The colonel, the ambassador and the naked photo…

Colonel Greville Bibby, ever the pukka officer, was trying to impress the deputy governor. They were sitting on red cushions in an empty building the military had commandeered.

Chah-e-Anjir was under Taleban control until a few weeks ago, and they were there, along with the British ambassador, Mark Sedwell, to reassure the population that the government and its foreign friends were firmly in charge.

The colonel pulled out a double page spread from a British newspaper which had in bold typeface a quotation from the Deputy Governor’s boss, the governor of Helmand. It also had a rather flattering picture of the colonel.

“Look!” he exclaimed, “This is a picture of me!” Unfortunately, he had forgotten which British newspaper it was. Being the Sun, the page flapped over to reveal on the back a photograph of a naked man and woman doing something which men and women don’t do in public in the land of the burka.

“Ah, right, that’s me, ho ho!” he said as the British Ambassador put his head in his hands, gently keening “No, oh no…”

“No, well, of course it’s not – er, just a joke… that’s me!” said the colonel desperately trying to fold the newspaper over to hide the offending image. The Afghans craned their necks to see. They laughed. The colonel’s reputation had perhaps been enhanced. Who was to know?

Later he addressed the shura, a meeting of about a hundred Afghan elders and heads of family and proclaimed: “My soldiers and I have been sent here by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second all the way from Great Britain to help you in your fight against Taleban!”

I felt I had travelled back in time to the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42) or the second (1878-80) or even the third (1919). At least in those days army officers on Her Majesty’s business didn’t have to contend with the Sun.