Frank Gardner: Not only Americans risked life and limb to serve in Afghanistan

Blast walls, rocket attacks, Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)… and long queues in the canteen. Anyone who deployed to Afghanistan, in whatever role, between 2001-2021 will have their own vivid memories of that time.

It started with the flight in – to Kandahar, Kabul or Camp Bastion. It could be a long, slow descent with the lights out on an RAF jet, or a rapid, corkscrew down in a C-130 transport plane. In both cases the aim was to avoid being blown out of the air by a Taliban surface-to-air missile.

Over the course of 20 years thousands of servicemen and women, as well as civilians, from dozens of countries deployed to Afghanistan, answering the US call for assistance.

That call came in the form of invoking Nato’s Article 5 of its charter – the only time it has ever happened in Nato’s 77-year history – which states that an attack on one member shall be deemed an attack on all.

America was reeling from the devastating 9/11 attacks when al-Qaeda, which was being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, murdered nearly 3,000 people by flying packed airliners into New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington.

The Taliban were swiftly driven from power in a joint effort by the US military, the CIA and Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance.

Then it was all about trying to hunt down the remnants of al-Qaeda as Britain’s Royal Marines, together with UK Special Forces, pursued them over the mountains but many escaped to safety to regroup in Pakistan.

It was not until ten years later that the US Navy’s Seal Team Six commandos tracked down the al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, in a villa in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The first two years of the US-led “Operation Enduring Freedom” as it was called, were relatively quiet. By late 2003, as America’s attention switched to Iraq, US servicemen we met even started referring to Afghanistan as “Op Forgotten”. But it was still dangerous.

From a rain-soaked Kandahar airbase we watched Romanian troops edge nervously out on patrol in their Soviet-era armoured vehicles, wary of the next ambush.

Flying into a remote US-manned firebase in the mountainous Paktika province in a Blackhawk helicopter, my BBC crew and I were told cheerfully: “You’ve come to the worst place in the world”.

Sure enough, the Taliban launched Chinese-made rockets at the base after dark, planted there, we were told, by farmers who had been either bribed or coerced into doing so.

Everything changed after 2006, when the UK deployed in force to Helmand province, a part of Afghanistan that had been relatively peaceful until then.

The Taliban made their intentions clear. If you come, they said, then we will fight you.

And yet the UK government at the time appeared shocked at the ferocity of the fighting 3 Para now found themselves engaged in, with British paratroopers calling in mortar and artillery fire so close to their positions it was termed “danger close”, in an effort to stop their bases from being overrun.

Over the next eight years, until the end of combat operations in 2014, it was not just Americans who were risking life and limb to serve in Afghanistan.

Brits, Canadians, Danes and Estonians were among those who saw the toughest fighting in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. It would also be churlish to ignore the bravery and sacrifice of so many Afghans who fought and died over two decades.

I say “fighting” but most soldiers’ biggest fears stemmed from the hidden IEDs, those expertly concealed Improvised Explosive Devices. The Taliban, who of course knew every inch of their terrain, were often able to guess correctly exactly where troops would need to cross an irrigation ditch or canal and so place the bomb accordingly.

In the space of a split second, in a blinding flash and puff of black smoke, a fit, healthy, 20-something individual would have their life either ended or catastrophically changed, facing amputation and a host of other complications.

So prevalent were these IEDs that soldiers were going out of the gates of their FOBs – Forward Operating Bases – on patrol praying that if they got hit it would result in a below-the-knee amputation, not one above the knee.

The courage and resilience of the people I have met since, who have managed, despite terrible loss and adversity, to turn their shattered lives around, is both humbling and awe-inspiring.

These are just some of the people who answered America’s call for help after the 9/11 attacks.

It is little wonder there has been such nationwide outrage at that country’s president’s suggestion that they somehow dodged the fighting.