruning. As part of a VIP trip with an American general we should be given proper beds. But military flights in Afghanistan are notoriously unreliable. I was once stranded with fellow journalists in Kandahar, our bags lost. We were put up in an unheated tent without enough bedding to go around. My colleagues drew lots to share sleeping bags; the unlucky one wrapped himself up with as many sweaters and hats are we could spare (he covered his feet with my satchel). I was the luckiest, having carried my sleeping bag by hand (a single cocoon). I’ll risk a bullet wound without bandages, but not a cold night like that one. The sleeping bag goes in, and I’ll make do with fewer underpants.

Travelling to Afghanistan with the American air force is a more dignified way to go than with the clapped-out RAF or Afghan airlines. But I am less happy once we are on the ground in Kabul and we travel in the general’s security bubble. Our convoy is an obvious a target for suicide bombers. Military vehicles used to zigzag aggressively, spread out across the lanes to prevent cars from overtaking and push unwary drivers onto the kerb.

But these days NATO is trying to learn the art of winning hearts and minds, so macho driving is out. General David McKiernan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, has ordered that blue signs encapsulating the new wisdom be pinned up all around the headquarters in Kabul: “WE can’t win if YOU drive recklessly. Think about it.”

But as we sit in Kabul’s traffic all I can think is that we are sitting ducks. On previous visits, the convoy leader would give passengers a briefing about what to do in case of attack: watch out for such-and-such suspicious vehicles; this is the route we are taking today; here are the jammers; this is where the emergency radio is kept; and remember today’s code-word to be able to use it. On this occasion our leader, a small barrel of a Scot, does away with the mumbo-jumbo: “If anything happens follow me and keep up. I may be short but I can run like hell.”

Picture credit: Army.mil (via Flickr)

(This is an instalment of a correspondent's diary about Afghanistan published on Economist.com.)