Hammerhead Six

Author's Note

Green Berets don't generally chronicle their adventures, as that goes against our "quiet professional" ethos. For more than a decade, despite urging by journalists, friends, and veterans, I refused to put the story of the Camp Blessing experiment to paper, as the events we lived through seemed too personal. Eventually, though, out of a responsibility to share the valuable lessons we learned with the next generation of unconventional warriors, and also in deference to that part of my soul that has never left an obscure village in the Pech Valley, I decided to write this memoir about what our time in Afghanistan had taught me.

Some of the chapters were written with ease, recounting memories of a modern-day warrior-king and commander in a foreign land. Several chapters were written painfully, reluctantly, and with trembling hands. For the reader who has never been to the Pech Valley, it may be hard to believe that such a place, with such people, really exists. The veteran reader who has had the privilege of placing his boots on that bloody soil will know that it can sometimes feel all too real.

In a country whose past has earned it the sobriquet "Graveyard of Empires," the Pech Valley, in Afghanistan's northeastern Kunar Province, stands out as a particularly brutal killing ground. Here, huddled in the shadow of the Hindu Kush mountains, fiercely independent Pashtun tribesmen have for centuries resisted intrusion in their turbulent affairs. Twice in the nineteenth century they humbled British troops attempting to introduce them to the blessings of Empire. In the 1980s, as the freedom-loving mujahideen, they did the same to an invading Red Army. The Taliban itself was unable to conquer this region. The valley's tribes and clans, engaged endlessly in internecine fighting, unite only to expel foreign invaders. Once that is accomplished, they quickly return to their ancient internal struggles.

The American experience with the Pashtuns of the Pech has not been much different. In 2001, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in the campaign known as Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Even though it drove the Taliban government from power, it left the Pech Valley a sanctuary for Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other fighters who united to resist the American invaders and the new Afghan government. For the following decade it remained a hotbed of tribal animosities and insurgent brutality, as well as a death trap for U.S. troops. If you drew a circle on a map around the places in northeastern Afghanistan that have been particularly deadly for Americans—places like Wanat, Korengal, Ganjgal, and Kamdesh—the Pech River would run through the center of that circle. Ten of the twelve Congressional Medals of Honor that have been earned in Afghanistan were awarded for actions conducted on this violent terrain.

A rare exception to this pattern of bloodshed occurred as OEF was entering its third year. In the fall of 2003, a team of U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) entered the Pech Valley, established the first "A" Camp to be set up since Vietnam, and undertook a struggle against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces for the hearts and minds of the people. These soldiers brought firepower into play when necessary. But as specialists in unconventional warfare (UW), they also repaired schools and clinics, cooperated with village councils in settling disputes, trained local security forces, and created an atmosphere of trust that made them more successful in bringing security to the valley than any outside force had been before. Before this team left the Pech in 2004, hundreds of locals who had fled to Pakistan during the previous decades of conflict were coming home, having heard that the valley was at peace—and that the Americans who had made this possible should be viewed as friends.

This was a dramatic break in a pattern that had lasted for centuries, and at the time this was duly noted by the press and military leaders. Time, U.S. News and World Report, and 60 Minutes II all profiled the Green Berets' success, and senior officers visited their camp hoping to take home replicable lessons from their achievement.

Sadly, once this team of Green Berets left the valley and were replaced, the lessons their unit had learned about cultural sensitivity and mutual respect were forgotten; a more conventional search-and-destroy strategy took over; and very shortly, things reverted to form.

By 2005, the same region that had welcomed the Special Forces troops as peacemakers was the site of the Lone Survivor disaster; two years after that, the Korengal Valley, which runs into the Pech, became known as the deadliest place in Afghanistan. Eventually, more than one hundred Americans lost their lives in the greater Pech Valley. In 2011, after years of effort, it was abandoned by U.S. forces to an uncertain future. As pundits draw lessons from all that went wrong in the Pech and Afghanistan, it may be helpful to remember what, briefly, went right.

The official name of the uniquely successful Special Forces unit was Operational Detachment Alpha 936 (ODA 936). Its code name was Hammerhead Six. It was my privilege to have been their field commander. This is our story, and the story of the Afghan people whom we did our best to serve.

