Afghanistan

It's been one of the deadliest weeks in Afghanistan since the Taliban were driven out in 2001.

The fighting has intensified in the week that NATO took over command of international forces from the United States in the south of the country. Canadian, British and Dutch soldiers now make up most of the alliance troops. Alastair Leithead has been gauging the morale of some of the British soldiers who are based in the southern province of Helmand.

In the fierce heat of the Kandahar summer, eking out what little shade I could while waiting by the runway for a military flight, I got chatting to a British soldier. He was on his way to what here they call "Hell"…the itchingly sandy and repressively hot Camp Bastion in the Helmand desert. Miles from the nearest town, where sandstorms can last for days and where thousands of British troops are now based. "When I joined up ten years ago," he said, "people rarely knew anyone who had died in action. Now, pretty much everyone you speak to knows someone who's been killed here or in Iraq."

Helmand is not a pleasant place to be. It's not only hot and dusty, but as a heartland for the Taliban and the biggest producer of opium poppies in the country, it's also a very dangerous place. I spoke to a British medic about how she was getting on - "eight weeks to go before R and R" - rest and recuperation - she said. I smiled and added that most troops I spoke to knew exactly the number of days they had left on their tour. "57" she quickly replied and went on to explain that new technology was helping them keep track. Every day when they log on to their computers an updated bar chart shows how much money they've made so far and a pie chart fills in another slice of their little circle showing how many days, hours and minutes they have left in the country. It made me think of the play Journey's End, about British troops in the trenches during the First World War. One of the characters, Trotter, obsessively fills in his little circles every day with a pen, counting down to the end of his war. And I'm not the only one harking back to the First World War. In an off-the-cuff remark one British commander mentioned to me that "At least back then troops were rotated out from the front line every 12 days". "While in one of Helmand's districts, scene of heavy attacks over the last few weeks, the Nepalese British fighters, the Gurkhas were only relieved after more than three weeks of intensive fighting".

At one stage they had to use hand grenades to fight off the Taliban. Hand grenades are only effective up to thirty metres.

There's been plenty of discussion about what the NATO force is here to do. Help the government bring security and then governance and development. The line is well rehearsed. Some argue this was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission, but in Helmand there's little peace to keep. The Paras, some of the best of Britain's regular forces have been sent here - and they knew they'd have a fight on their hands. But they didn't expect to lose so many soldiers so quickly - I think they expected more of an Iraq-style insurgency campaign rather than this guerrilla warfare that they now find themselves caught up in. And they're caught up in it because they have gone on the offensive - moving into the remote areas trying to bring security by chasing the Taliban out. It's in these operations that the Taliban militias are hitting them hard.

Of course everyone says Afghanistan isn't Iraq. There isn't the religious division, the insurgency hasn't reached anything like that kind of intensity; but having worked in both places there is something that worries me. Sitting in Baghdad for a month at a time watching the news wires flashing up the latest reports of car bombs, roadside bombs, assassinations and kidnappings I would sometimes find myself losing track, by the end of the day, of the number of incidents and the number of people killed and injured. Now sitting here in Afghanistan I am finding myself doing a similar thing.

But a key difference between the two countries invaded after September 11th is that the majority of Afghans still want the international force to be here and know things would be a lot worse if they left. The commanders in the NATO force and among British troops insist the Taliban are coming off worse - that hundreds are being killed. That's hardly a measure of success, one can argue, but what they ask for is time. The NATO force has only just taken over control of the south from the American coalition and they need six to nine months, they say, before they can be fairly judged. In the meantime the Canadians, the British and the Americans are losing men and women.

I spoke to another British soldier in Camp Bastion and asked her why she thought her country's forces are here. "I don't know" she said. "Something about drugs I think…but it seems more like we're here to be shot at by the Taliban."

单词注释：
intensify [in5tensifai] v. 变强，增强
alliance [E5laiEns] n. 同盟，联盟
morale [mC5rB:l] n. 士气，斗志
eke [i:k] v. 节约，勉强维持
bastion [5bAstiEn] n. 基地
opium [5EupjEm] n. 鸦片
poppy [5pCpi] n. 罂粟
medic [medik] n. 医务兵
trench [trentF] n. 战壕
hark [hB:k] v. 倾听
rotate [rEu5teit] v. 旋转，转动
Nepalese [nepC:5li:z] n. 尼泊尔人
grenade [^ri5neid] n. 手榴弹，催泪弹
Para [5pB:rE] n. 伞兵
guerrilla [^E5rilE] n. 游击队
assassination [E7sAsi5neiFEn] n. 暗杀，行刺

