Stephen Grey - Operation Snakebite

65 Afghan soldier (Nick Cornish)

* Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published in 2009

1

Copyright © Stephen Grey, 2009

Maps copyright © Ian Moores, 2009

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-192394-9

Quoted in Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Vintage International, 1991), p.38. Stone was believed killed in 1971 by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Obituary to Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr, by David T. Zabecki, available at: www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/SummersObitText.htm.

Stephen Tanner, Afghanistan, a Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002), pp. 37, 102.

Bost was razed by the Ghorid dynasty in 1150 and completely destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1225. After its irrigation systems were destroyed by Tamerlane in 1383, it never rose up again. Sources: Carol Miller, ‘Bost or Qala-i-Bist’, http://ejournal.thing.at/LitPrim/bost.html; and Ludwig W. Adamec, Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan , 2nd edn (London: Scarecrow Press, 1997), p. 200.

Adamec, Historical Dictionary , p. 144.

Arthur Bonner, ‘Afghan Rebels’ Victory Garden: Opium’, The New York Times , 18 June 1986.

‘If Hilmand were a country, it would once again be the world’s biggest producer of illicit drugs,’ said the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, in a press release reporting that opium production had decreased across the country, except in Helmand, where it had increased. See UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), ‘Opium Cultivation Down by a Fifth in Afghanistan’, press release, 26 August 2008, and ‘Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008’, www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2008–08-26.html, p. vii.

UNODC, ‘Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008’, p. 15.

See James Risen, ‘Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghan War’, The New York Times , 16 May 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/world/asia/16drugs.htm, and US Drug Enforcement Administration Congressional Testimony by Karen P. Tandy, Administrator, DEA, before the Committee on Armed Services, US House of Representatives, 28 June 2006, www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/cngrtest/ct062806.html.

See, for example, details in James Risen, ‘Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade’, The New York Times , 4 October 2008.

The dam was opened in April 1953. A turbine for producing power was added in 1975. The dam is ‘300 feet high and 887 feet long, with a 32 mile reservoir and a capacity of 1,495,000 acre-feet of water,’ Louis Dupree, Afghanistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 484.

Quoted by journalist Harry Miller in John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005), p. 74.

As described by John Cloake, in Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife , p. 90.

Quoted in Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, USMC, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (Grand Rapids: Zenith Press, 2006), p. 46.

Major Waller Ashe, ed., Personal Records of the Kandahar Campaign: by Officers Engaged Therein , Elibron Classics facsimile replica of the 1881 edition published by David Bogue (BookSurge Publishing, 2005), p. 98.

Matiullah Minapal and Aziz Ahmad Tassal, ‘Foreign Troops Accused in Helmand Raid Massacre’, Afghan Recovery Report No. 277, 11 December 2007, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=341341&apcstate=henparr.

Task Force 373 identified publicly in a US Air Force photo release, along with a photograph of its commander, Brigadier General Raymond Palumbo, at: www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=139629&page=3. TF 373 was identified as a ‘take-down’ unit by William Arkin, ‘Elite Terrorist Hunters in Iraq’, The Washington Post online, 28 March 2007.

Aziz Ahmad Tassal, ‘Musa Qala: The Shape of Things to Come?’ Afghan Recovery Report No. 275, IWPR, 27 November 2007. Available at: http://iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=340961&apcstate=henparr.

Michael Evans, ‘Brigadier Strides into Battle against Taleban’, The Times , 17 December 2007.

Sam Coates and Michael Evans, ‘Forces May Be Locked into Afghan Conflict for Decade, Brown’s Trip to Front Line Reveals’, The Times , 11 December 2007.

Nick Meo and Richard Beeston, ‘Lord Ashdown Called in to Overhaul Reconstruction of Afghanistan’, The Times , 17 January 2008.

Thomas Harding, ‘Afghan Insurgents “on Brink of Defeat”’, Daily Telegraph , 2 June 2008.

Bernard Fall, Street without Joy (Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books, 2005; first published 1961).

Quoted in Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife , p. 103.

Christina Lamb, ‘War on Taliban Cannot Be Won, Says Army Chief’, Sunday Times , 5 October 2008.

Quoted in Nagl, p. 87.