Wikileaks, the War in Afghanistan and the Day I Met a Long Range Sniper

By Mark T. Townsend

Dubai's debt crisis is the progenitor of endless stories labeling the emirate the new Vienna where the
world's intelligence agencies not only congregate but also operate in theatre. Proximity to some of the
world's seemingly interminable conflicts guarantees a steady flow of actors, some welcome, some less
so. Stumble off the beaten track and it is not difficult to rub shoulders with those involved in the
campaign for the greater good as we are often told. Most are briefly seeking that most telling of
euphemisms - R&R as they wait a connection home. Then there are those seeking to temporarily erase
the vicissitudes of fate and they generally like the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

An evening a few months ago I met an unconfessed fan of the movie at a local airport hotel used by
transit passengers which that night also included an itinerant friend. The distraction of the mélange
made me easily forget his announced late arrival. Ordering a drink in anticipation of at least a 30 minute
wait I became subsumed in the surrounding activity.

"What's happening mate?" the voice said next to me.

David, a thick set tattooed antipodean giant, easily fulfilled the stereotype of a construction worker or
engineer in my immediate thoughts. This subconscious need to know momentarily frustrated me. I
asked David where he was destined.

"I don't know and I haven't decided yet" he answered.

The response threw me and whilst trying to remain engaged, the reply just kept pricking at me. Then it
was the several references to "if you knew what I do". The pressure told on me. "What do you do?" I
asked. My ordinary but nevertheless pleasant evening was about to change gear. "I am a long range
sniper in Afghanistan." My reaction, largely disbelief left me feeling I was sat next to someone who had a
few too many. Yet as the conversation progressed the recollections were so vivid and so disturbing my
doubt turned to opprobrium. I was talking to a mercenary not aligned to anyone but essentially a gun
for hire.

"Sometimes I sit on a mountainside in the freezing cold for hours waiting for the target." The bleakness
in the assassin's voice for a moment subliminally conveyed the bleakness of the current campaign. The
detail of the locations, the decision when to execute meant the conversation cascaded and drew us both
into a sealed bubble.

"They explode like tomatoes," David said when I asked him what it felt like to pull the trigger on a high
velocity rifle. Yet as much as I felt abhorrence and as I much as I wanted to express disgust it was the
human being that began to unravel my disdain. He had no escape from his conscience. Relationships
destroyed, a family estranged and a lost soul wandering the planet with no place to go, one more victim
in the bankrupt tit for tat campaign that is Afghanistan. David excused himself on the pretext of nature
calling and I never saw him again.

For days if not weeks it was difficult to expunge the memory of that meeting. It is often the briefest of
experiences that influence. The information uncovered by Wikileaks reveals an breathtaking disregard
for human life which ultimately makes all of us victims.

©2010 Mark Townsend

All Rights Reserved
Wikileaks, the War in Afghanistan and the Day I Met a Long Range Sniper
By Mark T. Townsend

As for my friend, he had fallen soundly asleep.

©2010 Mark Townsend

All Rights Reserved