阿富汗

自从驱逐塔利班的战争在2001年打响以来，这是情况最为糟糕的星期之一。北约接替美国，指挥国际军队在阿富汗南部作战，战况变得更加激烈。同盟军的大多数士兵来自加拿大、英国及荷兰。阿拉斯代尔·莱特海德来到赫尔曼南部省市，体察驻扎在此的英国士兵的士气。

在坎大哈的酷暑中，我在路边的一小片荫凉下等待下一场战斗的降临，这时我跟一名英国士兵聊了起来。他正在前往赫尔曼沙漠中有几千英国兵驻扎的军队营地，那里到处都是沙子，而且热得要命，距离最近的城镇有几英里，沙尘暴可以刮上好几天，士兵们称之为“地狱”。他说：“十年前我入伍的时候，没什么人听说过有人在执行任务时牺牲。但是现在，通常每个与你交谈的人都认得死在这里或死在伊拉克的人。”

赫尔曼不是什么好地方。不仅仅是炎热多尘，而且作为塔利班的核心阵地，和阿富汗最大的鸦片产地，这里还十分危险。我采访了一位英国医务兵，看看她的情况如何。她说：“离休息复原还有八个星期。”我笑着告诉她，我碰到的大多数士兵都能准确说出他们还剩多少天的行程。她立刻就跟我说：“57天。”接着还告诉我，高科技正在帮助他们更好地掌握情况。打开电脑时，会有一个每日更新的表格，告诉你已经挣了多少钱，还会有一个饼图，告诉你还要在这个国家待上几天几小时几分钟。这让我想起了一部电影《旅途的结束》，讲的是一次大战中英国士兵在战壕里的生活。剧中的一个人物特罗特尔，像着了魔一样每天都会用铅笔记下战争的天数，直到他生命的最后一天。我不是唯一一个想到一战的人。在一次即兴谈话中，一位英国指挥官告诉我：“最起码到目前为止，我们的军队每12天都会在前线上拉锯一次。”“在赫尔曼的一个地区，几周的战火留得满目疮痍，来自尼泊尔、英国和廓尔克族的士兵，在经过了三个多星期的紧张战斗后，首次在那里得到了休息。”

有一场战役，士兵们不得不用手榴弹对付塔利班，要知道手榴弹可是在三十米之内才有效。

关于北约的军队究竟来这里做什么，人们已经有很多争论。帮助当地政府创建安全局面，然后进行治理，促进发展，这是当局一再重复的说法。有人说这应该是维持和平的任务，但在赫尔曼，其实没什么和平可以维持。伞兵，作为英国常规军中最优秀的力量，也被派到了这里。他们清楚将要靠自己的双手进行战斗，但没有想过会如此迅速地损失如此多的弟兄。我想，他们宁愿面对更多伊拉克式的反暴动战役，而不是像现在这样陷入游击战。而他们之所以会遭遇这种局面，是因为扮演了侵略者的角色，深入荒漠地带，试图通过驱逐塔利班来谋取安全稳定，因而招致了塔利班的奋起攻击。

当然，每个人都会说阿富汗不是伊拉克。这里没有宗教分化，这里的暴乱也远没有达到在伊拉克的强度。但是，先后到过这两个地方之后，我感到很担心。在巴格达工作的一个月里，看着采访车东奔西跑，去追逐最新的关于汽车炸弹、公路炸弹、暗杀和绑架的新闻，一天下来，面对那么多的事故和人员伤亡数据，我有时会感到迷失方向。如今待在阿富汗，我发现自己在做类似的事情。

但是，作为9·11之后遭到入侵的两个国家，阿富汗与伊拉克之间有很大不同，其中最明显的是，大多数阿富汗人仍然希望联盟军留在这里，他们知道，如果军队撤离，形势将会更糟。北约部队和英国军队的指挥官都坚称，塔利班正被严重削弱，因为数以百计的塔利班武装都被杀死了。这当然很难成为成功的标志，但是，他们需要的只是时间而已。北约部队才刚刚从美军手中接过了对南部的控制权，他们说，6到9个月之后大家才能对他们的行动做出公正的评判。而在这段时间里，加拿大人、英国人和美国人将继续失去同胞。

在军队营地里我还采访了另一名英国士兵，我问她，在她看来她们国家的军队为什么到达这里。她说：“我不知道，应该和毒品有关吧，不过，看上去我们来到这儿更像是为了给塔利班当靶子。”