A Day Ahead of the Devil now available in Ebook, Paperback and Audiobook
Afghanistan 2021. The Taliban takeover.
Surrounded and outnumbered by their Taliban attackers, a small group of Afghan special forces fights their way out of their base and races towards Kabul and the last of the flights leaving the country.
A team of seasoned SAS soldiers is deployed to Kabul to assist in extracting intelligence Assets for the MI6 Station there. But as the Taliban tighten their deadly noose around the city, the simple locate and recovery task soon becomes a lot more complicated.
And when a legendary Taliban commander arrives in Kabul and learns that there are special forces operating in his city, he knows there is only one thing to do: Hunt them down and kill them.
With hundreds of Taliban searching the city for them, the SAS team’s mission becomes one of survival and staying a step ahead of their hunters. And with the planned evacuation of Kabul descending into chaos, the team knows that if they don’t make it back to the airport fast, they won’t make it out at all.
Based around true events, A Day Ahead of the Devil is the latest action-packed thriller from the bestselling author of Asset Seven.
Khalil Haqqani addressing crowds in Kabul Marcus Yam
Now that the dust has settled somewhat since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the terrorist group find themselves in the strange position of actually having what they’ve been fighting for over the last 20 years.
But they’re not finding it easy.
Their jubilation at the scrambled retreat of their Western foes now replaced by the harsh realities of trying to govern a country that didn’t elect them into position. Taliban commanders, IED makers and fighters now fill national, regional and local authority positions with no background or even experience with which to assist them. Rewarded for their loyalties during the fighting with status and power but with zero ability to perform in their new roles. With no legitimate money coming into the country, salaries and wages can’t be paid to encourage Afghan citizens to take up positions and get the country moving again.
Women sent home and told not to work. That it is demeaning, un-Islamic and the Taliban are saving them from themselves. Females turned away from universities and colleges as, with no women in the workplace under Taliban rule, why do they need any education? The former Afghan Security Forces hiding among trusted family members knowing that they remain targets for Taliban reprisals. Only last week a former sniper from the British-mentored CF333 was gunned down in the street by a Taliban death squad who had been looking for him for weeks.
And what of the Taliban themselves? I’ve said it before but it’s important to remember that there is no one Taliban. Rather, it is a collective of groups currently unified under one common purpose. And now that they have achieved that purpose, we will soon see the fragmentation process begin. Tribal affiliations, ethnic groupings, familial rivalries, are all elements that have more power to divide than unite. There is also the major factor of their implementation of Sharia law. Some Taliban have a far stricter interpretation of this than others and there will be internecine conflict between the leadership and the rank and file about how this is implemented. When these differences become too great to bridge or compromise, the fractures will start.
Those advocating harsh Sharia implementation will clash with the more moderate adherents. Individuals will proclaim themselves as the true believers and, with their followers, break from the main group. They will stake a claim to territories and governance bringing them in direct conflict with their former leadership and contemporaries. Violence will inevitably follow with each side claiming the moral high ground in the conflict. Loyalties and patronage will be called upon to support the warring factions, further dividing the unity of the Taliban.
And lets not forget that the hardline Islamic State-Khorasan or ISIS-K as it is referred to, remains active in Afghanistan. And only too willing to see the Taliban divided and opportunities to extend their own organisation with disaffected Taliban ranks who believe that Taliban governance of the new Islamic Emirate is not harsh enough. The Taliban already knows that ISIS-K see themselves as the true Mujahideen and heir to the throne of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Further fighting between the groups is a given.
And what of Al Qaeda? The reason that, for all intents and purposes we embarked on this 20+ years of military adventurism? Will they gravitate in numbers back to Afghanistan? A Hijra or migration to the new promised land? Safe in the knowledge that the Taliban will be happy to host their presence once again? The truth is that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are linked by the latter’s oath of allegiance, a bay’ah, that stems from the 1990s and was reaffirmed by Al Qaeda in 2016.Evidence of this has been seen recently in online jihadi chat rooms where extremists are openly discussing relocating from Syria to the new Islamic Emirate, already assured of the welcome that awaits them.
