Sheltering from the fierce mid-morning sun behind a sentry box in a maze of blast barriers and razor wire, Abdul Walil and his friends watched British convoys drive out to face the dangers of Helmand. Soldiers leave the heavily protected base only in armoured vehicles, able to call in airstrikes at a few minutes notice.

The scraggly groups of Afghan drivers in grimy shirts and huge turbans hanging round the entrance to Camp Bastion travel on the same dangerous roads with loads of anything from baked beans to generators to supply the British, at the risk of being slaughtered, for wages of £100 a month.

Mr Walil is shot at almost every week when he makes the trip from Kandahar to Bastion, the sprawling British base in the Helmand desert, but he has no armour on his lorry, no bullet-proof jacket, and for protection only the unreliable gunmen whom his company hires to ride shotgun.

“As soon as the Taleban start firing at us the security guards run away and leave us drivers to our fate,” Mr Walil told The Times. “If we had proper protection there would be no drivers killed and no trucks burnt.

“I would do any other job but this one if I could. But my family needs to eat and there is no other work.” The businessmen who run the profitable haulage trade for the British Army have become wealthy men. The drivers take the risks.

If they are lucky and run into what Mr Walil calls “good Afghan Taleban” they will have their loads stolen but will be released with their vehicles to drive another day. If they fall into the hands of fanatical Pakistani jihadis they know what will happen to them.

Last year Mr Walil said eight drivers, including his friends Kamal Safar and Muhammad Khan, were beheaded after their convoy was attacked at the village of Hyderabad near Sangin.

He said that the American troops left soon after the attack started. “The drivers with the big trucks couldn’t move and they were caught,” he said. In January four drivers were killed in a similar incident in Musa Qala.

Most Afghans despise the drivers. They have, however, won the respect of British soldiers. Rifleman David Devine said: “They get smashed every day. I think they are the bravest men in Afghanistan.”

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