Conduct of War Is Redefined by
Success of Special Forces
The New York Times
January 21, 2002
BATTLEFIELD
By THOM SHANKER
ASHINGTON, Jan. 20 - In
the log book at Task Force
Dagger, the field headquarters for
all Special Operations missions in
Afghanistan, the following code
was entered for Dec. 12:
"GRN-GRN AA022 EXFIL'D."
Green-on-green, it indicated: two
anti-Taliban units fighting each
other.
AA022: an Army Special Forces
"A Team," code-named Cobra 22,
caught in the middle.
Exfiltrated: time for the American
soldiers to get out in a hurry.
The men of Cobra 22 had spent
more than two weeks advising
Sayed Jaffar, a warlord of the
Northern Alliance whose forces
helped push the Taliban out of
the northern city of Kunduz.
The town fell on Nov. 26, but the
region was still dangerous, and
now the nearby village of Pul-i-
Kumri erupted in gunfire as the
Jaffar militia confronted the
troops of another anti-Taliban
warlord. It was the kind of
violence that for years had
hampered the resistance.
Seeing no military logic in
refereeing the dispute, American
commanders rushed an MC-130 Combat Talon transport
plane and two Black Hawk helicopters to extract the
Special Forces from the scene. For good measure, an
AC-130 gunship, bristling with rapid-fire cannons, flew
shotgun.
American Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, whose
experiences are reshaping war- fighting doctrine, faced
many obstacles - foul weather, strange allies, friendly fire
and, of course, the enemy. And many in the military were
surprised at how much they have accomplished.
Even as the war entered a new phase with the first use of
American ground troops in late October, senior
commanders were unsure that sending a few dozen
advisers into the fight could topple the Taliban and cripple
Al Qaeda. They were ready to throw much larger numbers
of conventional troops into combat.
The ground campaign opened on one of the darkest
nights of the war, four days past a new moon. And when
the sun rose the next morning, on Oct. 20, two very
different operations had been completed, as if to illustrate
the choice of methods that the Pentagon was considering.
But the Pentagon spoke publicly then about only one of
the operations that occurred that night.
Just hours after the mission ended, the Pentagon
announced that hundreds of Army Rangers had
parachuted onto a military airfield about 80 miles south of
Kandahar while a helicopter raid hit a Taliban compound
at the edge of the city. Dramatic videotape of the airborne
assault was broadcast.
But the Pentagon said nothing about a secret ground war
- which quickly became the real ground war - that
started simultaneously in the north.
The first two teams of Army Green Berets to infiltrate
Afghanistan landed by helicopter that same night,
according to Special Forces commanders who planned the
mission. One joined up with Abdul Rashid Dostum, the
war-calloused Northern Alliance commander near
Mazar-i-Sharif, and the other with Muhammad Fahim
Khan, now Afghan defense minister, whose forces were
then loosely arrayed against the Taliban in the direction
of Kabul.
More would follow, but it was not easy. During just the
second mission to carry Special Forces teams into the
north, the helicopters were unable to land because of a
powerful sandstorm.
"I cannot even begin to describe the frustrations," a senior
Special Operations commander recalled. "We were right
there. It was like, just six more inches, but we couldn't get
over the goal line."
But in just three weeks, those A Teams - as the Special
Forces calls the detachments of a dozen select troops -
transformed the Northern Alliance into a force capable of
routing the Taliban army, which was increasingly
damaged and demoralized by the more precise bombing
that the American target-spotters made possible.
Few things surprised the Pentagon and its commanders
as much as how rapidly the military picture changed with
the arrival of the Special Forces. The prospect of fighting
big battles with American troops faded away.
Brig. Gen. Richard L. Comer, vice commander of the Air
Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field,
Fla., said the more conventional plan had been to "put in
a large amount of American forces, hop them in by air."
The alternative, General Comer said, was to rely mainly on
the native forces opposing the Taliban. The thinking, he
said, was: "Let's start with that, see what they can do. Put
Special Forces in there, knit them together, and see how
good we can make it."
If it had not worked, the war might have seen many
strikes by large forces of Rangers and other infantry. In a
final push, marines were to seize Kandahar's
international airport by force, senior officials said.
"We reasonably expected to do a lot more heavy
operations," a senior Defense Department official said.
