from HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to world@lemmy.world on 23 Jan 21:40
https://sh.itjust.works/post/53976123
Blast walls, rocket attacks, Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)… and long queues in the canteen. Anyone who deployed to Afghanistan, in whatever role, between 2001-2021 will have their own vivid memories of that time.
It started with the flight in – to Kandahar, Kabul or Camp Bastion. It could be a long, slow descent with the lights out on an RAF jet, or a rapid, corkscrew down in a C-130 transport plane. In both cases the aim was to avoid being blown out of the air by a Taliban surface-to-air missile.
Over the course of 20 years thousands of servicemen and women, as well as civilians, from dozens of countries deployed to Afghanistan, answering the US call for assistance.
Everything changed after 2006, when the UK deployed in force to Helmand province, a part of Afghanistan that had been relatively peaceful until then.
The Taliban made their intentions clear. If you come, they said, then we will fight you.
And yet the UK government at the time appeared shocked at the ferocity of the fighting 3 Para now found themselves engaged in, with British paratroopers calling in mortar and artillery fire so close to their positions it was termed “danger close”, in an effort to stop their bases from being overrun.
Over the next eight years, until the end of combat operations in 2014, it was not just Americans who were risking life and limb to serve in Afghanistan.
Brits, Canadians, Danes and Estonians were among those who saw the toughest fighting in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. It would also be churlish to ignore the bravery and sacrifice of so many Afghans who fought and died over two decades.
#world
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