The Elite

by Ranulph Fiennes

  The Berets were aware that fitting in would play a crucial part in being accepted by the Afghans, so, as part of their preparations, Nutsch and most of his team had begun to grow to beards. In Afghan culture, facial hair was considered a necessary rite of passage for adult males, and any man without a beard was not taken seriously. They also carried with them black and white cotton keffiyehs, which would not only keep them warm when wrapped around their necks and faces, but were also worn by many in the Northern Alliance.

  To help get off to a good start with Dostum, they came bearing gifts: oats for his horses, medical supplies and blankets for his men, and bottles of vodka for Dostum himself. They were aware that Dostum was not your average Muslim warlord. For one, he loved booze, and he was also said to have a liking for hookers. Nutsch knew he would have to bide his time to get to know him, while he also remembered Colonel Mulholland’s warning: ‘Trust no one!’ For that reason, they would have to rely on their training, and their wits, as well as their array of weapons, which included M-4 carbine rifles, grenades, and a 9mm pistol.

  In the dark, the chopper finally located its landing zone in the Darya Suf river valley. Disembarking into the cold desert night, Nutsch and his team found Mike Spann, J. J. Sawyer and Dave Olson of the CIA, as well as some of Dostum’s men, waiting to meet them. Carrying their rucksacks, they followed the men to Dostum’s camp just a few hundred yards away, where they would rest for the night before meeting the general in the morning.

  However, despite the friendly welcome, the men, dressed in their US Army tan fatigues, kept their hands close to their 9mm pistols holstered to their right legs. While they had been warned to trust no one, they were also aware that the Taliban had put a bounty of $100,000 on each of their heads. In a poor country like Afghanistan, this was an absolute fortune. They would need to exhibit extreme caution at all times. For this reason, even their names and insignia had been removed from their uniforms, not only for their own safety, but also so that no one could track them back to their families in the US and do them harm.

  At dawn, Nutsch woke to find that Dostum and his men had arrived from their mountain hideout. Doug Stanton, in his tremendous book 12 Strong, which details the Green Berets’ time in Afghanistan, recalls how Nutsch was sure to obey local customs upon meeting the 6ft-tall, gregarious Dostum for the first time. ‘He put his right hand over his heart and said, “Salaam alaikum. Peace be unto you brother.” ’

  Sitting on a carpet, as Dostum’s men provided local delicacies such as pistachios, almonds and apricots, Nutsch proceeded to offer the general the gifts they’d brought with them. While they were gratefully received, particularly the vodka, it was clear that Dostum would have really preferred bombs. But, Nutsch had something far better to offer: laser-guided bombs dropped by the US Air Force with incredible precision. Dostum was eager to see these in action – immediately.

  In order to do this, Nutsch would require the exact coordinates of the Taliban’s position. This would involve travelling to Dostum’s mountain hideout on horseback, something hardly any of the men had been trained to do. But, within minutes of Dostum’s proposal, half of Nutsch’s team were clambering onto ragged horses and, not wanting to show the Afghans they were apprehensive in any way, they set off on the arduous journey.

  Learning to ride as they went along, some of the men found their horses to have minds of their own and were almost sent hurtling off the sides of the mountain. Others were unused to sitting in saddles and soon developed painful blisters that were red raw. With a little bit of luck and persistence, most of them soon got the hang of how to handle the animals, which was just as well since, for the coming weeks, they would be the Special Forces’ primary means of transport.

  In an interview with PBS, Captain Will Summers recalled the experience of learning to ride in such circumstances:

  And my horse turned and faced straight down the hill . . . And he crouched down like a cat, and just sprung off the side of the mountain. And, I think about three to five horse lengths later, his front feet hit. And this guy just took off like lightning down the side of a cliff. The only thing that went through my mind was this 1980s movie, The Man from Snowy River. And so, I was like, ‘Okay, the guy from Snowy River, he put his head on the back of the horse, and he put his feet up around his neck.’

