by Eric Blehm
Then she sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrote a letter to her son, as always adding the outside temperature and time—54 degrees/8:09 A.M.—in the upper corner.
My Dear Son,
Everyone is sleeping here, Dad, Nicole, and I guess even the cat. Dad, Nic, and I had a small Thanksgiving dinner Thursday. Mike came down for sandwiches and pie. We watched Charlie Brown’s Christmas on video. Again! All of our prayers and thoughts were on you, Dan. Did you, I hope, have some kind of Thanksgiving dinner?
We love you so very much, Dan, and are really proud of you, please be careful. We know you have been trained well and have good common sense. I guess it’s like driving a car, you gotta watch out for the other guy!
I’ll write again soon. XXXXX OOOOO
Love, Ma!
The same day, at Mazar-e-Sharif, three hundred miles north of Tarin Kowt, Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners had seized control of the Qala-i-Jangi prison.3 The men of ODA 574 didn’t yet know it, but the headquarters staff of their battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Queeg, had responded to the uprising and were in combat with the prisoners, who had overpowered the guards and accessed a huge cache of weapons.
Casper and his men monitored the situation, receiving word of one of the first American casualties in the War on Terror: CIA case officer Mike Spann had been killed. It was a somber evening for the Americans sequestered in Tarin Kowt, and an especially dark night for the spooks.
Five Special Forces soldiers had been wounded during the uprising, Dan heard over the radio a short time later, but none were from ODAs. They were all staff personnel. “So, what happened?” Amerine asked him. “Could you figure out how all these staff guys got hurt?”
“I couldn’t tell,” said Dan, “but I got some other weird news for you. Sir, the Marines are here.”
“What?!”
“Remember the airfield the Rangers raided last month?”
“Rhino?”
“Yeah. The United States Marine Corps just seized it with seven hundred men in order to establish a base there.* They want to know what our intentions are for Kandahar and how they can be integrated into our plan.”
“What the fuck?” said Amerine. With each new development, another military convention was tossed out the window.
“I’m sure it took a while to plan,” Dan said. “Task Force Dagger should have told us this was coming.”
“If they even knew about it. This kind of cowboy shit can get someone killed: two friendly armies running around without talking to each other.”
“Another thing…there is an Afghan named Sherzai coming northeast from Pakistan with several hundred Pashtun fighters accompanied by an ODA. They seem to be following the Marines north toward Kandahar.”
“I gotta see this on the map,” said Amerine.
The two men stood over the captain’s map plotting locations, then Amerine studied it in silence. He noted that Karzai and all of the towns, villages, and districts he was courting to join him were north of Kandahar.
Camp Rhino was fifty miles south of Kandahar, but as far as Amerine was concerned, that was too close. He wondered if the massing American Marines at the doorstep of the Taliban’s spiritual capital would rally the Pashtun to fight off the invaders. The one thing Afghanistan’s tribes seemed to hate more than each other was an invading army—the seven hundred Marines at Rhino could put Karzai’s plan of driving to Kandahar and negotiating surrender at serious risk.
“I have to go talk to Hamid,” said Amerine. “We could really be fucked if we don’t rein these guys in.”
He found Karzai seated on a wooden chair on the sunny side of his courtyard, satellite phone to his ear. Once he was off the phone, Amerine informed him of the situation.
“The Marines? Outside Kandahar?” Karzai said.
They discussed the implications: Karzai and his guerrillas were achieving what all the Marines on the planet couldn’t do—persuading moderate Pashtun to leave the Taliban and join his revolt. While ODA 574 was essential to Karzai’s success, this foreign “army” of Marines could actually help Mullah Omar rally his remaining Taliban troops.
“What do you suggest?” asked Karzai.
“We weren’t advised they were coming,” said Amerine, “but they are requesting guidance. You can request that they stay in place well south of the city, while we continue to work things coming in from our position here in the north.”
“Okay. Then please tell your commanders to have them stay in place. Let them know that the Pashtun are on the verge of collapsing the Taliban.”
