The Circuit (34 page)

Next, I brought up the issue of pay. Suddenly, Ken didn’t see a problem with paying the SBS lads less than everyone else. I told him I disagreed. It made no sense that advisers with few key skills were earning more than the SBS lads whose skills were so superior that they spent their spare time training other members of the team.

Ken still didn’t agree. I told him if that was how he felt then he could tell the lads himself.

Ken didn’t want to meet with the team as a whole but after a few days of pressing him he finally agreed. Taking a page from his London playbook, he kicked off the meeting with praise, telling the team what a marvellous job they were doing. He also apologized for how unprofessional the previous department had been with its handling of the contract.

This time I didn’t wear out my arm patting myself on the back.

When he finally got around to the topic of pay scales, Ken dropped a bombshell: he said the wage discrepancies would soon be sorted because he was putting everyone on a new, lower rate. It got worse; not only did Ken expect the team to work for less money, he expected everyone to work longer rotations with less time off in between. To add insult to injury, Ken also informed us that our insurance packages would be slashed.

Ken told the lads the new terms would be written into new contracts that would nullify any outstanding ones they’d signed with KR, including those that hadn’t expired. He also said that 7if anyone didn’t like it, they were welcome to leave the job.

I couldn’t let Ken go unchallenged. I argued that with the security situation in Kabul declining rapidly, if anything the team should be earning more and our insurance packages should be raised. Ken responded that that wasn’t how his division did things; KR was a business and the business climate had changed. Belts were tightening all over The Circuit, he said, and KR had to remain competitive. He tried to ease the blow by telling us KR wasn’t singling out Afghanistan; they were dropping wages and insurance packages in Iraq as well. Bastard.

After the meeting I gathered the team together. I told them I’d continue to fight London for what they deserved, but I’d understand if they moved on to other things. If they did decide to jump ship, I asked them to please let me know as early as possible so I’d have sufficient time to get good replacements. I’d put my heart into that team and despite everything I wanted to keep it strong.

Over the next couple of weeks the lads got their new contracts. For me personally, I was able to keep my original rotation schedule but I was smacked with a 12.5 per cent pay cut. The only reason I didn’t tell KR to shove their job up their arses was because I didn’t want to go back on my promise to the ambassador.

After the pay cuts, keeping the job running smoothly was even more of a struggle. One of the SBS lads resigned in disgust, as did several others. Two of the replacement advisers hired by London didn’t have the proper skills for the job and had to be sent back (so much for Ken understanding our ‘needs’). Moreover, my constant pleas for basic kit were still being ignored. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, I soon learned that Ken was loath to support me when the client wanted to ignore my advice and do something dangerous.

About ten months into the contract, the ambassador had to return to his home country for meetings, leaving his deputy in charge. As soon as the ambassador was airborne the deputy announced that he wanted to go out to dinner at a restaurant in Kabul.

Afghan restaurants catering to locals in Kabul are fine, but restaurants popular with internationals are disasters waiting to happen. They are very soft targets – even those that are surrounded by blast walls and have guards posted outside. The fact is, most restaurant guards aren’t paid enough to stand and fight and the blast walls are so frail four men could push them down. A car bomb would rip through them like a hot knife through butter.

Many international restaurants in Kabul also serve alcohol, which, as I’ve mentioned, is illegal in Afghanistan. It’s not uncommon for these establishments to be raided by local police. As the police play both sides and it’s very easy for insurgents to get their hands on police uniforms, it’s impossible to know which raids are legitimate. So if you have a security detail guarding a client in a restaurant and it’s stormed by police, it could result in a blue on blue incident.

The ambassador understood my position on dining in restaurants and respected it. The deputy knew it as well, but it didn’t stop him from trying it on.

I asked Mr K if he could set up a meeting between the deputy and me so I could explain the situation. Mr K went to the deputy on my behalf but he refused to meet me; he had cabin fever and he wanted to go out to dinner.

I wrote an email to Ken explaining the problem. I wanted him to back me by persuading the embassy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to rein in the deputy. We were there to advise the client on security matters and the deputy refused to even let me have my say.

Rather than get in touch with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ken responded that I should give the client what he wanted, otherwise KR could lose the contract.

