Panther’s Claw: on the front line with the Black Watch

In June 2009, around 3,000 British soldiers were involved in Operation Panther’s Claw.

The military offensive aimed to drive out the Taliban from their Helmand strongholds and prepare the way for national elections.

It saw fast moving and bloody fighting on a front line that left 10 British soldiers dead and an estimated 200 Taliban insurgents killed. The number of civilian casualties was never clarified.
The combat phase of Panther’s Claw began on 19 June when the Black Watch launched an air assault on Taliban positions.

The military offensive aimed to drive out the Taliban from their Helmand strongholds and prepare the way for national elections.

It was one of the biggest British military operations since the invasion of Iraq. Taliban supply routes were disrupted and vital crossing points captured, and on 27 July the first phase of the operation was declared a success by Gordon Brown.

Smith spent three weeks south of Camp Bastion in the Babaji district with the Black Watch 3rd Battalion. He then spent two weeks in Nawa district with the Mercian Regiment following them “mentoring” the Afghan National Army (ANA) to begin securing Helmand for themselves.

The fight for Helmand

The soldiers of the Black Watch regiment were the first troops to launch Panther’s Claw, with more than 350 of them being airdropped into Babaji district.

They came under heavy fire from the Taliban who launched their own counter attacks. The soldiers were accompanied at all times by translators with megaphones, but it became clear there is little time for talking to be done.

The Black Watch fought to establish a Forward Operating Base in a landscape riddled with irrigation channels and fields. The soldiers discovered evidence of just how close the Taliban were – finding teapots, still warm to the touch, with mortar rounds lying besides them.
A sergeant explains:

“Obviously they’ve sat here, had a bit of a brew had something to eat and then moved on when we pushed onto this location.”

And it’s not just Taliban and British in the warzone – civilians who refuse to move were caught up in the fighting.

“Now the Americans want to bring peace – it’s even worse now.” Afghan farmer

One farmer who had been in Babaji all his life said: “All the governments who have been in power here till this moment, they couldn’t bring peace. Now the Americans want to bring peace – it’s even worse now.”

All the while, the soldiers have to beware of the IEDs – the Improvised Explosive Devices that have claimed so many lives, both British and Afghan.

Captain Judith Gallagher leads a team responsible for clearing the captured areas of the IEDs in a painstaking inch by inch search for the deadly explosive devices.

Overwatch and trust: the Afghan National Army

Once the fighting is over and the areas are made safe, the other half of the Helmand battle comes: training the Afghan National Army (ANA) to guard the country for themselves.

Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Cartwright, commander of the Black Watch operation, emphasised the importance of the task: “It’s absolutely vital that we have the Afghan national security forces trained to take on more of the responsibility for security. We can provide the overwatch to them, the support, the mentoring and the training when they’re on the ground.”

It can be a frustrating task, especially when trust breaks down between the British and the ANA – who at times don’t appreciate being told what to do.

Captain Ed Brown, of the Mercian Regiment was “mentoring” the ANA troops on how to search buildings for Taliban weapons in the Nawa district.

Tensions mount however over the perceived laziness of the Afghan soldiers to fully commit to the search, and the fact British soldiers aren’t allowed to enter the buildings themselves unless they come under fire.

The tension threatens to boil over into open confrontation between the British and the ANA, outlining the difficulties in establishing trust between the two forces.

“[The ANA] are inherently idle.” Cpt Ed Brown

Captain Brown was clear in his frustration: “We haven’t had very long with them, in fact we’ve not had any time with them to build up their skills to the standards that we’d expect from them.

“They are inherently idle.”

Tensions are equally high in the local villages. At a meeting of the village elders, a shura, it was clear they are not convinced by the British arguments: “Now there’s no Taliban here there’s no fighting or shooting. If you really want to help us bring security to our country don’t come to our home. Go and live in the desert, you can fight the Taliban from there.”

British, Taliban and civilian casualties

Ten British soldiers were killed during Operation Panther’s Claw. The unofficial body count for the Taliban was around 200. Yet after weeks of fierce fighting Smith saw little sign of Taliban dead.

The insurgents invariably remove their dead and leave little behind to mark their presence – no bodies or blood stains, only spent bullet cases.

In fact the only body encounter Shaun Smith saw during his entire two and a half months in Afghanistan was that of a young teenage girl, found dead in a field after a Taliban sniper fire results in an airstrike being called.

The girl was unlikely to be a fighter – Smith saw no dead insurgents.

Background: heroin, Helmand and the Taliban
Creating an estimated 90 per cent of the world's heroin trade Helmand is a sought-after stronghold for the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

- Helmand is Afghanistan's largest province, slightly smaller in size than the Republic of Ireland, with wide deserts in the south and mountains in the north making it difficult to control. 

- Most of the Helmand's population is clustered around the river in north and central Helmand, where British and U.S. troops are also mainly deployed. It is where the agricultural fields cultivating opium poppy and food crops are located. 

- Helmand produces more than half of the opium cultivated in Afghanistan, the source of about 90 per cent of the global supply, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

- The drug crop is closely tied to the insurgency as the Taliban are mainly funded by the opium trade. But Nato forces in Afghanistan are not permitted to engage in crop eradication, a policy which limited British tactics in crippling the insurgency. 

- Britain, the United States and other Nato allies have started a number of civilian programmes to offer farmers alternative crops to opium, such as wheat, but Helmand remains Afghanistan's biggest poppy-producing province.