“What about Sherzai?”
“I will be in touch with him over the phone,” said Karzai. “Gul Agha Sherzai was the governor of Kandahar Province before the Taliban. He should be helpful.”
While the Marines were digging in at Camp Rhino, Major Chris Miller was in Uzbekistan trying to get his B-team, ODB 570—which included ODA 574’s former chief warrant officer, Lloyd Allard, and medic, Cubby Wojciehowski—out of isolation at K2 and into the war.
Cubby had to laugh when he recalled Dan’s parting words—that ODA 574’s mission would be boring. ODA 574’s “boring” would be a marked improvement over rotting away in Uzbekistan, where they had been for the past three weeks. To kill time, he’d learned to juggle with grenades.
ODB 570 had watched as the Army’s 10th Mountain Division prepared to leave K2 to back up the Green Berets and help evacuate the wounded at Mazar-e-Sharif.
“Green Berets should be helping Green Berets!” Allard said to Miller. “Let’s make ourselves a quick reaction force. Maybe that will get us in the war.”
“Now that sounds like an A-team mission, soldier,” Miller said, impersonating John Wayne. “We’re a B-team. But it just might work.”
He took the proposal to the Task Force Dagger command, and Mulholland bought the argument that if a Green Beret was in trouble, a Green Beret should go help him. The team began to practice quick reaction tactics and made sure they were ready to infiltrate on fifteen minutes’ notice. This new sense of purpose was a little sunshine for ODB 570, whose men were part of K2’s growing community of bored, sometimes disgruntled B-teams and their respective A-teams—men who watched their C-teams, their battalion staffs, infiltrate ahead of them to do their jobs.
As medic, Cubby refreshed the men on their medical skills, reviewing the basics of battlefield triage,* tourniquet placement, and amputations. He was grateful for the distraction, but in the back of his mind he dreaded the prospect of being called upon to save the lives of his friends.
Late on the afternoon of November 26, automatic weapons fire erupted on the street outside ODA 574’s compound in Tarin Kowt, where the team was lounging around the “living room.” Brent jumped up from his seat on an MRE box and grabbed his carbine, which was propped up against another crate.
Wearing his Harley-Davidson cap, JD was leaning against the wall, looking out at the street through the compound’s entrance. He signaled “stop” with his hand and said, “They’re celebrating something.”
They learned later that the locals were celebrating the liberation of Kunduz, the last Taliban bastion in the north.
Around 2 A.M. on November 27, a Pave Low helicopter flew over the mountains north of Tarin Kowt. Inside, the commander of 5th Group’s 2nd Battalion, forty-two-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Dave Fox, felt a hand tapping him on the shoulder—a member of the flight crew giving him the one-minute warning.
Fox gripped the webbing near the rear ramp and looked at his second-in-command, Major Don Bolduc, thirty-eight, who gave a quick nod. Across the hold, their young communications sergeant, Nelson Smith, was just getting up onto one knee when the helicopter touched down hard, knocking Smith flat as the air filled with swirling, chalky-tasting dust. “And that’s what we call a controlled crash,” said the crewman, nudging Fox toward the ramp. The three Green Berets turned on their NODs and walked off the helicopter to where a figure wrapped in a blanket stood in the rotor wash, beckoning
to them.
The dust settled, slowly revealing three trucks and nine heavily armed Afghan guerrillas and American soldiers.
Amerine stepped forward. “Hey, Colonel,” he said, shaking Fox’s hand. “Welcome to Tarin Kowt.”
“It’s been a hell of a trip getting here,”4 said Fox.
As they walked to the trucks, Fox told Amerine he realized his presence on the mission violated Special Forces doctrine. “When I was briefed about this,” he said, “the first thing I said was, ‘This is a B-team mission.’”
“What did Mulholland say about that?” said Amerine.