  And so, my feet came up, my head goes back. And I have like horsetail on the back of my head. And this guy just tears down the side of this mountain where at the bottom of it is like a gully about 6–12ft deep, and about 4ft wide . . . And he successfully jumped over that . . .

  And I guess about twenty minutes later, the general [Dostum] and some of his entourage had finally caught up. And he had stopped, and looked at me kind of strange again, but a little different this time. And, he said something to me. And he started off again on his horse. And he turned around, and he said something again. And I knew that he was pretty serious about what he was saying. And then we walked off. And his translator said, ‘The general just paid you a great compliment.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s great. What did he say?’ And he said, ‘Truly, you are the finest horseman he has ever seen.’ And then he had stopped and said, in addition to this, I was the most daring and brave man he had ever known.

  While the Special Forces had to embrace an old-fashioned mode of transport, they found that the men in the Northern Alliance, who travelled with them, also looked like a medieval army. Bedraggled and bearded, the men carried battered weapons that had either been seized from the Soviets in the 1980s or had been cast-offs from other long-ago wars. For instance, bayonets that had the year ‘1913’ stamped on them were still found to be in use. Still, these men were eager to fight the Taliban and earn their freedom. For the Americans, this made them essential.

  Passing through the Darya Suf valley, they saw many empty villages that had been wiped out by the Taliban. The buildings had been burnt to the ground, the women raped and murdered, and the men beheaded. It was a bitter reminder that, while the Special Forces had their own reasons for being in Afghanistan, they were also helping its people take back their country from fanatics.

  Upon reaching the foot of the mountain, after many hours of travelling, Nutsch and his team now faced another terrifying prospect. Ascending hundreds of feet above the ground, on just a narrow path with no barriers, they had to hang onto their wild horses for their lives. For men who had virtually no horse-riding experience, this was a hair-raising prospect. Yet everyone stayed on their horse and soon they had reached Dostum’s hideout, from which the whole valley stretched below. After twenty-four hours of little sleep, and an exhausting journey, Nutsch now had to prove his worth. If he failed, Dostum might decide that he could do without the Americans after all.

  Looking out over the vast valley, Nutsch asked Dostum to point out the Taliban positions. When Dostum did so, Nutsch could not be sure if the Taliban were in fact situated where he was pointing. He was under strict orders to avoid bombing civilians at all costs, not least because this would only give the Taliban propaganda to use against them. To reassure Nutsch, Dostum contacted the Taliban via radio, where in the course of the conversation he not only proceeded to insult them mercilessly, but also managed to get them to confirm their positions.

  With this, Nutsch was satisfied and he used his GPS, and a map, to work out the position’s latitude and longitude before radioing a B52 overhead. He handed Dostum a pair of binoculars and the warlord watched on as seconds later a 1,200lb bomb dropped through the air and wiped out the surrounding area. Dostum was seriously impressed. It would have taken weeks, if not months, to attack the Taliban in their mountain forts, losing many men in the process. Now, in just a matter of seconds, they had been destroyed. Clearly Nutsch and his team were going to be of some use.

  That night Dostum invited the Americans to eat with him. Sitting on a rug, the team enjoyed chicken and lamb, fresh salad, rice and flatbread, remembering to scoop the food up with their right hand, as the left hand was considered unclea
n in Islamic cultures. This was a habit I also picked up in Dhofar, so much so that, while I remain right-handed, when it comes to issues in the lavatory, I am left-handed, just for this very reason. I also remember ensuring I was barefoot when eating, with my legs tucked underneath so that the soles of my feet could not point at another man – for this would be an insult to a Muslim. Sadly, I did not always manage to avoid this. When I first ate with my men, they kindly picked out the most succulent pieces of meat from their side of the communal dish and gave them to me. I assumed it would be polite to return them but I soon learnt this would cause grave offence. As such, I was happy to eat the succulent meat, while also ensuring not to insult anyone. This did not, however, always work in my favour. When on patrol, villagers would often urge us to share their food with them, with sheep’s eyes being their main delicacy. I quickly learnt to swallow while smiling. However, while my Arabic was initially poor, I did acquire a phrase I could use in any number of situations – Insha’Allah, which means ‘God willing’. As this was non-committal, I soon came to say it whenever I was asked a question and wasn’t sure of the answer.

