How one US soldier averted a massacre

“We were like newborn babes trying to get used to the environment, trying to get used to the people,” Captain Jason Amerine, of the US Army 5th Special Forces Group, said. “I’ve got to admit, I was almost giddy because it was like out of a movie.”

And so began a six-week crash course in 21st-century warfare, waged by satellite telephone and mule train, which took anti-Taleban allies to within reach of Kandahar.

Speaking in Germany after he was airlifted out of Afghanistan, one of the survivors of last week’s disastrous friendly fire incident, which killed three of his men, Captain Amerine provided the first glimpse of what American and British special forces have been doing on the ground in Afghanistan.

In the process, he and his men can lay claim to one of the pivotal roles in the war, helping anti-Taleban forces in the south to build critical momentum.

The mission was to help Hamid Karzai, then a little-known tribal leader, and began with their night-time landing in a valley deep into Taleban territory.

Critical to its success would be how Captain Amerine, from Honolulu, would relate to Mr Karzai, now head of the country’s interim Government but then an exiled politician with little more than a rabble militia to his name.

Shortly after the Americans dropped on to Afghan soil, a voice came out of the darkness introducing himself as Mr Karzai. After loading the latest US military equipment on to waiting mules, they trekked through the night, unnerved that their Afghan allies waved torches as they went.

For the next three weeks, Captain Amerine and Mr Karzai planned their campaign, using a village of a few dozen mud huts as their base. Starting from scratch, they had to build a force capable of taking on the Taleban.

The Americans arranged for food and blanket drops for the locals, as well as arms and ammunition — and Mr Karzai and Captain Amerine sized each other up. “I had to get to know that he was more than just another politician and he had to get to know what my underlying agenda was. I was real careful in the beginning not to be very pushy,” the officer told The Washington Post. “I drank a lot of tea with Hamid Karzai.”

Mr Karzai regarded the town of Tarin Kot, 70 miles north of Kandahar and important to the Taleban mystique, as the key. After days of diplomacy on his satellite telephone and able to boast of ever-increasing numbers, the Afghan chief declared that it was ready to fall.

“We piled on and had this crazy convoy and drove right into Tarin Kot. Every kind of vehicle, soldiers armed to the teeth hanging on,” Captain Amerine said.

The victors wanted time to eat, but Captain Amerine was nervous about reports that the Taleban were returning to attack. “They forced me to sit and eat a little bit,” he said, before organising a defence of the town, calling in airstrikes and helping to repel a Taleban convoy.

They learnt later, from captured Talebs, that they had arrived in town just in time to avert a catastrophe. The returning convoy was under orders to slaughter women and children as well as men, to make an example.

Captain Amerine said: “When we turned back that convoy, the high religious heads came over to Hamid’s headquarters and said if the Americans weren’t here, we’d all be dead now. Basically, from that point on, our relationshiop was solid with the Pashtun tribes. Hamid told me word spread all the way down to around Kandahar. The impression Hamid had was that was the Taleban’s last-ditch attack. We broke the back of the Taleban that day.”

Within days, the stray bomb dropped in their midst. Captain Amerine, who has shrapnel in one leg and lost one eardrum and 50 per cent of the hearing in his other ear, wants his dead comrades to be remembered for what they achieved, not how they died.

He said: “It was a horrible way to end it, but the surrender of Kandahar was coming and my friend was Prime Minister of Afghanistan.”

They learnt later, from captured Talebs, that they had arrived in town just in time to avert a catastrophe. The returning convoy was under orders to slaughter women and children as well as men, to make an example. Captain Amerine said: “When we turned back that convoy, the high religious heads came over to Hamid’s headquarters and said if the Americans weren’t here, we’d all be dead now.

...wants his dead comrades to be remembered for what they achieved, not how they died."

...

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