Inside Kabul: Real British Army Life – PsyOps, Chaos, and the Buzkashi Connection

Step inside the real world of British Army life in early 2000s Afghanistan — where camaraderie, chaos, and black humour met the dust and danger of Kabul. In this gripping new chapter of The Parallel Four, we reveal how a small PsyOps team built an entire influence operation from the ground up — with nothing but creativity, courage, and a kettle that never stopped boiling.

From watching Afghan riders battle it out in a brutal buzkashi tournament (imagine polo with a goat) to wrestling with dodgy translations, broken printers, and NATO bureaucracy, this episode captures the grit, laughter, and madness behind the headlines.

Expect true-to-life stories of Royal Anglian Regiment and Intelligence Corps teamwork, the chaos of Kabul logistics, and the humour that kept morale alive.

Perfect for fans of military history, Cold War Germany, rugby, skiing, travel, and the human side of war, this isn’t Hollywood heroics — it’s real people, real missions, and real life behind the wire.

👉 Subscribe for more stories from Kosovo to Kabul, packed with authentic British Army banter, NATO operations, PsyOps craft, and the camaraderie that never fades.

Transcript

Meanwhile, on certain afternoons the old military academy next door would erupt into chaos — because that was when they hosted buzkashi tournaments. Now, buzkashi, if you’ve never seen it, is full-contact polo played at breakneck speed… with a dead goat. Yes, a dead goat. The aim: wrestle the poor creature’s remains free and gallop it across your opponent’s goal line, all while trying not to be unseated, trampled, or lashed by the whips of the other riders.

It was brutal, violent, and strangely hypnotic. The thunder of hooves shook the ground, dust clouds billowed like gun smoke, and every rider seemed one heartbeat away from disaster. You couldn’t take your eyes off it — partly because it was gripping, partly because you weren’t sure whether to laugh or wince.

We’d perch on the blast walls with our mugs of tea, wrapped in blankets, watching like old ladies at a village cricket match. “He’s got the goat!... No the other ones got the goat!” we’d shout, our commentary swinging from outrage to delight in seconds. It was the most surreal sporting spectacle of my life — Kabul outside the wire, unfolding right on our doorstep. And yet, we couldn’t look away.

Back on task, our first priority was to request the Commander’s Mission. To our surprise — and more than a little delight — the newly appointed Commander Isaf turned out to be one of our old Company Commanders from Battalion days, now sporting a Major General’s rank. Even Major Bruce had once served under him.

The reunion was warm but typically understated, full of those clipped military pleasantries that carry a lifetime of shared history. “Still alive, I see.” — “Just about, sir.” A few nods, a wry smile, then it was straight to business.

We asked the all-important question: “What do you want from PsyOps?”

That meeting — all six of us squeezed in, nodding along with the General — was the spark that lit our Kabul campaign. Back in our little tent office, we huddled round the whiteboard with mugs in hand and maps spread across the table, launching into one of our trademark brainstorming sessions.

It didn’t take long to see the problem. Traditional comms were a dead end. Social media was practically non-existent, television barely reached beyond a handful of sets, and most of the local radio stations were either struggling to stay on air or blasting out 1980s Pashto disco on repeat. That left us with one reliable weapon in our arsenal: print.

Once our interpreters had settled in — and finally stopped bickering over who brewed the best tea — we sat them down and picked their brains on how best to reach the people of Kabul. To our relief, they were full of clever ideas (and, to our amazement, they didn’t even demand too many bribes in the process).

It was Sergeant Simpson — our graphic designer, print whisperer, and part-time miracle worker — who dropped the winning pitch. A tri-language tabloid-style newspaper: one part English, one part Pashto, one part Dari, and entirely brilliant. We all knew instantly it was the way forward. By the time the tea went cold, “our newspaper” had gone from idea to mission.

