Call Sign Extortion 17

by Don Brown

  After the Joint Special Operations Task Force commander cut off his subordinate’s testimony midstream, the subject of the investigation changed to testimony about how the bodies were extracted from the crash site. Nothing else was mentioned about the unidentified Afghans, of any substance, in the entire 1,250-page report—not even a peep. Nor is there any suggestion in the Colt Report’s recommendation or in General Mattis’s final conclusions that the military did anything wrong in the deaths of thirty Americans.

  Why not?

  Why no attempt to at least identify these guys? Why conduct days of investigation on flight approach, rescue operations, ground movement of enemy forces, and gloss over the identity of seven unidentified intruders on the aircraft?

  It’s as if the unidentified Afghan infiltrators were the big pink elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.

  Why is this question significant?

  The answer has to do with the concept of “Green-­on-­Blue” violence.

  Chapter 12

  “Green-­on-­Blue” Violence: “Friendly” Afghans Killing Americans

  The phrase “Green on Blue” refers to the dangerously widespread practice of Afghan forces masquerading as American allies, yet then shooting Coalition elements in the back and subversively cooperating with the Taliban. The Colt Report’s failure to even address the potential security concerns the Afghan “Mystery Seven” might have presented was nothing less than shocking.

  Why won’t the military deal with the question of their identity? Why ignore this inexcusable breach of security in the Colt Report as if it’s a nonissue?

  The failure to address the identity of the “Mystery Seven,” and the apparent cremation of their bodies so as to destroy DNA evidence, was one of the linchpin failures in this investigation that points to a cover-­up. This failure is so important that it’s crucial to pause and consider the problem of Green-­on-­Blue attacks.

  The Background on Green-­on-­Blue Violence

  Ever since the United States inserted forces into Afghanistan in 2001, there has been an effort to work with the government of President Hamid Karzai, beginning in 2001 when the United States toppled the Taliban-­controlled Afghan government at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom.

  Karzai was not Taliban, and had been installed as interim president of Afghanistan at a conference in Bonn, Germany, in December of 2001, with said conference operating under the approval of the United Nations. Karzai was chosen first as head of the Afghan Interim Authority, and later was elected president of the country. Karzai, when he became president, appointed anti-­Taliban leaders into high positions in his government.

  The United States, and other NATO forces, for political and other reasons, now sought to have an ally on the ground in the “host” country in which it was prosecuting the “War on Terror.”

  That host government on the ground was now the government of Hamid Karzai. This alliance would lead to a military alliance, at least on paper, in the “War on Terror,” in which Afghan Army and other military forces would be pitted alongside US forces to go after and kill Taliban.

  That type of arrangement might have looked good on paper. But there was a practical problem with it. In many cases, pro-­Karzai Afghans in the Afghan Army who were ordered to fight alongside the Americans, for religious and political reasons, felt a stronger alliance with their stated enemies, namely Afghan Taliban, than with their politically mandated military allies, namely the Americans. Put another way, many Afghan Army members in Karzai’s army felt a much stronger allegiance to fellow Muslim Afghan Taliban members than to the members of the US military who had orders to kill Muslim Afghan Taliban members. For religious reasons, and for nationalistic reasons, the Afghan Army–Taliban tie was often much stronger than the Afghan Army–NATO tie.

  The results of this strong and often natural alliance between regular Afghan military and police forces and their Afghan Taliban brethren often proved deadly and disastrous for American forces in Afghanistan. Numerous reports surfaced of Afghan Army and police forces shooting and murdering Coalition forces, which were composed primarily of American forces. Thus, the phrase “Green-­on-­Blue” attack was born.

  It should be noted that the phrase “Green-­on-­Blue” has nothing to do with the color of uniforms or anything else other than the standardized military symbols used to designate different forces on maps. In the military’s system, the color blue is used for friendly forces, red for hostile forces, green for neutral forces, and yellow for unknown forces. Thus, Blue-­on-­Blue shootings are incidents in which members of the same force fire on one another. Green-­on-­Blue, technically, would refer to neutral forces firing on friendly forces. The phrase in this context means Afghan forces firing on ISAF Coalition (primarily NATO) forces.

