Policing the Poppy

Eleven hours after retiring from his post as Head of The Serious Organised Crime Agency’s Tactical Firearms Division Dave Wright, 50, was on a plane to Afghanistan, bringing 31 years experience as a British policeman - and looking for a “last great adventure”. He ‘retired’ as a Superintendant; today he works at the most basic levels to support and develop Helmand province’s fragile police force.

As the man charged with mentoring the Counter Narcotics Police - Afghanistan (CNP-A) Wright’s daily battle isn’t about bombs, bullets and airstrikes. It’s about creating a force for law and order that people can trust and respect. In Helmand that means seeing that police officers are paid, literate, trained, drug-free . . . and equipped with uniforms.
He says: “Nothing could prepare you for working in the Afghan environment, it doesn’t matter how much you read or what people tell you – until you come out here you can’t begin to understand the country, the people and the conditions they live in.
“I had the opportunity to do something completely different to my old job, but still use all the skills I had learned over a long career. Some of my former SOCA colleagues would like to follow me, many are curious - some think I am mad!”
And it’s a view his wife of 23 years, Christine, has some sympathy with, although she, too, was a career police officer: “We weren’t keen on the idea of him going at first. It was an important year for the girls with University and GCSEs coming up. I suppose you could say we weren’t exactly supportive! And we thought, why there; why Afghanistan?”

With 8,000 troops in Afghanistan the UK is the second largest military contributor to the international community’s efforts in the country and the second largest bilateral donor. International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, talking recently about the move from stabilisation to state building, praised the soldiers and civilians, like Wright, who are involved in that process. He said: “They take those risks in pursuit of one shared mission: to help Afghans to secure, govern and develop their country, for themselves.”

And the last seven years have seen real progress towards that goal as Wright explains: “We have recently had huge successes with opium recoveries. In the last month we recovered 750kgs, 1,600 kgs, 1,420 kgs and last week another 650 kgs. These were by British Army-mentored Afghan patrols operating in the desert. The prisoners and samples of the narcotics are flown back to Lashkar Gah where they are collected by the CNP-A who interview and process them through the criminal justice system. The remainder of the narcotics, and the smugglers vehicles, are then blown up by explosives to ensure they are destroyed.

“ Last week the CNP-A operating in Lashkar Gah City raided a house and recovered 48kg of pure heroin together with over two tonnes of precursor chemicals in a drugs laboratory. It takes 10kg of opium to manufacture 1kg of heroin. This was an example of intelligence-led policing - a totally Afghan initiated and led operation. “It is things like that which make it all worthwhile.”


Squaddie graffiti, scrawled on the inside of a suffocatingly hot portaloo at Kandahar Airfield says: “Afghanistan is an illusion caused by lack of drugs and alcohol”. And while it may not rank among the most uplifting of sentiments about Afghanistan – it does reflect certain truths about the country.

The irony is that while there is definitely a lack of alcohol (the British military bases are ‘dry’ in every sense of the word) the surrounding countryside suffers from no shortage of drugs.
Adjacent Helmand Province produces up to 90 percent of the world’s heroin. According to Wright a number of the police are drug ‘users’ of some description. He says that until recently 6ft cannabis plants grew on the doorstep of many police posts and corruption was rife.
This sounds depressing, but Wright is upbeat and optimistic. Aided by his mentoring, root and branch reform of the force is well in hand and he claims with authority that the CNP-A are “100 per cent clean.”

They are also 100 per cent male.

Helmand has a police ‘tashkeil’ or establishment of 2,000 - just six of them are women. There would have been a seventh, trained as a counter-narcotics specialist, but she was kidnapped on Lashkar Gah’s east-west Highway 601 earlier this year and murdered. Her assassins cut her throat, in front of her son, and then they shot her in the face.
Like many other women who put their heads above the parapet in Helmand, she had received threats and warnings, but with 90 per cent of her training completed, she was determined to finish it.

Wright, who hails from Washington, Tyne and Wear, and still bears traces of his North East accent, is reluctant to talk about her. It’s a painful issue. “She was a very brave woman, but don’t take it from me; ask her colleagues.”

