by Jim Mattis
For several nights before the assault, we had quietly staged Marines and vehicles. The assault wave launched from the ships, and by dawn, four hundred more Marines, plus gun trucks, had landed. Our team had just achieved the deepest amphibious assault from the sea in history.
From start to finish, it had taken our team—Navy, Marine, Army Special Operations, State Department—just twenty-eight days to conceive, plan, persuade, and execute the invasion of Afghanistan. Operations occur at the speed of trust.
On November 26, D-Day + One, the Taliban moved against Rhino by launching an armored convoy from Lashkar Gah, fifty miles to the northwest. Navy F-14s and Marine Cobra gunships made short work of them. They didn’t get close, and didn’t live to return to the town named for Alexander the Great’s army, which had invaded Afghanistan 2,400 years ago.
Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was later asked about opening a second front in the war. “The insertion of Task Force 58,” he said, “had a deep psychological impact on the Taliban and Al Qaeda—they were confronted with a military situation which unhinged any hope they had for a gradual pullback from the north and a chance to hold from the barrier of greatest strength. Task Force 58 fundamentally changed the equation for the enemy from one of grim hope to hopelessness.”
My goal at Rhino was to swiftly build up our combat power and take the offensive.
* * *
—
Rhino had only one advantage as a forward operating base: it was in Afghanistan. Aside from that, it was a distinctly unpleasant place, a dry lake bed where high winds covered us with dust. As you tromped through it, it enveloped you, clogging your eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouth. No blade of grass or scrub tree marred the landscape; it was brown to the horizon. All water was flown in, so we couldn’t wash. We had to chip through calcified rock to dig in. The troops were constantly hacking up phlegm.
It was meant to be a jumping-off spot. We steadily built up our combat power, fuel, and medical supplies during our first week on the ground. Commodore Harward was amassing special forces from several nations alongside his SEALs. Very soon, we were ready to push against Kandahar.
Our aviators were performing at the outer edge of the envelope for man and machine. Allies were rushing in to come to America’s aid—Australia, Canada, Germany, Jordan, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Turkey, and the UK. I tightened a bit as I listened to landings in zero visibility. Mishaps in brownout conditions were inevitable. One CH-53 sucked debris into its air intake, lost power, and crash-landed, thankfully without injuries. A Huey lost power on takeoff and rolled over, consumed by flames. On a night takeoff, a taxiing C-130 hit the rotor blade of another CH-53. Again, we sustained no injuries. Twenty-four hours a day, Air Force Captain Mike Flatten and his dozen men kept the runway open, supported by thirty-nine sailors from the Navy Construction Battalion, the famous “Seabees,” constantly grading and compacting the runway. Air Force C-17s, some flying 3,600 miles from Germany, kept us supplied.
Shortly before I had left the USS Peleliu for Rhino, I was directed by higher headquarters to speak with reporters on board ship. Without thinking much about it, I told them, “The Marines have landed. We now own a piece of Afghanistan and are going to give it back to the Afghan people.”
When it showed up in the headlines, it read, “We now own a piece of Afghanistan.” Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld didn’t contact me personally, but he would genially reprimand me in a press conference by saying, “Don’t do that again.” He went on say that I was “clearly exuberant.” While the headline caused consternation at CENTCOM headquarters, it wasn’t my problem, and I went ashore.
Toward the end of the first week at Rhino, I grew impatient. We were still on hold.
General Franks was opaque. “We may well use assets from [Rhino] to interdict the roads….It is not an invasion. As soon as our work is finished, it [Rhino] certainly will be removed. And yes, we may well use it to bring humanitarian assistance to the people in Afghanistan.”
Not an invasion? Well, here we were—hundreds of Marines and Special Operations troops, caked in dust, cleaning their weapons four times a day. In September, the President had described CENTCOM’s war plan as requiring ground troops to “hunt down remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.” We had come to Rhino to destroy the terrorists who had murdered three thousand civilians. Admiral Moore had told me to land and shatter the Taliban’s last hope of defending themselves. His clear-eyed vision, coupled with his force of personality, gave me at least one steady anchor point on which to plan and conduct the operation. His example would be a model to me in the years ahead.