"We might have seen more of those events like 300
Rangers dropping out of the sky on a given night. But the
A Teams brought us a steady increase of pressure, and
the sudden collapse of the Taliban. Nobody predicted
that."
The lessons from the Afghan experience are already being
adopted in the broader war against international
terrorism. In the Philippines, scores of Special Forces are
being sent to advise and assist its army in fighting
terrorists. In the Pentagon's war rooms, contingency plans
are being re-examined, and top officers are declaring that
relatively small but highly proficient units, operating
secretively and equipped with an arsenal all their own,
can quickly change the balance of power.
But the war in Afghanistan has illuminated the risks, as
well. Special Operations forces had to help quell a riot
when Taliban prisoners rebelled, killing a C.I.A. officer. A
helicopter that crashed in the mountains trying to
evacuate a sick commando had to be bombed by an
American jet to protect its secret equipment. An errant
bomb killed three Americans of the Special Forces - and
nearly killed Hamid Karzai, on the day he was appointed
head of the new interim Afghan government.
And the only soldier killed so far by hostile fire was Sgt.
First Class Nathan Ross Chapman of the Special Forces.
His group was ambushed in Paktia while trying to stitch
together an Afghan militia to hunt for Osama bin Laden
and his Taliban ally, Mullah Muhammad Omar. That
mission still has not been accomplished.
First Raid: Ranger Mission - 'Meat and Potatoes'
Meticulous planning for the first use of American ground
forces in the war began in late September, after the
Pentagon learned of a remote desert airfield within
striking distance of Kandahar.
At Fort Benning, Ga., intelligence officers of the 75th
Ranger Regiment pored over photographs from satellites,
Predator drones and other reconnaissance aircraft.
They calculated the height of a wall around the compound
from the length of its shadow, pinpointed potential
Stinger missile placements and watched the movements of
construction workers and Taliban troops.
Overnight on Oct. 19, four MC-130 Combat Talon airlifters
dropped more than 200 Army Rangers on the airstrip,
code-named Objective Rhino.
It would be a month before American forces, marines,
would return to that base, and when they did, their role
was largely to protect it so that Special Operations forces
would have a staging point near Kandahar.
The Rangers shot and killed a fleeing Taliban soldier,
scoured the empty compound for weapons, and collected
some documents, few of which proved useful. American
warplanes killed 30 Taliban near the airstrip.
"It was a meat-and-potatoes Ranger mission," said Maj.
Robert Whalen, an intelligence officer of the 75th Ranger
Regiment. "Seize the airfield in a lighting fast strike, and
get out."
For most of the Rangers, mainly in their early 20's, it was
their first combat. On the way into Afghanistan from their
staging area in the Persian Gulf region, Staff Sgt. Timothy
Shrewsbury recalled, a battalion commander led them in
reciting the Ranger creed. "Surrender is not a Ranger
word," it says in part. "I will never leave a fallen comrade to
fall into the hands of the enemy."
"I know I wasn't scared," Sergeant Shrewsbury said. "It's
such a cliché, but the training really does take over. It was
like a big exercise."
Though smaller groups of Rangers would conduct other
missions in southern Afghanistan - mainly calling in
airstrikes against convoys - the first commando raid of
the war was not to be repeated.
Unconventional War: Small Units Sent on Large Missions
The use of small, highly trained units to accomplish large,
strategic missions by exploiting an enemy's weakness has
been talked about for years, but tried with mixed success
in the past. Initially, there was little reason to be
optimistic about fighting this kind of war in the anarchy of
Afghanistan.
Army Special Forces typically take months, if not years, to
cultivate relationships with friendly regional powers. (The
term Special Forces refers to the Army's Green Berets
only; the phrase Special Operations forces encompasses
the universe of unconventional warriors in all of the
services.) While Special Forces had trained with some
Central Asian militaries, they had never worked with
Afghans, whose hostility to foreign armies goes back
generations.
Before the war, the mission of attacking Mr. bin Laden
and his supporters and bolstering the anti-Taliban
resistance belonged to the Central Intelligence Agency.
The extent to which the Special Forces worked with the
C.I.A. was another innovation in this war.
"We have more access at a more junior level to important
intelligence than ever before," an Army Special Forces
commander said. "What we are giving our teams in the
field is much more than they've gotten before. In the past,
there was a lot of information that was not given to
captains and the A Teams. This time, they've got it."
