Blood price

Sangin, Afghanistan

‘You don’t want to end up on a bracelet or on a fucking T-shirt. If you see people that need to die, kill them,’ said the US Marine Corps sergeant, briefing the convoy about to leave. It was night and we were setting off along the main road out of Sangin. Highway 611 had recently reopened — one of the successes here trumpeted by Nato — but no one would call it safe. ‘If you need to fire your weapon, that’s between you and Jesus. Good to go? Let’s do this shit.’

As the armoured vehicles rumbled into the pitch black, I remembered a friend’s account of a dinner party in Kabul at Christmas. Two visiting American newspaper editors were holding forth about the UK’s ‘failure’ in Sangin. The only British guest found herself on the defensive as they joked about how the US marines had accomplished more in a few months than the ‘wimpy Brits’ had managed in years.