Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Extraordinary Moment or Catastrophe?

August 13, 2018 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

Jonathan Beale returns to Afghanistan for the BBC and reports on the recent three day ceasefire in Kabul when Taliban fighters and Afghan National Army soldiers posed together for the cameras.

Despite a recruitment crisis in the Afghan National Army, with some units 70% undermanned, Senior NATO commanders see this as progress and evidence that ‘the strategy is working’. Lt Gen Richard Cripwell, the most senior British military officer in Afghanistan, describes it as an “extraordinary moment”.

But, as Jonathan so rightly points out, “then again that’s exactly what I heard so many times from so many senior British army officers during their time in Helmand.”

His words seem painfully prophetic. In the same news cycle, the New York Times reports that elsewhere in Afghanistan government forces have lost over 200 officers and soldiers killed in action in sustained attacks over the weekend by Taliban insurgents. According to a senior Afghan security official, speaking anonymously because of the delicacy of the issue, “It was a catastrophe.”

Are we still doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome?

Chris Green is a former soldier and businessman. In 2012 he spent nine months in Helmand Province Afghanistan as a member of the International Security Assistance Force. He subsequently authored a critically acclaimed book, SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand, A true story of love, service and incompetence. He regularly blogs on defence and current affairs issues.

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

Spin Zhira, Uncategorized

Unfinished business or ancient history?

April 2, 2018 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

Reporting for the BBC from Kabul, Auliya Atrafi explains why so many of his fellow countrymen blame the British for everything.

He tells us of a persistent rumour that ‘the hand of the British is behind every evil in Afghanistan.’ It is a widely held belief that I encountered again and again in Helmand Province.

Britain has suffered some of it’s most humiliating military disasters at the hands of Afghans, most notably the destruction of Lord Elphinstone’s army in the 1842 retreat from Kabul and the 1880 Battle of Maiwand, an engagement which took place 40 miles east of Lashkar Gah, the British headquarters of Task Force Helmand from 2006 – 2013.

Many Helmandis’ forefathers had a hand in the British defeat at Maiwand and earnestly believed that Task Force Helmand had returned, 126 years later, to avenge the 969 British and Indian troops who died there. By contrast, most British troops were unaware of the battle and, for those few who did, its significance was dismissed as ‘ancient history’.

SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand. A true story of love, service and incompetence.

SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand is the unauthorised, unvarnished and irreverent story of one man’s midlife crisis on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan where the locals haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842 or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. Of course, all infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.‘

Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate War

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

Spin Zhira, Uncategorized

SIDING WITH THE VULTURES

March 7, 2018 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

Johnny Mercer, Tory MP and former soldier, writes in The Telegraph that the Ministry of Defence is “losing its moral compass”. He refers to the reopening of historic allegations of abuse in Iraq by British soldiers brought by disgraced lawyers such as the unscrupulous Phil Shiner who sought only to line their own pockets.

Everything happens for a reason, but it is hard to understand why the Ministry of Defence would “side with the vultures”. Johnny offers a clue when he states that “we are finally beginning to understand the lengths to which an organisation like the MoD will go to look after itself”

Those who break the law must be held to account, but could it be that the Ministry of Defence is sacrificing the nation’s bravest and best in order to deflect away from complicity at the most senior level into illegal activities such as state sponsored assassinations, kill/capture missions (where the former was the most likely outcome) and detention without trial or access to legal representation?

Sometimes two plus two does equal four.

Spin Zhira

BE AFRAID

January 4, 2018 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

The avalanche risk estimate is currently set at five in the Trois Vallees. It’s the most extreme level of risk on the avalanche danger scale and indicates that large and very large avalanches are certain to be triggered by skiers travelling in avalanche terrain, which is any slope between 30 and 45 degrees (the slope angle on which slab avalanches are most likely to occur).

Since I don’t really fancy my chances in an avalanche I stayed home today and surfed the web, where I stumbled across Greg Hill’s Mountain Rules.

Greg is a Suunto sponsored ski mountaineer and guide who has five simple rules for mountain travel that I really identify with as follows:

Be Afraid
Be Prepared
Have a great team
Have a plan
Be vigilant

Greg’s five rules are the product of 20 years experience in the mountains. By contrast, I have just three rules for backcountry travel which were developed in 50°C heat on the plains of Afghanistan. But I reckon they’re just as good and there’s plenty of similarity:

Hope for the best
Plan for the worst
Prepare to be surprised

Of course, ‘Be afraid’ was not a rule in Afghanistan. It was a given.

SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand. A true story of love, service and incompetence.
Over-matched, over-ruled and over-weight, Spin Zhira is a tale of one man’s personal battle against the trials of middle age set on the front line of the most dangerous district in Afghanistan. Guaranteed to make you laugh and cry or your money back.¹

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

¹Check the small print first

Spin Zhira

“IRISH UP AND OVER!”