It’s tempting to resort to black humour and see the new Afghanistan as becoming little more than a dystopian Disneyland for terrorists and extremists. But that would detract from the suffering and hardships that another group in the country are already undergoing: The Afghan people. Brutalised and exhausted by decades of fighting and violence, it seems that they are set for another extended period of the same. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, the warlords tore the country apart as they vied for power and the spoils of the victor. When the Taliban began taking control of regions and implementing law and order, they were initially welcomed by the long-suffering citizens, grateful for the stability this group provided. Such was the wanton destruction and carnage they’d suffered during the warlords’ fighting.
And, in my opinion, history is probably going to repeat itself as the Taliban fractures into dissident groupings battling for control of the country. Battling with ISIS-K, bringing their Al Qaeda allies into the conflict to support and assist. Attracting defeated and disaffected jihadists from around the globe, keen to prove their twisted commitment to their faith. Pulling in the state actors of Pakistan, India, Iran, Russia, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan as the Great Game of history further repeats itself. As we in the West monitor the situation closely for any hint that the country becomes the de facto platform for the planning and launching of terrorist attacks against our nations.
Pessimistic? Perhaps, but in my experience pessimism in these situations usually pans out to be closer to realism than not. To the jubilant Taliban, Afghanistan has added another empire to its list of those who came, saw and failed to conquer. But it would benefit them more to remember this as a lesson rather than cause for gloating. Because the Graveyard of Empires they have inherited has shown through history over and over again, that it is not for the holding. That it favours none, not even the brave.
In an article I wrote almost 18 months ago, (https://www.jamesemack.com/have-the-taliban-won/) I covered what I thought a strategic withdrawal from Afghanistan would look like. Back then, the United States was talking about troop reductions in order to return control of the country back to the people of Afghanistan whose Security Forces were now deemed capable of this task. I wrote then that I considered this the beginning of an exit strategy and nothing else. Twenty years, trillions of dollars and thousands of deaths bringing the world’s superpowers to the line in the powder-fine, Afghan sand. I described how I thought the Afghan Security Forces would fail to hold ground, surrender and abandon their positions. How with no Air support, Intelligence provision and joint-mission hand-holding, there was no hope of the Afghans holding back the Taliban advance.
Sadly, all this has come to pass. Even as I write this piece, last week’s Pentagon assessment that the Taliban could take Kabul in a year has been hastily revised to the more realistic timeframe of 3 weeks. With most key provincial cities under or about to be under Taliban control, this is not just a pessimistic, worst-case scenario: It is a very real possibility. The city of Pol e Khomri, a mere 140 miles north of Kabul, was taken by the Taliban the evening before I began writing this. Afghan news footage of soldiers and police abandoning bases and stripping off uniforms in anticipation of Taliban victories showing the sad reality of life on the ground.
The Taliban have capitalised on our withdrawal from Afghanistan with a speed and ferocity that has surprised many. For me, I’m just surprised they’re surprised. Since the Taliban regrouped and re-entered the conflict in the early 2000s, they have consistently displayed tenacity for the long game and the capacity to launch fast, large-scale operations resulting in successes and gains beyond which they were deemed capable. The capture of the city of Kunduz in 2015 a good example of this. The largest city in the north-east of the country with a population of around 400,000. Despite being defended by Afghan and American Special Forces, the city fell quickly and had to be retaken with considerable effort and a major allocation US military assets.
