You might think these words were used to describe the situation in Afghanistan in August 2021 as the Taliban took control of the country. In fact, they were written by British journalist David Loyn in September 1996, to describe events as the Taliban last came to power after the departure of Russian forces in 1988/89.

The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.

The past few weeks have seen the withdrawal of coalition troops from Afghanistan after a conflict lasting twenty years. I doubt history will look kindly on the manner in which this evacuation took place. Although I agree with the words of German field marshal and military strategist, Helmuth von Moltke: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the gist.

Even so, I think Field Marshal von Moltke would be shaking his head in horrified wonder at the chaotic scenes we’ve watched on the nightly news, as crowds of desperate Afghans and foreign nationals tried to get aboard the last flights out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, even as the Taliban were re-taking the city. The sight of people clinging to the outside of a US transport plane as it rolled along the runway, and then falling as it took off, is not one I will soon forget.

On August 8, President Biden had announced, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” This was despite the fact that, as far back as May 20, the UN had reported that the Taliban “now contest or control an estimated fifty to seventy percent of Afghan territory outside of urban centres, while also exerting direct control over fifty-seven percent of district administrative centres.”

By August 14, the Taliban controlled all border crossings, with the exception of the airport. The following day, they began their assault on the capital, which surrendered within hours.

I realise I’m an outsider in all this, but I still wonder why—when political and military commanders knew well in advance that they were ending operations in Afghanistan—they didn’t begin evacuation of Afghan nationals who had worked alongside the coalition forces via Bagram Airfield, while they still had control of it. It would appear from reports I’ve seen that the last US troops left the base—shutting off the electricity and disappearing into the night—July 1, without a formal handover to the Afghan Armed Forces. Most of the AAF only realised the US troops had gone when the lights went out and the looting started. Although the AAF quickly regained control of Bagram it, too, fell to Taliban forces on August 15.

On August 26, a suicide bomber detonated around 25 pounds of explosives and shrapnel outside the Abbey Gate of the airport, killing at least 170 people and wounding 150 others. The Islamic State group IS-K claimed responsibility. This further hampered the evacuation efforts.

Although reports claim that 122,300 people were airlifted out of Kabul, tens of thousands were left behind. We are told that some are now living in fear of reprisals for having aided the coalition. Women are frightened of consequences for simply gaining an education, a job, or going about without a chaperone.

So far, the new Taliban government appears to be playing nice. They promise we will not see a return to the human rights abuses of the 1990s, when public floggings, amputations, and executions by stoning were commonplace. They even promise that women may continue their education, and return to their government jobs—although not at any kind of high level, obviously…

Only time will tell.

For me, it was heart-breaking to watch events as they have unfolded in Afghanistan. I took a particular interest as I’ve highlighted the situation there in two of my books. The first of these was Dancing On The Grave, the first of my Lakes crime thrillers. This story features an ex-military sniper who is suffering from PTSD after serving in Afghanistan. The treatment of a teenage Afghan boy who operated as his spotter plays a huge role in the plot.

The latest book to feature Afghanistan is a prequel to my Charlie Fox series, Trial Under Fire, which came out in August. The action of this book follows Charlie years before the series proper starts, back when she is still in the British Army and is on what should have been a routine patrol with her unit in Helmand province. At that time, female personnel were not supposed to be put in combat situations. But a helicopter crash and the arrival of a Black Ops team soon throws that out the window. They need Charlie’s ‘very particular set of skills’. How can she say no?

If you’d like to comment on this blog, you can do so at Murder_Is_Everywhere.

This week’s Word of the Week is dustsceawung, which is an Old English word for which there is no direct translation. It means to contemplate the fact that dust used to be other things—we came from dust, and will return to being dust when we are gone. It is supposed to shift one’s focus from the material things in life to subjects with deeper meaning.

As well as Trial Under Fire, my latest book out is the Charlie Fox short story collection, Fox Five Reloaded. Available for pre-order is the first in a new series, The Last Time She Died, which will be out in October 2021.

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The Charlie Fox prequel novella, TRIAL UNDER FIRE, goes back to a time when Charlie Fox was a regular soldier in the British Army. A radio operator out with a routine night patrol, she is not supposed to be in a close-combat position. But a downed helicopter sees her unit tasked with an urgent rescue mission, and all bets are off.

