Task Force Helmand: A Soldier's Story of Life, Death and Combat on the Afghan Front Line - Brossura

‘As the final ISAF flight leaves Afghanistan the Taliban walk into power and reinstall sharia law. Immediately the bloodletting and feuding begins, first the 68 female MPs are paraded in the national stadium and murdered, members of the Afghan women's football team alongside them, then female doctors, teachers and other professionals are also killed. Those who had even menial jobs are forced from them and savagely beaten; girls are banned from the classroom. The violence continues as anyone with a connection to the previous government is eradicated. Millions of ordinary people now back the Taliban in an attempt to distance themselves from anything to do with the government. From being a country with a future, Afghanistan has been flung way back into the past. Society becomes feudal’
Doug Beattie comments on what will happen if we pull back from Afghanistan
Guardian online 31/8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/30/afghanistan-worst-case-scenario
‘The Afghan soldiers dragged our Taliban prisoner off the path. There was a burst of gunfire. “What the hell is going on?” “They’ve shot the prisoner. The Afghans. They’ve bloody shot him.” Their medic did it with his AK-47’ The descent of our Afghan campaign into a Vietnam-style madness, by Captain Doug Beattie MC and photographed by Charles Eckert’
Extract, Mail on Sunday 27/9
‘Captain Doug Beattie’s new book is a unique chronicle of Afghanistan. He talks movingly to Julian Flanagan...Writing about Afghanistan, then showing Margaret, was cathartic but troubling. “This guy you have known for this many years has the ability to thrust a bayonet through a living person. There’s a fear people would see something different in you, not the loving father”...Task Force Helmand is thoughtful, compassionate, sometimes disturbing’
Daily Telegraph 8/10

‘Bits of bomber hung on a line like washing’
Extract, News of the World 11/10
‘It is a fact that the Afghan police have been infiltrated at every level by the insurgency. They are not employed by governments, they are paid by governments – and if the Taliban come along and pay them more, their loyalties can be very fluid...but there are other reasons why this could have happened. For one thing, the level of drug-taking within the Afghan police is incredibly high – it’s thought that around 80% have an active heroin addiction – and it’s possible that the gunman was simply high on drugs’
Doug’s response to a policeman killing five British soldiers in Helmand base.
Front page news, Guardian, 5/11

‘They are infiltrated by the Taliban at every level’
The Sun 5/11

‘The policemen are influenced either ideologically or financially’
Bloomberg news 5/11

‘They’re really a militia, a tribal police whose allegiances are not necessarily to the government or event to the provincial governor. It is normally to their village or tribe or the area they come from...because they’re militia they can be bought and paid off at will. If the government’s paying them they’re reasonably happy. But if they don’t get enough money they’re quite happy to be paid by the insurgency’
The Times 5/11

‘Mr Beattie has had his own run-ins with the Afghan police – he believes an ambush of his unit in Garmsir in Helmand Province in 2006 was set up between the Taliban and the ANP’
Metro, 5/11

‘Capt Beattie described the Afghan police as little better than an armed militia’
Daily Mirror 5/11

‘He told of the Afghan army holding one of his men at gunpoint while they murdered a Taliban prisoner before running off. And a British mentoring team had to be evacuated after paratroopers accidentally killed a child and locals attacked their base’
Daily Express 5/11
‘Beattie took part in 50 major contacts and witnessed the results of suicide bomb attacks. He describes the casual horrors of war – Afghan troops murdering a captured Taliban – and an Afghan child killed by British mortar fire. He is good at describing the heart-pounding action of close quarter fire fights as well as the dry humour of day-to-day life with soldiers’
Military Illustrated magazine Dec issue
‘The Soldier’s Story: The past decade was the end of innocence: when we stopped pretending to be soldiers and became real soldiers...I was due to leave the military in 2006, but in July that year was asked to go to Afghanistan. It was supposed to be a desk job in Kandahar but when I arrive there weren’t enough soldiers in Helmand so I headed there to work as a liaison officer between the Afghan army, the police and national directors of security...That year I killed for the first time. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. He stepped in front of me holding a grenade and I shot him. I went on to kill many more. Some killings, as I sit here now, I can justify to myself. Many more I have problems with...’
Interview, Independent Magazine 28/11