Despite Franks’s perplexing statement, I remained focused on building up combat power to quickly seize Kandahar, ninety miles away. Back at the Pentagon, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said, “Kandahar, it’s sort of the last bastion…of Taliban resistance….They’ll dig in and fight, and perhaps to the end.” The chairman had clearly stated the right mission for Task Force 58, for we were within striking distance of their “last bastion.” Maneuver warfare had taught us to shatter the enemy’s capacity to make coherent decisions. The Taliban’s command center in Kandahar didn’t know what to do. It was time to put Mullah Omar out of his misery and tear apart the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. Don’t give them the time and space to reconstitute.
Yet we were hunkered down, not knowing what we were waiting to do. Although Admiral Moore was doing his best to get us into the fight, TF 58 was stuck, ordered to hold fast. It was maddening. One of my Marines from New York City summed up our frustration. “This is a perfect war, General,” he said. “They want to die, and we want to kill them. Let’s get this on!”
A week after we landed, General Franks held a press conference, saying, “The Marines…I will not characterize the intent of them being there [at Rhino] as a force to attack Kandahar. That’s simply not the case. That’s not why we put them there.”
Now I was baffled. A negative statement is not a mission. Simply sitting at Rhino, we were sucking up resources and risking accidents, without moving against the enemy. Why were we there?
The news had gotten worse on November 28, our third day at Rhino. Admiral Moore informed us that CENTCOM had decided to limit our total force to one thousand personnel. Moore and I were not told why CENTCOM had unilaterally prevented me from bringing more of my troops to Rhino to move against the Taliban, whose numbers were estimated at twenty thousand. I still had 3,500 Marines waiting on board ships, deployed to my command by orders from CENTCOM and the Secretary of Defense. But on shore, I also needed support personnel like the Seabees to maintain the dirt airstrip. So as a result of the arbitrary limit, to bring in the Seabees, I had to send combat troops back to the ships.
On November 30—the sixth day after landing—control of Task Force 58 forces ashore at Rhino transferred from Admiral Moore to the U.S. Army Forces Central Command (ARCENT), located in Kuwait. Each night, I sent an “intentions message” to Moore and to ARCENT, updating recent activities and laying out my intent and the operations for the following days. I kept extending our patrol areas, some sixty miles from Rhino. I was confident in the skills of these small mounted units, and we were looking for a fight. But the enemy, knowing we were there, chose not to engage.
Loose control of operations is ingrained in Marine and Navy culture, and years of teamwork have us highly aligned. The Army approach provides more detailed oversight by the higher-level staffs. ARCENT was eager to support TF 58, but they needed coordination time and a deluge of information. Strangers who haven’t trained together don’t work smoothly together. Once in the fray, they need to work out the kinks. Ideally, they rehearse repeatedly before an operation such as ours. ARCENT brought a large staff with a deliberate and very thorough planning process.
From their perspective, they were exhibiting a thirst
to contribute. But they needed data, a lot of data: what we were doing, what we needed, and details about what we were planning, when, where, how. Much of this my lean staff didn’t know, because we never asked such questions of our subordinate units. The volume of demands for data was overwhelming us. The senior land component staff could transmit much more than my handful of staff could assimilate.
My operations officer told his ARCENT counterpart, “Sir, there is one of me and dozens of you. I’m working twenty-two hours a day, and I can’t answer all of your action officers. I can answer your questions, but not everyone on your staff.”
In response, ARCENT sent us a more generalized instruction: “Be prepared to interdict enemy lines of communication [roads] west of Kandahar.”