We sketched out the layout like a gang of caffeine-fuelled editors on Fleet Street. The front page? Local news with a dash of international stories that actually mattered to Afghans — and we swore, hand on heart, no Eurovision coverage. The middle spread was our warm-and-fuzzy zone: human-interest pieces, Isaf activities, interviews with locals, and, thanks to yours truly, the occasional “Goat of the Month” feature.

The back page was all sport. Cricket scores, football gossip, and — once we finally worked out the rules — buzkashi match results. Still not entirely sure who was winning, but one thing we knew for certain: the goats weren’t.

With the plan in place, Johan and I set off on our journalistic excursions, usually accompanied by one or two of our interpreters. They were guides, protectors, and brutally honest critics. “Perhaps best not to photograph that man, sir. He is… let us say, not very camera-friendly.”

At first Kabul felt muted, like someone had pressed pause on the city. But as the days grew warmer, life trickled back: markets bustling, children kicking makeshift footballs, traders hawking everything from spices to spare car doors. Our cameras drank it all in. Within a week we had a stack of stories and photographs — more than enough to fill our first edition.

That was when the real work began. You’d think a simple newspaper would be easy for a team of seasoned professionals with multiple deployments behind them. It was not. English gave us no trouble — until we tried to push it into Pashto or Dari. Neither language translated cleanly, and both used Arabic script, which made Microsoft Word weep bitter digital tears.

Our laptops didn’t help. Standard English Windows has about as much compatibility with Arabic fonts as a lawnmower has with snow. Pages crashed, text flipped itself backwards, whole articles vanished into formatting black holes. By the end of the first day, half of us were convinced the machines were possessed.

So what did we do? We improvised — again. One laptop got bravely reformatted with Arabic Windows, a process that generated enough swearing to make a dockyard worker blush. Then we scoured every corner of Kabul (and a few dark corners of the internet) until we dug up a set of Pashto fonts that didn’t look like someone had sneezed across the screen.

Our interpreters gamely typed up the translations, printed them out, and handed the stack to Sergeant Simpson — who by this point had the thousand-yard stare of a man who dreamt in QuarkXPress. He cut, pasted, scanned, formatted, and cajoled the whole mess into something that actually resembled a newspaper.

And the best part? All of this could have been avoided if procurement had simply listened to Simmo back in the planning stage and bought the Middle East version of Adobe Creative Suite. But no. Just like in Kosovo — when we spent weeks wrestling with Cyrillic fonts until someone finally twigged and ordered the Central European package — here we were again, fighting the alphabet as much as the enemy.

Still, adversity breeds creativity. Or at the very least, it breeds spectacularly colourful language and, thanks to Simmo’s stubborn wizardry, a newspaper that was — against all odds — surprisingly decent.

Designing a newspaper in English is one thing — designing one that reads right to left, back to front, and upside down (or at least it felt like it) was a whole new ball game. Arabic script, Pashto, and Dari all had their own ideas about how a page should behave. The whole thing had to be pasted up in reverse, like printing through a mirror with one hand tied behind your back. At first glance, it was less newspaper and more migraine in tabloid form.

Thankfully, me, Johan, Vinka, and Marlin could muddle our way through Pashto — though “muddle” might be generous. We could spot a few characters and guess the rest. It’s like Arabic, only with extra squiggles and a serious attitude problem. Speaking it was another comedy altogether: close enough to Arabic to fake confidence, but different enough to keep us very, very humble. Half the time it felt like we were playing charades with a grammar book.

Then salvation arrived — in the form of a dusty laptop and a long-awaited copy of Adobe Creative Suite Middle East Edition. It should’ve landed months earlier, of course, but better late than never. Overnight, our formatting nightmares evaporated. No more mirror-pasting, no more fonts behaving like toddlers with crayons — we were suddenly, gloriously professional.

Naturally, a new problem showed up straight away. Translating English into Pashto or Dari didn’t just lose meaning — sometimes it lost all sense entirely. We once turned “community outreach” into something that apparently read as “collective goat borrowing.” Not exactly the message we were after.