  Unlike myself, Nutsch and his team were thankfully experts at ingratiating themselves with their hosts. With trust established, Dostum revealed to Nutsch the city they should target if they were to take down the Taliban: Mazar-i-Sharif.

  While rich oil and gas deposits lay near the city’s airport, it also boasted the country’s longest paved runway, capable of landing transport and supply aircraft. The bridge over the Amu Darya River could also be used to move men and material from Uzbekistan. If the Northern Alliance could take Mazar, then Kabul, the capital, would fall soon after, and then all of Afghanistan with it.

  With this target in mind, Dostum and ODA 595 spent the coming days nailing down Taliban targets and unleashing bombs on their positions. As one Green Beret told David Tucker and Christopher Lamb for their book United States Special Operations Forces: ‘The hard part is developing the infrastructure that facilitates knowing where the targets are, so you can bomb them. And that is what won the war. It’s getting the targets and getting which targets, why this target or why that target, and that’s what makes it work.’

  The Berets didn’t have the manpower or the weapons to overthrow the Taliban by themselves. But what they did have was the training to build trust and to extract information that was crucial to crippling the Taliban regime. One minute the team would be on horseback, the next they would be using cutting-edge technology to guide bombs from 20,000ft.

  Soon they had further help, when another team arrived with a special operations laser marker (SOFLAM). This made targeting a Taliban tank or truck far easier than the GPS method Nutsch had been using. Once the laser was locked onto a target, the bomb could hit it with unerring accuracy. It could even follow vehicles on the move. As long as the laser remained on the target, the bomb would track it.

  However, Nutsch realised that even though they were obliterating Taliban positions they weren’t doing as much damage as they could. He needed to lure the Taliban out in large numbers, along with their tanks and trucks. This would require Dostum and his men facing them in battle, and preparing to charge. When the Taliban then assembled, Nutsch could order in the bombs. Following this, Dostum’s men would finish off any survivors as they lay wounded or tried to run. In theory, this was a brilliant move. In practice, it almost ended in disaster.

  In the heat of battle, orders became confused, with Dostum telling his men to charge just as Nutsch had ordered a bomb to drop. Nutsch could only watch in horror as the Afghans thundered towards the Taliban, praying that the bomb would hit before they reached the position. If it were to wipe out hundreds of Dostum’s men, Nutsch knew it would be hard to recover the relationship.

  As the Taliban unleashed their guns on the Afghans, and their tanks prepared to open fire, the earth suddenly shook with a massive explosion. Nutsch looked through the dust for any sign of Dostum’s men. To his relief, with the dust slowly dispersing, he saw them, still alive, shooting, stabbing and even beheading any survivors.

  Yet, as they took village after village, Nutsch and his team didn’t always have the luxury of fighting at arm’s length. With one particularly vicious fight going against the Northern Alliance, Dostum entered the field to inspire his men. Nutsch and his team knew they had to join him. To lose Dostum would be a disaster, as it would leave them in the hands of his successor, who might have very different ideas about an alliance with the Americans. On horseback, they subsequently roared into battle, firing their rifles at the oncoming Taliban, driving them back and ensuring Dostum was kept alive. It was like a scene from the First World War, certainly one the Royal Scots Greys would have been proud of.

  Moving ever closer to Mazar, the Berets soon came across a deadly obstacle that had haunted Afghanistan for decades: a minefield. It was only by the grace of God that no one was killed. But, stuck in the middle and without the use of mine detectors, it appeared they were trapped. The Americans could only watch in awe as the Afghans subsequently bent down on their hands and knees and painstakingly cleared the mines by softly lifting them from their hiding places and disarming them.