“I never even saw Mulholland. When we were at K2, he was here in Afghanistan, up north at Bagram. Which was where I thought I was going before we got diverted down here to join you and Karzai. You heard about what happened at Mazar-e-Sharif, right?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“I heard that Lieutenant Colonel Queeg’s battalion called in close air support,” said Fox, “and a five-hundred-pound laser-guided bomb missed its mark and slammed into their command post, killing and wounding dozens of Northern Alliance fighters and seriously wounding five of Queeg’s staff.”
“Any ODAs involved?” Amerine asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“So the headquarters called the bomb in on themselves?”
“Looks like it,” confirmed Fox.
By 9 A.M., Amerine had briefed Fox and Bolduc on the events of the past two weeks, including insights into Karzai’s character, his background, and his strengths and weaknesses—respectively, diplomacy and understanding of military affairs. He detailed the complicated but highly successful aerial reconnaissance system Alex had developed to protect the friendly villages and to scout their route to Kandahar. He told them about the untested and untrained guerrilla fighting force, as well as the team’s plan for moving south, scheduled to begin the next day. Fox left the brief satisfied with the way ODA 574 was performing its job.
Now everybody was hanging out in the “living room,” drinking coffee.
“Is everybody here, Sergeant?” Bolduc asked JD.
“We’re up,” said JD, confirming that all of ODA 574 was present. “Okay, Major Bolduc has a few announcements.”
Nelson Smith winced inwardly while his superior spoke to the casual gathering in loud bursts, as though he were formally addressing a battalion: “The commander and I understand that our being here has deviated from doctrine. I’m here to tell you that this all came as much as a surprise to us as to you. Our main function is to militarily advise Hamid Karzai. What this means is that we are here to give you top cover. We are here to facilitate. We are here to advise and assist and relieve some of that burden from you so you can focus on small-unit tactics, organizing, advising, and assisting the anti-Taliban forces. We’ll hold meetings to update the commander daily at 1630 while we’re here in Tarin Kowt. Any questions?”
There were none.
After the meeting, Fox and Bolduc followed Amerine across the street into the courtyard of Karzai’s compound, where Amerine nodded at the two guards, both holding AK-47s. Up on the roof, another guerrilla with an RPG leaning against his shoulder was scanning the street. On their way to Karzai’s guest room, the three Americans wove around small circles of Afghans sitting on the ground and talking quietly.
Pausing outside the door, Amerine said to Fox, “I won’t stay, sir. He’s very personable, very intelligent, and speaks perfect English. He has his hand on the pulse of everything going on—he has extremely reliable intelligence. If I can make one suggestion?”
Fox nodded.
“Stay with the G-chief, just like in Robin Sage,”*said Amerine. “I can’t emphasize enough how important that training was. Karzai appreciates being advised and won’t think it overbearing. I’ve been joined at the hip with him since we got here.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Fox.
The Americans entered the room, and all conversation in the large circle halted, the eyes of the tribesmen following Fox and Bolduc as Amerine led them to Karzai’s usual spot near the western wall. Amerine made introductions and Karzai stood to shake hands. Two of the Afghans seated to Karzai’s left moved over, creating an opening in the circle.
As Amerine left, he heard Karzai say, “Please sit. Tea?”
While Fox and Bolduc spent their first hours with Karzai and his tribal leaders, sixteen delegates, representing the four major Afghan tribes—Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, and Pashtun—gathered at a luxury hotel outside Bonn, Germany.
This historic meeting of traditionally hostile groups had been convened by the United Nations to discuss the future of Afghanistan. They’d been brought together by their common hatred for the Taliban and a desire to replace the regime with what the U.N. called a “broadly based” government representing Afghanistan’s diversity. The lofty goal of this consortium was to let the Afghan people decide their own democratic government—one that would satisfy all the ethnic factions, or at least keep them from fighting another civil war.
Those in attendance included representatives from the Northern Alliance, which at the time controlled most of Afghanistan, and the Rome Group, a delegation of exiles loyal to former king Zahir Shah, of which Karzai was part. Diplomats from Russia, the European Union, all six of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, and the United States, represented by James Dobbins, were not allowed in the meeting itself, but had flocked to the hotel in order to meet with the delegates and each other.
