Good things rarely happen in Afghanistan prisons.  Philip Young’s story is no exception
Afghanistan’s Helmand Province of Lakshar Gha.

On the eve of 1st October 2009, 46 year-old Philip Young drove towards the British controlled Counter Narcotics Base (CNB).  This was a routine mission. Young was to oversee a small project in the largely Taliban opium producing province of Lakshar Gha.

Young - a former commander of Personal Security Detail for a United States Army General in Iraq - had worked in Kabul the past year for ANHAM Defence Contractors, supervising logistics; overseeing supplies and equipment details for an US Department of State Contract.

Driving into the compound they noticed an Afghan guard wearing traditional dress complete with bullet strapped belts about his body.

“This was not the norm and I was immediately highly suspicious,” Young recalls. Other than that, the place was deserted.  

A former guard, Abdul Ghafar had staged a coup, recruiting a splinter group of five fellow tribesmen; together they had disarmed thirty men and at gunpoint locked them inside base quarters.