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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
The Green Berets Up Close
On the ground with the Special Forces who turned the tide—and just lost one
of their own. A NEWSWEEK exclusive
By Donatella Lorch
NEWSWEEK
Jan. 14 issue — They landed in darkness on an early November night,
deep in the mountains of northern Afghanistan. For six hours, they’d hunkered
down in the freezing hold of the transport helicopter, tossed by heavy winds,
before setting down 6,000 feet above sea level. Shouldering 200-pound packs
stuffed with weapons, ammunition and communications gear, the U.S. Army’s
First Battalion, Fifth Special Forces A-team piled out of the chopper and
onto the snowy turf.
THE HELICOPTER RETREATED, a roar of rotor wash kicking dirt and ice into
the men’s faces. Then silence. For weeks, the 13-man Green Beret team had
trained and studied and obsessed about their mission. They were a tight-knit
group, each man trusting the others with his life. Yet it wasn’t until the
chopper faded from view and the vastness of the landscape came into focus
that they realized how far from home they were, and how alone: 90 miles
behind enemy lines, in the heart of Taliban territory.
To the men, standing in the blackness that night, the mission ahead
seemed almost impossible. The team was to find and win the trust of an
elusive Northern Alliance commander they knew virtually nothing about and
whose language they didn’t speak, supply his ragtag team of fighters and
then, with his help, storm a key Taliban stronghold, the northern city of
Mazar-e Sharif. After wresting control from the enemy, they were to restore
order and help local leaders begin rebuilding the ravaged city. Along the
way, they were to sneak up on armed Taliban camps and caves, helping to
laser-guide U.S. bombers to the targets.
DOMINO EFFECT
In the harrowing, heroic days that followed, they did just that. The
fall of Mazar-e Sharif turned out to be a critical moment in the Afghan war,
setting off a domino effect that quickly led to the fall of the major cities
of Kabul and Kandahar, and the collapse of Taliban rule. It also provided a
dramatic victory for the elite Special Forces, whose daring missions in the
past had sometimes gone disastrously wrong.
Though sustained fighting in much of the country has subsided, at
least for now, the U.S. servicemen who remain in Afghanistan are still at
risk. Last Friday a Green Beret, Sgt. 1/c Nathan Ross Chapman, was shot and
killed when he was ambushed by enemy fighters near the Pakistan border in the
east. A CIA agent was also wounded in the attack. U.S. soldiers continue to
comb through southern cave complexes looking for Taliban and Qaeda
fighters—frustrated that they still have no clue where Mullah Mohammed Omar
and Osama bin Laden might be. At the same time, Special Forces teams remain
on hair-trigger alert in Mazar-e Sharif, keeping violence at bay.
Secretive and publicity averse, Special Forces units usually shun
outsiders, refusing to divulge details of their missions even years after the
shooting stops. But over the past week, a NEWSWEEK reporter was granted
round-the-clock access to the Special Forces soldiers who helped capture
Mazar-e Sharif, providing an unprecedented, real-time glimpse at an ongoing
Green Beret mission—and a look at how foreign wars will likely be fought in
the future. In this exclusive report, the soldiers recount how they fought
their way to the city, and detail the difficult second phase of their
mission: trying to keep peace in a country that for so long has known nothing
but war.
Gathering up their gear that first night, the team spotted a
campfire in the distance. It was their guides, a shabby group of Afghan
fighters dressed in blankets and plastic shoes, trying to get warm over the
low flames. In preparation for the mission, the American soldiers had grown
their hair long and sported bushy beards. But one look at their underfed,
ragged allies made it clear that no one would ever mistake them for locals.
THE TWO ATTAS
The Afghans would take them to meet Atta Mohammed, a Northern Alliance
commander who was waiting for them in a hamlet miles away. The A-team knew
little about him. Preparing for the mission, they’d asked for any information
the Army had about Atta Mohammed. They were instead given files on Mohamed
Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker.
For the next two days, the men did not sleep as they made their way
across the countryside. They were used to working through extreme fatigue and
hunger. In training, they routinely performed complex tasks after days or
weeks with little food or rest. They followed their guides through the night,
down narrow icy trails and across steep drop-offs. Bobby, the team’s
communications sergeant, looked at the Afghans’ skimpy clothing as a way of
convincing himself that he wasn’t freezing.