  2011: A Bloody Year for Green-­on-­Blue Violence

  In 2011 alone, leading up to the shoot-­down of Extortion 17 on August 6, 2011, there had already been at least twelve reports of such Green-­on-­Blue attacks, or murders, or attempted murders of Coalition forces by Afghan forces who were supposed to be US allies. This is according to statistics compiled by the Long War Journal, in an article by Bill Roggio and Lisa Lundquist, first published August 23, 2012, and updated October 26, 2013, which documented the following Green-­on-­Blue attacks in 2011, leading up to the Extortion 17 flight.

  Attack 1: January 15, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier argued with a Marine in the Sangin district in Helmand, threatened him, and later returned and aimed his weapon at the Marine. When the Afghan soldier failed to put his rifle down, the Marine shot him.

  Attack 2: January 18, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier shot two Italian soldiers at a combat outpost in the Bala Murghab district of Badghis province, killing one and wounding the other before escaping.

  Attack 3: February 18, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier opened fire on German soldiers at a base in Baghlan province, killing three German soldiers and wounding six others. The attacker was killed in return fire.

  Attack 4: March 19, 2011:

  An Afghan hired by Tundra Security Group to provide security at Forward Operating Base Frontenac in the Argandab Valley in Kandahar Province shot six US soldiers as they were cleaning their weapons, killing two and wounding four more. The attacker was shot and killed in return fire by three other US soldiers.

  Attack 5: April 4, 2011:

  An Afghan Border Police officer guarding a meeting between a Border Police commander and US military trainers in Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province, shot and killed two US soldiers, then fled. ISAF reported on April 7 that the attacker was killed when he displayed hostile intent after being tracked down in Maimana; two other insurgents were arrested during the raid.

  Attack 6: April 4, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier opened fire on ISAF vehicles in Kandahar Province; no casualties were reported.

  Attack 7: April 16, 2011:

  A newly recruited Afghan soldier who was a Taliban suicide bomber detonated at Forward Operating Base Gamberi in Laghman Province near the border with Nangarhar Province, killing five NATO troops and four Afghan soldiers. Eight other Afghans were wounded, including four interpreters.

  Attack 8: April 27, 2011:

  A veteran Afghan air force pilot opened fire inside a NATO military base in Kabul, killing eight NATO troops and a contractor. According to the Washington Post, the shooter, a two-­decade veteran of the Afghan air force named Ahmad Gul, jumped out a window after the attack, injuring his leg.

  Attack 9: May 13, 2011:

  Two NATO soldiers who were mentoring an Afghan National Civil Order brigade were shot and killed inside a police compound in Helmand Province by a man wearing an Afghan police uniform. The gunman was wounded by return fire and taken to a hospital.

  Attack 10: May 30, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier killed an
ISAF soldier in southern Afghanistan. According to an Australian Department of Defense press release, an Australian soldier from the Mentoring Task Force was shot while manning a guard tower at patrol base MASHAL in the Chorah Valley in Uruzgan province by another guard, a soldier from the Afghan army, who fled.

  Attack 11: July 16, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier killed an ISAF soldier in southern Afghanistan. According to The Telegraph, a NATO soldier was shot by an Afghan soldier not far from Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province during a joint patrol. The attacker ran away after the shooting.

  Attack 12: Aug. 4, 2011:

  An Afghan soldier killed an ISAF soldier in eastern Afghanistan. According to the Turkish Weekly, someone wearing an Afghan police uniform killed an ISAF soldier in Paktika Province.

  So based on these reports, as set forth in the Long War Journal, a total of twenty-­six NATO/Allied were murdered in Green-­on-­Blue attacks in 2011 alone, leading up to the flight of Extortion 17. This was a problem that the military was well aware of. Yet, the fact that seven unidentified Afghans infiltrated the flight was mentioned only peripherally in the report, substantially brushed over, and no time or resources were spent on trying to identify who these men were.