In this account of our time in the Pech Valley, I have tried to be as honest as security concerns would allow, highlighting our mistakes as well as our successes, as mistakes were often the most instructive events. This is not a hero story but a human story of camaraderie, loyalty, sacrifice, risk, and hope. I hope that it will aid both the military student and the civilian interested in understanding the nuances of UW to appreciate the depth and difficulty of this type of warfare.

A U.S. Army field manual defines unconventional warfare as "operations conducted by, with, or through irregular forces in support of a resistance movement, an insurgency, or conventional military operations." In order to be successful at UW, Green Berets work shoulder to shoulder with local soldiers, mercenaries, militiamen, and other indigenous forces. We serve our own country's interests, but to do so effectively our focus, as suggested by our motto De Oppresso Liber ("To Free the Oppressed"), is to improve the lives of locals by freeing them from tyranny. We build tight bonds with our indigenous ("indig") allies—bonds that cannot be feigned or developed with an intent to manipulate. This makes UW an emotional as well as a military investment. In this book, I try to convey what that investment meant to one team operating in the gray zone of northeastern Afghanistan.

The book does not have a political agenda. I do not claim to be an expert in international affairs, U.S. foreign policy, or Afghan demographics. I confine myself to what I witnessed, over several months, in one troubled corner of the War on Terror. I do not describe every operation that ODA 936 conducted in the Pech Valley but rather some key events and topics that I feel best illustrate the story I want to tell.

Because of the sensitive nature of some of our operations, the manuscript was reviewed and edited where appropriate to protect operational security. Narrative details and conversations have been reconstructed from my own memories, those of my team members, and a journal that I kept while in-country. The names of local Afghans have been changed to protect our allies and friends who are still living there.

I dedicate this book to the many patriots—Americans, coalition allies, and Afghans—who have given their lives to end oppression in Afghanistan. We owe it to them to pursue knowledge and improvement so that we can focus on winning the unconventional wars that we fight. I hope this work will honor the sacrifices both of the fallen and of those who struggled against terror in that fabled land and came home carrying the ghosts of Afghanistan with them.

Preface

Kunar Province, November 2003

Along the ridge the column of men moved eastward. Walking single file, they dodged branches and skipped from boulder to boulder with the hardy grace of people at home in the mountains. From a distance, they might have been mistaken for carefree hikers, braving the half-light chill of the Afghan morning. Up close it was clear that their mission was not recreational.

The leader, tall and nimble, wore the black turban that signified his loyalty to the Taliban, the brutal fundamentalist government that a Western coalition had recently driven from power. A few others were similarly dressed, although most wore floppy pakols—the traditional woolen caps of Afghan males. All sported trim beards, and all but one carried firearms.

Someone with an eye for weapons would have seen in these arms the traces of Afghanistan's troubled history. Most of the band carried the Kalashnikov rifles—the jihadi-favored AK-47s—that the Soviets had used in vain against Afghanistan's celebrated "fighters for God," the mujahideen. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these rifles had been taken from slain Russian soldiers in the 1980s, and several of the young men walking along the ridge this morning had inherited their arms from their mujahideen fathers or uncles.

One of the band carried a British-made Lee-Enfield, a bolt-action relic that the CIA had provided the mujahideen for their fight against the Russians. On another's shoulder, resting as casually as a fishing pole, was the thick, deadly tube of a rocket launcher. Two men carried between them a DShK machine gun, while their comrades shared the burden of its ammunition, wearing belts of linked 12.7mm rounds across their chests like lost Mexican revolutionaries.

The one unarmed figure was a youngster—his faint beard betraying his youth—who was last in the line. The knife at his belt suggested that his elders would not outdo him in fierceness, but that was his only weapon. His right hand held a video camera. Every few minutes he would flick it on to film his comrades and then, panning to the right, the scrubby incline that led to the valley below.

Two or three hundred yards down the slope a dirt road ran alongside the Pech River, linking the village of Shamir Kowt, where the men's day had begun, to the American military base at Asadabad, seven miles away. It was on that road, the boy knew, that if Allah willed they would soon shed infidel blood. He was proud of his nation's fighting heritage and he was eager—they were all eager—to be counted among the faithful in this latest war against the West.

