2RHPZ
05-08-2004, 03:36 PM
?I Yelled at Them to Stop?
By Colin Soloway
NEWSWEEK
Oct. 7 issue ? One afternoon in August, a U.S. Special
Forces A team knocked at the door of a half-ruined mud
compound in the Shahikot Valley. The servicemen were taking
part in Operation Mountain Sweep, a weeklong hunt for Qaeda
and Taliban fugitives in eastern Afghanistan.
THE MAN OF THE HOUSE, an elderly farmer, let the
Americans in as soon as his female relatives had gone to a
back room, out of the gaze of strange men. Asked if there were
any weapons in the house, the farmer proudly showed them his
only firearm, a hunting rifle nearly a century old. When the
team had finished searching, carefully letting the women stay
out of sight, the farmer served tea. The Americans thanked him
and walked toward the next house.
They didn?t get far before the team?s captain looked
back. Six paratroopers from the 82d Airborne, also part of
Mountain Sweep, were lined up outside the farmer?s house,
preparing to force their way in. ?I yelled at them to stop,?
says the captain, ?but they went ahead and kicked in the
door.? The farmer panicked and tried to run, and one of the
paratroopers slammed him to the ground. The captain raced back
to the house. Inside, he says, other helmeted soldiers from
the 82d were attempting to frisk the women. By the time the
captain could order the soldiers to leave, the family was in a
state of shock. ?The women were screaming bloody murder,?
recalled the captain, asking to be identified simply as Mike.
?The guy was in tears. He had been completely dishonored.?
The official story from both the 82d Airborne and the
regular Army command is that Operation Mountain Sweep was a
resounding success. Several arms caches were found and
destroyed, and at least a dozen suspected Taliban members or
supporters were detained for questioning. But according to
Special Forces, Afghan villagers and local officials living in
or near the valley, the mission was a disaster. The witnesses
claim that American soldiers succeeded mainly in terrorizing
innocent villagers and ruining the ******* that Special Forces
had built up with local communities. ?After Mountain Sweep,
for the first time since we got here, we?re getting rocks
thrown at us on the road in Khowst,? says Jim, a Green Beret
who has been operating in the area for the past six months.
Special Forces members say that Mountain Sweep has probably
set back their counterinsurgency and intelligence operations
by at least six months.
Officers in the 82d insist their men did nothing
wrong. In response to NEWSWEEK queries, public-affairs
officers characterized the Special Forces involved in Mountain
Sweep as ?prima donnas? who were damaging the war effort by
complaining to the press. Yet at a time when Washington is
talking about expanding the mission in Afghanistan and
increasing the number of large-scale operations like Mountain
Sweep?and when Qaeda allies are stepping up terrorist attacks
against the fragile government in Kabul?the criticism raises
serious questions about the best strategy for fighting the
low-intensity war.
Shahikot is where Al Qaeda and Taliban forces fought
their last major battle against the Americans back in March.
Some 50 soldiers from several Special Forces A teams have been
operating in eastern Afghanistan?s Paktia and Khowst provinces
ever since. They?ve been working to win the villagers? trust
and cooperation?and largely succeeding, as NEWSWEEK found
while accompanying some of them for two weeks on operations
shortly before Mountain Sweep began. ?The Americans in Gardez
who have Toyota trucks, they are good guys,? says Jan Baz
Sadiqi, 46, district administrator in Zormat, the valley?s
population center. ?They don?t break into houses, and they
don?t terrorize people.?
Then on Aug. 19, American commanders sent some 600
action-hungry members of the Army?s 82d Airborne Division,
Third Battalion, charging into Zormat and the Shahikot area.
?Those guys were crazy,? said one Special Forces NCO who was
there. ?We just couldn?t believe they were acting that way.
Every time we turned around they were doing something stupid.
We?d be like, ?Holy s?t, look at that! Can you believe this!?
? Another said: ?They were acting like bin Laden was hiding
behind every door. That just wasn?t the way to be acting with
civilians.? Special Forces working in the region say that
since Mountain Sweep, the stream of friendly intelligence on
weapons caches, mines and terrorist activity has dried up.
The Special Forces have often had a stormy
relationship with the rest of the Army. Conventional
commanders sometimes regard the elite fighters as arrogant
cowboys. Special Forces members respond that the regular Army
is too rigid for the painstaking job of fighting a
low-intensity conflict. ?The conventional military has a
conventional mind-set,? said an SF officer. ?It does not work
when you have crooks and terrorists and all kinds of bad guys
who blend into the population.? In Afghanistan, the A teams
have been out in the field, cultivating the friendship of
villagers and tracking down terrorists. At the same time,
regular soldiers like those of the 82d were, until August,
mostly confined to their bases, just itching to get out and do
the job for which they were trained.
