Armed with fresh hope in Bamyan

Corporal Raymond

It came from China, probably some time in the 1980s. Where the anti-tank shell has been since is impossible to guess. But on this hot day it sits on a rock slope in Afghanistan, one valley over from Kiwi Base, home to 110 New Zealand soldiers and three police officers.

A Type 65 recoilless rifle round contains about 500g of high explosive. It is a tank killer. On impact, the explosive detonates and forms a jet of plasma expelled with such force and heat it can melt through the skin of a tank.

Corporal Jim Johns gets out of the four-wheel-drive, and carefully eases down the rocky slope towards it.

"That wasn't there yesterday," says Raymond "Richie" Richards, 29, Army medic and environmental health expert. He and his escort had spotted a separate illumination round returning from the water run the day before and have returned with Johns, who is an explosive ordnance specialist with the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

"The place is loaded with this sort of thing," says Johns. "The kids must have put it there. We're trying to educate them but the message isn't getting through."

Having checked the illumination round - used and safe - he hunkers down among the rocks. On all fours, then lower, Johns checks the tail of the deadly round to see if it has been fired.

Confident it hasn't been triggered, which makes it unstable, he goes lower, looking for booby trap triggers or wires.

His face is barely a foot from the shell. It's clear, and he picks it up to take back to base, where there is half a ton of recovered weaponry.

When Richards makes the water run the next day, with petroleum technician Lance Corporal Darren Te Whata, there is a mortar shell by the roadside.

This is Bamyan. This is the reality of a country sundered by 27 years of war. You don't step off the beaten track. There are 10 million mines potentially underfoot and caches of artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenades and other weaponry.

This is also a country where men have kept explosive shells and rockets in their bedrooms for 10 years - in case they need them again. In the bazaar is a World War I Lee Enfield, for sale among rugs and pashminas.

At Kiwi Base, the daily realities of life carry the possibility of injury or death for the men and women of New Zealand's three defence services. A constant refrain echoes Fred Dagg's Kiwi anthem: "We don't know how lucky we are, mate."

The men and women of the Bamyan Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), led by Navy Captain Ross Smith, are starting to get a pretty good idea three months into their six- month tour. Their job is to maintain security, advise the provincial governor and police, and identify projects for NZAid money.

This hard, fiercely beautiful land does not forgive. The air is thin. In summer, it's so hot the temperature goes off the thermometer.

The "120 Days of Wind", which Afghanistan is experiencing now, takes the edge off the heat but makes sure the dust gets everywhere.

In winter, the temperature falls to 15 degrees below zero and snow covers the camp a metre deep. The wind still blows, and carries the chill to the bone.

Travel here is exhausting and drawn out. It can take an hour to cover 20km, or less, in the four-wheel-drives which are mainly unarmoured. Flak jackets are slung over doors as token protection. The main base sits on a hill above the town of Bamyan, home to Afghanistan's persecuted Hazara minority. From a racially separate base, the locals are also the main group of Shiites in a Sunni Muslim country.

One aid worker says Bamyan is a "sort of a bubble", which explains the relative peace.

History here is awash with blood. Genghis Khan slaughtered most of the population as a reprisal for the death of his nephew.

About 2km east of Kiwi Base, is the Hill of 1000 Screams.The Russians were repulsed here in the 1980s. Each conflict brought new atrocities.

The town was levelled by the Taleban and hundreds of men were executed because of their ethnicity.

When the Taleban were thrown back, some were captured and buried alive inside shipping containers.

The Kiwi contingent has watched over Bamyan for three years as the province has slowly discovered peace.

From the base, you can see cliffs where magnificent Buddhas were blasted to rubble, surrounded by the caves where people have sheltered from the elements and war for more than 2000 years. Now, they are starting to come out of the caves.

Jim Johns, who destroyed a half ton of recovered bombs on Thursday, tells of the local man who fought for 10 years against the Russians and kept mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades in his storeroom - insurance against future battles. Then he called in the Kiwis.

"He wanted to get rid of it because he didn't want his kids to go through the same thing."

Lieutenant Colonel Brett Rankin, second in charge, says: "It's probably the first time the Hazara people have had an even chance in their history."

The base is busy, even when 33 of the soldiers leave for three weeks at a time to staff three patrol bases; Romero, Scott Base and Chunuk Bair.

The patrols are critical to security, with most of the base's local intelligence drawn from heads of villages. Others in the base support the patrols, or work directly with the community. The kitchen provides a mountain of food and a fully equipped workshop keeps a fleet of vehicles running.

While Ross Smith describes the security situation as "stable", he emphasises the need for care.

So far, no New Zealand PRT here has had to fire a shot in anger or faced unfriendly fire.

But the provinces surrounding the Kiwis have seen an increase in the use of homemade bombs.

In February, when Smith and Rankin made a pre-deployment visit, the Norwegian PRT base to the northeast was overrun by Afghans outraged by the publication of the Danish Allah cartoons.

In Bamyan, there was also anger but quick diplomacy and the help of the governor and chief of police calmed locals. Statements by Prime Minister Helen Clark also helped.

"We've been lucky here so far," says Warrant Officer (2) Greg "Mitch" Mitchell. "Even here it only takes a couple of things to happen to set off a riot."

There is a sense the valley has been holding its collective breath.

"They've seen it all before," says Mitchell. "After the Russians left, there was a power vacuum and the mujahedin came in. Then the Taleban. You try and use future tenses with them, and talk about the future, and they don't want to talk about it. It's quite sad, really.

"In some areas, they are better off than us. The seediness in Western culture, they don't have that. The number of shops down there," he says, motioning towards the town, "with no one in attendance, and nothing gets taken."

The Kiwi Way is endorsed as one of the reasons for peace here. Aided by Bamyan's ethnic differences and geographical separation from the rest of Afghanistan, the New Zealanders have more freedom than other PRTs.

They have embraced it. While troops elsewhere dispense aid from heavily armed and armoured columns, the Kiwis stop for tea and conversation.

"We treat these people as equals," says Ross Smith.

There is a strong feeling among the troops that Bamyan can't be left alone yet. They see the need to stay beyond New Zealand's 2007 commitment.

If they leave too early, as many feel they did in Timor, anarchy could easily return.