The first question was whom to help, and it took weeks to
answer.
"We basically had to figure out who was a `bad bad' guy,
who was a `bad good' guy and if there were any `good
good' guys," the officer said.
In the north, they chose from commanders who had kept
their armies intact after the Taliban gained control of the
cities. In the south, they looked for tribal leaders who
could attract fighters to their side from the mainly
Pashtun tribal groups. One such leader was Mr. Karzai,
who infiltrated Afghanistan from Pakistan.
"We believed he had the most loyal following, but they
weren't soldiers," said a Special Forces lieutenant colonel
named Dave, who commands the teams that linked up
with Mr. Karzai outside Kandahar, providing security and
military advice. "They were shopkeepers and farmers and
friends," said Dave, who like many of the unconventional
warriors spoke on condition that his last name be
withheld. "They would advance to the front in Toyota
pickup trucks and Subaru taxis."
Getting uniforms, ammunition and food to those forces
took time. But with American advisers at their sides, they
took the offensive quickly. And with the Special Forces
designating the targets on the front lines, the intense
bombardment from the sky gave the anti-Taliban forces
the ultimate advantage.
Air Operations: Even on Horseback, Calling In Strikes
Calling in air strikes is one of the most important jobs
given to Special Operations forces.
When some 400 Taliban prisoners rebelled inside a
fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif in late November, one of the
first troops to rush to the scene was a 26-year-old Air
Force combat controller, a staff sergeant named Mike.
An eight-year veteran from Oxford, Conn., the sergeant
said he had pinpointed enemy positions and radioed for
airstrikes by Navy F/A-18's carrying 2,000-pound bombs.
It took them just 15 minutes to respond.
One of the satellite-guided bombs exploded only 70 feet
from his position, hurling him into the air and wounding
four other American troops. "Everything went black, and I
thought I was dead," he said in an interview at the
Hurlburt Field headquarters, where he is recovering from
punctured ear drums, flash burns on his face and
scratched corneas.
He was one of about 100 combat controllers, weathermen
and search-and-rescue specialists then operating in
Afghanistan, officials said. Trained to scout targets and
spot them with laser range-finders, combat controllers
advise pilots on what kind of bomb to drop and how best
to fly to the target. They also identify landing zones for
troops and drop zones for parachuted supplies.
Each of them carries 150 pounds of gear, including radio
and navigation equipment and, of course, a rifle. The
steep mountain trails of Afghanistan presented
challenges, Mike recalled. "I've trained for a lot, but this
was the first time I ever rode horseback," he said.
Evolving Doctrine: Wholesale Integration in Air and on
Ground
While the use of Special Forces to build an opposition
army in Afghanistan was straight from the doctrine of
unconventional warfare, their wholesale integration into
the air war was unusual, according to senior military
officials involved in the planning throughout the conflict.
"The guys on the ground were originally conceived as
developing classic liaison relationships with local forces
with the goal being to build a groundswell of opposition,"
a senior military officer said. He said this "strategic" plan
became more "tactical" as the Special Forces teams proved
so effective at spotting targets for American bombers and
attack jets. "We refocused our efforts," the officer said. "We
did not expect they would play such a large tactical role."
But the path had been blazed in advance.
Last July, Lt. Gen. Maxwell C. Bailey, who until earlier
this month was head of the Air Force Special Operations
Command, created a permanent Special Operations
liaison team ready to deploy on short notice to any
regional conflict.
Twelve days after the attacks on the World Trade Center
and Pentagon on Sept. 11, two dozen of its Air Force
experts and three Army Green Berets arrived at Prince
Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to join the
planning for the air war that started two weeks later.
Air Force Special Operations planes flew some of the most
devastating attack missions.
The Special Operations cargo plane of choice, the MC-130
Combat Talon equipped with advanced terrain-following
and terrain- avoidance radar, is also used to drop the
15,000-pound BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" bombs.
The Combat Talons, flying 14.5-hour round-trip missions
from their base in Incirlik, Turkey, also parachuted
hundreds of plywood containers, each weighing 1,400 to
2,200 pounds and filled with food, winter clothing and
small arms, to the anti-Taliban forces who would carry the
brunt of the fighting.