In Shahikot, that wasn?t the job that needed doing.
?The 82d is a great combat unit,? said a Special Forces NCO
who took part in the mission. ?A lot of us on the teams came
out of the 82d. But they are trained to advance to contact and
kill the enemy. There was no ?enemy? down there.? The
remaining Taliban forces melted into the civilian population
after Operation Anaconda blasted them out of the caves of
Shahikot in March. Since then, the Afghan war has become
basically a low-intensity guerrilla conflict, with Taliban and
Qaeda fighters operating in small cells, emerging only to lay
land mines and launch nighttime rocket attacks against the
Americans before disappearing once again.
The Special Forces were created to deal with precisely
that kind of enemy. Each A team is made up of 10 or fewer
noncommissioned officers, led by one warrant officer and one
captain. Armed with M-4 rifles and light machine guns, they
live, travel and work with local troops. They patrol isolated
villages in ordinary Toyota pickups, talking to the
inhabitants?and never go anywhere without someone who speaks
the local language. They have been trained to assimilate local
customs and sensibilities as carefully as possible. Many of
them sported full beards until a few weeks ago, when a news
photo of a whiskery Green Beret shook up the brass in
Washington. A smooth-cheeked adult male is a strange sight for
rural Afghans, but the generals ordered all troops to shave
immediately.
Still, people back home?Pentagon brass and civilians
alike?are asking why terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden
and Mullah Mohammed Omar are still running loose. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly dressed down Gen. Dan
McNeill in July for failing to capture more ?high-value
targets.? Such impatience was likely a factor in launching
Mountain Sweep. ?It?s the victory of form over substance,
substituting action for results,? says a Western diplomat who
is worried about increasing complaints and warnings from areas
where conventional operations are taking place. ?It?s thinking
if you do a lot of stuff, something will happen. Something
will, but it might not be what you want. The unhappiness is
building.?
Villagers have made no secret of that unhappiness. In
the village of Marzak, several witnesses say that 82d troops
chased down a mentally ill man, pushed him to the ground,
handcuffed him and then took turns taking photos of themselves
pointing a gun to his head. The office of Zormat administrator
Sadiqi was flooded with complaints about the actions of some
82d units. ?They knocked down doors, pouring into the homes,
terrifying everybody, beating people, mistreating people,?
says Sadiqi. He says villagers demanded: ?Why do the Americans
come here and search our women? We don?t need this kind of
government!?
After the mission, the two SF teams submitted an
?after-action review.? NEWSWEEK has not seen the document, but
sources say it describes in detail the problems the teams
witnessed and suggests ways to avoid such problems in the
future. The report set off a storm of recriminations. Col.
James Huggins, commander of Task Force Panther, of which the
Third Battalion is a part, says every platoon and squad leader
in the battalion was questioned under oath, and their
statements did not support the teams? charges. ?I can?t tell
you 100 percent these things didn?t happen,? says Huggins.
?All I can tell you is I looked, and can?t find any evidence
that they did.? Officers involved have been accused of leaking
classified reports to NEWSWEEK, and have been subjected to
internal investigations.
Even as he defends his troops, Huggins says he?s
working to avoid problems in the future by increasing
?cultural awareness? training, bringing in female military
police to search Afghan women and keeping supplies of new
locks on hand to replace those that are cut off during
searches. As some Green Berets see it, the damage has already
been done. Told that more operations like Mountain Sweep are
being planned, one Special Forces NCO says: ?It?s over, then.
We might as well go home, because we?ll never succeed with big
ops like that.? Even so, Mike sticks up for the conventional
Army. ?Some SF guys will tell you we don?t need regular forces
out here, that we can do it all by ourselves,? he said. ?But
that?s impossible. The question is, how do you use those
forces?? He recommends a model that has been successful in
Afghanistan?pairing an A team with a company of regular
infantry. ?We need their muscle and firepower to support us
when we go after the bad guys. But they need our brains,
experience and skills to get the mission done,? Mike says. ?If
you establish ******* with the people?establish you are not an
occupying army?and prove you are here to support the
transitional government, they will tell you where to find Al
Qaeda.? Among the Special Forces, the hope is that the U.S.
command can learn from the mistakes of Mountain Sweep and get
the job done right.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
By Colin Soloway
NEWSWEEK
Oct. 7 issue ? One afternoon in August, a U.S. Special
Forces A team knocked at the door of a half-ruined mud
compound in the Shahikot Valley. The servicemen were taking
part in Operation Mountain Sweep, a weeklong hunt for Qaeda
and Taliban fugitives in eastern Afghanistan.
