Posted on 01/09/2005 10:44:33 PM PST by Former Military Chick
U.S. officials would like the Iraqi election to look a lot like Afghanistan's.
The Afghan election Oct. 9 was relatively peaceful. There was so little election day violence that news stories on the vote focused on concerns about fraud and the ink used to mark voters hands.
Some observers say the quiet on election day can be attributed in large part to the work by Special Forces soldiers - many of them from Fort Bragg - to suppress the insurgents who would have tried to disrupt it.
Officials don't think they will be as fortunate in Iraq. The insurgency is much larger and more dangerous than it was in Afghanistan in October.
''Saddam's henchmen are still in play. They understand they have no place in the new Iraq," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense policy think tank. ''The Taliban state was very weak and most of its supporters only supported it to end the fighting."
The Afghan election was peaceful in part because U.S. forces have a better handle on fundamentalist Muslim insurgents. For the past three years, the American strategy has been to provide enough firepower to allow special operations troops to operate freely, Pike said. Much of the success of the election can be attributed to a renewed offensive by the Special Forces in September.
The only reported clash in October between American and Taliban forces was in Char Cheno district in the Uruzgan province. News reports after the battle said that U.S. and Afghan soldiers killed about 40 Taliban fighters. The story was a footnote to the election day coverage and the military released few details.
But interviews with members of the Fort Bragg-based Special Forces team that took part in the fight indicate that it was a major - albeit one-sided - clash that could have had a significant role in preventing the Taliban from disrupting the election in central Afghanistan.
The leaders of the fight on the American side were 10 members of a Special Forces team from Fort Bragg who have since returned from Afghanistan. For security reasons, they would not allow their names to be used.
Rare sight
The team moved from its firebase to the Char Cheno district because of reported Taliban threats. The team was accompanied by 30 armed Hazaras - members of an ethnic and religious minority oppressed by the Taliban.
The soldiers drove into the valley Oct. 7, two days before the election. They said Afghans working in the fields and walking along the roads stopped and stared as the convoy moved through. Americans had not been in the area for a year.
The Special Forces team captain said he was excited about the mission because it gave him free reign to go after the Taliban.
''I didn't have to ask permission for anything," he said.
The team had heard from its sources in the valley that three Taliban leaders were hiding in the valley. As the soldiers' trucks crested the hill overlooking a group of compounds in the valley, they saw three Afghans trying to get away, two of them on motorcycles. The team's medic, manning the .50-caliber machine gun on one of the trucks, fired at the men on the motorcycles. One was wounded. The captain cut down another with his M-4 rifle. The third man escaped to the village bazaar.
The team's operations sergeant and the Hazaras then went down and cleared the compounds. The Green Berets said the rooms were full of Taliban documents, including money and identification cards and 55-gallon drums of rice and soup. The team also uncovered three videotapes - two of propaganda and one of Taliban fight songs.
As the team cleared out the documents, they could see Taliban fighters massing at the bazaar in the village about 800 meters to the south. They said fighters were streaming in on foot, in trucks and on motorcycles.
The captain knew he and his men could be in trouble. A dust storm was blowing in, making it hard for the soldiers to call in air support. And the 10 Americans and 30 Hazaras were greatly outnumbered.
Making a stand
The team leaders knew that the mountain pass they had used to get into the valley was mined and Taliban fighters were likely preparing an ambush. They decided to make a stand in the saddle between two hills behind the compound.
The team sergeant and operations sergeant and prepared the defensive position. The soldiers parked three Humvees armed with machine guns and grenade launchers at the intersection of three roads in the middle of the saddle. One truck was aiming at a cemetery about 500 meters north of the team's position. The other trucks were facing east and west. Hazara commandos climbed the hills and dug machine gun positions.
''It was like Fort Apache," the operations sergeant said.
The team's junior engineer said he was shocked when he was ordered to place Claymore mines along the team's perimeter. He said the mines have a short killing radius and are used only for close combat.
''If we had to use them, we were in trouble," he said. "I just put in a pinch of Copenhagen and watched the sunset. I knew that night it was game on."
While the team and Hazaras prepared the defenses, the captain got on the radio to call in air cover. He was told, at first, that none was available. But eventually the team's headquarters in Kandahar was able to secure a pair of A-10s to help the team with promises of more air support throughout the night.
Air support
At dusk, the team could make out 60 to 100 fighters in the bazaar.
The senior weapons sergeant was the first to see trucks heading toward the compound near the cemetery. As the Taliban fighters start to spread out in the cemetery, the two A-10s arrived.
''I was really worried until the air got there," the captain said.
A-10s, armed with a powerful 30 mm cannons, can fly low and slow to provide support to troops on the ground.
As the weapons sergeant opened up with a machine gun on a Taliban truck, setting it afire, the A-10s made several runs over the Taliban fighters, firing their 30 mm cannons.
A little later, the A-10s ran low on fuel and had to return to base. They were replaced with an AC-130 - a propeller-driven plane armed with 40 mm and 105 mm cannons and a 25 mm Gatling gun.
The captain had the AC-130 orbit above the town and shoot its 40 mm cannon outside the compounds. Every time the Taliban fighters revealed their position by responding to the gunfire, the AC-130 would destroy the compounds they were in.
The plane flew around the area for more than four hours. At one point, the team located the main command and control compound where most of the fighters were hiding. The captain said the AC-130 leveled it with its 105 mm cannon.
Just before dawn, the captain saw two groups of Taliban fighters massing to attack. One group was in the bazaar and the other at a set of compounds to the west of the team's position. The AC-130 had already left the area. The only air support left was a B-1 bomber. The captain asked the B-1 to wait until the Taliban fighters got into position before dropping its bombs. The team members hunkered down behind their trucks because one of the bombs was going to hit no more than 400 meters away.
The B-1 dropped three 1,000 pound bombs - two on the bazaar and one on the set of compounds.
''The whole sky went pure white for a split second," the captain said.
The Special Forces soldiers said they saw bodies fly through the air after the blast. The compounds and the bazaar burned for the rest of the night. Ammunition cooked off in one of the compounds.
Intelligence reports
The team didn't wait around to celebrate its victory. Just before dawn, the Green Berets and the Hazara commandos packed up and left the valley.
The soldiers said that later intelligence reports indicated that close to 100 fighters were killed, including two men close to Mullah Omar, the Taliban's founder. The men were in the area teaching fighters how to make roadside bombs, the captain said.
The next morning, about 300 Taliban fighters arrived in the village. According to the team's sources, they were looking for the Special Forces soldiers, whom they called "Bush's Boys."
The captain later learned that a $200,000 bounty had been placed on his head by the Taliban after the one-sided battle at Char Cheno.
He took it as a compliment for him and his team.
Staff writer Kevin Maurer can be reached at maurerk@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3587.
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