September 25, 2017 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

At 06.30 hours on this day in 1915, on the command “Irish Up and Over!”, Riflemen Frank Edwards lobbed his football into the No Mans Land which separated the British and German positions at Loos-en-Gohelle. Frank, along with his London Irish team-mates, Mickey Mileham, Walter ‘Jimmy’ Dalby, Bill Taylor and Bert Coward spread out like a line of forwards and went after the ball, “all the while shells bursting among them and shrapnel screaming overhead”.

So started the Battle of Loos, the first large scale British offensive of the First World War, referred to at the time as ‘The Big Push’. Despite heavy casualties, there was considerable success on the first day in breaking into the deep enemy positions but the reserves had been held too far from the battlefront to be able to exploit the successes and succeeding days bogged down into attritional warfare for minor gains.

The football continued in play, ending up somewhere on the German wire, but Frank was not so lucky. Going down wounded, it was Micky Mileham who stopped to fix the tourniquet that saved his pal’s life.

In a different war in a different century, fighting for our survival, trapped and cut off from our resupply chain and slowly but inexorably running out of supplies and ammunition, I experienced the same sense of belonging that sustained my London Irish forbears and which had convinced them it would be a good idea to “charge across No Man’s Land passing the ball forward” .

It is such a potent force that the British Army has harnessed it for its latest advertising campaign. “Belonging sees you through whatever life – on or off the battlefield – may throw at you.”

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

¹Check the small print first

Spin Zhira

MY WAR GONE BY, I MISS IT SO

September 20, 2017 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

On this day five years ago my war ended. It would be another 24 hours before I departed Afghanistan for the very last time but, having handed in my weapon systems, I was now a bystander rather than a combatant in the fourth Anglo-Afghan war.

As a schoolboy I recall listening to a Battle of Britain veteran recount his experiences as a World War Two RAF Fighter Pilot as “the best years of my life”. Later, having served in the Balkans myself four years earlier, I read Anthony Lloyd’s personal account of that war and his descent into heroin addiction: My War Gone By, I Miss It So.

Both men reveal a secret I guiltily share. War is the ultimate frontier of human experience. Paradoxically not to be missed but not recommended for your children either.

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

¹Check the small print first

Spin Zhira

Words and deeds are not aligned.

August 29, 2017 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

We are told that President Donald Trump changed his mind about sending more troops to Afghanistan after a campaign by his national security adviser H.R. McMaster which included showing the president a photograph of women casually strolling through downtown Kabul dressed in miniskirts.

The picture from 1972 was used by Mr McMaster in an effort to demonstrate to Mr Trump that Western culture could return to Afghanistan if he sent more troops. It appears to have been a winning argument. On the campaign trail last year, Mr Trump had vowed to end America’s longest war calling it a “total disaster”.

If the President was moved to change his mind by the prospect of Western culture returning to Afghanistan it is not clear why he would lie about his motivations to the American people but he did. In a widely publicised speech to troops at Fort Meyer in Virginia he insisted, “We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists.“

It seems the British government are equally eager to see the return of Western culture to the streets of Kabul and “welcome” the President’s change of heart. Prime Minister Theresa May is prepared to approve a surge of special forces personnel to hunt down Taliban leaders and the Isis and al-Qaeda militants they are sheltering.

It’s curious because, only last year, speaking at the Republican Convention days after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President she declared, “there can be no return to the failed policies of the past – the days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over“. Or perhaps not.

Western rhetoric, policy and strategy on Afghanistan are contradictory and confused. Words and deeds are not aligned.

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

¹Check the small print first

Spin Zhira

INSURGENT ALGEBRA: 10-2≥20

August 27, 2017 chrisdsgreen 3 Comments

The Sunday Times has learned that the SAS are being readied to return to Afghanistan as part of Donald Trump’s planned military surge.

According to Whitehall sources, “Theresa May is prepared to approve a surge of special forces personnel to hunt down Taliban leaders and the Isis and al-Qaeda militants they are sheltering.”

It seems that we are, once again, walking with eyes wide open into a flawed strategy of night raids and drone strikes.

As General Stanley McChrystal, a former ISAF commander explained: “From a conventional standpoint, the killing of two insurgents in a group of ten leaves eight remaining: Ten minus two equals eight (10-2=8). From the insurgent standpoint, those two killed were likely related to many others who will want vengeance… Therefore, the death of two creates more willing recruits: Ten minus two equals twenty, or more, rather than eight (10-2≥20).”

McChrystal’s insurgent algebra is correct but it is Albert Einstein, author of the most famous algebraic formula of them all, who is alleged to have said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand
A true story of love, service and incompetence.

When Chris Green became disillusioned with his seemingly perfect existence he didn’t buy a sports car, run off with the au pair or snort cocaine from the breasts of prostitutes.

Instead he went to fight the increasingly unpopular war on terror in Afghanistan.

