Reports varied on how many Taliban had participated in the attack, but conservative estimates put the figure as low as a few hundred. It seemed, in short, that the Afghan government had abandoned the city with barely a fight. It was an unpleasant turn of events, but few could claim that it was a surprise. The city had come under repeated attack in the spring, and morale among government forces was low as high-level corruption sapped even basic supplies like food, water, and fuel.
Early reports were still arriving from the field, and Gen. Campbell knew it would be weeks before the full picture emerged. He requested an urgent video teleconference with the leaders of the Afghan army’s 209th Corps in Kunduz to hear about their planned response to the crisis. He needed to know that they had a clear plan to regain control before heading to Washington to advocate for continuing the mission.
DR. CUA BARELY REGISTERED the battle outside on the first day. Her scrubs were covered in blood. Her hands were washed raw after she performed many consecutive surgeries without a break. She was dimly aware of the rattle of gunfire and explosions outside. Inside the hospital, it had been a battle against time, triaging the patients in the crowded emergency room waiting area. She couldn’t imagine how her Afghan colleagues were coping. This was their home after all. At the gates, hospital staff had worked through the day, steadily admitting patients and relatives one by one, taking names.
Each patient was allowed one accompanying family member, but the rule was difficult to enforce when relatives showed up with multiple children. Many of the patients streaming in wore mismatched uniforms and were assumed to be opposition fighters. The staff at the gates had to explain to each of them the hospital’s key rule: no weapons or uniforms inside. The primary goal was to keep the hospital safe. Médecins Sans Frontières treated all victims of war, regardless of their affiliation.
Dr. Cua had been dismayed to find out earlier in the day that the rest of the team at the residential compound had been evacuated. That meant there was no one left to relieve the workers at the hospital in the evening, and it was unclear if they’d missed their opportunity to be evacuated. She was asked what she wanted to do and weighed her options.
There were two factors to consider. One was the chance of actually making it to the airport. The sound of gunfire reminded her of the battle still raging in the streets. Would she get caught in the crossfire, like so many patients, or worse, kidnapped by Taliban? The second consideration was the lives of the patients at the hospital, and all those to come in the days ahead. If she fled now, who would perform the life-or-death surgeries that she could provide? What message would this send to her Afghan colleagues left behind? She didn’t see any choice but to stay.
Around six p.m., a white Toyota Corolla pulled up at the gates. The driver was a middle-aged man with a long beard; he carried a modified Kalashnikov, a sign of stature. Three men who seemed to be bodyguards sat in the back. At the far end of the street, a Taliban fighter armed with a Kalashnikov stood guard. A caretaker approached the car to speak to the bearded driver and then ran inside to find Dr. Nasim.
After a few minutes Dr. Nasim appeared. He was distracted by the emergencies piling up inside the hospital. Supplies were low, the hospital staff were terrified, and places to create makeshift beds were running out. He walked briskly to the gate to see what the visitors wanted. He noticed the watchman standing on the corner. So this was somebody important. He peered into the vehicle and immediately recognized the driver. He had a long, black beard and close-set eyes and wore a turban.
It was Mullah Salam, the Taliban’s shadow governor of Kunduz province. US intelligence had spent years hunting for him, and here he was out in the open in the middle of the city.
“The area is now under our control,” he told Dr. Nasim. “If anyone bothers you, let that man know.” He gestured at the watchman on the corner. “We know you provide free health care, and we appreciate it. We want you to keep the hospital running, and we will respect your impartiality,” he said.
Dr. Nasim nodded. The car carrying Mullah Salam sped off before there was time to process what had just happened.
In Kabul, Guilhem Molinie, Médecins Sans Frontières’ country director, was relieved to hear that the Taliban planned to respect the impartiality of the hospital. His main concern now was that the hospital might be struck by a stray rocket or accidentally targeted in a US airstrike. He contacted the US military to verify, once again, that the hospital’s GPS coordinates were on the no-strike list, against which all airstrikes were cross-checked. It included entities or objects protected under international law and the rules of engagement. The US military confirmed that the hospital was on it.
Despite the assurances, Guilhem found it difficult to know whether keeping the hospital open was the right thing to do. The team on the ground wanted to stay. Nonessential staff had been evacuated. Staying endangered the staff, but they had been preparing for an escalation in hostility all summer, and their services were needed now more than ever. The trauma hospital in Kunduz had treated 137 wounded patients, including 26 children, by ten p.m. The majority were victims of gunshot wounds with severe abdominal, limb, or head injuries who would almost certainly have died without immediate medical attention.
HUTCH spent the following day in contact with the two teams in Kunduz; he coordinated the moving of reinforcements and assets to help secure the airfield, the Afghan government’s last stand in the province. He dispatched three members of a third team, ODA 3135, and a combat controller to Kunduz to accompany a fresh contingent of Afghan commandos normally based at Camp Morehead. It was increasingly difficult to follow the situation from afar, and he realized he had to get to Camp Pamir as soon as possible to take control of the mishmash of US and Afghan forces.
