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With the Green Berets in Afghanistan (1)

WITH THE GREEN BERETS IN AFGHANISTAN

By Donatella Lorch
NEWSWEEK Jan. 14 issue

They landed in darkness on an early November night, deep in the mountains of northern Afghanistan. For six hours, they'd hunkered down in the freezing hold of the transport helicopter, tossed by heavy winds, before setting down 6,000 feet above sea level. Shouldering 200-pound packs stuffed with weapons, ammunition and communications gear, the U.S. Army's First Battalion, Fifth Special Forces A-team piled out of the chopper and onto the snowy turf.

The heliocpter retreated, a roar of rotor wash kicking dirt and ice into the men's faces. Then silence. For weeks, the 13-man Green Beret team had trained and studied and obsessed about their mission. They were a tight-knit group, each man trusting the others with his life. Yet it wasn't until the chopper faded from view and the vastness of the landscape came into focus that they realized how far from home they were, and how alone: 90 miles behind enemy lines, in the heart of Taliban territory. To the men, standing in the blackness that night, the mission ahead seemed almost impossible. The team was to find and win the trust of an elusive Northern Alliance commander they knew virtually nothing about and whose language they didn't speak, supply his ragtag team of fighters and then, with his help, storm a key Taliban stronghold, the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. After wresting control from the enemy, they were to restore order and help local leaders begin rebuilding the ravaged city. Along the way, they were to sneak up on armed Taliban camps and caves, helping to laser-guide U.S. bombers to the targets.

DOMINO EFFECT In the harrowing, heroic days that followed, they did just that. The fall of Mazar-e Sharif turned out to be a critical moment in the Afghan war, setting off a domino effect that quickly led to the fall of the major cities of Kabul and Kandahar, and the collapse of Taliban rule. It also provided a dramatic victory for the elite Special Forces, whose daring missions in the past had sometimes gone disastrously wrong.

Though sustained fighting in much of the country has subsided, at least for now, the U.S. servicemen who remain in Afghanistan are still at risk. Last Friday a Green Beret, Sgt. 1/c Nathan Ross Chapman, was shot and killed when he was ambushed by enemy fighters near the Pakistan border in the east. A CIA agent was also wounded in the attack. U.S. soldiers continue to comb through southern cave complexes looking for Taliban and Qaeda fighters_frustrated that they still have no clue where Mullah Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden might be. At the same time, Special Forces teams remain on hair-trigger alert in Mazar-e Sharif, keeping violence at bay.

Secretive and publicity averse, Special Forces units usually shun outsiders, refusing to divulge details of their missions even years after the shooting stops. But over the past week, a NEWSWEEK reporter was granted round-the-clock access to the Special Forces soldiers who helped capture Mazar-e Sharif, providing an unprecedented, real-time glimpse at an ongoing Green Beret mission_and a look at how foreign wars will likely be fought in the future. In this exclusive report, the soldiers recount how they fought their way to the city, and detail the difficult second phase of their mission: trying to keep peace in a country that for so long has known nothing but war.

Gathering up their gear that first night, the team spotted a campfire in the distance. It was their guides, a shabby group of Afghan fighters dressed in blankets and plastic shoes, trying to get warm over the low flames. In preparation for the mission, the American soldiers had grown their hair long and sported bushy beards. But one look at their underfed, ragged allies made it clear that no one would ever mistake them for locals.

THE TWO ATTAS The Afghans would take them to meet Atta Mohammed, a Northern Alliance commander who was waiting for them in a hamlet miles away. The A-team knew little about him. Preparing for the mission, they'd asked for any information the Army had about Atta Mohammed. They were instead given files on Mohamed Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker.

For the next two days, the men did not sleep as they made their way across the countryside. They were used to working through extreme fatigue and hunger. In training, they routinely performed complex tasks after days or weeks with little food or rest. They followed their guides through the night, down narrow icy trails and across steep drop-offs. Bobby, the team's communications sergeant, looked at the Afghans' skimpy clothing as a way of convincing himself that he wasn't freezing.

At daybreak, they came to the hamlet, a collection of mud huts sheltered by the mountains. Atta, a bearded, 38-year-old former schoolteacher, came out to greet them. One problem quickly became apparent: Atta spoke no English, and none of the A-team members knew Dari, Atta's language. Accomplished linguists, everyone on the team spoke Arabic and at least two other languages. One spoke French, another Chinese. No luck. At last Dean, the team commander, tried Russian, and one of Atta's men answered him. They'd found their translator.