The role of Afghan women in the world of counter narcotics is new. “We’re helping to move the Counter Narcotics Police from a static, reactive role to one that is intelligence led,” he explains. Historically featuring only in the poppy harvesting process, women also appear on the drugs landscape as addicts or prisoners. In both roles they are largely victims of poverty, fear and a male dominated society. Now operating as police officers and prison guards they are beginning to become part of the solution as well as the problem. But there’s a long way to go.

It is a cultural paradox that while male officers are unable to search women for arms and drugs, Afghan men discourage the recruitment of females who could fulfill this role. Wright introduces me to one of Lashkar Gah’s best female officers who has had singular successes and is keen to tell her story. “It was at a checkpoint, a year and a half ago. One woman had an AK-47 under her clothing (burqa) and 250 rounds of ammunition. Another had a grenade and explosive material. This lady tried to attack me, and then she bit me!”

A wrist is offered, showing scars of what are unmistakably teeth marks.
I was asked not to name the officer and no photographs of she or her colleagues were allowed. We met at a literacy class. Joining the ANP provides access to education as well as income, something the women particularly value.

Wright comes from a household of women: his wife, Christine, is also a retired police officer; the couple’s daughters Amy, 18, and Sophie, 16, are used to his absences. “He’s always worked away,” says Christine. “I suppose we’ve become very independent – but we knew that if there was a problem he could always come home.
He is supposed to work a rota of six weeks on and two weeks off, but it doesn’t always work out that way and there are inevitable trade-offs. “He came home on (GCSE) results day, but that meant he wasn’t able to be here when Amy went up to university,” says Christine .

“When I was with SOCA I worked in London during the week, traveling from Durham to Kings Cross on a Monday morning and returning for the weekend,” explains Wright. But ‘coming home’ from Helmand is a bit different. “I fly by RAF helicopter from Lashkar Gah to Camp Bastion, then by C130 Hercules to Kabul, then a flight to Dubai, then an Emirates flight home. It can take 5 or 6 days to get in and out – they are epic journeys!”

Another downside for his family back home is the fear. “We worry every time something comes on the television news” admits Christine. “Just recently there was something about a suicide bomber infiltrating a police unit and until we found out where it was, it was difficult.”
Wright’s admiration for the brave Afghan women taking on the difficult role of policing in Helmand is obvious.

“They travel to work in burqas” he explains. “When I first arrived I asked about uniforms. They said they would be proud to wear uniforms, like female police officers in Kabul, but they had never been offered any.”

The police command posts are like small forts and although the women are not armed, the men they work alongside are. Wright arranges for us to visit one and, with the obligatory armed guards, we leave the military base to meet two female officers on duty.
It ends in frustration; despite painstaking arrangements to catch them on shift, neither is there. Wright although clearly annoyed, is unfailingly diplomatic.

These check points, east and west of Lashkar Gah, are unprepossessing. Men with glazed eyes and ill fitting uniforms share a room with sacks of potatoes, RPG launchers, AK-47s - and a single wooden crutch resting against a wall .Yet in the last 12 months more than 1,000 members of the ANP have lost their lives fighting for their community and to gain some respect for their tarnished profession.

The rewards are poor and the risks considerable. The country’s 82,000 police are a popular target for militants; less well armed and trained than the Army, they travel in small groups in hostile territory.

In 2008 the numbers killed nationally represented half the size of Helmand’s entire establishment. Earlier Wright has admitted how much he would love to see a ‘bobby on the beat’ system in Helmand, but with police officers responsible for many crimes, and public signs urging people to report mistreatment at checkpoints, it will take time to build trust. Or what Douglas Alexander describes as both short-term stabilisation and long-term state-building.
Minister for Education Hanif Atmar described Afghanistan’s four great problems as narcotics, poverty, insurgency and weak governance. The UK, currently the lead nation of the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) of which Wright as a EUPOL officer works alongside, is actively involved in addressing all these issues.

DFID is the lead UK Department on development; it has provided £7.2 million since April 2006 to support the implementation of projects to provide immediate and visible benefits to the people of Helmand. And increasingly it is being recognised that specialists like Wright have a unique contribution to make. Engagement with the local community is a key element of counter-insurgency which cannot not be won by force and ‘quick impact’ ventures alone. Douglas Alexander said: “They have brought much-valued civilian skills to the job . . . of identifying immediate priorities with the local population. Their military colleagues are not only providing reassurance for local communities by patrolling areas that have been subjected to attacks and criminality, but also working with civilians to train hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police to take charge of security themselves.