In the process of discovering himself he unwittingly discovers that the courage and heroism of the soldiers he fights alongside are confounded by incompetence and corruption, not to mention “an industrial strength counterterrorism killing machine”.

It’s a world where the dipsomaniac governor is in the pay of the illicit opium trade, the Chief of Police is a pederast and all round bad guy and the locals still haven’t forgiven the British for the occupation of 1842, or for the Russian Invasion of 1979. All infidels look the same so you can’t really tell them apart.

Missing his two young sons, unable to influence policy and just a phone-call away from a brawl he can only lose with the elite SAS, Chris dreams of epic powder days in the High Alps a world away from Afghanistan. But before he can return home to a hero’s welcome – and his wife’s divorce lawyers – he must first complete one last mission to Zumbalay, the Taliban Heart of Darkness and an unlikely reunion with an old man in Helmand.

Guaranteed to make you laugh and cry or your money back*, Spin Zhira is a rare insight into the male mid-life crisis. What every woman needs to know and why every man should be careful what he wishes for.

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

* check the small print first

Spin Zhira

Riddle of the Waves

August 25, 2017 chrisdsgreen Leave a comment

Steven Price Brown, or PB as he was known to me, called me a ‘fucking cunt, Sir’ when we first met. He was feeling aggrieved as I’d just fallen on him from a great height. I can’t say I blame him. He’s now published a book of his own, The Riddle of the Waves about his descent into and recovery from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

His platoon suffered appalling losses in Afghanistan and as advance team medic he was at the centre of the most horrific incidents. Unbeknownst to me, after leaving the forces he retreated to Africa but became increasingly ill. Diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in October 2014 he returned to the UK but ended up homeless, living in a hostel and undergoing therapy. In October 2015, he was introduced to the military sailing charity Turn to Starboard, and discovered a new love of nature and a new purpose in life.

It is commonly the case that the strongest, most dependable soldiers, those that hold the team together in times of crisis, are the ones that suffer the most and do so in silence. It was obvious to me from the start that PB was one of the strongest. I regret that, having relied on him so much, I didn’t also anticipate he might subsequently succumb to post traumatic stress.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, bestselling author of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘First class’
Doug Beattie, bestselling author of An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic. Vivid. Tragic. True. This is the book to read on service in Afghanistan.’
Dr Mike Martin, bestselling author of An Intimate War

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, bestselling author of The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read’
Frank Ledwidge, bestselling author of Losing Small Wars

‘Five stars’
SOLDIER The official magazine of the British Army

‘Not just for soldiers’
William Reeve, BBC World Service and Afghanistan Correspondent

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

Spin Zhira

TRUMP RULES OUT AFGHAN EXIT

August 22, 2017 chrisdsgreen 2 Comments

President Donald Trump has ruled out a hasty US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, America’s longest war.

Trump had previously tweeted “We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Their government has zero appreciation. Let’s get out!” but has now been persuaded that America must remain in Afghanistan to “fight to win” vowing to avoid the mistakes made in the past.

“We are not nation building again, we are killing terrorists” the President said. Unfortunately, if ISAF learned anything in Afghanistan, it was that the supply of willing insurgent foot soldiers in that part of the world is infinity. My friend Niels Vistisen, Political Adviser (POLAD) to the Governor of Nahr-E-Saraj in 2012, observed ‘It became increasingly obvious that even though ISAF won all of the battles, NATO was not winning the war.’

General Stanley McChrystal, a former ISAF commander explained: “From a conventional standpoint, the killing of two insurgents in a group of ten leaves eight remaining: Ten minus two equals eight. From the insurgent standpoint, those two killed were likely related to many others who will want vengeance… Therefore, the death of two creates more willing recruits: Ten minus two equals twenty (or more) rather than eight.”

McChrystal was infamously sacked in 2010 by President Obama after his motor-mouth got the better of him in the company of a Rolling Stone journalist. While his media skills may have been deficient his insight into counter-insurgency warfare was not.

Killing terrorists is not the winning strategy that President Trump now seeks or that America now needs to end the longest war in its history.

SPIN ZHIRA: Old Man in Helmand
A true story of love, service and incompetence.

When Chris Green became disillusioned with his seemingly perfect existence he didn’t buy a sports car, run off with the au pair or snort cocaine from the breasts of prostitutes.

Instead he went to fight the increasingly unpopular war on terror in Afghanistan.

Ten reasons to read SPIN ZHIRA.

‘Brims with authenticity and dark humour.’
Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

‘A must read.’
Richard Dorney, The Killing Zone

‘The best book by a soldier concerning the Afghan War that I have read.’
Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars

‘First Class.’
Doug Beattie MC, An Ordinary Soldier

‘Absolutely fantastic’
Dr Mike Martin, An Intimate war

What others are saying about SPIN ZHIRA.

* check the small print first