So, during one particularly caffeine-fuelled brainstorming session, we flipped the script — literally. Instead of forcing English into Pashto and Dari, we briefed the interpreters on the intent, let them draft it in their own language first, and only then translated it back into English for approval. Genius. Or so we thought.

The very first article to go through our shiny new reverse-translation system came back from the legal desk looking like it had been mauled by a red-pen-wielding banshee. Apparently, “the people are jubilant in the presence of the foreign helmets” didn’t exactly meet the Ministry of Defence’s editorial standards. Who knew?

So, Sgt Simpson and I set off on a little charm offensive — first the legal officer, then the political adviser, and finally the General himself. I poured the tea, smiled sweetly, and explained (more than once) that while our phrasing might sound odd in English, it sang in Pashto.

He gave a quick laugh, muttered something about “bloody typical of you lot,” and waved it through.

“As long as the locals understand it,” he said, “just crack on.”

From then on, unless we were deliberately trying to tug at hearts and minds, we had free rein to publish. Which is how headlines like “Snow in Kabul: Children Reclaim the Streets (and Some of Our Snow Shovels)” went straight to print without anyone batting an eyelid.

Just as we were getting into our editorial stride, reinforcements arrived: a Belgian Warrant Officer from their Intelligence Corps and a French Captain from their PIO — their version of PsyOps, though naturally they refuse to call it that.

In true NATO-small-world fashion, the Frenchman turned out to be none other than JB — the same enthusiastic soul who had hosted us back in Mitrovica during the Kosovo campaign. He was older now, a touch greyer, captain’s pips on his shoulders — but still carried the same unshakable passion for press clippings and, tragically, the same appalling taste in coffee.

With JB on board, we suddenly had trilingual chaos and pan-European arguments over layout margins. The newsroom was complete — loud, ink-stained, and gloriously dysfunctional.

Logistics in Afghanistan were a constant headache. Everything short of fresh air had to be flown in, which meant supplies were rationed to the point of absurdity. We counted teabags like gold dust, hoarded milk powder like misers, and held actual debates over whether sugar truly qualified as an “essential store.”

The French, however, seemed to operate under entirely different rules…

One evening, long after our interpreters had left, JB appeared in our tent with that effortless Gallic confidence of his. He unbuttoned his coat, reached inside with a flourish, and produced a bottle of Napoleon brandy as though he were revealing a priceless jewel. “Voilà,” he declared, smiling, as if brandy in Kabul were the most natural thing in the world.

We gathered around the potbelly stove, mugs in hand, while he poured each of us a generous, warming sip. The rich smell cut straight through the Afghan chill, and for a few minutes the war outside the canvas walls felt very far away.

It was not the last bottle, of course. French logistics seemed to follow their own rules — and morale, evidently, always arrived with an ABV.

Our interpreters were a unique breed. Clever, multilingual, and absolute masters of the disappearing act. “Where’s Wassi?” someone would ask. The stock reply? “He’s praying.” By our count, he prayed about twenty times a day — until we caught him round the back, happily smoking and reading the sports section.

Mohammed Senior and Mohammed Junior had their own rhythm. They could look industrious for hours, heads together, when in fact they were locked in some philosophical debate in Pashto. The subject might have been tea, football, or the finer points of translation — we were never entirely sure. But somehow, against all odds, the work still got done.

Meanwhile, Kabul itself was stirring from its post-Taliban slumber. Taxis and battered minivans buzzed like bees from a busted hive, markets sprang up like mushrooms after rain, and — slowly, cautiously — women began to reappear on the streets. A few even dared to walk without full burqas. It was as if the city were stretching its limbs again after a long, dark sleep.

Our little corner of Kabul sat neatly between the Afghan Ministry District and the edge of the diplomatic quarter. To the east, along the Jalalabad road, sprawled the British support base, Camp Souter — dusty, frenetic, and ringed with enough HESCO bastions to resemble a medieval fortress.