There is also surprise stated at the poor performance of the Afghan Security Forces and their unwillingness or inability to fight the Taliban. There shouldn’t be. In the twenty or so years I have had involvement with the country, I’ve never seen a completely autonomous, Afghan security initiative of any significance make a considerable achievement. It had been tried, and probably many times, but, in my experience and observations at least, there was always a coalition command, control or support element involved. Where handovers of certain elements such as specialist training courses were conducted under capacity-building initiatives, these also failed quickly. We tried, as usual, to emboss our Western democratic template on a third-world fiefdom of warlord states and tribal domains. Took our military and law-enforcement models and applied them to a patriarchal society where for centuries nepotism and familial loyalty determined positions of command and influence.
We tried hard to cut the head off the snake of corruption but found that it was so endemic and accepted as the cultural norm that it was the entire body of the snake we were dealing with. From Ministers to Generals, Colonels to Corporals, it was accepted that an integral benefit of your position was to feather your own nest. Senior military officers created ‘ghost’ units; military bodies that existed only on paper, drawing millions in dollars for base infrastructure, food, fuel, uniforms, weapons, vehicles, training and equipment for entities that didn’t exist in the physical world. Ministers squirrelled away funds intended for government initiatives to offshore accounts in the Middle East in preparation for their exodus once the Coalition cut and run. Which they were absolutely convinced we would eventually do. And in which they have been proved right. And the poor soldiers and policemen at the bottom of the pile? Often not receiving their salaries, or sometimes just a tiny portion of them as the hierarchal rank pyramid above them siphoned off their ‘cut’ before the pittance reached the rank and file? Based in Provinces and towns where it takes them days to return to their home villages? No commonality with the populations of these towns other than a very general nationality?
Demoralised and dejected, it’s little wonder they have no motivation to fight. Our model doesn’t work for them. They needed a completely different system that aligned with their cultures, ethos and identities. Plural. There is no one Afghanistan in terms of population identity. Hazaras, Pashtuns, Baluch, Tajik, Uzbek make up just some of the disparate demographics we tried to mould together under a unified national security infrastructure. When we saw that this wasn’t working particularly well, we came up with other, localised initiatives: Afghan Local Police, Khost Protection Force, Counter Terrorist Pursuit Teams. But still, our best laid plans to replicate our Western models always fell short of our aspirations. I once mooted to a senior coalition officer that we were effectively creating the best-trained militias in the world that would soon just be absorbed into their presiding warlord’s arsenal. He didn’t disagree.
The Taliban don’t fight for a pittance of a salary they might or might not receive. They don’t fight on behalf of a national concept they don’t really believe in. They don’t fight for a government that has no real influence beyond the surreal bubble of Kabul. They fight for their beliefs, twisted and abhorrent as they may be. They fight for their absolute conviction that they are returning Afghanistan to the Islamic Republic it was always meant to be. They have a unified goal, driven by their unshakable faith in their ideology and motivated daily by their successes. Which in turn gives them the affirmation that their god supports their struggle, wants them to win.
The Afghan Security Forces have none of this. And the government knows it. In desperation, President Ghani has formally requested assistance from regional warlords to defend and hold their lands against the Taliban advance; a clear acknowledgement that his Army is defeated. But it appears that even this request is too late to achieve anything more than small pockets of resistance as the Taliban sweep through the country conquering villages, towns and cities.
So as the Taliban look set to return Afghanistan to the Stone Age, the people of the country will once again, suffer horrifically. As our Western superpowers pull away from the sinking ship, other nations are considering their response. Russia, always keen to meddle and exploit an opportunity to needle the West, is taking a cautionary approach, bolstering troop numbers in former Soviet satellite states on the border with Afghanistan to monitor and intercept any potential Islamic fundamentalism from seeping through to Russia’s borders. China has already made clear its intention to have a major involvement in what happens in Afghanistan. The Taliban have confirmed they will engage with the Chinese which seems jarringly hypocritical when one considers the treatment of the Uighur Muslims at the hand of the Chinese State. But that’s part and parcel of the realpolitik that China deploys around the globe in its current advancement of influence.