Of course, I didn’t agree. It would be one thing if the deputy could ignore my advice and go to a restaurant alone, but it was far too dangerous for diplomats to go anywhere in Kabul without their CP teams. Caving into the client for fear of losing the contract would put everyone – client and advisers – at risk unnecessarily. It would be completely unprofessional. I wrote back to Ken saying as much. I never got a response.

In the meantime, I persisted asking at my end for a meeting with the deputy and, finally, I wore him down. We had a bit of a confrontation but when I explained he’d not only be endangering himself but also his CP team by dining in restaurants, he agreed not to go.

I was very pleased with the outcome. I’d done my job with complete integrity and KR still had the contract. Whether they deserved to keep it or not was another matter.

Eleven months into the contract I had what would be my final confrontation with KR London. It wasn’t over restaurants or weapons or even wages; what pushed me over the edge was body armour. I’d become so fed up with the ongoing lack of support for the team that I went, on my own initiative this time, to KR London for a face-to-face with Ken.

During the meeting I noticed six sets of brand-new body armour in the corner of Ken’s office. I asked him what they were doing there. He said they’d been purchased for another job which had fallen through. Body armour was among the basic items the team had been forced to scrounge for because KR hadn’t provided any.

I asked Ken to ship the body armour to Kabul as soon as possible. He said he couldn’t do it until the client paid for it first. It was the final straw. Ken must have known he had advisers on the ground risking serious injury and death due to lack of proper equipment. But he’d rather let the body armour sit in his office collecting dust than dent his profit margins.

Shortly after that meeting I resigned (but not before badgering Ken into sending the body armour to Kabul). I’d fulfilled my commitment to the ambassador and I was very proud of the fact that he remained alive and unharmed on my watch. But I couldn’t take another minute of working for KR. In my resignation letter, I cited the ‘catastrophic mismanagement’ of the contract and listed all the ways in which KR London had failed to provide a duty of care to its clients and to its employees in Kabul. I also mentioned that I was fully aware that KR was using my CV to woo potential clients, claiming it represented the type of adviser they deploy to hostile environments.

‘I’m sure the client would be impressed,’ I wrote, ‘if this letter of resignation accompanied that CV.’

CHAPTER 34

‘He will meet with you but we must leave right now.’ Qadeer, my translator, was beaming with pride. He’d been working on my behalf for months to get this meeting. I would have to get a move on. I was soaking wet with sweat from training and my clothes were plastered to my body. There was no way I could meet anyone looking and smelling like I did. If there’s one thing I hate it’s rushing around catering for fast balls. Then again, when you’re summoned by an Afghan warlord ‘right now’, then
now
it is.

It was November 2006. Getting a face-to-face with the Afghan warlord Patcha Khan had been a goal of mine for some time. In March of that year, shortly after I resigned from the KR job, I accepted an assignment in Afghanistan running a hostile environment training task for Afghan nationals (the programme was paid for by the British Government and contracted out to a British CSC). The training task was fascinating. My ‘students’ came from all over Afghanistan, including areas controlled by the Taliban. They were constantly feeding me fantastic first-hand information about what was happening in their villages and provinces. Some of it I dismissed as folklore but many of the stories rang very true.

Not surprisingly, the intelligence from my students was far more disturbing than most of the news reports coming out of Afghanistan. Working with journalists had taught me to dig deep to uncover the reality of a situation. Though I hadn’t advised the media in over a year, my passion for finding the truth had only strengthened. Hence my desire for a meeting with Patcha Khan; I wanted to get a tribal authority figure’s thoughts on Afghanistan’s present and future.

I ran to my room, stripped off my training kit and hit the shower. As I washed I mentally prioritized the questions I’d like to ask Patcha Khan. I would be lucky to get even twenty minutes with him. As warlords go, Patcha Khan was a busy one; balancing the family business of ruling Zadran, a district in Afghanistan’s Paktia province, with his new job at the time – an elected MP.

Patcha Khan wasn’t the only Afghan warlord playing at democracy but the men straddling Afghanistan’s stubborn tribal past and its shaky ‘democratic’ future were an exclusive club. The country’s President, Hamid Karzai, wasn’t even a member. Karzai has no control over his own province of Kandahar. In fact, he has no authority outside the capital, hence his nickname, ‘the Mayor of Kabul’.

