Kalpesh Lathigra // PHOTOGRAPHY / Anglo Afghan War
These photographs are a work in progress, initially a commission from The Guardian Weekend Magazine to document the lives of British Soldiers serving in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The first of the Anglo-Afghan Wars in 1839 were a result of British fears of Russian advances as the imperial powers competed for influence in central Asia. The British invading forces were destroyed. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent defeat of the Taliban in 2001 ushered in what was deemed a new start for Afghanistan but 5 years on the Taliban have re-emerged fighting a guerrilla war against the British and American forces who make up ISAF (International Security Assistance Force).
“The names of bases in southern Afghanistan which have become familiar are spread out over an area which is not objectively large – Kandahar to Musa Qaleh is about the same as London to Birmingham – but becomes vast when compared with the tiny number of troops expected to provide security in it. Officially, there are more than 4,200 British troops in Helmand province. But only about a quarter are combat troops. Many of the rest – the ones who do the maintenance on equipment and aircraft, the catering, the administration – barely see the real Afghanistan. They fly in to bases, serve their six months behind the Hesco barriers, and fly back to Europe. Away from the badlands like Sangin, life can be tiresome, claustrophobic and hot, but not hard. In the Gereshk camp, there is desert all around, but you can’t see it. Inside the ramparts, the troops live in roomy, well-lit, air conditioned tents. There are hot showers and gleaming, stainless steel toilets, cleaned by imported south Asian labour. The scoff house serves freshly cooked food, steak and gateaux, three times a day and Birthday cakes on request. There’s a large gym, live Premiership games on Sky, a shop, Internet terminals and a surprising absence of dust. Apart from the odd interpreter, and the sky, there is nothing Afghan there at all.
It was hard to remember, tucking into sausage and bacon for breakfast, that outside the compound, pig-free Helmand was observing the fast of Ramadan. Leaving the compound was like leaving a spacecraft and stepping on to a strange planet, with helmets and flak jackets in place of spacesuits. I went out on patrol with the company in Gereshk three times. We passed hundreds of Afghans; mostly they ignored us, occasionally they waved. In five hours’ patrolling, there were some 15 minutes of conversation between the troops and Afghans, all discussing security with policemen at checkpoints. In this supposedly safe zone, the British soldiers never put down their weapons, and the interpreters hid their faces behind scarves and dark glasses. Just before one post on the road to Kandahar, we drove through a field of opium poppy stalks.
To the Paras, the Taliban are a mystery, a flicker of dark cloth or a black turban in the undergrowth, somehow both foolish and sly, fanatically brave and sneakily cautious. On the rare occasions the Paras see a corpse, it’ll be a man in his 20s or 30s, dressed in the baggy Shalwar kameez worn by any Afghan farmer and with an Afghan farmer’s face. “They don’t surrender,” said Major Loden. “They either escape, or they’re killed.”….”
(James Meek)
