Pacman Challenge

The nickname given by British soldiers to patrolling certain areas in Afghanistan.

Accompanying British soldiers from 2nd Battalion, The Rifles on patrol inHelmand province, The Telegraph’s Miles Amoore wrote:

The soldiers call it the “Pacman Challenge” – dodging the scores of booby traps, trip wires and charges laid by the Taliban in the fertile soil of Afghanistan’s Sangin valley. The reference, to an arcade computer game, is one of the ways the soldiers make light of the deadly gauntlet they run every day in the district. …

Progress through the Upper Sangin Valley, one of the most heavily mined areas in Afghanistan, is painfully slow. The point man in the section conducts a meticulous search for Improvised Explosive Devices, or I.E.D.’s, as the rest of the soldiers follow in his footsteps, careful not to stray too far out of the safety arc.

The Telegraph reported recently that three quarters of British fatalities in Afghanistan this year have been due to Improvised Explosive Devices. On July 10, five soldiers from 2nd Battalion, The Rifles were killed on patrol near Sangin. The Guardian’s Karen McVeigh explained why the attack was so deadly:

It was caused by a “daisy chain” bomb, where the initial Improvised Explosive Device (I.E.D.) was linked to the second, a grimly efficient tactic which saw one soldier die from the initial explosion and, when the patrol withdrew to regroup at a more defensive position, the second bomb detonated, killing three more soldiers and injuring a fourth, who later died.

A former army officer, Amyas Godfrey, told McVeigh that this type of attack is becoming increasingly common in Afghanistan. According to Godfrey,daisy chain bombs have also been employed in Iraq, and by the I.R.A. in Northern Ireland.