These Afghan-led operations, acting on Afghan intelligence, are making real headway in improving security for local citizens.” It’s this element of the job that give Wright most satisfaction. He describes its rewards as ”Seeing the Afghan Police achieve spectacular results through their own efforts, witnessing their will to learn and understanding that the average CNP-A police officer wants to do a good job, wants to have the respect of the public and despite all the obstacles in his way still attempts to achieve this.”

Wright walks a tightrope Helmand, as do so many of the British civilian and military staff involved in long-term reconstruction. Offend cultural sensitivities and you are back to square one. Several times I see Wright reign-in impatience, but he is an experienced copper supported by an MBA and ears of experience on regional and national special squads.
He’s been at the top of his profession in the UK – here he argues patiently for women officers to be allowed to fill in data-capture forms and get their wages on time. Does he miss anything I wonder?

“Obviously my wife and family. And when you have had a bad day at work a pint of beer always helps!” he observes wryly. Helmand is dust-bowl dry in the summer and despite having air-conditioned accommodation, the heat is energy sapping.

Sickness is a constant headache for UK troops and civilians and before each meal at Lashkar Gah diners, without exception queue to wash and then sanitise their hands. Food is good and plentiful, but the hygiene regime is strict.


One senior civil servant who has been in Helmand for a year tells me that while the issues are “massively complicated” she is “continually optimistic”. “The national drug control strategy is a good thing and an integral part of establishing the rule of law.”
British military units have also been involved in drug raids, but that is not their primary role. Earlier this year Royal Marines from 40 Commando destroyed a drugs factory in the Upper Sangin Valley along with 1.5 tonnes of morphine base. The operation’s purpose was to deny Taliban groups a possible safe haven and to prevent them regaining the ability to mount attacks against the town of Sangin.

But in terms of enduring reconstruction, Wright echoes Douglas Alexander; it is about enabling Afghans to do things for themselves.
The HQ of Lashkar Gah’s counter narcotics unit is sweltering; most of the time there is no electricity. This is not unusual. There is not enough oil or diesel for the vehicles and no cash to repair the broken window in the detention cell. Computers with English keyboards gather dust until Dari/Pashtu replacements can be found.

Helmand Province’s drugs busters have no body armour and travel in soft-skinned vehicles. An IED recently destroyed the front of one but left the occupants unscathed – they were lucky. If it had been travelling faster they would all be dead.
Wright takes me to the office of Colonel Abdul Qadir, a genial, bearded family man who offers melon and thanks me for my interest in his problems. Somewhere in this compound 142 kilos of heroin are secured - the fruits of a recent raid in the Marjah area of Helmand
Outside he has shown us sacks of chemicals used in the process of heroin production, drums and tanks confiscated from a home laboratory.

This is heartening in a region where many people believe that the police are corrupt. The basic wage for an officer is $100 per month, rising to $130 for a sergeant. There is no pension scheme and no medical insurance for those injured on duty. Later Wright points out an officer who was shot through the neck and side only a week earlier. He is not in uniform but is attending police literacy classes that attract a further $20 a month “as an incentive”. The entrance and exit wounds below his hairline are healing well, but plain to see.

Wright explains how rigour is being injected into the training system through introduction of an eight week Focused District Development course. It teaches standardised police skills, law, ethics, survival training and use of equipment. (It also guarantees that those with a drug problem go cold turkey for two months!) All ranks go through the process.

The opium-centric economy has made Helmand unstable and unsafe. The vicious circle of poverty and fear is perpetuated by narco-traffickers who advance money to farmers to buy seeds, then guarantee farm-gate purchase of their crop. Wheat, chillies or other legal crops would be just as easy to grow, but the dangers of getting them to market, paying bribes on the way and securing a buyer make them hazardous and unattractive alternatives. Building a strong police force won’t solve anything overnight – but it’s a significant step in the right direction.
Wright’s tour was fixed term, but Afghanistan gets under the skin. Will he stay I ask? “That depends very much on my family. I have a one year contract and I am now more than two thirds of the way through it. However I feel I have now reached a position where I have gained the trust of the local Afghan Police and the results I am achieving now are by far and away greater than in my first 6 months. Continuity and trust is vital in this policing environment.”