Afghanistan — Royal Marine witnesses progress in Sangin

Five years after first deploy­ing to San­gin, Roy­al Marine Cap­tain Mar­ty Adams is back in the town and is wit­ness­ing some of the progress made there thanks to the mil­i­tary effort and the civil­ian ’surge’ by the UK Government’s Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Unit.

An Afghan child at one of around 800 stalls now open in Sangin’s bazaar Source: Sergeant Kei­th Cot­ton RLC, Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

Cap­tain Adams is serv­ing with 40 Com­man­do Roy­al Marines in the San­gin dis­trict centre. 

He was last in the town in 2005 serv­ing with the Mobile Air Oper­a­tions Team, part of Joint Heli­copter Force (Afghanistan).

Since that time the efforts of British troops have made the dis­trict cen­tre a much safer place for the locals and ISAF forces. 

But improve­ments in the area are also due to the work of the Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Unit, co-owned by the Min­istry of Defence, the For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office and the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, which has been at the heart of a civil­ian surge in San­gin since 2008. 

Describ­ing improve­ments to secu­ri­ty in the dis­trict cen­tre, Cap­tain Adams said: 

“In 2005 the secu­ri­ty out­side of the FOB [For­ward Oper­at­ing Base] was prac­ti­cal­ly none. Our­selves as sol­diers, we could­n’t go out­side the FOB for fear of being attacked and occa­sion­al­ly we were attacked inside the FOB. 

“But since then, due to the progress that we’ve made, we’ve man­aged to push the bub­ble of secu­ri­ty out from this loca­tion and beyond the cen­tre of San­gin itself.” 

When Cap­tain Adams was first in San­gin, For­ward Oper­at­ing Base Jack­son came under sus­tained attack from insur­gents oper­at­ing with­in the dis­trict centre. 

Now, the weapons on the tow­er of the Fire Sup­port Group (FSG) build­ing which pro­tects the base are large­ly silent: 

“I was here attached to the Light Infantry, and they were essen­tial­ly defend­ing them­selves,” said Cap­tain Adams. “They weren’t real­ly able to push for­ward out­side of the FOB… Now the local com­mu­ni­ty have the free­dom to have what is a nor­mal life, which is essen­tial­ly what every­one wants anyway. 

A patrol by mem­bers of the Police Men­tor­ing Troop based at For­ward Oper­at­ing Base Jack­son in San­gin. These patrols are cen­tral to improv­ing free­dom of move­ment for the local nation­als Source: LA(Phot) Si Ethell, Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

“They can go shop­ping and move around free from intim­i­da­tion from the Tal­iban because of the secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed by the Afghan and ISAF forces.” 

An exam­ple of this devel­op­ment is the Hel­mand Riv­er cross­ing which can be seen from the FSG tow­er. Before, it used to be a rick­ety bridge that fre­quent­ly got washed away. 

Now, there is a fer­ry cross­ing and and an Afghan police secu­ri­ty check­point pro­vid­ing access into the town. 

Cap­tain Adams commented: 

“There used to be a riv­er cross­ing with one or two boats. It was quite restrict­ed because the Tal­iban and oth­er insur­gent groups would dom­i­nate in the area, but now that the Afghan and the ISAF secu­ri­ty forces have pro­vid­ed pro­tec­tion, the locals can come and go as they please and there is a lot more activ­i­ty at the cross­ing point. 

“The sta­bil­i­sa­tion force is the main effort real­ly. They’re the peo­ple who are going to bring gov­er­nance to this area, whilst we the sol­diers pro­vide the secu­ri­ty for them to do it.” 

Amongst those deliv­er­ing the civil­ian sta­bil­i­sa­tion effort is Andy Cor­co­ran, who deployed to San­gin as a dis­trict polit­i­cal offi­cer in Octo­ber 2008. His civil­ian role was a crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant piece in the over­all jig­saw, help­ing mil­i­tary com­man­ders to under­stand the local polit­i­cal situation. 

Tan­gi­ble progress with new schools and health clin­ics and bazaars reopen­ing is the most obvi­ous evi­dence of improve­ment said Mr Corcoran. 

Yet equal­ly impor­tant to long-term suc­cess is the intan­gi­ble progress implic­it in estab­lish­ing who the key fig­ures with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty are, devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships with them, build­ing a pic­ture of the community’s needs and under­stand­ing what it would take to move them away from the Tal­iban to sup­port the local government. 