Inevitably, our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the instant gains made by the Taliban draw comparisons with Vietnam. And not completely without merit: A prolonged, unpopular military campaign in a far-off country. A mission creep with ill-defined, shifting objectives. A determined enemy unconcerned by time constraints, budget, political appetites and changes in administrations. A ‘nation’ whose central government has little impact on much of the country beyond the capital. The deaths of of our bright and best young men and women.The deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.
There is an image that, for me at least, summarises the humiliating end game of the Vietnam War. It is the picture of the last helicopter evacuating the US Embassy in Saigon, a chain of figures on the roof of the building urgently boarding. the final flight as the city fell to the Viet Cong. With the latest Pentagon assessment that Kabul could fall within 3 weeks, is this something we can expect to see in Afghanistan? A Black Hawk helicopter evacuating the last few Embassy personnel as Taliban gunfire and mortars wreak havoc on the city?
I hope not. I would hope that with our UAVs, satellites and network of intelligence assets, advanced warning would enable rapid evacuation before the threat was so close. Which is all well and good for our deployed personnel. But for the Afghans in Kabul there is no last chopper. No Black Hawk to spirit them away from advancing hordes of black-turbaned fanatics. No sitting back in the aircraft seat, eyes closed, the smell of AvGas a comforting reminder they are being transported to safety.
For the Afghans, they are going back in time. Back to a time of brutality and repression that they believed had been consigned to history. Human, Gender, and Equal Rights progression not just halted but reversed. The one lifeline open to them would be that of a power-sharing initiative between the Taliban and an Afghan Government. And the country is in a desperate enough position where such an appeasement may be preferable to the government than the wholesale loss of the country to these fanatics. The problem with this though is that the Taliban don’t need to negotiate. They are in the dominant position, winning every battle and fight as they advance through the country. Why would they negotiate for a part of something that they know they will own completely in the near future?
But maybe that won’t happen. Maybe by some miracle and foreign intervention the siege of Kabul can be avoided. Maybe a coalition of warlords can stave off the worst until international assistance can be marshalled into place. Such assistance probably not being led by the West, our withdrawal commitment leaving no political face-saving possibilities for an about turn.
When all is said and done, I wouldn’t want to see a ‘last chopper out of Kabul’ scenario. Wouldn’t like to imagine the panic and fear of the Afghans in Kabul as our last people flew overhead on their way to safety as the enemy was at the gates. The Afghan’s rage as they felt abandoned by a superpower who hadn’t stayed the course they’d committed to. Or the sight of Taliban flags flying above the very institutions that the deaths of thousands of people, trillions of dollars spent, and twenty years of fighting had been invested to protect.
When I worked on a special projects program in Afghanistan, I spent a lot of my time with the Afghans, rather than with the coalition forces that is the standard operational tour model I was accustomed to. There were several downsides to this, the main one of course being constantly alert and hyper-vigilant of the insider threat; the Afghan that would walk into one of my sessions one day with a suicide vest primed and ready to go.
The upshot was the experience of living and working alongside these people and their culture and the direct access to their lives and stories. Case in point: The old guy in this photo worked in the location where we conducted a lot of our training courses. I kind of inherited him when I took over the role and he was allegedly employed to clean our offices, classroom and break-out areas. In reality he would just run a spectacularly filthy cloth over surface areas making them far worse than they had originally been. That was how he earned the nom de guerre of ‘The Dirtier’.
He was very poor, even by Afghan standards. He received no official salary but was paid in kind with leftover food from the Afghan trainers. He never spoke but communicated through gestures and an odd grunt to get his point across. Once I had settled into my new position I became curious. Who was this guy? Why was he allowed to remain in our compound when he was actually more of a hindrance than a help? The Afghans are not noted for being a particularly charitable people so I was also interested in their reasons for letting him hang around.