THE MAN OF THE HOUSE, an elderly farmer, let the
Americans in as soon as his female relatives had gone to a
back room, out of the gaze of strange men. Asked if there were
any weapons in the house, the farmer proudly showed them his
only firearm, a hunting rifle nearly a century old. When the
team had finished searching, carefully letting the women stay
out of sight, the farmer served tea. The Americans thanked him
and walked toward the next house.
They didn?t get far before the team?s captain looked
back. Six paratroopers from the 82d Airborne, also part of
Mountain Sweep, were lined up outside the farmer?s house,
preparing to force their way in. ?I yelled at them to stop,?
says the captain, ?but they went ahead and kicked in the
door.? The farmer panicked and tried to run, and one of the
paratroopers slammed him to the ground. The captain raced back
to the house. Inside, he says, other helmeted soldiers from
the 82d were attempting to frisk the women. By the time the
captain could order the soldiers to leave, the family was in a
state of shock. ?The women were screaming bloody murder,?
recalled the captain, asking to be identified simply as Mike.
?The guy was in tears. He had been completely dishonored.?
The official story from both the 82d Airborne and the
regular Army command is that Operation Mountain Sweep was a
resounding success. Several arms caches were found and
destroyed, and at least a dozen suspected Taliban members or
supporters were detained for questioning. But according to
Special Forces, Afghan villagers and local officials living in
or near the valley, the mission was a disaster. The witnesses
claim that American soldiers succeeded mainly in terrorizing
innocent villagers and ruining the ******* that Special Forces
had built up with local communities. ?After Mountain Sweep,
for the first time since we got here, we?re getting rocks
thrown at us on the road in Khowst,? says Jim, a Green Beret
who has been operating in the area for the past six months.
Special Forces members say that Mountain Sweep has probably
set back their counterinsurgency and intelligence operations
by at least six months.
Officers in the 82d insist their men did nothing
wrong. In response to NEWSWEEK queries, public-affairs
officers characterized the Special Forces involved in Mountain
Sweep as ?prima donnas? who were damaging the war effort by
complaining to the press. Yet at a time when Washington is
talking about expanding the mission in Afghanistan and
increasing the number of large-scale operations like Mountain
Sweep?and when Qaeda allies are stepping up terrorist attacks
against the fragile government in Kabul?the criticism raises
serious questions about the best strategy for fighting the
low-intensity war.
Shahikot is where Al Qaeda and Taliban forces fought
their last major battle against the Americans back in March.
Some 50 soldiers from several Special Forces A teams have been
operating in eastern Afghanistan?s Paktia and Khowst provinces
ever since. They?ve been working to win the villagers? trust
and cooperation?and largely succeeding, as NEWSWEEK found
while accompanying some of them for two weeks on operations
shortly before Mountain Sweep began. ?The Americans in Gardez
who have Toyota trucks, they are good guys,? says Jan Baz
Sadiqi, 46, district administrator in Zormat, the valley?s
population center. ?They don?t break into houses, and they
don?t terrorize people.?
Then on Aug. 19, American commanders sent some 600
action-hungry members of the Army?s 82d Airborne Division,
Third Battalion, charging into Zormat and the Shahikot area.
?Those guys were crazy,? said one Special Forces NCO who was
there. ?We just couldn?t believe they were acting that way.
Every time we turned around they were doing something stupid.
We?d be like, ?Holy s?t, look at that! Can you believe this!?
? Another said: ?They were acting like bin Laden was hiding
behind every door. That just wasn?t the way to be acting with
civilians.? Special Forces working in the region say that
since Mountain Sweep, the stream of friendly intelligence on
weapons caches, mines and terrorist activity has dried up.
The Special Forces have often had a stormy
relationship with the rest of the Army. Conventional
commanders sometimes regard the elite fighters as arrogant
cowboys. Special Forces members respond that the regular Army
is too rigid for the painstaking job of fighting a
low-intensity conflict. ?The conventional military has a
conventional mind-set,? said an SF officer. ?It does not work
when you have crooks and terrorists and all kinds of bad guys
who blend into the population.? In Afghanistan, the A teams
have been out in the field, cultivating the friendship of
villagers and tracking down terrorists. At the same time,
regular soldiers like those of the 82d were, until August,
mostly confined to their bases, just itching to get out and do
the job for which they were trained.