Following opening remarks from Germany’s minister of foreign affairs, the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, explained that each representative group present would have the opportunity to make a statement. But first they would hear from Hamid Karzai, who was in Tarin Kowt sitting beside Lieutenant Colonel Fox when the expected call came through.
“Excuse me,” Karzai said to Fox as he answered the phone.
He spoke in Pashto, his words coming in clear over the speaker in Bonn: “We are one nation, one culture. We are united, not divided. We all believe in an Islam that is a religion of tolerance.”
For nearly five minutes, Fox listened to Karzai’s melodic voice as the tribal leaders present nodded repeatedly in affirmation.
“This meeting is the path toward salvation,” Karzai concluded. “The interim authority you seek to organize there in Germany is a means of getting to a Loya Jirga.”
Dobbins was in his suite at the hotel in Bonn. He had yet to speak with Karzai, but in his meetings with the regional players, Karzai was the only name that was consistently mentioned as someone capable of bringing the country together.
“Among the international representatives was a strong concensus in favor of Hamid Karzai,” Dobbins would later recall in his memoir. “Virtually every foreign official with whom I had met in the past month, including the Pakistani, the Indian, the Russian, the Iranian, the Turkish, and European delegates had mentioned his name unprompted. The unanimity of international support for Karzai was largely [Northern Alliance representative] Dr. Abdullah’s doing. He and Karzai had served together in an earlier coalition government in Kabul [closely following the Soviet occupation]. He knew Karzai as a moderate, personable, conciliatory figure of the sort who might be able to hold a fractious coalition together.”
An endorsement for Karzai at Bonn from Iran’s foreign minister—which staunchly opposed the United States’ foreign policy—surprised Dobbins. More astounding had been the nod for Karzai from the Pakistani intelligence chief, whom Dobbins met in Pakistan two days after Karzai had secretly left J-Bad to infiltrate Afghanistan with ODA 574.
It seemed that everybody Dobbins spoke to respected Karzai, who as an émigré statesman had been lobbying on behalf of his country for years. While Dobbins recognized that Karzai could not have achieved his current military credibility in Afghanistan without the United States, he was coming to realize that the man’s political and diplomatic reputation was purely self-made.
“Congratulations,” Amerine s
aid as he sat down later that afternoon with Karzai.
With Mike and Brent showing Bolduc, Fox, and Smith around Tarin Kowt, Amerine was the only American in the room. He appreciated how the circle of Afghans barely paused to acknowledge his presence; he had indeed become a fixture here.
“Lieutenant Colonel Fox told me you addressed your countrymen in Germany.”
“Yes. I hope they could understand me.” Karzai coughed. “I’m not feeling well.”
“You need more sleep, Hamid,” said Amerine.
“There is no time,” said Karzai, nodding at a young man, who poured two cups of tea for them. Karzai lifted a cup to his nose, and inhaled the rising steam. Amerine sipped his. Neither of them spoke while they drank two more cups of tea, then Amerine said, “I’m going to brief Lieutenant Colonel Fox shortly about tomorrow’s movement to Petawek and I need to confirm that the vehicles will be ready just after sunrise—ours assembled on this street and the rest at the edge of town.”
“I will see to it,” Karzai said, leaning forward when Amerine smoothed his creased and wrinkled survival map before them on the carpet.
One of several small villages spread along the foot of the mountains that bordered Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces, Petawek was fifty miles southwest of Tarin Kowt. It was a remote truck stop for traders, with a population of one thousand Pashtun. The drive to Petawek would take them over multiple mountain ranges, across deserts and high valleys, and through deep canyons—extremely rough and wild country that Karzai said the Soviets had learned to avoid after a few devastating ambushes.
Karzai had been negotiating with the tribal leaders of the districts, towns, and villages along their intended route; on Amerine’s map these were represented by a swath of circles, like stepping-stones all the way to Petawek. If they could safely connect those dots—and Karzai had assured them a clear drive—they would reach Petawek within ten hours.