That was clear and succinct. So we launched patrols far and wide. One night, a mounted patrol was in an ambush site about eighty miles from Rhino. After they shot up the lead vehicle of a Taliban convoy, a few hundred yards to the rear, enemy fighters hopped out of a dump truck to outflank our unit. Watching this through night vision goggles, the patrol called in an air strike. The enemy fighters climbed back into their truck just as a Navy F-14 dropped its bomb, killing a dozen of the unluckiest Taliban in Afghanistan.
The next morning, I was shaving when the secure telephone jangled. My radio operator, Corporal Jacobek, picked it up, answered a few questions, and hung up.
“ARCENT,” he said, “needed a little info about last night’s ambush, sir.”
I thought nothing further about it. Then it happened again after another successful but routine engagement. Jacobek was busy, so I answered the phone.
“About last night’s action,” a lieutenant colonel said, “we weren’t informed beforehand. I need details. Someone’s going to answer for this. Corporal, give me the name of the person responsible.”
“Mattis,” I said.
“Damn, he’s the commanding general….Who am I talking to?”
“Mattis.”
A moment’s pause.
“Shit, sorry, sir. It was a good kill. SecDef’s happy. But we have no record of authorizing it.”
We both laughed. Different folk, different systems. But it symbolized a culture of pre-briefs, orders, reports, and large staffs difficult to navigate.
TF 58 remained tied in place for reasons I still don’t understand. Our mounted patrols occupied only a fraction of our fighting power. Plus, the center of the enemy’s gravity lay in Kandahar, easily within our reach. Theoretically, our force did serve as a “threat-in-being.” That is, by simply occupying Rhino, we affected the enemy’s behavior. But I didn’t want one thousand elite mobile troops ashore and thousands more on ships inhabiting a theoretical world; I wanted us turned loose to create chaos.
As was my habit, at night I’d walk the lines, hopping into fighting holes to chat with the shivering sentries. Under a spectacular array of stars, exhaling steam with every breath, it was easy to talk about the mission. Night after night, I got the same message.
“When do we get into the fight, sir?”
“Soon,” I said. “Our turn will come soon. Don’t let down your guard. Stay ready.”
September 11 was fresh in our minds. We wanted to destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Obliterate them, not sit on our cold asses, hocking up gobs of dust. The lads were chafing.
The unsettled Taliban were falling back in disorder toward Kandahar. An eleven-man Special Forces team was moving toward the city with Hamid Karzai, the political leader of the opposition. On the morning of December 5, our ops center informed me that a Cobra helicopter had crashed, with the crew safely recovered. A few hours later and 130 miles northeast of Rhino, due to a terrible error, a two-thousand-pound bomb exploded in the middle of the team that was supporting Karzai. The casualties, both killed and wounded, were severe. The coordinates for their location were uncertain, initially showing one location on the Pakistan border and, later, a different location closer to Kandahar. I didn’t know which was correct. It was broad daylight, which meant that helicopters would be vulnerable if they were vectored to the wrong location, approaching a hot landing zone. Amid the confusion of the initial position reports, I declined to immediately launch the helicopters.
The Special Forces soldiers were furious, as I would have been in their place. They had suffered fatalities, and the wounded needed immediate help. But I had to weigh how many lives I placed at risk versus how many might be saved by instantaneous action. By around noon, the location had been confirmed and the helicopters went in, bringing back forty-one injured to Rhino.
One of the injured Afghan fighters died at Rhino, despite the efforts of our Navy surgeons. Had my delayed decision cost him—and his family—his life? Should I have sent the helos in earlier, as the Special Forces soldiers were urging? Or had I avoided more aircraft accidents and fatalities by not rushing to an unconfirmed location?
When you are in command, there is always the next decision waiting to be made. You don’t have time to pace back and forth like Hamlet, zigzagging one way and the other. You do your best and live with the consequences. A commander has to compartmentalize his emotions and remain focused on the mission. You must decide, act, and move on.