At daybreak, they came to the hamlet, a collection of mud huts
sheltered by the mountains. Atta, a bearded, 38-year-old former
schoolteacher, came out to greet them. One problem quickly became apparent:
Atta spoke no English, and none of the A-team members knew Dari, Atta’s
language. Accomplished linguists, everyone on the team spoke Arabic and at
least two other languages. One spoke French, another Chinese. No luck. At
last Dean, the team commander, tried Russian, and one of Atta’s men answered
him. They’d found their translator.
A SELF-SUSTAINED UNIT
The men had expected to encounter bumps like this, and much worse,
along the way. The A-team had been together for more than two years, training
all over the Middle East and Central Asia for just such a mission. Though
almost none had seen combat, they had been taught to thrive in the worst of
conditions. Unlike infantry soldiers, who rigidly follow the commands of
their superiors, the small Special Forces teams are expected to operate as a
self-sustained unit, completely on their own, without continual direction
from above. If a problem arises, they’ve got to solve it themselves; if their
plan falls apart midmission, they have to come up with a new one; if they
don’t know the local language, they quickly learn it. More cerebral than
their Airborne or Ranger colleagues, Green Berets like to say that their
training—physically brutal as it is—favors brains over brawn. Team leader
Dean quotes Shakespeare from memory. Mike, the weapons expert, keeps Teddy
Roosevelt’s passage about men who fight “in the arena” in his diary. The
young and the mindlessly gung-ho rarely make the cut. In an Army of
fresh-out-of-high-school infantrymen, Special Forces are typically in their
mid-30s and have college degrees.
After lengthy Afghan pleasantries, Atta got down to business. He told
the Americans that he had 2,000 troops in the Darya Balkh Valley, south of
Mazar-e Sharif. On the narrow, winding mountain trails, the trip would take
more than a day. The team split in two, one group staying with Atta, the
other circling around the mountains. Special Forces A-teams are designed to
break in half. Each team of 12 has two experts in each specialty, from
weaponry to communications—allowing the team to become a mirror of itself,
carrying out its mission from two different locations. (In Afghanistan, the
team had a 13th man, an elite Air Force Special Operations airman who helped
direct airstrikes from the ground.)
The men slowly made their way down the narrow road, flanked by hidden
land mines on both sides. The Afghans provided horses, but saddled them with
so much gear that four of the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Two others
broke their legs on the badly rutted terrain. The thousands of Northern
Alliance soldiers who met the team at the other end were a sorry-looking lot.
The Americans got on the radio and called in for an airdrop of uniforms,
shoes, blankets, food and ammo.
FIRST STOP: AQ KOPRUK
Clothed and fed, the Afghans quickly warmed to the U.S. soldiers, who
began drawing up a list of targets they needed to hit on their way to Mazar-e
Sharif. First up: Aq Kopruk, a Taliban town a few miles away. The aim was to
catch the enemy utterly by surprise in a massive air-bombing raid that would
break the Taliban’s hold over the region. Split up on two mountainsides, one
part of the team called in the airstrikes while the other “painted” the
targets with lasers, guiding the bombs to their marks.
Green Berets & Brides of Al Qaeda
The bloody accuracy of the attacks instantly lifted the spirits of
Atta and his troops. During one bombing raid, Stan, the A-team’s warrant
officer, was showing Atta how the lasers worked. Just as Atta put his eye up
to the viewfinder, an American bomb obliterated a distant target. Atta could
see the bodies of Taliban soldiers blown into the air. “We wanted to show him
we could help him beyond boots and clothes,” says Dean. “From that point on,
all Atta wanted was more laser.” In a matter of days, Aq Kopruk fell.