  During my time in Dhofar, the Adoo had covered the ground upon which we regularly travelled with anti-tank mines. In the supposed safety of a Land Rover, I don’t recall feeling that concerned, but this was in spite of the evidence I saw every day, as the mines caused some horrific injuries, sheering off limbs and killing many men.

  Rather than an actual minefield filling me with dread, during an unassisted attempt to cross Antarctica, I experienced something similar that truly scared me. Mike Stroud and I were walking across the snow-packed ice when suddenly a gaping hole opened up just ten paces ahead of Mike. It was 45ft wide and 120ft in length. It was a miracle it didn’t swallow him whole. But we still weren’t out of trouble. All around us, renewed explosions announced further cratering. It was terrifying. We couldn’t stay where we were, as the ground was now unstable, but we also didn’t know where the next crater would emerge, or for how long this could continue. Just like a minefield, we had to just keep going, never knowing when the ice shelf would rumble and reverberate around us again. It was only sheer luck that we weren’t plunged into the icy waters below.

  As Nutsch and his team continued with Dostum’s army towards Mazar, it was now time for ODA 534 to meet up with Afghanistan’s other notorious warlord, Atta Mohammad Noor. It was not only important that Captain Nosorog establish a relationship with Noor, but he also needed to persuade him to fight on the same side as his rival. After all, Dostum and Noor had a common enemy they hated more than each other – the Taliban.

  On 2 November, Nosorog finally met with the bearded Noor at his camp near the village of Ak Kupruk. Noor was delighted the Americans had arrived. He had been fighting the Taliban for five years yet no one in the west had listened to his warnings or cries for help. Now his efforts to resist would finally be rewarded.

  Over the years, he had built an impressive list of informants. Some lived in Taliban towns while others served in the Taliban itself. With this intelligence, ODA 534 embarked on a similar journey to that undertaken by Dostum and Nutsch, finding Taliban positions and bombing them into oblivion, all the while moving towards Mazar, where hopefully their two armies would join together and rout the Taliban.

  With two Special Forces teams in Afghanistan, working with two warlords, Lieutenant Colonel Max Bowers arrived at Dostum’s camp to oversee the operation. After all, it would be disastrous should either side accidentally bomb the other in their haste to take out the enemy. Moreover, there was still concern that the warlords could fabricate positions to take out the forces of their rival. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.

  Yet, while taking down the Taliban proceeded at a speed no one had thought possible, the whereabouts of the Special Forces’ chief target, Osama bin Laden, remained a mystery. With a huge bounty on his head, there was certainly no shortage of leads. Sadly, these often turn
ed out to be just wild guesses, with Afghans eager to earn the reward. However, when the Taliban government announced on 8 November that it had granted bin Laden Afghan citizenship, it at least seemed that he was still in the country. Some good intelligence even suggested he had been sighted outside Mazar. Such information drove the teams on with a renewed energy to take the city.

  When Mazar did eventually fall on 10 November, it all seemed a little too easy. The Americans’ intense bombing campaign, coupled with the Northern Alliance sweeping all before them, saw the Taliban flee the city before any great battle could take place. Nosorog and Noor’s army were to be the first on the scene and were greeted as conquering heroes by crowds of grateful Afghans. However, while most of the Taliban had left the city, hard-core al-Qaeda members, vowing to die fighting rather than surrender, had holed up in an abandoned school.

  In order to avoid more bloodshed, Noor sent some of his men into the school to try to persuade the al-Qaeda fighters to surrender. Soon after, Dostum and Nutsch arrived in the city and were informed of the siege, and that Noor’s men were inside. They were told not to attack, or order any bombs to strike the building, before Noor’s men were safely out. But Lieutenant Colonel Bowers was not made aware of this conversation. With communication breaking down, a strike was subsequently ordered on the school. All the al-Qaeda operatives were killed, along with Noor’s men. Unsurprisingly, this did not go down well. Nosorog had to use all his powers of diplomacy to keep Noor onside and prevent the alliance collapsing just as they had taken their primary goal.