So I asked my Afghan counterpart, a Major with a fearsome reputation earned on the battlefields of Helmand and Kandahar. Turned out ‘The Dirtier’ was once a respected Afghan Army officer who refused to shore up the puppet government that the Russians emplaced back in the 80s. Choosing honour and integrity over capitulation, he joined the Mujahaddin and their battle to force the Soviet war machine out of their country.
A natural leader and superb tactician, he quickly became a legend for his audacious attacks and bravery in action. A boogeyman spoken about in hushed tones around Russian campfires in the Hindu Kush. But with success comes notoriety and he was now firmly on the Russians’ radar. His name crept up the target list aided by information about him gleaned from savage interrogations of captured fighters. He evaded the Russians’ attempts to ensnare him and was regaled as something of a folk hero by the Afghans. But it could never last; he was a marked man.
During a particularly brutal engagement he and his men were trapped in the neck of a steep valley, decimated by repeated strafing runs from the Hind gunships. Pinned by the aerial onslaught there was no escape when the Special Forces troops swept down from the summits. His war was over. The boogeyman was caught. His capture was celebrated by the Russians who by now were looking for any good news stories to send back home to a demoralised population questioning the deaths of their conscripted sons in a nonsensical cause.
His capture was always going to be a painful one; The Russians have none of the sensitivities or conformity to treatment agreements that our western nations have. Mohammed was tortured. Firstly for information; where are the other fighters basing themselves? Who is helping them? When is the next attack? Secondly he was tortured for revenge, reparation for the lives of the soldiers he had taken. And lastly, for sport; the broken boogeyman available to all and sundry to vent their frustrations upon. Mohammed was tortured horribly and for a long time.
As a result of his torture and interrogations he is deaf and speaks only with difficulty. Hence the grunting and pointing for communicating. This man has borne witness, and been subjected to, the very worst atrocities that human beings inflict upon each other. By rights he should be a bitter misanthrope, a man with an axe to grind against the world and the injustice it served upon him. But he is not. His soft, kind eyes show he bears no grudges. The laughter lines and mischievous gleam hinting at the hidden character within.
My team contained a healthy complement of cynical, jaded individuals. Men moulded by the situations and operations they had been exposed to over the years. And yet, without knowing anything of The Dirtier’s story, I watched how they softened to the old man’s presence. Gifts in the form of clothing, caps, shoes, were passed unceremoniously with a gruff ‘thought you could use these’ to allay any suspicion that softness or affection was involved. Quite surreal to see the transformation of The Dirtier from his ragged, down and out look to turning up in 5.11 tactical pants, approach shoes and a black polo shirt.
He started spending more time with his new British friends, just as quiet as he ever was, save for the fact that he would occasionally laugh when he saw something that he could understand outside of the language barrier. One of the guys returned from leave once and took The Dirtier to one side and privately presented him with a gift. With the assistance of an interpreter he was giving The Dirtier instructions for something. Curious, I picked up my coffee and ambled across in time to see the old man holding the side of his head and crying openly. It took a second for me to assimilate all of the information in front of me and work out what was going on: My colleague had returned from the UK with a hearing aid for The Dirtier. And it was clearly working. The raw emotion from the old man was infectious and I found myself turning away, some unseen smoke obviously irritating my eyes…
It was some time later that I learned The Dirtier’s story and shared it with the guys. They were, as you would expect, impressed and respectful of the old man and what he had gone through. But here’s what I like about this whole affair: These guys treated The Dirtier with compassion and courtesy from the off, when to all intents and purposes he was just a tramp with a place to be. Whenever I hear the occasional moron stereotyping military and ex-military personnel as war-mongering automatons, I always think back to my guys and their relationship with The Dirtier and wish I could show that person the reality.
When I learned Mohammed’s story I wanted to photograph him, to try and capture those soft eyes with just the barest hint of mischief. A snapshot to remind me that no matter what fresh hell is levelled at us, we can come through it without being broken. So here it is, a portrait of the man whose story I have just written taken in our compound on the day The Dirtier became Mohammed.
