2011

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Modern Warfare 3 – ONN from kenny yuan on Vimeo.

It was the largest roll of notes I’d ever seen. 3 grand in fifty pound notes. The guy who hauled it out did so as if it were a rolled up copy of the Sun. One night on sentry I had a conversation with another guy on how his law exams were going. Another evening those of us new to the unit went through a joining process at the end of which we were judged by our peers as suitable to serve alongside them.

The side effect of leaving us in a state of complete physical incapability as we crawled into our pits in the early morning was only a minor talking point, getting up the next day for annual fitness tests just another non event none of us stopped to think about for a second. No one failed.

No one ever fails.

The daily grind of camp life is a very different experience from the outside world. But in here our unit attracts all walks of life – academics, tradesmen & school leavers alike. It’s a varied environment. Which is just as well, as the amount of skills our squad needs to pick up en route to Afghan is also pretty diverse.

Forensics, electronic counter measures, IED search, team medics, language – the modern nature of warfighting has morphed the battlefield into a highly dynamic multidimensional theatre where quick thinking across any number of domains previously the reserve of the trained specialist is required.

To aid the man on the ground in this our kit has seen a near constant flux as new equipment is both trialled & issued to the field in rapid evolutions. On an individual level, we’ve never been better supplied. Which is just as well, as the Helmand insurgency proper has been going on for upwards of 5 years now.

To our North the US has created blitzkrieg-like conditions to take the war to the Sangin Talebs who had proven so stubborn when we were there. It’s a bloody tactic but appears to be yielding results. The Taleban soon adapt to new tactics, the question is whether coalition forces can manoeuvre more effectively.

I haven’t tasted war yet but I’m glad I’m going in with those I’ve trained alongside these past months. The ever-changing situation in a tribal matrix such as Helmand demands fighters who adapt breathlessly.

There is undoubtedly a feeling of relief as much as anything that we can get a chance to make the training count for real. And while reconstruction and war fighting at times seem to occupy the same ground – just completely different dimensions – it will also feel good to ascertain first hand just what is happening on the dusty desert wastelands of southern Afghanistan.

And so too, while I believe in the benefits of troops developing their own ideas of the way ahead, the inevitable clash with reality on the ground is another interesting context for the experiences of deployment.

We’ve been hanging around a while, things are now getting decidedly faster.

Time Magazine this week has a disturbing image of a girl with her nose chopped off by Taleban justice (her long hair disguises the fact she no longer has any ears either). In the UK The Spectator is running with the headling ‘How we lost the war’.

In this post-Wikileaks environment, which while not releasing very much we didn’t already know, sets in stone a 360° view of Taleban resurgence. Perception is a powerful lens and it’s the sheer volume of data released that highlights the depth of the problem we face. The enemy is spreading it’s influence to parts of the country that for long periods faced little or no Taleban threat, granted while still under the benign rule of local warlords.

To exacerbate matters a politically-motivated date for retreat has been set for UK forces at least – giving the Taleban a timetable for takeover. So how do we get out of this mess?

Look across the border to Pakistan.

Afghanistan has shared the largely unmarked Durand Line border with it’s neighbour to the south east since 1893 (when Pakistan was part of the then colonial British India). As the border demarcations of the era tended to do, the line in the sand cut appeared to take no account of the tribes of the region cutting as it did right through the Pashtun heartland. Pashtun nationalists believed the line divided their homeland.

Fast forward to today and little has changed. Both the Taleban and current governments of Afghanistan are largely Pashtun in background and both are hostile to the thought of a border with their brothers. But across the Line Pakistan has kept it’s own internal strife with Pashtuns largely confined to the Tribal Areas.

The lesson is simple – Afghanistan and it’s allies should focus on first containing the Taleban threat in the largely Pashtun South and East and effectively seal these areas off to the rest of the country, allowing normalisation and good governance the essential breathing space it needs to bed in. If this means a step back to Tribal Law for these regions so be it.