Fratricide: Errant Bomb Kills G.I.'s and Afghans
On Dec. 5, three Green Berets and five of their Afghan
comrades were killed when they were struck by an errant
American bomb during the siege of Kandahar. Many more
were wounded.
A fresh Special Forces A Team, code- named Python 33,
was given just minutes to grab weapons and rucksacks
and load onto an MC-130 for the flight to the marines'
forward base, Camp Rhino. Even before they touched
down at the desert airstrip, a transport helicopter and two
attack helicopters had their rotors spinning for the trip to
the front.
"There was none of the Army's hurry up and wait that
day," said Randy, a sergeant first class and the Python 33
combat medicine specialist.
They arrived just hours after the fratricidal bombing, and
the offensive on Kandahar continued.
There are many visible reminders of what happened:
Major Don, deputy commander of Special Forces in the
Kandahar region, still limps from wounds he received on
Dec. 5, but he refused to leave Afghanistan. And the men
of Python 33 still drive a white truck, its windshield blown
out and its panels pocked by shrapnel from the errant
bombing.
And some are less visible. One night just outside
Kandahar, a member of Python 33 produced an armful of
mail from his pack. He had just heard how the remains of
one Green Beret were taken home with a letter from his
wife still in his pocket.
"If I don't make it home, I don't want these letters coming
home with my personal effects," he said, as he pitched a
fistful of holiday cards and notes into the roaring campfire
of the Python 33 base in the compound where Mullah
Omar once ruled.
Lessons Learned: Uncomplicating Chain of Command
For years, the Pentagon has struggled to blend Special
Operations forces - with their distinctive training, their
peculiar weaponry, their unorthodox tactics and their
culture of secrecy - into the joint operations of land, sea
and air forces. In the Afghanistan campaign, this was a
goal from the start.
Unconventional warriors have their own unified combatant
commander, Gen. Charles R. Holland, who heads the
Special Operations Command. Among the distinctions of
his command: It is the only one in the military with its
own research and development budget. But General
Holland played a much larger role in the Afghan
campaign than simply readying and providing those
forces.
In combat, his units came under the command of Gen.
Tommy R. Franks, the commander in chief of the Central
Command, who is in charge of all military operations from
the Horn of Africa to the Hindu Kush. Under him is Rear
Adm. Albert M. Calland 3rd, the Special Operations
commander in the region.
A complicated chain of command is anathema to warriors,
but the day-to-day reality of this arrangement was not so
complex. General Franks' headquarters in Tampa, Fla., is
literally next door to the headquarters of the Special
Operations Command. He and General Holland speak
virtually every day, and planned the war together.
Their civilian boss, Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, likes to joke that he hates to say things twice,
so he, General Franks and General Richard B. Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speak together at
least twice a day to discuss jointly all aspects of the war
campaign.
The war was as unpredictable as any other, but there is
little sign that the commanders struggled over the use of
unconventional forces.
But in the ranks and among the commanders, there is
talk that the $3 billion spent each year to field and equip
40,000 Special Operations fighters is not enough.
"When our group was notified to prepare for deployment,
there was a huge spastic response to procure items we
should already have had - in communications, global
positioning systems, cold weather gear," said one Special
Forces major, named Chris, interviewed in Afghanistan.
"We were taking off for Afghanistan, and in the back of the
cargo plane we were still practicing on our new satellite
phones. Stuff is still arriving now, and I think, `Hey, this
would have been great four weeks ago.' "
A senior Defense Department official explained that Mr.
Rumsfeld and General Franks had made a conscious
decision to move fast despite the risks.
"There was a clear decision made not to wait for a stately
buildup of forces to the brink of combat, and only then to
walk through the wall," said a member of Mr. Rumsfeld's
inner circle.
The campaign exposed a shortage of aircraft to refuel
helicopters on long missions, General Bailey said. He said
the Air Force would like the CV-22, a variant of the Marine
Corps' Osprey, a new aircraft that has been delayed by
serious technical problems.
But General Bailey, like other Pentagon leaders,
cautioned against thinking of Afghanistan as the model
for all future wars.
"In my mind, you have to be very careful about trying to
apply too specifically the lessons of Afghanistan," he said.
"We've had a very successful campaign, with air power,
surrogate forces with Special Forces. We can duplicate
things under our control, like air power and Special
Forces. But where are those indigenous forces? Where
does that exist in other places in the world?"
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