Cap­tain Mar­ty Adams from 40 Com­man­do Roy­al Marines is cur­rent­ly serv­ing in San­gin Source: Cor­po­ral Bar­ry Lloyd RLC, Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

The Kab­ul Gov­ern­ment also played a sig­nif­i­cant role in Sangin’s emer­gence from cri­sis. Nick Pounds, a sta­bil­i­sa­tion advi­sor who deployed to San­gin in July 2008, said: 

“We got a min­is­ter to vis­it San­gin to open gov­ern­ment offices, the school and the clinic. 

“It was the first time an Afghan min­is­ter had been seen in San­gin — prob­a­bly since the king died. It was real­ly good for him and good for the peo­ple of Sangin.” 

Dur­ing Mr Pounds’s peri­od in San­gin, pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty to allow the peo­ple to engage with the local gov­ern­ment and go about their dai­ly lives with con­fi­dence was the high­est pri­or­i­ty, and he helped devel­op a a joint civ­il-mil­i­tary sta­bil­i­sa­tion plan cre­at­ing three secu­ri­ty zones with a com­bined area of approx­i­mate­ly eight square kilometres. 

At the heart of San­gin was the secure gov­er­nance zone, home to the school, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and NGOs (Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Organ­i­sa­tions). Next came the eco­nom­ic zone, con­sist­ing of the bazaar and its imme­di­ate envi­rons. The last of the three areas, mov­ing out from the town cen­tre, were the four focus zones based around Afghan Nation­al Army (ANA) patrol bases: 

“In terms of effect, it was a suc­cess,” said Mr Pounds. “We secured the area we set out to secure. We pro­vid­ed secu­ri­ty in the gov­er­nance zone, pro­tec­tion in the eco­nom­ic zone and estab­lished an ANA pres­ence in the focus zones.” 

Sta­bil­i­sa­tion depends on a per­mis­sive secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion. With this achieved, com­mer­cial activ­i­ty could resume. The bazaar start­ed to thrive, boost­ed by a grants scheme to encour­age shop­keep­ers to reopen their stalls, linked to the region­al governor’s seed dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme. Very quick­ly 120 shops reopened: 

“By the time I left, the bazaar con­tained 700 to 800 shops sell­ing every­thing from cars and mobile phones to grain and satel­lite dish­es,” Mr Pounds said. 

A sol­dier out on patrol engages with the local pop­u­la­tion Source: Sergeant Kei­th Cot­ton RLC, Min­istry of Defence, UK Click to enlarge

Phil Weath­er­ill, a civ­il engi­neer who deployed to San­gin as a sta­bil­i­sa­tion advi­sor in Octo­ber last year, said: 

“Eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly the lives of Afghans here are chang­ing for the bet­ter on a month­ly basis; it has tak­en a long time to get to this state and there have been, and will con­tin­ue to be, chal­lenges along the way but I hon­est­ly believe that slow­ly the peo­ple of San­gin are begin­ning to be won over.” 

Devel­op­ment con­tin­ues apace, pro­vid­ing a stark con­trast to Tal­iban-con­trolled areas. The Dis­trict Devel­op­ment Agency has com­plet­ed more than 70 projects in the last six months. Health and edu­ca­tion have both ben­e­fit­ed dramatically. 

The Gov­ern­ment has opened 45 com­mu­ni­ty schools and four nation­al Gov­ern­ment schools. There are now five free Gov­ern­ment health facil­i­ties as well as numer­ous pri­vate clinics. 

The Roy­al Marines from 40 Com­man­do will con­tin­ue to help improve the secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in and around San­gin, allow­ing the devel­op­ment of sta­bil­i­sa­tion efforts, until the end of their deploy­ment in Octo­ber 2010. 

The Marines are cur­rent­ly work­ing with Amer­i­can forces who will take over the pro­vi­sion of secu­ri­ty in San­gin when the Marines depart. 

The UK-led Provin­cial Recon­struc­tion Team in Hel­mand and sta­bil­i­sa­tion advi­sors will con­tin­ue their vital role of deliv­er­ing gov­er­nance and socio-eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in the area. 

Press release
Min­istry of Defence, UK 

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