The warlords in the north who come from ethnic Uzbek and Tajik backgrounds should be put on a programme for assimilation into the legitimate state forces and government structures.

The heroine trade in the north should be destroyed by the rapid industrialisation using rich Afghan mineral deposits in the region. Porous borders should be guarded more closely in order to cut off the smuggling routes and organised government ‘purges’ of poppy growing areas should happen in parallel to the growth of the natural resource extraction industry.

Troops should be tasked north of this boundary to police this change in a robust manner. Troops to the south should remain on a war footing with the large build up of non-combat provincial reconstruction teams being recollected to the north.

Fundamentally all mentions of a ‘timetable’ for withdrawal should be erased. The job gets done when the job gets done.

If it succeeds, it will likely result in the two-tier development of the country. But the coalition is fast running out of other options in order to reverse the slow march to defeat.

One such item is a drink called Irish Moss. From Jamaica, it inexplicably comes in peanut butter flavour. In a tin (of the canned tomato type) although you do get a quaint ring pull.

So each time I went into this shop the vaguely alarming Irish Moss would be there immediately to my left staring me down, daring me to pick it up in comedy red button ‘do not touch’ style.

Today I bought one and here’s the unboxing:

It is thick goop. In my excitement I forgot to shake and initially after opening and lifting it into the glass nothing came out bar a few heavy surface blobs.

Few quick shakes later and it emptied surprisingly well.

According to wikipedia, Carrageenan – what you call the seaweed it’s made from – has aphrodisiac qualities. This however was overshadowed by the fact it looks like a pot of whale cum and tastes what you’d imagine same to taste like. Only with peanuts naturally. Maybe it’s a Yardie thing?

Apparently it’s used in ice-cream too. Will try not to think about that much.

• Globalisation has made things less hassle but also less interesting.
• Lowest price hotel – $4 in Tajik Pamirs
• I have to learn to swim better but river swimming is cool
• Soviet style border bureaucacy is worse in the ‘new’ Republics than Russia itself
• If someone utters ‘foot deep potholes’ don’t listen to their views on road quality – they’ve never been off the motorway
• Things I missed out on:  Bukhara market Uzbekistan, Gates of Hell Turkmenistan, Iran
• Number of weddings attended: 1
• Best city – tie between Ashgabat & Istanbul but the phrase ‘great for a weekend’ still applies
• Suzukis give most ‘never say die’ per pound sterling
• Cost of Trans Siberian from UB to Moscow is ~120 quid.  It took far too long to find out this basic info on the internets.  Too much expensive ‘travel guide’ crap getting in the way
• I was previously unaware how Asian Central Asians looked.  Imagined Persian-speaking Tajiks to be predominantly similar to Afghans.  Not the case
• ‘We are Turks’ – Kazakh educated man in Olgii, Western Mongolia.  Also share their religion
• All the horror stories you’ve heard about those boats crossing the Caspian are true
• Bulgarian traffic policing is a complete joke.  Some states are going to need lessons in how to be good Europeans.  And yes I realise how ironic that statement is coming from me
• 3 man water balloon launchers have a range of over 100 metres in dead wind
• Gap in the market for British style kebabs from Turkey onwards
• Best pizza/worst pizza – Holiday Inn, Sarajevo/finish line cafe UB
• Best fast food – Either egg burger in Big Burger UB or kebabi bap in Osh, Kyrgyzstan
• I haven’t had breakfast yet…

And to be frank, it’s total shite.

Dart board dates, non-existant routes & towns that are in a different country are all heavily featured. I should point out that when we originally planned this out there was no planning, nor was the future need for it planned either. This seems to us contrary to the ethics of the Mongol Rally and so having to actually think through such concepts as ‘routes’ beyond anything more detailed than country level just seems like rallying heresy.

So we haven’t really done it.

But whatever, we’re almost done writing words in boxes and inserting random numbers in correctly formatted date spaces. We’ll be sending them all off sometime this week and then biting our nails and ringing up the Adventurists every so often for progress reports I’m sure. Mostly though we’re just going to sit back and with the help of a few cold beers reminisce about all the old adventures we’ve had and discuss all the new ones we’re going to have.

