The instructor then got down to business, explaining that this room in Bank Hall would be the CSTs’ home for the next six weeks. Days would begin at 6:30 a.m. in the gym and end at 5 p.m. The first course would focus on “human dynamics,” which included subjects like “cross-cultural communications,” Afghan culture and language, the role of women in Afghanistan’s history, and rural versus urban life. On deck: training in negotiation and mediation, tactical questioning and searching, and mental strategies to help manage combat stress. There would be psychological evaluations, peer evaluations, and a culminating exercise to finish the session. At the end of his introduction the cadre reminded the CSTs, almost as an afterthought, that making it to this point did not mean they were in the program. At any time soldiers could be asked to leave if instructors decided they didn’t measure up.
It’s like the first day of school all over again, Lane thought to herself. But after the last two months of preparation, she was ready for anything. Bring it, she said to herself, opening her notebook.
The instructor then launched into a description of “ARSOF,” the labyrinthine and mysterious world of elite combat troops formally known as Army Special Operations Forces. The women were on the cusp of becoming on-the-ground enablers of some of the boldest, most sophisticated teams in the United States military. At the end of the course, the teacher went on to explain, they would be asked to choose between Special Forces—the Green Berets and their Village Stability Operations—and Ranger Regiment—the direct action raiders. Ultimately the course instructors and the special operations teams would make the final call about their assignments, but part of the CST training process was understanding the difference between the special ops forces and the CSTs’ role in supporting them.
“VSOs,” the cadre said, his voice carrying across the rows of neatly arranged gray desks, “are village-stability operations. They are the centerpiece of our counterinsurgency strategy.” Counterinsurgency (COIN) was the hallmark of General McChrystal’s tenure leading U.S. forces in Afghanistan and it continued to be part of America’s strategy after he left in 2010. While counterinsurgency’s feasibility had been questioned both publicly and in military circles by the summer of 2011, when the CSTs were preparing for their first missions, much of COIN strategy remained in place alongside counterterrorism, or CT, strategy, which called for finding the insurgents where they lived. That, of course, was the place where the CSTs would be headed: into the villages and compounds.
The teacher went on to explain how the VSO missions were designed to promote stability in strategically critical rural areas—often remote and usually hostile—that insurgents had come to dominate. These operations focused on “the center of gravity”: the local population. The Green Berets leading VSO missions lived among Afghans and specialized in understanding the political and security terrain from the ground level in order to strengthen the work of local community leaders. To do this they partnered with village elders to get them the resources needed to deliver cash-for-work projects, agricultural training sessions, and medical services. And they equipped and trained men to form local police teams to protect the village from insurgent attacks. As security, local governance, and stability improved, the counterinsurgency theory went, citizens in a community would be more connected to one another and to their government, and therefore less likely to support the insurgency.
The Green Berets have long been known as “soldier-diplomats,” since much of the work they do requires language skills and a cultural understanding of the war zone in which they fight. But they are also intensively trained in direct action and combat skills, earning them nicknames like “snake eaters” and “bearded bastards.” Most CSTs would end up with these village-stability teams, where their work would consist of meeting and talking with local women in ways that men couldn’t because of the cultural traditions that separate the genders. The female soldiers would help Special Forces to better understand local power and politics dynamics and community needs as they sought to win “hearts and minds.”
But a small number of women would go to the other side of Army special operations and join the 75th Ranger Regiment in its direct action role. Rangers focus exclusively on the “clear” part of the “clear, hold, build” tenets of counterinsurgency—a shorthand first popularized in congressional testimony by then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. They are not responsible for wooing and winning over local leaders; their job is to clear contested areas of men who support the insurgency and threaten a civilian population. The CSTs working with the Rangers would be responsible for building crucial relationships with women on the scene that would reveal the information needed to help capture insurgents. This work would be done inside the homes of Afghan women, and would take place in the midst of night raids aimed at capturing the weapons makers, fighters, organizers, funders, and insurgency leaders with whom the women lived as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers. The idea behind the missions was to weaken the insurgency and give the military’s “hold and build” work—the less “kinetic” aspects of warfare—a chance to succeed by creating the space to win over local populations through strengthening local services and reducing security threats. The men of Ranger Regiment had been deployed continuously since 9/11 and went out every night on these operations, as did other special operators, and over the years such raids had grown increasingly unpopular with both the Afghan government and its people. Even those who favored such raids as a critical tool to root out the most intransigent and dangerous insurgents worried they had the potential to create more terrorists than they eradicated. A major part of the CST role, then, was to be culturally sensitive at this tenuous and highly unpredictable moment, and be assertive and quick-thinking enough to find the information needed in the midst of this most dynamic and unpredictable kind of battle.
