A Million Bullets: the Real Story of the British Army in Afghanistan
“Herrick 4 was drawing to a close by then, and the fighting was beginning to subside, although the platoon-houses at Now Zad and Sangin were still under sporadic attack. Only Musa Qala was quiet, thanks to an experimental ceasefire that had held for almost a month. Loyn joined a band of fighters who took him on a tour of northern Helmand in a convoy of speeding trucks, apparently with complete impunity. At one of their bases the Taliban were seen showing off some captured Coalition equipment: a ...machine-gun in a wheelbarrow, an American helmet which they had fired at in order to test it, and, most memorably, a pair of night vision goggles that one fighter struggled to put on over his enormous black turban.The report, broadcast on Newsnight, generated much controversy. Some accused Loyn of giving succour to the enemy. The Conservative defence spokesman Liam Fox called the piece 'obscene'. On the other hand, soldiers quite liked it. In a poll on the Army Rumour Service website, 62 per cent of respondents agreed unconditionally with the question 'Is it right for the BBC to interview members of the Taliban?' A former intelligence analyst for the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps in Bosnia, an ex-Fusilier officer who called himself 'Stonker', wrote, 'I was always happy to read-hear-watch interviews with tw-ts [sic] like Arkan;*15 because (taken with a pinch of salt, and in conjunction with material from other sources) it was a "way in" to their world view, which was advantageous.'Perhaps the most troubling shot was of a military vehicle lying mangled at the side of a road just outside Musa Qala, the white-on-black British number plate 04 FF 31 plainly visible – 'a Spartan', Loyn commented, 'destroyed with the loss of three lives'.MoreLess
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