That war had been going on for two years, and for these guerrillas it had just taken an ominous turn. Ever since the Americans had driven the Taliban underground, the people of the Pech had resisted the new invaders and sided with the insurgency, just as a generation earlier they had resisted the Russians and sided with the mujahideen. The lifeblood of the insurgency was popular support. But now new players on the scene were disrupting that support.

They were Americans, these new players, but they did not behave like the typical "helmeted ones." They wore full beards, even as the Prophet had demanded, and their dress was like that of any Afghan villager. They were well-trained fighters, but it was not only their fighting skills that made them dangerous. It was that, in their daily patrols up and down the mountain valleys, they were spreading lies among the villagers and the shuras, claiming that they were friends of the Afghan people and only wished to help them build a "new Afghanistan."

Many of the valley's people believed these lies. From the Waygal district in the north to the Korengal in the west, people were welcoming and befriending the bearded infidels. Young villagers were even working with the American soldiers and turning against the insurgency. To the young men on that ridge this morning, this could not be allowed to stand. The bearded Americans must be driven out. A statement must be made: a statement in fire.

The band's leader had cause to be pleased with how the morning had gone so far. His guerrillas, combat ready before dawn, had started the day with prayer, then converged on the Shamir Kowt district house at first light. Peppering it with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and AK-47s, they had dragged the district governor and his staff out of bed, chastised them for befriending the bearded ones, and reminded them of the perils that awaited those who insulted the Prophet or his teachings. Taliban founder Mullah Omar would be pleased, the leader thought, at how fervently he had defended the faith.

But there was more on his agenda than berating weak believers. He knew that the Asadabad base would have learned of the attack within minutes after they had left Shamir Kowt. The Americans would even now be donning their battle armor and rushing recklessly to the aid of their lackeys. They would be driving their vehicles breakneck along the valley road, anticipating a firefight seven miles to the west.

Insh'Allah, they would never get there. Here, two miles east of Shamir Kowt, he would spring his trap, and his men would mete out the Prophet's justice.

Coming to a level patch of ground, the leader stopped. He looked down the rocky slope to the road and smiled. His view of the route the Americans would take began at a bend in the road to the east, toward Asadabad. It ended at a mud hut to the west, toward Shamir Kowt. Between the bend and the hut lay half a mile of open ground. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) had already been placed in the road to immobilize the American vehicles directly in front of their fighting positions. When they arrived, not a tree, not a house, nothing would block his marksmen's view of the would-be rescuers. They would be like rabbits before the pitiless eye of a falcon.

This is the place, he said. Move quickly now.

At his command rifles were unslung, grenade launchers loaded, and the DShK settled in a cleft between two boulders. The ammo belts came off and hundreds of rounds of 12.7mm shells—shells that could pierce all but the heaviest armor—were laid out in readiness for the gunner and his assistant. As the men checked their weapons and loaded fresh magazines, the youngster with the videocam recorded their activity, as if framing instructional shots for a training film.

For a long time since the arrival of the Americans, this band had been hunted. Now, flush from the morning's success, they were feeling lighthearted, hopeful. For the first time in months, they were the hunters. And their quarry, this latest incarnation of unbeliever interference, was about to come into view.

With the trap set, the men waited. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. After twenty minutes, the Taliban leader had a flash of uncertainty: Had he miscalculated the driving time from the base? Or the eagerness of the Americans to demonstrate their prowess? No matter, he told himself. He remembered the saying.

You have the clocks. We have the time.

And then it was time. Dust rising just beyond the bend in the road told him that the rescue party was coming to his guns. He raised his arm, cocking the signal to fire.

Five seconds, six, seven. The front grille of a U.S. Army Humvee rounded the bend, then another, and a third. They were moving fast. In seconds they covered a third of the distance to the hut. They were rattling blindly to the heart of the baited kill zone.

Two dozen Kalashnikovs, a DshK, RPGs, one old Enfield, and a videocam pointed in deadly silence at the open stretch of road. A man with an RPG launcher adjusted his aim. The machine gunner tightened his trigger finger. No one looked at the leader.

They sensed rather than saw it when he dropped his arm.