Musa Qala sits on the banks of its namesake river, a tributary of the Helmand, in one of Afghanistan's most contested provinces. Its population of 15,000 to 20,000 belongs mostly to the Alizai Pashtun tribe, divided into six competing clans. When the U.S.-led intervention toppled the Taliban in 2001, local tribesmen accepted the Karzai government and convinced the insurgents to leave. That fragile peace collapsed in 2003 when Helmand's governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, raided the village of Akhtak, killing 80 people -- most of them civilians. He promised compensation. None came. By 2006, when Britain's Task Force Helmand arrived, the Taliban had filled the power vacuum. The British insisted Akhundzada be removed for his opium connections, but his replacement lacked local support. Without his militias and without the population's trust, the district was already burning before the first British patrol arrived.

On June 14, 2006, the 25-man British Pathfinder Platoon, commanded by Major Nick Wight-Boycott, was ordered into Musa Qala. They were a mobile reconnaissance unit, ill-suited for garrison duty, but the battle group had no one else to send. The district centre was a cluster of low cement and mud buildings behind a ten-foot wall, housing a police headquarters, a prison, and an American-built clinic. The Pathfinders set up three fortified posts -- sangars -- and joined an 80-man Afghan National Police detachment whose discipline was questionable but whose willingness to fight was not. Two weeks later, an American convoy was ambushed in the nearby green zone, triggering massive airstrikes that sent the civilian population fleeing. When the Danes attempted a relief convoy on July 21, the Taliban ambushed their column from three sides, destroying one armored vehicle with a mine. It took coalition aircraft dropping six 1,000-pound bombs to finally break the Danes through to the compound on July 26.

At one in the morning on July 17, the Pathfinders watched through night vision devices as figures crept toward the walls. Then came the RPGs -- four or five rockets, followed by a storm of small-arms fire. The garrison answered with rifles, machine guns, and 51mm mortars, then called in artillery on a nearby building where insurgents had concentrated. That building happened to be a mosque, and its destruction became a propaganda gift for the Taliban even as it killed many of their fighters. When the Danish light reconnaissance squadron arrived to relieve the exhausted Pathfinders, Easy Company -- a hastily assembled unit of Paras from 3 PARA and Royal Irish from the Barrosa Platoon -- rotated in under Major Adam Jowett. The siege only intensified. Resupply became a nightly ordeal of Chinook helicopters threading through tracer fire. One crew refused the run entirely. The garrison's ammunition dwindled to the point where they rationed rounds and fixed bayonets. Over 40 days, Easy Company repelled more than a hundred separate attacks while the town around them crumbled under airstrikes and artillery.

By late August, Musa Qala was destroying itself. Much of the town centre lay in ruins. Most residents had fled, unable to trade, farm, or send children to school. On August 26, a woman and her child were killed in the bazaar during a firefight -- and the elders had endured enough. They blamed the Taliban and the coalition equally. First they approached the insurgents, who had suffered heavy losses in their failed attempts to storm the compound, and found them willing to negotiate. Then they brought their proposal to Governor Daoud, who passed it to Brigadier Ed Butler. On September 12, Butler ordered a ceasefire. The next day, sixty elders walked into the district centre to discuss terms with Major Jowett. A shura convened in the desert west of town, with British officers sitting across from elders accompanied by men in black whom Butler recognized as Taliban -- though they said nothing and took no formal part.

General David Richards insisted on one condition: if the ceasefire held for a month, both sides would withdraw and leave the town to its people. The elders agreed. Governor Daoud drew up a 14-point plan: Afghanistan's flag would keep flying over the district centre, the elders would select 60 relatives to form a local police force, and reconstruction would continue. For a time, Musa Qala was peaceful. Residents returned to shops and fields. On October 13, Easy Company loaded onto Afghan "jingly" lorries for extraction -- each truck carrying an elder who had guaranteed safe passage. The convoy rolled through the desert without a shot fired, rendezvousing with 42 Commando. The Musa Qala agreement would not last -- the Taliban retook the town in February 2007 -- but for the soldiers who survived the siege, the silence of that convoy ride was victory enough.