Battleground

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In August 2008, 3,000 British troops and a convoy of vehicles spent five days moving a new turbine across Helmand Province to the Kajaki dam. It was one of the biggest operations of the current war effort in Afghanistan and is testament to the importance of Kajaki. British forces continue to guard the dam diligently. It remains a principal target for the enemy insurgents in the area, who would like to see it destroyed. If this happened, it would be an untold disaster for southern Afghanistan.

‘Ambush!’

Dmitri Kirov, the Soviet soldier, barked the word in Russian. He was in the middle of the convoy, which came to a sudden halt. There were ten of them in three vehicles, all heavily armed because they carried a precious cargo: the case at his feet in the rear of this open-backed truck.

They’d been going slowly. The road up into the mountains was narrow. The pale, wintry sun failed to melt the patches of ice on the road, and with the wind it felt like it was several degrees below zero. Worse than that, their own army had littered this place with anti-personnel mines as part of their long war against the Mujahideen of Afghanistan. These mines were an effective way of killing people. The trouble with them was that they didn’t mind which people they killed: Mujahideen, innocent children, or Soviet soldiers.

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