Every student was expected to keep a journal and to bring it to class every day to make notes about her responses to course activities, readings, and discussions. The journal would be graded at the end. Trainers provided a recommended reading list of popular titles such as Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; Kabul in Winter by Ann Jones; Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson; and Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Early in the course, the CSTs received training in Pashto, one of Afghanistan’s two native languages (Dari being the other) and the one they would hear most often on their missions. They would of course be relying on interpreters to communicate with Afghan women, but being able to offer up some basic words would be a quick and powerful show of goodwill and respect. So they learned how to say “Salam Alaykum,” the traditional greeting of peace, as well as the Pashto equivalents of “my name is”—zamaa num; “please”—mehrabani; “how are you”—tsenga yast; “thank you”—manana; and “woman”—shedza. An Afghan-American lecturer offered the women a primer on the code of Pashtunwali and a catalog of unacceptable behaviors:
• Do not eat in public during Ramadan.
• Don’t rush or hurry an Afghan.
• Do not laugh loudly in public.
• Don’t wag or point your finger.
As the course went on, one of the students began a collection of favorite quotes in her notebook. One characterized the brand-new CST program itself: “It’s like building an airplane in flight.”
The training program for the female enablers didn’t come anywhere close to the formal preparation of Special Forces or Ranger Regiment men. To become a specialist in special operations and unconventional warfare requires training that is both extreme and extensive: for Green Berets, anywhere from 18 to 36 months and for the Regiment’s elite strike force members, just under a year. After that lengthy preparation and selection process, only around one in four candidates make it through. But the reality was America was fighting a long, costly, and unpopular war in Afghanistan and leaders like Admiral McRaven wanted to find whatever edge, whatever useful tool they could to improve the prospects of that fight. Comma
nders were impatient for the skills the female soldiers could provide, and they wanted the women out doing their jobs now.
All the CSTs were aware that their training protocol was a work in progress, and they chalked it up to the program’s newness. Aside from the language training and basic cultural education, much of the coursework struck one of the CSTs as “a whole lot of bookwork for people who were headed to war.” Claire Russo, who had played a role in shaping the program from its start, expressed in a memo her own concerns about how the training program favored “culture classes” over ones that taught “hard skills such as tactical questioning, engagement, and basic tactical movements.” Russo knew that culture varies significantly “from village to village, valley to valley and province to province” and she wanted the soldiers to have broad general knowledge. But she wanted them to be trained to defend their lives and protect their teammates, too. “It is critical that the students leave the CST class with the skills sets they need to execute the mission and survive while doing so,” she had written.
But it wasn’t only the Afghan community that the women needed to prepare for; they also had to win the acceptance of the American men they would be serving with. From the beginning, the instructors made clear that the CSTs would be wading into their own, female version of friendly fire when they deployed in August. Many of the male soldiers they supported would want nothing to do with them, the CSTs were warned. The trainers drilled the message home: “They are going to hate you, and you are going to have to be prepared for that.” It wasn’t just that they would have to “sell” their capabilities, as every enabler did, to a corps of battle-tested veterans, some now on their tenth or eleventh deployment in nearly as many years. As a constantly increasing share of responsibility for the fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other terrorism hotspots around the globe landed on their shoulders, Special Operations Forces now had within their reach nearly every flavor of weaponry and intel support possible. The dramatic capture one month earlier of Osama bin Laden, carried out by a team of Navy SEALS, had only added to the allure of special operators in the American imagination and the impression that special ops forces could accomplish any mission the conventional military and leaders in Washington tossed their way, no matter how wild the odds. CSTs were only the newest group among many “enablers” that served in a support role for these fighters; there were explosive ordnance disposal specialists, information support operations, weather experts, and communications specialists, to name only a few.
But the CSTs had one big difference: their gender, which rendered them both highly suspect and highly visible. One of the goals of the training course was to prepare the women for the internal hearts-and-minds campaign they would have to wage once they arrived in Afghanistan. The instructors devised a series of role-playing scenarios that would place the women in situations like the ones they could encounter in theater.
In one exercise, they were required to brief a Special Forces leader on the strengths and contributions the CST team brought to his mission. The idea was to get the women comfortable explaining their jobs and help them to develop a strategy for assimilating into their new teams.
“Who wants to volunteer for this one?” the instructor asked.
Amber’s hand shot up.
She walked to the front of the room and held out her hand to the Special Forces soldier playing a reluctant team leader there to test her mettle. He had graying hair and light eyes and looked a few years older than Amber.
“Go ahead,” he said, in his most uninviting tone. Amber took a seat at the small table in the front of the class.
“Given the current political climate in Afghanistan and the desire to respect the Afghan culture, the CST capability can be a real help,” she began. “Right now you aren’t able to access fifty percent of the population and so you can’t get a well-rounded picture when it comes to what’s happening in the community. You’re also not getting some information you might want on the intel side.”
