ariweiner
04-17-2004, 10:30 PM
A matter of death and life
By Mark Mazzetti
QALAT FIREBASE, ZABOL PROVINCE-- Their mission was to capture or kill a high-level Taliban commander. But for an infantry company of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, that turned out to be the easy part.
Midmorning on March 18, soldiers packed into CH-47 helicopters for an air assault into Miam Do, a village in central Afghanistan sympathetic to the old Taliban regime. Their quarry: Haji Farouk, the Taliban's provincial military commander. Landing in front of a mud compound, U.S. and Afghan soldiers--along with American military intelligence agents--stormed the building and quickly nabbed Farouk. Nearby, psychological operations troops broadcast announcements in Pashto from the mosque, calling for inhabitants to assemble in the village center. As Capt. Jorge Cordeiro remembers it, "Everything was working great at that point."
But all that would soon change. As the Americans sought out armed militiamen, one infantry squad spotted movement inside a giant mud fortress on the edge of the village, according to the soldiers involved and official after-action reports. Led by Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman, the squad moved in and began room-by-room clearing operations. As Lagman burst into one room, a waiting Taliban soldier fatally shot him in the head. The 26-year-old from Yonkers, N.Y., collapsed onto the dirt floor.
Drawing fire from other Taliban fighters, the rest of the unit pulled back, awaiting reinforcements. The company's executive officer, 1st Lt. Casey Newton, arrived minutes later with a platoon of Afghan National Army soldiers. Forming a cordon around the fortress, the Afghan soldiers blasted a hole in the wall with a rocket-propelled grenade, yet a small group of Taliban fighters engaged them immediately as they attempted to enter. Overhead, pilots in two Apache helicopters saw Taliban soldiers standing over Lagman's body.
With enemy fighters at every entrance to the fortress and not knowing Lagman's condition for certain, Newton assembled a squad for a rescue or, more likely, a recovery mission. "It didn't really matter if Lagman was dead," says Newton. "We were going to go in there." Using a tree trunk leaning against one wall, Newton's squad climbed over the 15-foot mud walls, as other soldiers lobbed smoke grenades and laid down suppressive fire. With bullets flying in every direction, the squad reached Lagman's body and dragged it back over the walls--a show of valor that has earned Newton a nomination for a Silver Star.
Change of plans. Still unaware of how many enemy fighters remained in the mazelike complex with nearly two dozen rooms, battalion commander Lt. Col. Joe Dichairo ordered in heavy fire from the Apache helicopters. But then the pilots spotted two women and several children inside, prompting Dichairo to call off the Apaches and order a second ground assault. A squad led by Sgt. David Haslach entered the building through the hole blown open by the RPG and tossed nonlethal concussion grenades as they tried to clear the building. In one room, they found two women huddled in a corner and brought them outside.
But trouble lurked nearby. Approaching the crumbled doorway of another room, Sgt. Michael Esposito, 22, was met with AK-47 fire from Taliban fighters. Struck twice, he fell to the floor. Haslach and another soldier dragged Esposito outside the compound, where medics' efforts to save him were unsuccessful. To end the standoff, Dichairo ordered everything inside the building destroyed. That decision, he recalls, was the toughest, suspecting that other women and children might still be inside. As darkness fell, the Apaches unloaded all of their ammunition into the building, followed by Maverick missiles from A-10 jets. During the night, an AC-130 gunship shot up the compound with cannon fire.
At daybreak, the 10th Mountain and Afghan Army soldiers attempted a third assault. Still, they encountered hostile fire from two surviving Taliban fighters. Again the squad pulled back and this time called in a B-1 bomber that dropped satellite-guided JDAM bombs on each corner of the compound, reducing most of the mud fortress to dust.
Sifting through the rubble, the exhausted American soldiers--completing what would be their last combat mission in Afghanistan--came across the mangled remains of six Taliban fighters and then made a startling discovery. In the same destroyed room where the fighters had made their last stand, a 9-month-old infant girl lay in a small hammock--shaken and crying, yet unhurt. The baby was carried to her mother in the village. Those who fought that day don't even try to explain how the baby survived; instead, they just call it the "miracle" at Miam Do.