Due to the gritty performance and selfless sacrifices of two Special Operations Forces teams, by the end of the first week in December, Karzai was approaching the outskirts of Kandahar. Hundreds of tribesmen, sensing the end of Taliban rule, cheered as he drove by. Bob Harward and I, accompanied by a Coalition Special Operations commander, helicoptered in to meet with him at a bombed-out villa on the edge of Kandahar, formerly occupied by Mullah Omar. Karzai was calm, confident, and content, and in league with our Special Forces. With occasional gunfire echoing in the background, we sat on rugs around a Coleman lantern, casting shadows on the wall. We discussed how my forces would seize the Kandahar airport. He assured us that Mullah Omar and the other Taliban leaders had fled.
During a break in the talks, Karzai and I went for a walk in the villa’s garden.
At one point I said, “If I caused you any problems with my statement about owning a piece of Afghanistan, I apologize. I didn’t mean to.”
Karzai stopped. “No,” he said, “when I read that in the electronic edition of The New York Times, I went out and shouted at my troops, ‘The Marines are in southern Afghanistan. We’ve won!’ ”
I had to laugh. What CENTCOM had seen as a disruption in the campaign was not even a tempest in a teapot. Quite the opposite, it had motivated Karzai’s troops at a tough time.
Hundreds of Taliban were still in the city, sullen but powerless. In the days following the meeting, Task Force 58 and the Special Operations Forces met scant resistance in securing the airport, the main roads, and the government center in Kandahar. To the people’s joy, the despised Taliban had been routed. I saw formerly prohibited kites flying, and men lined up in front of barbershops waiting to have their beards shaved off.
* * *
—
By mid-December, Kandahar airfield was secured and the battleground had shifted to the Tora Bora mountains, four hundred miles north of Rhino. Osama bin Laden had retreated there with two thousand of his most dedicated Al Qaeda fighters from a dozen nations. Years earlier, OBL had hired engineers with bulldozers to construct a network of caves outfitted with generators and electric power. His force was now holed up inside those fortifications.
Of course, I expected TF 58 to be employed in the final battle that would destroy Al Qaeda’s high command. My brigade was the only American unit within reach that had the firepower, leadership, mobility, and shock troops to do the job and finish the fight. As a bonus, I was eager to use our helicopters to bring into the fight numerous commando teams under Harward’s command. With a now well-honed team, we could bring a seamless conventional/special operations juggernaut into the hunt.
Our combined sta
ffs and intelligence analysts were piecing together the reports of OBL’s retreat. At a glance, there appeared to be several routes leading east out of Tora Bora into Pakistan, twenty miles away. But in snow and freezing temperatures among sixteen-thousand-foot peaks, few of the rocky and icy paths were accessible. We had high-resolution photomaps detailing every twist and turn on the high-altitude passes, and imagery revealed only a few dozen passable routes. All could be kept under observation and under fire from well-sited, interconnecting outposts on the high ground.
Again, history offered lessons. I had studied the Army’s “Geronimo campaign.” To track down the Apache leader in 1886, the Army had constructed twenty-three heliograph stations in southern Arizona and New Mexico to provide observation and communications. Whichever way the Apache turned, they were seen and cut off. Our own Marine intelligence staff back in the States had quickly provided computer-generated visibility diagrams. My staff plotted the locations where outposts on the high ground would have around-the-clock observation of all escape routes. The outposts were positioned so that each one could see another, thus providing interlocking fields of fire.
I was prepared to deploy Special Ops teams and Marine rifle platoons, all with forward observers who could direct air and artillery fire. At every pass, helicopters would insert overwatch teams equipped with cold-weather gear, forward air controllers, snipers, machine guns, and mortars. Attack aircraft would be on call. Our air could smash up the entrances, leaving the terrorists to die inside the caves. If they tried to escape, TF 58 would be waiting at the exits. Cutting off the escape passes was the anvil; I also had reinforced rifle companies waiting to swing the hammer and finish off the Al Qaeda forces. By December 14, we had helicopters on the Kandahar runway and tough, well-equipped troops ready to board.