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Photograph by Robert Wilson
Scotland on Sunday by Kenny Farquharson
The Commander of the British Army in Afghanistan is standing on a scrap of waste ground in the centre of a dusty town called Musa Qala. There is an awful stench in the air. It comes from a dead dog, half-buried under a tree, its rotting head exposed to the air. "Shall we take a look at the bazaar," asks Brigadier Andrew Mackay, in the tone of voice someone might use when suggesting an afternoon visit to Jenners tearoom.
Photograph by Robert Wilson
SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY BY KENNY FARQUHARSON
GENERAL Ahmed Khafarji, grey-suited, shirt-collar button undone, unshaven, sits behind the desk of his office high above the city of Baghdad.
Khafarji is deputy minister in Iraq’s new ministry of interior. It’s his job to deal with matters relating to the new Iraqi police service. The man sitting in the armchair across the desk is Brigadier Andrew Mackay, who has been given the task of rebuilding that police force.
Photograph by Robert Wilson
DAILY TELEGRAPH PROFILE
"Unless we retain, gain and win the consent of the population within Helmand, we lose the campaign," he previously said. "The population is the prize." He has been vocal in the past, claiming in March that a British failure to deliver economic development or reconstruction for ordinary Afghans meant that "one of the central tenets of counter-insurgency doctrine is failing."
He has also criticised troop equipment in the past - in a secret memo published in the book Operation Snakebite by Stephen Grey, he said much of the equipment was "tired, limited and failing regularly".
His troops were responsible for recapturing the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala in the north of Helmand in December 2007. From his "hole in the ground" on Roshan Hill, a high point above the town, he spent five days watching as the town was finally captured, an action later described as the "best operation to come out of Afghanistan in years" by the Pentagon. He played a personal role in the operation when he walked for nearly a mile across no man's land to reach the town and take up position on the Hill................
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BBC Documentary
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BBC Documentary
Afghanistan: The Lessons of War
A couple of years after leaving the military and embarking on a commercial career Andrew was contacted by the BBC Producer Ian Muir-Cochrane. Behavioural Conflict had also been released and Ian was interested in a collaborative effort to reflect on Andrews experience of Helmand but to also interview some of the key individuals who he had either engaged with directly or were actively involved in the conflict at the time he was deployed. This led to a series of interviews with senior politicians and soldiers from Afghanistan, the UK and the US.
It was a profoundly moving experience for Andrew to work with Ian Muir-Cochrane and the BBC. He commented that:
“I think whoever you are when when you go to an extreme environment such as Helmand its never the same person who comes back. I was interested in considering the role that I played as the commander of British Forces in Helmand and the journey it had taken me on.