By Mark Mazzetti
QALAT FIREBASE, ZABOL PROVINCE-- Their mission was to capture or kill a high-level Taliban commander. But for an infantry company of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, that turned out to be the easy part.
Midmorning on March 18, soldiers packed into CH-47 helicopters for an air assault into Miam Do, a village in central Afghanistan sympathetic to the old Taliban regime. Their quarry: Haji Farouk, the Taliban's provincial military commander. Landing in front of a mud compound, U.S. and Afghan soldiers--along with American military intelligence agents--stormed the building and quickly nabbed Farouk. Nearby, psychological operations troops broadcast announcements in Pashto from the mosque, calling for inhabitants to assemble in the village center. As Capt. Jorge Cordeiro remembers it, "Everything was working great at that point."
But all that would soon change. As the Americans sought out armed militiamen, one infantry squad spotted movement inside a giant mud fortress on the edge of the village, according to the soldiers involved and official after-action reports. Led by Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman, the squad moved in and began room-by-room clearing operations. As Lagman burst into one room, a waiting Taliban soldier fatally shot him in the head. The 26-year-old from Yonkers, N.Y., collapsed onto the dirt floor.
Drawing fire from other Taliban fighters, the rest of the unit pulled back, awaiting reinforcements. The company's executive officer, 1st Lt. Casey Newton, arrived minutes later with a platoon of Afghan National Army soldiers. Forming a cordon around the fortress, the Afghan soldiers blasted a hole in the wall with a rocket-propelled grenade, yet a small group of Taliban fighters engaged them immediately as they attempted to enter. Overhead, pilots in two Apache helicopters saw Taliban soldiers standing over Lagman's body.
With enemy fighters at every entrance to the fortress and not knowing Lagman's condition for certain, Newton assembled a squad for a rescue or, more likely, a recovery mission. "It didn't really matter if Lagman was dead," says Newton. "We were going to go in there." Using a tree trunk leaning against one wall, Newton's squad climbed over the 15-foot mud walls, as other soldiers lobbed smoke grenades and laid down suppressive fire. With bullets flying in every direction, the squad reached Lagman's body and dragged it back over the walls--a show of valor that has earned Newton a nomination for a Silver Star.
Change of plans. Still unaware of how many enemy fighters remained in the mazelike complex with nearly two dozen rooms, battalion commander Lt. Col. Joe Dichairo ordered in heavy fire from the Apache helicopters. But then the pilots spotted two women and several children inside, prompting Dichairo to call off the Apaches and order a second ground assault. A squad led by Sgt. David Haslach entered the building through the hole blown open by the RPG and tossed nonlethal concussion grenades as they tried to clear the building. In one room, they found two women huddled in a corner and brought them outside.
But trouble lurked nearby. Approaching the crumbled doorway of another room, Sgt. Michael Esposito, 22, was met with AK-47 fire from Taliban fighters. Struck twice, he fell to the floor. Haslach and another soldier dragged Esposito outside the compound, where medics' efforts to save him were unsuccessful. To end the standoff, Dichairo ordered everything inside the building destroyed. That decision, he recalls, was the toughest, suspecting that other women and children might still be inside. As darkness fell, the Apaches unloaded all of their ammunition into the building, followed by Maverick missiles from A-10 jets. During the night, an AC-130 gunship shot up the compound with cannon fire.
At daybreak, the 10th Mountain and Afghan Army soldiers attempted a third assault. Still, they encountered hostile fire from two surviving Taliban fighters. Again the squad pulled back and this time called in a B-1 bomber that dropped satellite-guided JDAM bombs on each corner of the compound, reducing most of the mud fortress to dust.
Sifting through the rubble, the exhausted American soldiers--completing what would be their last combat mission in Afghanistan--came across the mangled remains of six Taliban fighters and then made a startling discovery. In the same destroyed room where the fighters had made their last stand, a 9-month-old infant girl lay in a small hammock--shaken and crying, yet unhurt. The baby was carried to her mother in the village. Those who fought that day don't even try to explain how the baby survived; instead, they just call it the "miracle" at Miam Do.