The soldier sat stone-faced. He looked bored.
She inhaled, internally reloaded, and went on. “I know both intel and local knowledge are critical to the Special Forces mission, and we can really help to make a difference there because we can talk to women and children while being respectful of Afghan culture. We can help you learn more about what’s happening on the ground, as well as the challenges local families are facing, and the kinds of services they need most. I also bring language experience from training at Monterey in Farsi, which is close to Dari, so I can act as an interpreter with Dari-speaking populations without taking any of your interpreter resources.”
She waited for a response, but the soldier was unmoved. He let a few uncomfortable moments pass, then asked:
“Why should we give you resources that we need for ourselves? You aren’t bringing anything to the table that we can’t do without you, so why should we support you in this mission?”
Amber knew he was there to test her; that was the entire point of the exercise. She had promised herself she would stay calm no matter the provocation. But nothing she said was connecting, and her role-playing partner gave the impression that he had absolutely no interest in what she had to say, since he knew the world of Special Forces way, way better than she. His attitude was infuriating, and Amber could feel herself growing hotter.
She tried again.
“We are here to support the important work you are doing, and we want to further the mission,” she said. “We think that talking to women and helping you have a window on what they see and do and know will be useful.”
Nothing.
Then, finally, he said: “I’m not sure why you’re here at all. We don’t need this. What I do need is for every one of the precious spots I have on my team to go to people who are mission-critical. This sounds like a lot of work for very little benefit. And besides, we are going to end up having to take care of you. You think you can hang with us? You aren’t even going to be able to keep up out there. We’re going to start marching and you’re going to fall out of formation and then we are going to be the ones who will have to put aside our mission to take care of you.”
Amber felt the anger rising from the pit of her stomach. Keep your cool, she cautioned herself. Do not lose it, you know that is just what they expect you to do.
“How about your fitness level?” he asked, almost taunting her.
“I just ran a marathon six months ago,” she retorted. “I can run a mile in under six minutes. I do CrossFit every day, sometimes twice a day. Fitness is a cornerstone of serving in special operations, and I take that very, very seriously.” She heard her voice rising and fought to rein it in.
“Listen, women are just built differently than men. It’s a simple fact. You’re just going to be a liability out there,” he concluded.
That was it. Amber heard the word liability and it was like a switch flipped in her mind and unleashed a volcano of frustration she could no longer contain. Ever since she started in the Army more than a decade earlier men had thrown that word around in connection to female soldiers, regardless of how competent and fit the women actually were. Like many of her female colleagues, she had come to loathe these assumptions. But for Amber, it went beyond simple resentment.
As a nineteen-year-old private first class working as an intel analyst in Bosnia, she tried on numerous occasions to persuade the special ops guys to take her with them on missions to capture men indicted for war crimes. “I’ll bring along an interpreter,” she would say, “and we can talk to the women and help you find your guys.” In essence, Amber had tried then to improvise her own version of a Cultural Support Team years before they were officially created. The soldiers, mature and intelligent men who were well into their thirties, received her entreaties patiently, but explained that she “would just be a liability” to their work. And Amber knew what they meant. It was nothing personal; the truth was that she simply wasn’t strong enough to be out there. It was a wake-up call for her, and those words—“yo
u’ll just be a liability”—became her motivator. Ever since that tour she had devoted herself to becoming stronger, faster, and tougher than most men her size and age. She knew she had to be better than they were to be taken seriously, and she had spent the past ten years hardening her body and her mind so she would be ready for whatever challenge she could find that would take her out into the fight.
To have done all that and still be told she was a liability in this brand-new program was too much. Her frustration boiled over.
“You don’t know me,” she answered, quietly at first but her voice was rising. “You don’t know what I am physically capable of.”
For a fraction of a second she considered stopping there and shutting up before she really got herself into trouble, but Amber hurtled on. “I guarantee you that I can outscore you on a PT test.”
Now she was leaning forward in her chair, getting in his face. “I guarantee that unless you run an eleven-minute two-mile, I can run faster than you. And I can guarantee that unless you can do one hundred push-ups in two minutes, I can do more push-ups than you.”
The soldier stared back. The CST was doing exactly what he had expected.
“And: I bet I can do more sit-ups than you,” Amber added.
Kate, watching from a few rows back, froze in her seat. She had the impression of watching a car smashing into a brick wall right before her very eyes, but in slow motion. Part of her felt that Amber should just pipe down, but another part was thankful and relieved that someone, finally, had decided to stop taking all that shit. She had grown tired of apologizing for the fact that she was a fit, battle-hungry patriot who wanted to serve her country, gender be damned. And right now, standing in front of the whole class, Amber was speaking for all of them. It may not have been an elegant performance, but it sure as hell was satisfying.
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