A little further on, the Americans were busy hammering the Afghan National Army into shape. Their drill sergeants barked with such enthusiasm I sometimes wondered if their voices carried all the way to Uzbekistan.

Directly across the road stood Warehouse Camp, home to the Germans. They somehow managed the impossible: immaculate boots and spotless uniforms in a city made entirely of dust. I never worked out how they did it.

The French and most of the other contingents had set up shop near the airport — back where we ourselves had first stumbled in under cover of darkness, equal parts terrified and confused.

This patchwork of national camps quickly shaped our daily routine. Mornings often began with the Boss disappearing into the Ministry District, returning later with notes scribbled on the backs of envelopes and the look of a man who had just survived three different committees.

Me and Johan spent half our lives trudging between Warehouse Camp and Camp Souter, playing diplomat, interpreter, and tea-drinker in equal measure. The Germans insisted on punctual meetings with immaculate agendas — and equally immaculate boots. I never missed a chance to point it out: “How d’you lot do it? Marchin’ through a sandpit but lookin’ like you’ve just come off parade at Windsor Castle.” They would smile politely, as if to say they had better things to do than explain magic.

The French were different. JB could turn even the dullest coordination meeting into a theatre production, complete with dramatic pauses and hand gestures, usually followed by an offer of coffee that was guaranteed to taste like burnt tyres. Still, it kept us awake, which was something.

By the end of each day, we felt less like a PsyOps team and more like the cast of a NATO soap opera — endless meetings, endless coffee, and Stephen heckling from the cheap seats.

Every so often, Johan and I were dispatched up to Bagram Airbase, about thirty miles north of Kabul — though it felt more like going on safari than a supply run. The Italians, who ran security for Isaf HQ, insisted on giving us a full armed escort, which made us feel like either visiting royalty or very unpopular celebrities.

The road wound north through a dusty mountain pass littered with the rusting carcasses of Russian armour — tanks, APC's, trucks — all abandoned to the elements. Grim reminders of past wars… or possibly of some truly terrible driving. At one bend, a handful of old tank mines had tumbled downhill in the rains and now sat sulking on the verge like landmines on strike.

Bagram itself was a dustbowl of Herculean proportions. The air was so dry your eyebrows felt crunchy, and by the time you spoke you could practically chew the grit.

One afternoon, standing in the lunch queue still coughing up half the road, we heard a familiar voice behind us. Turned round — and there he was. A Bootneck we’d trained with back at Lympstone, now sporting the crown of a Major. Rank, wrinkles, and all — but the grin was the same.

“Bloody hell, you two still alive?” he said, shaking his head.

“Just about,” I shot back. “Though apparently we’re still in PsyOps instead of doing any real soldiering.”

The laughter that followed proved one thing: no matter how many years or how many wars, Bootneck banter never changes.

They had a proper chinwag over lunch, grinning like schoolboys at a reunion. The years melted away in minutes, and before long they were swapping stories as if they were back in the Naafi at Lympstone. Listening to him, it was painfully clear they had picked the right time to jump ship from the green machine. By his account, the Marines were never home long enough to dent a sofa cushion — bouncing from exercises to Northern Ireland, then freezing in the Falklands, before repeating the cycle all over again.

A year later, he turned up in our Group as a regular officer for a stint, slipping straight into our madhouse with the usual Bootneck charm. Sharp as a tack, no ego, and a wicked sense of humour — he was one of the good ones.

Which is why it cut so deep when the news came back that he had been killed on Op Telic in Iraq. You learn early in this line of work that loss is part of the job. But some names… some names carve deeper than the rest.

On the drive back to Kabul, bumping along the same dusty road past rusting Russian armour and sulking landmines, Johan and I let the conversation drift. Seeing our old Bootneck mate had stirred something.

