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illusory this might have been. We made quite a party in the evenings, downing plates of chicken and rice in the diningroom, swapping notes and the news. Things were beginning to heat up in Helmand. Assadullah Wafa, the new governor, had announced that 800 fighters had crossed the border from Pakistan, although the report could not be verified. Bays was considering a trip to Helmand to try to establish what was really going on. In the meantime he was working on a story about Kandahar's newly recruited police force, a part of the ANP, the Afghan National Police. He had arranged to go out on a routine patrol with them, and I went along for the ride.
    The ANP story was an important one for the future of Afghanistan. Across the south they had an unsavoury reputation for extorting money from road users at unofficial vehicle checkpoints. So endemic was the problem that in early 2007, following the assassination in his home of a local import-export magnate, the region's trucking companies briefly went on strike. This mattered. Never mind that the Coalition's military effort was scarily dependent on the trucking trade to bring in heavy supplies from Karachi; banditry by uniformed men represented a public relations catastrophe that threatened to wreck ISAF's mission altogether.
    Public 'security' was at the heart of the myth about the Taliban's creation. The reappearance of highwaymen between Kandahar and the Pakistani border was particularly disastrous, for this was the exact stretch of road on which the Taliban had first appeared in 1994, pledging to rid the province of the freelance bandits then blighting ordinary farmers' lives. In those days it was hardly possible to drive a mile without encountering a chain across the road, manned by some Kalashnikov-toting militiaman demanding money. Farmers were unable to get their crops to market, ordinary trade was paralysed and the local economy was stalled. The Taliban put a stop to the thievery by the swift and sometimes instantaneous application of sharia law. However harsh, hanging or amputation was also popular with many people. And now, banditry was creeping back, and being practised by the very policemen responsible for preventing it – policemen, moreover, who were supported, trained and equipped by the international community.
    I was later to meet a member of the Household Cavalry Regiment (HCR) who described how, early in Herrick 4, his patrol of Scimitars had come across an ANP checkpoint not far from Camp Bastion. The policemen manning it were wearing civilian clothes, but on the HCR's approach they were spotted hurriedly putting their uniforms on again; they had been stopping vehicles and extorting money from the drivers while pretending to be bandits. The bitter symbolism of the return to lawlessness was not lost on any Afghan. It was a propaganda coup for the Taliban and a dreadful case of plus ça change , while the damage by association to the British Army's reputation was another blow to the campaign for hearts and minds.
    We were picked up by three open-backed trucks packed with gun-toting policemen, and we lurched off to a large roundabout on the west side of town, the main entry point into Kandahar from the Helmand badlands beyond. The men all leapt out, forming a ring around the junction to secure it, while others set about stopping and searching incoming vehicles for illicit weapons. The air grew heavy with diesel fumes as a long tail-back built up. Cars and rickshaws hooted impatiently, trying to queue-jump the idling trucks and buses. Bays and his crew began to film the tumult, while I picked my way across the squelching ground to chat to the policemen on the perimeter.
    The bored young men I found there were evidently not local. Most of them had the high cheekbones and clean-shaven features of Tajiks and Uzbeks from the north. They wore uniform, which was something: blue fatigues, a white shoulder-cord that looped to the right breast-pocket, grubby white puttees