The A-team won more trust by treating dozens of wounded Northern
Alliance soldiers. The team was among the first American soldiers to deal
with serious land-mine injuries in the country. On the night before the
attacks on Aq Kopruk, as they tried to get a few hours of sleep on the floor
of a cramped mud hut, wounded fighters started streaming in. One Afghan
soldier had stepped on a land mine, blowing off most of his leg, leaving just
a mangled bone protruding beneath his knee. His fellow soldiers had heard
there were American doctors nearby, and lugged the man up the hillside for
five hours on top of an old door. Jason, one of the team’s two medics, had
ordered an amputation saw before he left the United States, but it hadn’t
arrived in time. Improvising, he stretched the man out on a blanket in the
mud courtyard and used his Leatherman pocket tool to saw through the bone.
All the while Mike, the team’s senior weapons man, kept an eye out for a
mangy stray dog who tried to jump out and gnaw at the bone.
MAINTAINING MOMENTUM
The team spent just one night in Aq Kopruk. They didn’t want to lose
the momentum of their first attack, or give the fleeing Taliban forces time
to regroup. Stealing two Taliban trucks and one car, they ditched their
horses and continued north toward Mazar-e Sharif with Atta and his men. Along
the way, they called in more airstrikes. After guiding the bombs to their
targets, the men moved through a gorge dotted with caves, the road littered
with bodies of Taliban soldiers and the charred carcasses of bombed-out
trucks.
Meanwhile another U.S. Special Forces team was also heading to Mazar
from a different direction. It accompanied Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a
Northern Alliance commander and Atta’s rival for control of the city. A third
Northern Alliance commander, Mohaqqeq Mohammed, was on the way as well.
On Nov. 9, Atta’s men met up with Dostum and his troops, about an
hour’s drive south of Mazar-e Sharif. As Taliban soldiers, demoralized and
outgunned, fled Mazar, Atta pressed on to the city. He arrived in Mazar the
next day with the A-team, to cheering crowds. Screaming and crying, men,
women and children rushed over to thank the American soldiers, greeting them
like a rescuing army. “It was surreal,” recalls Mike, the weap-ons man. “We
didn’t know what to expect. We were locked and loaded, and didn’t know
whether there were any more Taliban. I wondered whether it was the same
feeling the Allies had when they liberated Paris.” The men were astonished to
have captured the city so quickly. They had expected to spend a long,
miserable winter camped out in the mountains. None thought they would defeat
the Taliban until at least the spring.
’15 MINUTES OF I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME’
In the months since the fall of Mazar, something resembling normal
life has slowly returned. People watch TV, take photographs and listen to
music. Children fly kites, a favorite pastime. Most women still wear burqas,
but now with high-heeled sandals and painted toenails. The A-team has shifted
its focus from fighting to diplomacy—a key component of Special Forces
training. The men cheerfully endure the seemingly endless rounds of greetings
and tea drinking that precede any meeting with local leaders. “First it’s 15
minutes of I love you and you love me,” says one team member. “Then drink
tea, then eat fruit, then eat some more nuts and eat candy and talk a bit.”
By now, the soldiers all have basic Dari down.
Yet the men know better than to let their guard down. Tensions
between Atta, Dostum and Mohaqqeq, the three competing Northern Alliance
commanders, persist. The interim government named Dostum deputy Defense
minister and Atta commander of Northern Forces. Each appointed a mayor to
govern Mazar, leaving the city with two competing administrations. Heavily
armed fighters loyal to all three commanders patrol the city, keeping an
uneasy balance of power. A-team members never move out of their secure
compound without their weapons, and keep four-wheel-drive vehicles loaded
with ammunition, water, food and fuel. As one team member put it, they don’t
like it when people on the street come up behind them.
The caution may have saved their lives. Last Friday night, as the
A-team drove through the city, they suddenly found themselves confronted by
men with guns. Instantly, the diplomats once again became soldiers and drew
their automatic rifles. Dean, the team leader, told each of his men which
attacker to shoot if necessary. Wisely, the Afghans lowered their weapons and
moved on. As it turned out, the men weren’t Taliban but Northern Alliance
fighters loyal to Dostum, flexing their powers and ready to shoot. For Dean
and his men, it was a chilling reminder that in Afghanistan, “peace” may
just be another word for war. For now, at least, it is a different kind of
war than the one a few brave men helped to turn around.
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any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational
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