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With the Green Berets in Afghanistan (2)

A SELF-SUSTAINED UNIT The men had expected to encounter bumps like this, and much worse, along the way. The A-team had been together for more than two years, training all over the Middle East and Central Asia for just such a mission. Though almost none had seen combat, they had been taught to thrive in the worst of conditions. Unlike infantry soldiers, who rigidly follow the commands of their superiors, the small Special Forces teams are expected to operate as a self-sustained unit, completely on their own, without continual direction from above. If a problem arises, they've got to solve it themselves; if their plan falls apart midmission, they have to come up with a new one; if they don't know the local language, they quickly learn it. More cerebral than their Airborne or Ranger colleagues, Green Berets like to say that their training_physically brutal as it is_favors brains over brawn. Team leader Dean quotes Shakespeare from memory. Mike, the weapons expert, keeps Teddy Roosevelt's passage about men who fight "in the arena" in his diary. The young and the mindlessly gung-ho rarely make the cut. In an Army of fresh-out-of-high-school infantrymen, Special Forces are typically in their mid-30s and have college degrees.

After lengthy Afghan pleasantries, Atta got down to business. He told the Americans that he had 2,000 troops in the Darya Balkh Valley, south of Mazar-e Sharif. On the narrow, winding mountain trails, the trip would take more than a day. The team split in two, one group staying with Atta, the other circling around the mountains. Special Forces A-teams are designed to break in half. Each team of 12 has two experts in each specialty, from weaponry to communications_allowing the team to become a mirror of itself, carrying out its mission from two different locations. (In Afghanistan, the team had a 13th man, an elite Air Force Special Operations airman who helped direct airstrikes from the ground.)

The men slowly made their way down the narrow road, flanked by hidden land mines on both sides. The Afghans provided horses, but saddled them with so much gear that four of the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Two others broke their legs on the badly rutted terrain. The thousands of Northern Alliance soldiers who met the team at the other end were a sorry-looking lot. The Americans got on the radio and called in for an airdrop of uniforms, shoes, blankets, food and ammo.

>FIRST STOP: AQ KOPRUK Clothed and fed, the Afghans quickly warmed to the U.S. soldiers, who began drawing up a list of targets they needed to hit on their way to Mazar-e Sharif. First up: Aq Kopruk, a Taliban town a few miles away. The aim was to catch the enemy utterly by surprise in a massive air-bombing raid that would break the Taliban's hold over the region. Split up on two mountainsides, one part of the team called in the airstrikes while the other "painted" the targets with lasers, guiding the bombs to their marks.

The bloody accuracy of the attacks instantly lifted the spirits of Atta and his troops. During one bombing raid, Stan, the A-team's warrant officer, was showing Atta how the lasers worked. Just as Atta put his eye up to the viewfinder, an American bomb obliterated a distant target. Atta could see the bodies of Taliban soldiers blown into the air. "We wanted to show him we could help him beyond boots and clothes," says Dean. "From that point on, all Atta wanted was more laser." In a matter of days, Aq Kopruk fell.

The A-team won more trust by treating dozens of wounded Northern Alliance soldiers. The team was among the first American soldiers to deal with serious land-mine injuries in the country. On the night before the attacks on Aq Kopruk, as they tried to get a few hours of sleep on the floor of a cramped mud hut, wounded fighters started streaming in. One Afghan soldier had stepped on a land mine, blowing off most of his leg, leaving just a mangled bone protruding beneath his knee. His fellow soldiers had heard there were American doctors nearby, and lugged the man up the hillside for five hours on top of an old door. Jason, one of the team's two medics, had ordered an amputation saw before he left the United States, but it hadn't arrived in time. Improvising, he stretched the man out on a blanket in the mud courtyard and used his Leatherman pocket tool to saw through the bone. All the while Mike, the team's senior weapons man, kept an eye out for a mangy stray dog who tried to jump out and gnaw at the bone.

MAINTAINING MOMENTUM The team spent just one night in Aq Kopruk. They didn't want to lose the momentum of their first attack, or give the fleeing Taliban forces time to regroup. Stealing two Taliban trucks and one car, they ditched their horses and continued north toward Mazar-e Sharif with Atta and his men. Along the way, they called in more airstrikes. After guiding the bombs to their targets, the men moved through a gorge dotted with caves, the road littered with bodies of Taliban soldiers and the charred carcasses of bombed-out trucks.

Meanwhile another U.S. Special Forces team was also heading to Mazar from a different direction. It accompanied Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Northern Alliance commander and Atta's rival for control of the city. A third Northern Alliance commander, Mohaqqeq Mohammed, was on the way as well.

On Nov. 9, Atta's men met up with Dostum and his troops, about an hour's drive south of Mazar-e Sharif. As Taliban soldiers, demoralized and outgunned, fled Mazar, Atta pressed on to the city. He arrived in Mazar the next day with the A-team, to cheering crowds. Screaming and crying, men, women and children rushed over to thank the American soldiers, greeting them like a rescuing army. "It was surreal," recalls Mike, the weapons man. "We didn't know what to expect. We were locked and loaded, and didn't know whether there were any more Taliban. I wondered whether it was the same feeling the Allies had when they liberated Paris." The men were astonished to have captured the city so quickly. They had expected to spend a long, miserable winter camped out in the mountains. None thought they would defeat the Taliban until at least the spring.

15 MINUTES OF I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME In the months since the fall of Mazar, something resembling normal life has slowly returned. People watch TV, take photographs and listen to music. Children fly kites, a favorite pastime. Most women still wear burqas, but now with high-heeled sandals and painted toenails. The A-team has shifted its focus from fighting to diplomacy_a key component of Special Forces training. The men cheerfully endure the seemingly endless rounds of greetings and tea drinking that precede any meeting with local leaders. "First it's 15 minutes of I love you and you love me," says one team member. "Then drink tea, then eat fruit, then eat some more nuts and eat candy and talk a bit." By now, the soldiers all have basic Dari down.

Yet the men know better than to let their guard down. Tensions between Atta, Dostum and Mohaqqeq, the three competing Northern Alliance commanders, persist. The interim government named Dostum deputy Defense minister and Atta commander of Northern Forces. Each appointed a mayor to govern Mazar, leaving the city with two competing administrations. Heavily armed fighters loyal to all three commanders patrol the city, keeping an uneasy balance of power. A-team members never move out of their secure compound without their weapons, and keep four-wheel-drive vehicles loaded with ammunition, water, food and fuel. As one team member put it, they don't like it when people on the street come up behind them.

The caution may have saved their lives. Last Friday night, as the A-team drove through the city, they suddenly found themselves confronted by men with guns. Instantly, the diplomats once again became soldiers and drew their automatic rifles. Dean, the team leader, told each of his men which attacker to shoot if necessary. Wisely, the Afghans lowered their weapons and moved on. As it turned out, the men weren't Taliban but Northern Alliance fighters loyal to Dostum, flexing their powers and ready to shoot. For Dean and his men, it was a chilling reminder that in Afghanistan, "peace" may just be another word for war. For now, at least, it is a different kind of war than the one a few brave men helped to turn around.