Hutch, the last US soldier to touch down at the airfield, arrived around seven thirty p.m. on September 29, 2015, and went straight into a briefing with the Kunduz team. General Abdul Hamid, the commander of the Afghan army’s 209th Corps, appeared just as they were wrapping up. The Taliban had started to attack the northern section of the airfield, he told them. The Ktah Khas unit was responding to the crisis but was unlikely to be able to hold the perimeter indefinitely. The Afghan army was already vacating the airfield, he said, and he advised the Americans to do the same before it was too late.
“Please don’t abandon the perimeter!” Hutch exclaimed, dismayed. “My guys will go out there and strengthen the position.”
Gen. Hamid looked uncomfortable. It was clear that his force had lost all confidence in the situation, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. Hutch turned to the teams and ordered them to head for the perimeter and do everything possible to stop the Taliban from breaching the base. They quickly sketched out a plan, took any vehicles they could find at the camp—most were unarmored—and headed toward the northern gates with the Afghan commandos.
A scene of complete chaos awaited them there. Hundreds of Afghan men in various stages of undress ran toward them in waves. Some were still in uniform, others in civilian clothes, and some seemed to be stripping off their apparel midflight, escaping on foot and in vehicles, dumping their weapons on the way.
“Get back here, you cowards!” others called after them, shouting for them to stay behind and fight.
The Ktah Khas had a truck at the vehicle gate mounted with a heavy machine gun to stop Taliban from breaching the base. The US teams took the control tower and spread out to nearby buildings to reinforce the Afghan commandos, establishing positions at the pedestrian entrances. Nearly everyone was riding in unarmored Ford Rangers or on Kawasaki quad bikes, and exposed to gunfire. One team pushed back a group of fighters attempting to enter on foot through a pedestrian gate. Another tried to take out a Soviet ZPU, an antiaircraft gun, that was firing rounds at the control tower.
The arrival of an AC-130 gunship to support the soldiers battling to save the airfield proved to be the game changer. The gunship was the deadliest in the US arsenal and carried an array of heavy weapo
ns: a 25mm Gatling gun, a Bofors 40mm cannon, and a 105mm Howitzer that could flatten buildings. It had sophisticated sensors, had navigation and fire control systems to visually or electronically identify targets, and could engage simultaneously with different weapons. The Taliban, unaware that any Americans remained at the base, were unprepared for airstrikes, which had become rare following the withdrawal of most foreign troops. The gunship took out a second antiaircraft gun located outside the airfield, and the volley of fire sent the insurgents running for cover, halting the attack.
The US teams, working with the Afghan commandos, fought through the remainder of the night to strengthen the perimeter, convincing the regular army troops that had stayed behind to return to their positions guarding the base. The gunship continued to hunt down pockets of Taliban fighters until it was clear the attack was over. At sunrise, the Green Berets were satisfied that the base was under control, and they returned to Camp Pamir to plan the next step. Afghan forces lining the sides of the road cheered as they passed through.
Hutch gathered everyone together to work on a plan to reestablish a foothold in Kunduz city. The Afghans wouldn’t go in without them. The teams were skeptical that the Afghan army was sending reinforcements to hold any ground that was cleared, but they dispersed to prepare for the mission and to refine the CONOP, or concept of operations, that would have to be submitted to higher-ups for approval. Hutch left to join the video teleconference that Gen. Campbell had requested with the Afghan army’s leadership in Kunduz.
Gen. Campbell wanted to understand the situation before heading back to Washington. There were signs that Kunduz was about to be the start of a much bigger crisis. Afghan forces were caving in the northeast. To the south, the Taliban had cut off supply routes through Baghlan to the capital. The entire chain of command, including Hutch’s battalion commander, Col. Johnston, and the commander of US and NATO Special Operations in Afghanistan, Major General Sean Swindell, was on the call as well.
Gen. Campbell’s forehead was creased into a frown. The top US commander had little patience for ceremony and dived into questions about how the Afghan army planned to regain control. The 209th Corps commander, Gen. Hamid, hadn’t brought a translator and stumbled over his words. His English seemed to be evaporating fast. The call was not going well.
Hutch knew that the problem was more than simply a language barrier. He had just witnessed the near loss of the airfield and recognized that it was difficult for Gen. Hamid to admit that he’d lost control of the army, or that local forces were refusing to return to the city. He decided to jump into the discussion before it deteriorated any further.
“Sir, there is a plan,” Hutch said. “We’re going to move into the city with them.”
He laid it out. The ODAs would accompany the patchwork of Afghan commando units that had arrived to defend Kunduz, help them regain control of key infrastructure like the governor’s office and police headquarters, and push outward. He guessed there were perhaps 150 Taliban fighters in Kunduz city. Once the Taliban realized that American troops, backed by US air support, had arrived to reinforce the Afghans and were serious about regaining the city, they would likely disperse.
“I really believe that once the Afghan forces see that the enemy isn’t as strong as they thought, they’ll come back and man their posts,” Hutch said, “and we can take the next step as advisers.”
Gen. Campbell appeared satisfied and told Hutch to get it done. “We’re going with them, and we’re going to make sure this happens,” Hutch said.