“Y’know,” I said, staring out at the mountains, “if we’d stayed in the Corps, that could’ve been us — never home long enough to wear out a sofa, bouncing from one frozen training area to the next.”

Johan gave a slow nod. “Norway, Northern Ireland, Falklands… repeat until retirement.”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “All cold, wet, and knackered. And probably still polishin’ me boots for some Colour Sergeant who hated me guts.”

We both laughed, but there was a quiet edge to it. Truth was, we had jumped ship at just the right time. PsyOps was chaos, sure — but it was our chaos. We were writing the scripts now, not just marching to someone else’s drum.

As Kabul came back into view, the dust hanging over the city like a tired curtain, I couldn’t help but grin. “Mad as it is, mate,” I said, “I reckon we landed on our feet.”

Back in camp, they dumped their kit and made a beeline for the garden, where the stove was already ticking over. Marlin and I were perched on camp chairs, steaming mugs in hand, watching them with raised eyebrows.

“Well?” I asked, half-smile tugging at my lips. “Did Bagram survive you two?”

“Barely,” Stephen said, stretching his legs. “Ran into an old Bootneck mate — now a Major. Proper blast from the past. Got us thinking though… if we’d stayed in the Corps, that could’ve been us. Never home, freezing in Norway one month, stomping around Northern Ireland the next, Falklands after that.”

Marlin tilted her head. “Sounds exhausting.”

“Exactly,” Stephen grinned. “Cold, wet, knackered, still polishing boots for some Colour Sergeant with a vendetta. We jumped ship at the right time.”

I raised my mug, eyes glinting. “Hmm. And instead you sit in Kabul, invent newspapers, argue with translators, and drink tea until midnight. Much better.”

“Oi,” Stephen protested, laughing, “at least here we’re the ones causing the chaos, not the poor sods marching through it.”

Johan gave a small nod, the corner of his mouth twitching. “He’s right. This is our madness.”

We clinked mugs, the four of us together again, the dust and noise of Kabul all around — and for the moment, it felt like we had chosen well.

Back in Kabul, me and Johan managed to pull off a few absolute blinders for the Isaf News interviews. Our crowning glory? None other than the President himself — Hamid Karzai. No interpreter required — his English was smooth, polished, and every bit as sharp as his mind. He was warm, articulate, and, most importantly, he knew exactly where the cameras were.

Next up was Ashraf Ghani, the Finance Minister — a man with a brain like a calculator on double espresso. He rattled off figures faster than we could scribble, and I swear Johan’s pen nearly caught fire trying to keep up.

Then came the Minister for the Hajj, who explained the pilgrimage process with such passion that by the end we were half ready to sign up ourselves.

Just when we thought it could not get any bigger, we found ourselves with front-row seats — and, somehow, backstage passes — to the great Loya Jirga. Picture the Afghan version of the United Nations, only with more beards, fewer suits, and an industrial quantity of tea.

Our little newspaper baby grew up fast. What started as a modest ten-thousand-copy print run — cobbled together with paste-ups, dodgy translations, and more swearing than Simmo would ever admit — ballooned into a quarter of a million by the time we handed over to the Turks in June. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs running a printer that sounded like a dying yak on a cobbled street.

By then, we had gone legit — printing downtown through a trusted local press. Somehow, against all odds, our rag had become the must-read tabloid of Kabul. For some, it was news. For others, it was a morale boost. For plenty more, it was an emergency fire-starter. Honestly, we counted all three as wins.

In the early days, Marlin and I — always quicker than the rest at reading the heartbeat of a place — came up with a stroke of genius: questionnaires. Through our local contacts, we pushed them out across Kabul with simple questions such as, “What worries you most?” “How do you hear your news?” and my personal favourite, “Would you like your goat back?”

Hundreds trickled back — tea-stained, scribbled on, folded like origami — and we sat patiently entering every last answer into the system. What we produced was gold dust: a window into the minds of ordinary Afghans — what they feared, what they hoped for, what kept them awake at night.