I had met Patcha Khan once before briefly back in 2004. I was on my way to Khost province to collect Nic Robertson from an embed. The journey from Kabul required me to travel on a main road through Zadran – Patcha Khan’s turf.

Back then, Patcha Khan wasn’t part of the Kabul-based central government (I use the term ‘central’ in the loosest possible sense). Karzai and the Northern Alliance generals he’d appointed to his cabinet regarded Patcha Khan, a southerner, as a dangerous renegade. Karzai went so far as to send one of his lackeys to Zadran to try and overthrow him. Big mistake.

Patcha Khan responded to the attempted coup by showing Karzai exactly who was in charge of Zadran. He shut down the only road linking Khost town near the Pakistan border with the city of Gardez; a critical commercial route for anyone travelling north-west from Pakistan up to Kabul. Coalition forces, having been intimidated by Patcha Khan’s militia in the past, weren’t prepared to intervene.

The road closure brought the entire area to a standstill. I learned about it when my convoy encountered hundreds of vehicles stopped in a valley. Scores of drivers and passengers were stuck in the searing heat with nowhere to go. I didn’t know how long the closure would last and I wasn’t going to stick around and find out. I grabbed my big camera and, posing as a news photographer, bluffed my way past Patcha Khan’s guards into a meeting with the man himself. Once inside, I ‘interviewed’ Patcha Khan about the road closure. I then told him that as a stills photographer I could only report his story on the internet but if he’d let me collect my colleague from Khost there was a possibility the story could appear on international television. Patcha Khan ordered his men to open the road – just for us.

A few days later a group of elders from Zadran persuaded Patcha Khan to reopen the road to the public. They feared that if the stand-off with the central government continued, he would be targeted by American forces.

Patcha Khan proved he wasn’t afraid to flex his muscles and anger Karzai, which by default meant he wasn’t afraid to anger the Americans. That defiance made him something of an honest broker in my book. He may have gone on to become an elected MP but he didn’t owe his legitimacy to Kabul. If things were as bad as I suspected in Afghanistan, he wouldn’t spin the situation. Patcha Khan would tell the truth, no matter how politically inconvenient. He was more warrior than politician and he’d shown enormous restraint, in my opinion, by closing the road when the standard response in Afghanistan is to take no prisoners – literally. By joining parliament, he’d also shown that he could bury the hatchet for the good of his country. I was looking forward to speaking with him again.

Qadeer was waiting in our vehicle with the engine running. I climbed in the driver’s seat and checked my gear to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind; medical bag, comms, local cell phone, city map, spare vehicle keys, 9 mm pistol and an AK47 short. Even though we were in a hurry, I wasn’t going to cut corners on the equipment check. Once we left the safety of our secured compound we’d be straight onto one of the most dangerous roads in all of Afghanistan.

The Jalalabad Road is as manic as it is treacherous; a dog-eat-dog free-for-all where armoured 4x4s, creaky old lorries and dilapidated cars fight it out with pedestrians, bicycles and donkey carts. Locals drive their transport on any side of the road they see fit, cutting up other vehicles and pulling across the road without indicating. The sun had just dipped behind the mountains surrounding Kabul as we turned onto the Jalalabad Road. Traffic was heavy and with no streetlights and no wind blowing, the thick Kabul dust hung low in the oncoming headlights, making it difficult to see bicycles, motorbikes and carts. On the plus side, the poor visibility made it more difficult for potential suicide bombers to target us.

Another plus was our vehicle. Unlike KR, my new employers had provided me with a top-of-the-range B6/7 armoured Toyota Hilux. I certainly felt better driving around Kabul, but I still had to remain vigilant. Though the chances of surviving an attack increase exponentially when you upgrade from a B/4 to B6/7, it’s still no guarantee. Many people make the mistake of believing that an armoured vehicle will protect them from anything. It won’t. No amount of modern armoured materials can. With enough explosives moulded correctly and enough accuracy, a suicide bomber will almost always kill or maim his – or her – intended target.