With enemy forces closing in, Charlie’s skills are put to the test…

Chapter Four

Anybody who’s ever been in a firefight will know just how chaotic it is. Not least because the adrenaline is rampaging through your system and all your senses seem to be running at maximum revs, even though I was four months into my tour in Afghanistan at that point. This was not my first time under fire by any stretch.

I took a couple of long, deep breaths, willed my heart to slow its pounding to a steadier rhythm. I knew I would never hit anything if I allowed my sight picture to be shunted all over the place by the beat of my own pulse.

As soon as our lads opened up from concealment on the south side of the ravine, the firing intensified. I shut it out of my mind, tried not to pay attention to the battle being fought behind me. I kept one eye on the image overlaid by the illuminated reticle inside the scope, and the other open in the darkness, now strobe-lit by muzzle flash.

It was unusual for the Taliban to mount a conventional military assault, or even to hold their ground when they faced a possible pitched battle with coalition forces. Guerrilla hit-and-run tactics had served them well when their countrymen were kicking the arse of the Russians during the 1980s. And they hadn’t done too badly at kicking ours back in the mid-1800s, either.

So, either the crew of the Lynx was of importance, or the insurgents were waiting for something to happen…

When I caught another flash high to my left—southeast of our position—at first I took it for more weapons fire. I tracked right and left, hunting for another burst, but nothing came.

A padded knee hit the dirt near my shoulder.

“You see that, Charlie?” Corporal Brookes demanded. He had to lean in and yell in my ear to be heard over the crackle of the guns. “What d’you reckon?”

I lifted my head. “Didn’t see enough of it to make a guess,” I said. “Small arms, maybe? If it was another RPG, it would have hit us by now.”

“Now there’s a cheery thought. If you—”

“There!” I interrupted him. “There it is again. It’s a vehicle—headlights, look. Coming fast, if the way they’re jolting around is anything to go by.”

“The mad buggers. They’ll rip the axles out of that thing.”

“Well, let’s hope they do it sooner rather than later, then.”

I dropped my face back to the scope, saw with more clarity an old Toyota pick-up truck, the rear bed crammed with Taliban fighters. They sat packed in so close their knees interlocked together, bristling with the usual AKs, but also PK machine guns, and old bolt-action Lee-Enfields.

I’d learned to make a fairly accurate estimate of distance using the mil-dots on the SA80’s reticle against the size of a known object, like the ubiquitous Toyota pick-up. By my reckoning, they were already a little over 800 metres away, and closing as fast the terrain would allow.

Brookes was saying something but I’d tuned him out as I tried to relax behind the gun, to melt into the dirt beneath me. I tracked the pick-up as it bucked and rocked over the ground. Vague calculations ran through my mind as I tried to predict where the jolting front headlights would land next, rather than where they were now.

I tried to concentrate on a point directly between the lights, where I knew the front grille of the Toyota would be, and the vulnerable radiator behind that. I could see it clearly inside my head, a target maybe half a metre square. And I told myself it was easy as I squeezed the trigger.

The truck reared up at the moment I fired, so it might almost have been reacting viscerally to the shot, but I knew I’d missed. They had gained another twenty or so metres by now, still coming, still closing.

I was at the limit of the effective range of the SA80, but ever since the army had discovered the ability I had with a long gun, they’d encouraged me to put down thousands of rounds in training, to enter Skill-at-Arms meetings and the competitions held at Bisley.

And if I left it much longer, the men advancing would have us well within the range of their battered AK47s. The Lee-Enfields some of them carried dated back before the Second World War. Old, true, but in the hands of an experienced fighter they could be deadly at a greater distance.

“You’re never aiming for that truck are you?” Brookes said. “’Cos you’ll be bloody lucky to—”

I ignored him, fired again, a two-round burst this time as the front of the truck came down, and immediately saw from the steam hissing out into the beam of the headlights that I’d scored a hit. The driver jerked the wheel in reaction, almost overturning the vehicle. It wrenched to a stop and I caught movement as the occupants bailed out into cover, expecting my next shots to be aimed at them.

“You jammy fucker!” Brookes said, just as Captain MacLeod reappeared alongside us.

“Corporal Brookes, give us a heads-up as soon as that truck gets within—”

“Don’t think they’re going to get any closer, sir,” Brookes said. He jerked his head in my direction. “Seems like they ran into car trouble.”

TRIAL UNDER FIRE is published, in eBook and print formats, on August 2 2021. Get your copy here.

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