In Shahikot, that wasn?t the job that needed doing.
?The 82d is a great combat unit,? said a Special Forces NCO
who took part in the mission. ?A lot of us on the teams came
out of the 82d. But they are trained to advance to contact and
kill the enemy. There was no ?enemy? down there.? The
remaining Taliban forces melted into the civilian population
after Operation Anaconda blasted them out of the caves of
Shahikot in March. Since then, the Afghan war has become
basically a low-intensity guerrilla conflict, with Taliban and
Qaeda fighters operating in small cells, emerging only to lay
land mines and launch nighttime rocket attacks against the
Americans before disappearing once again.
The Special Forces were created to deal with precisely
that kind of enemy. Each A team is made up of 10 or fewer
noncommissioned officers, led by one warrant officer and one
captain. Armed with M-4 rifles and light machine guns, they
live, travel and work with local troops. They patrol isolated
villages in ordinary Toyota pickups, talking to the
inhabitants?and never go anywhere without someone who speaks
the local language. They have been trained to assimilate local
customs and sensibilities as carefully as possible. Many of
them sported full beards until a few weeks ago, when a news
photo of a whiskery Green Beret shook up the brass in
Washington. A smooth-cheeked adult male is a strange sight for
rural Afghans, but the generals ordered all troops to shave
immediately.
Still, people back home?Pentagon brass and civilians
alike?are asking why terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden
and Mullah Mohammed Omar are still running loose. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly dressed down Gen. Dan
McNeill in July for failing to capture more ?high-value
targets.? Such impatience was likely a factor in launching
Mountain Sweep. ?It?s the victory of form over substance,
substituting action for results,? says a Western diplomat who
is worried about increasing complaints and warnings from areas
where conventional operations are taking place. ?It?s thinking
if you do a lot of stuff, something will happen. Something
will, but it might not be what you want. The unhappiness is
building.?
Villagers have made no secret of that unhappiness. In
the village of Marzak, several witnesses say that 82d troops
chased down a mentally ill man, pushed him to the ground,
handcuffed him and then took turns taking photos of themselves
pointing a gun to his head. The office of Zormat administrator
Sadiqi was flooded with complaints about the actions of some
82d units. ?They knocked down doors, pouring into the homes,
terrifying everybody, beating people, mistreating people,?
says Sadiqi. He says villagers demanded: ?Why do the Americans
come here and search our women? We don?t need this kind of
government!?
After the mission, the two SF teams submitted an
?after-action review.? NEWSWEEK has not seen the document, but
sources say it describes in detail the problems the teams
witnessed and suggests ways to avoid such problems in the
future. The report set off a storm of recriminations. Col.
James Huggins, commander of Task Force Panther, of which the
Third Battalion is a part, says every platoon and squad leader
in the battalion was questioned under oath, and their
statements did not support the teams? charges. ?I can?t tell
you 100 percent these things didn?t happen,? says Huggins.
?All I can tell you is I looked, and can?t find any evidence
that they did.? Officers involved have been accused of leaking
classified reports to NEWSWEEK, and have been subjected to
internal investigations.
Even as he defends his troops, Huggins says he?s
working to avoid problems in the future by increasing
?cultural awareness? training, bringing in female military
police to search Afghan women and keeping supplies of new
locks on hand to replace those that are cut off during
searches. As some Green Berets see it, the damage has already
been done. Told that more operations like Mountain Sweep are
being planned, one Special Forces NCO says: ?It?s over, then.
We might as well go home, because we?ll never succeed with big
ops like that.? Even so, Mike sticks up for the conventional
Army. ?Some SF guys will tell you we don?t need regular forces
out here, that we can do it all by ourselves,? he said. ?But
that?s impossible. The question is, how do you use those
forces?? He recommends a model that has been successful in
Afghanistan?pairing an A team with a company of regular
infantry. ?We need their muscle and firepower to support us
when we go after the bad guys. But they need our brains,
experience and skills to get the mission done,? Mike says. ?If
you establish ******* with the people?establish you are not an
occupying army?and prove you are here to support the
transitional government, they will tell you where to find Al
Qaeda.? Among the Special Forces, the hope is that the U.S.
command can learn from the mistakes of Mountain Sweep and get
the job done right.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.