‘Those who have never been in Helmand give their view, but the soldiers are silent: For those who think that attacking the Government’s strategy on Afghanistan doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the soldiers’ morale, I can tell you that you are wrong. Nobody is expected to follow the Government’s policy blindly, but it is incumbent on us all to find out the facts and not just believe the headlines. If you get the chance, speak to those who have been there, take the time to investigate those headlines, hold to account those who argue that we are achieving nothing in Afghanistan. If we do not, then we are going to lose this campaign, not in the heat of another fighting season but in the bars and front rooms as we talk ourselves into failure. In doing so we belittle the sacrifice of those who served and continue to serve this country in Afghanistan’
Independent on Sunday 30/11
‘Beattie, of 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, was awarded the Military Cross for his part in recapturing the town of Garmsir from the Taliban in 2006. This is the story of his action-packed return to Helmand in 2008’
The Times 26/12
‘Captain Beattie postponed retirement to instruct British and Afghan troops on working together. His success was limited, and the two groups’ conflict of interest and outlook reached a crisis point when the Afghans aimed their guns at British soldiers trying to stop them killing a Taliban prisoner. Unable to save him, the Brits can only stand by and watch as the man is shot dead – by a medic’
Time Out 14/1
‘We owe our guys for their courage’
Feature on ‘Heroes Need Homes Help’
Sunday Mirror 21/2
‘A war veteran who won the Military Cross in Afghanistan is coming out of retirement again to serve a THIRD tour on the frontline’
Interview, Sunday Mirror 11/4

‘ "This war gets under your skin, in the blood...” Captain Doug Beattie believes Britain is morally committed to giving the Afghan people a better future. He also feels that success in Afghanistan will counter the terrorist threat in Britain and provide greater stability for the wider region. But the veteran officer predicted that the next 12 months will be crucial for a new plan by General Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in the country. “We are really at that tipping point of whether we are going to see success or not"'
Interview, The Times 13/4
‘But this is not just a matter of cool-headed judgment, it is also an affair of the heart. So any sense that the Americans are stepping in to save us is hard to countenance. There is an analogy with the Second World War, where the British (alongside others) held back the Nazi onslaught for four long years, only for the US to enter the conflict and bring about victory. Now we have the Americans saying that they will have Helmand under control within 18 months, as if everything that went before – every British life lost, every effort made – added up to nothing. However, in reality US forces can only step in because of what went before. This is not a British failure in Helmand. With limited resources it is a British success’
Feature, The Times 1/6
TASK FORCE HELMAND by Doug Beattie 'Captain Doug Beattie describes in powerful simple language his 2008 tour of Helmand with 1 Royal Irish Regiment...During the tour he went through 50 major contacts and experienced the shocking reality of suicide bombers. He details the collateral damage (an Afghan child killed by a British mortar), he recounts his fury and incomprehension as Afghan colleagues murder a Taliban prisoner whilst holding his own men at gunpoint and describes the paralysing fear of ambush...a grim confirmation of combat where duty outweighs horror' Scottish Legion News, Aug/Sept Issue
‘Captain Doug Beattie describes in powerful simple language his 2008 tour of Helmand with 1 Royal Irish Regiment...During the tour he went through 50 major contacts and experienced the shocking reality of suicide bombers.  He details the collateral damage (an Afghan child killed by a British mortar), he recounts his fury and incomprehension as Afghan colleagues murder a Taliban prisoner whilst holding his own men at gunpoint and describes the paralysing fear of ambush...a grim confirmation of combat where duty outweighs horror’ Scottish Legion News, Aug/Sept Issue

Doug Beattie entered 1 R Irish as 17-year-old. He served as an NCO in Bosnia, an RSM in Iraq, and completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan before retiring from the British Army in autumn 2008. He was awarded the Military Cross in 2006.
Co-writer Philip Gomm first met Doug Beattie in Helmand Province in 2006 while working for ITV News.