Hutch left the conference feeling as though he had been charged with a vital operation—perhaps the most important operation since a small team of Green Berets had led an alliance of Afghan warlords to victory against the Taliban in 2001. He believed the mission had to happen as soon as possible, and failure was not an option. After experiencing the horrors of urban combat as a platoon leader in Ramadi, Iraq, he knew that only a swift response would save Kunduz city from a drawn-out and bloody battle.
Back at Camp Pamir, Hutch checked on the teams’ progress. The lack of armored vehicles was an even bigger problem now that they planned to infiltrate the city. The Kunduz team had only the four Humvees that it had brought from Mazar-e Sharif a few weeks earlier. The other Green Berets, along with their supporting personnel, had all arrived by helicopter, without vehicles. The Afghan commandos that had flown in from Kabul didn’t have trucks either.
In the end, the teams scraped together a few unarmored Ford Rangers, open-door ground-mobility vehicles, and Kawasaki quad bikes to carry forty-one US and NATO forces.1 These were far from ideal modes of transport into a Taliban-controlled city, but they would have to do. It took several more hours to find vehicles for the various Afghan commando units that had flown in. The Afghan army’s 209th Corps had lost many of its vehicles and was unwilling to give up its remaining ones. The US teams also failed to persuade the locally based 10th Special Operations Kandak commandos, who had held out in the city until the last moment, to join the mission. That meant none of the Afghan forces accompanying them had been to the city before.
As the sun went down on September 30, the teams made their final preparations, inventorying weapons and ammunition, checking communications systems, and coming up with work-arounds to make up for the various shortages of equipment. They expected to stay in the city at least overnight since Afghan reinforcements seemed unlikely to arrive soon. They had a single 1:50,000-scale map of Kunduz between them, and the only printer left at the camp refused to produce any more, disgorging large, magenta-colored blobs instead. The Afghan commandos had no radios and would have to rely on cell phones for communication, another disadvantage as mobile networks were unreliable.
Hutch submitted the CONOP, titled “Kunduz Clearing Patrol,” under the Resolute Support mission to train, advise, and assist Afghan forces. The plan was to drive into the city of Kunduz along the main highway, which the US military called Route Milky Way, at night. Inside the city, the US and Afghan teams would recapture key administrative buildings and establish a foothold at the governor’s office. If the mission succeeded, no one would know about the US role in the mission, and it would look like the government had recaptured the city.
CONOPs had to be signed off on by the entire chain of command. The Special Operations Task Force (SOTF) first approved the plan at the battalion level, led by Col. Johnston. The SOJTF, which included all US and NATO Special Operations forces in Afghanistan and was led by Gen. Swindell, had to sign off next. The SOJTF then shared it with RS headquarters. The mission came back approved under Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, the unilateral US counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan to hunt down al Qaeda.
Hutch was surprised: the Kunduz operation had nothing to do with al Qaeda. The SOJTF didn’t offer any further guidance except the OFS rules of engagement, which were more offensive in nature. He decided to play it safe and continue operating under RS rules, which allowed them to fire or call in air support only in self-defense. He had one last bureaucratic hurdle to clear. He was waiting for the Afghan commandos accompanying them on the mission to be approved as persons designated special status, which identified them as an integral part of US defenses on the ground. It was another of the legal loopholes that allowed the United States to carry out airstrikes in support of the commandos.
The teams did some quick rehearsals, and Hutch delegated the mission brief to the Kunduz team. A few minutes before the operation was due to start, their Fox, the intelligence sergeant, approached Hutch with a fresh report from a trusted source in the city.
“He says there are around a thousand Taliban fighters in the city,” he said, “and they have set up heavy weapons in defensive lines along the highway.”
Hutch was concerned, but he found it hard to believe the Taliban could have so many fighters in the city. He thought there were perhaps 150 at best. But it was clear the teams would run into stiff resistance at least at the start, and most of his guys were riding in unarmored vehicles.
When the brief was completed, Hutch stepped forward to rally the soldiers on the importance of the mission, and how Afghanistan’s future was at stake.
“This isn’t an ordinary mission to disrupt a threat network,” he told them. “The whole world is watching, and I know you will not disappoint. I’m honored to be alongside you. Gladiators, I salute you. Prep the trucks.”
The soldiers made final checks and boarded their vehicles. They were then delayed by an hour while looking for fuel for the Afghan commandos after the 209th Corps initially refused to give up its supply. At eleven p.m., they were finally ready. A small group of Afghan soldiers waved and shouted encouragement. Hutch wondered if this was the reinforcement the Afghan generals had promised in order to hold the city after it was cleared. It wasn’t much, but perhaps it was a good sign. The camp lights faded as they headed into the night.
Hutch saw himself as a philosopher by day, but he was never more in his element than in the middle of a fight. Combat appealed to something visceral. He felt invincible while at the same time convinced that each moment might be his last. He was calm, totally focused on coordinating the convoy and its various elements, prepared to drive into battle. He hoped the pep talk had fired the guys up. In his experience, the Taliban preferred not to stay and fight when faced with overwhelming US firepower. An AC-130 gunship circled above them. He figured that a few examples of its destructive force would be enough to scare the Taliban off.
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