Taliban surprise attack

Nato troops tell of Taliban firefight inside Camp Bastion

Coalition forces admit they were caught by surprise when 15 insurgents attacked base and killed two US marines

the Guardian,

12 October, 2012

A set of wire cutters and a moonless night were all the Taliban needed to break into one of the most intimidating military bases in Afghanistan, the vast desert headquarters of UK troops and the US Marine corps.

The attack last month caught the foreign coalition in Afghanistan by surprise, and underlined the Taliban's tenacity even in a part of the country that was a focus of fighting by US surge forces, and where the Taliban's hold has been severely weakened.

Fifteen insurgents killed two US marines and destroyed six Harrier jets in the attack; another two were so badly damaged they could only be used "for spares". A fuel depot went up in flames and soldiers assigned to non-combat jobs grabbed weapons to fight the Taliban at close quarters.

"I came over to Afghanistan just expecting to refuel planes," said Sergeant Jammie Hawkins from Tennessee, who instead found himself trading bullets with three Taliban fighters outside his offices.

"A bus passed by, coming down the road on its daily routine, and they opened fire on it, and that's when we knew they weren't marines." Undaunted by the sudden explosion of the war into the usually calm heart of Bastion, he picked up his weapon and helped kill two attackers and injure the third.

Camp Bastion, roughly the size of Reading, had always seemed uncomfortable but safe. British forces set up camp in the middle of a desert so inhospitable and isolated that it seemed immune to attack. Perhaps because of this, the vast blast walls that stretch round the 37km perimeter give way in some remoter areas to a wire fence, a weakness exploited in the attack.

"There were no suicide bombers, there were no tunnels," said Major General Mark Gurganus, when asked what the insurgents used to penetrate the base. "It's a tool about this big, and it cuts wire." He gestured with his hands to show the type of implement found in standard toolboxes. "We did not have the fence alarmed."

The general, who commands US and Nato forces in south-western Afghanistan, told journalists visiting Bastion that insurgents had taken advantage of rolling desert to approach the base unseen. "If you use terrain very carefully, and they did – they came up in an area that was pretty much obscured from a lot of the towers, they were able to move up. They did this on a night when there was absolutely zero illumination."

But the suicide squad did not have to sneak through miles of desert; an arid moonscape once host to a handful of nomadic herders has become a precarious home to thousands of people fleeing violence, unemployment or government drugs eradication programmes elsewhere in Helmand.

Just a few kilometres from the Bastion fence there is now a transient population of desperately poor villages. Mud paths are scattered with the dried husks of opium poppies, and the occasional cluster of bullet casings from AK-47s used by insurgents. The Afghan police and army pass through occasionally, and there is no other authority forup to 20,000 people living there, most of them poppy farmers.

"There is no real government up here, so the land just belongs to the first person who comes," said Lieutenant Mark Mensik, whose platoon is charged with patrolling south of Camp Bastion.

"The Taliban come up pretty freely. When we are out there they try to stay around, harass us and then go back south. They will definitely infiltrate when we are not out there," he added; his troops expect to hit a homemade bomb around once a week.

Recently, elder Attah Nazar, aged about 60 and who has 24 children, told a patrol of US troops less than 10km from Camp Bastion that the area was secure.

"I've lived here three years and never seen the Taliban in all that time," insisted his son-in-law Abdul Mohammad. Asked about a pile of nearby bullet casings – from ammunition not used by coalition forces – he shrugged. "They must be from the Americans, there is no one else around."

The imam from the village mosque, born in the same district as the Taliban's commander Mullah Omar, stood beside the remains of last year's opium crop and insisted the villagers only grow wheat.

Most visits are equally frustrating, said Mensik, because although farmers resent Taliban efforts to tax them, they do not want to be targeted for helping, or appearing to help, foreign forces. "All they are here to do is plant poppy, make money and get out of here."