To get me in the mood I’m going to repost something that showed up on the Rally forums tonight, from the 2nd year of the Rally back in 2005:

These interesting tidbits are from the first (proper) year of the Mongol Rally, 2005. Yes, they are all true.

43 cars left London.
27 cars reached Mongolia.
14 cars reached the finish in Ulan Bator.
2 teams were robbed at knife point.
1 car snapped in half.
3 engines fell completely out of the cars.
1 team was held for five days in no-mans land.
1 team cycled almost 100 miles to get to the finish when their car gave in.
100’s of tires were blown.
1 team got engaged.
3 teams attended weddings.
1 team found a 10 foot deep pot hole.
1 team found a 25 ton crane rolled by a pot hole.
1 team had to reverse up a mountain after losing all but one forward gear.
1 person spent 24 hours in a Kazakh jail charged with five crimes against the state.
1 person was stoned by a Mongolian nomad, who then shot at him with a gun (and missed).
1 team was rammed off the road after an argument over water melons.
1 person spent a day in a Turkish hospital.
3 people were banned from Turkmenistan for a year.
As a result of an incident with a cow, one person was detained by police in Azerbaijan and threatened with a beating from a dwarf.
2 cars flipped over in Mongolia.
3 teams were chased by armed bandits.
0 team members died.

We’ll be visiting at least one active warzone while we’re away so kind of hoping the last statistic isn’t bettered…

 As the cluster of disparate economies known as the eurozone struggles to cope with the oncoming depression, is it prudent to watch out for the health of the emerging banking sector of Eastern Europe as the next source of financial panic in the global meltdown?  Austrian banks say EU bailouts are needed to prevent these organisations (their debtors at the end of the day) from collapsing – from this we may deduce their own balance sheets would not withstand such an event either.

The emerging Eastern states received the bulk of EU investment and optimism as the collection of states struggled to move sluggish economies even in the good times – will they prove their downfall in the bad times?  And can anyone realistically expect to see a unified EU action on the crisis?

Catching up on the African agenda, looks like tentative steps to get around the piracy problem have been taken by the West.  Hope to do my LC course next year so maybe I’ll get a part of the action at some stage in the future.  Frankly I’m surprised it took this long for Royal to get in on the act.  While Brigade is out in Ghanners, a landlocked AOR should in theory at least free up 539 Assault Squadron for maritime ops.

And there’s a lot to be done.  The Ukranian vessel MV Faina (operating under a Belize flag of convenience) and it’s crew are still being held to ransom.  Not to mention their cargo of 33 T-72s bound for South Sudan seemingly under Kenyan patronage (or Ethiopia?).  Keep up to date with arms deals here.

Meanwhile it remains to be seen whether Somali pirate activity dies down.  Further reports of hijacking attempts on Chinese & Russian vessels are filtering through.  And the corporates are sensing blood,  with some getting results.  There is a deep rooted issue that is lost amid the intrigue & imagery created by the pirates actions.  The lack of anything resembling governance coming out of Mogadishu, together with deep-rooted international ambivalence had allowed illegal poaching to run unchecked in Somali coastal waters despite the warnings.  The long term solution to piracy is to defend the Somali waters against the poachers, many seemingly of Chinese origin.

With the Islamic Courts Union on the march once more, it’s all happening.

To get my new Africa category off the ground enjoy this FarCry 2 trailer complete with Black Hawk Down’s Bara Bara soundtrack.

On a more serious note, I find it puzzling that after years of virtually ignoring the destruction on a World War scale in the DRC’s various uprisings the BBC last night went with it as their lead story.  Likely had more to do with the fact their African correspondent Orla Guerin optained an exclusive interview with the Tutsi rebel leader than a marked change in their coverage of Congolese affairs…

As always, there’s a lot more to this than serial guilt merchants like the BBC can ever hope to convey – I’ll be reading the experts opinion to remain current.