  Two New York Times Articles on Taliban Infiltration

  New York Times reporter Ray Rivera published two articles examining the problem of Taliban infiltration into supposedly friendly Afghan forces. The first article, entitled “Taliban Fan Fears of Infiltration in Afghan Forces” and published on April 20, 2011, began by recounting a November 29, 2010, incident on the Pakistan border in which an Afghan border policeman, who was “well thought of by his superiors suddenly opened fire on American soldiers, killing six.” The article went on to cite another incident in April of 2011 in which insurgents, dressed in Afghan uniforms, attacked “three heavily secured government locations.” Even though the Rivera article reported intelligence officials as saying there was “no evidence the infiltration is widespread,” it concludes that “concern over sleeper agents still run high among NATO and Afghan officials.”

  On June 27, 2011, and only forty days before the Extortion 17 shoot-­down, Rivera wrote a second article on the subject of Taliban infiltration into the Afghan military. This article, entitled “Afghans Build Security, and Hope to Avoid Infiltrators,” featured the story of a Taliban insurgent named Akmal, who very easily infiltrated the Afghan army, and later took part in two suicide bombings. At the time of the article, Akmal was facing the death penalty.

  Rivera reported that, “In the past two and a half years, 47 NATO soldiers have been killed by Afghan soldiers or police officers. Many of those deaths were the result of arguments that turned violent. But infiltrators are suspected in some of the cases, including one in which an Afghan soldier detonated a vest at an Afghan military base and another when a police officer killed the police chief at the Kandahar police headquarters.”

  Green-­on-­Blue violence was nothing new to the US military, and they were clearly aware of the issue of Taliban infiltration of the Afghan military. Indeed the mainstream press was picking up on it, as evidenced by both of Mr. Rivera’s articles.

  One Extortion 17 parent relayed the words of his late son, a member of SEAL Team Six. “It’s hard to get the Afghans to fight. Sometimes they won’t move. Sometimes they want to stay in the chopper.” The father related his son’s concerns that the SEALs were “far more worried about getting shot in the back by the Afghans we have to take on these missions than by the Taliban we’re fighting against.”

  Indeed, the overwhelming evidence of Taliban infiltration into the regular Afghan military—the same military that NATO forces were forced to work with as “allies”—was so disconcerting that General John Allen, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan and former commander of the combined International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), estimated that 25 percent of all Green-­on-­Blue attacks were carried out by Taliban infiltrators. General Allen’s conclusions were reported by Mike Mount of CNN on August 23, 2012. Allen, who was the top NATO commander at the time, indicated that the 25 percent infiltration was significantly higher than an earlier 10 percent infiltration estimate put out by the Pentagon.

  In an interview from the Pentagon, Allen was quoted as saying, “So if it’s just pure Taliban infiltration, that is one number. If you add to that impersonation the potential that someone is pulling the trigger because the Taliban have coerced the family members, that’s a different number,” he said.

  Chapter 13

  An Ambassador’s Blunt Warnings

  In a September 17, 2012 speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently retired US ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker estimated infiltration to be higher than 25 percent, the estimate given by US military commanders.

  In an article on the well-­respected military.com website, dated September 18, 2012, and entitled Crocker: Taliban Infiltration Worse than Estimated, reporter Richard Sisk quoted part of former US Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the previous day, September 17, 2012.

  We’ve talked about security and security forces simply to say the threats as we have seen are very much there, whether it be that coordinated attack on Camp Bastion that destroyed a number of aircraft—only 15 or so gunmen, but they clearly knew what they were doing—the high profile attacks, which haven’t worked that well, by and large, as headline grabbers, after the attack on the embassy last year and again in April, and the very troubling green-­on-­blue attacks.

  You know, I’m not there. But I would put the percentage of attackers who have some affiliation with the Taliban rather higher than the percentages I have seen [referring to the 25 percent estimate from military sources]. I think they’re finding that a relatively easy [thing] to do—and our own vetting in the US military is not that great, let’s face it. We’ve got a lot of prison barracks at military facilities for people who never should have gotten in the first place and didn’t get out of boot camp housed in Afghanistan. I think the Taliban have found a niche. Obviously not the whole story; I don’t discount the personal grudge, the cultural insensitivity and the rest of it. But I think we underestimate at our peril a resilient enemy finding a new—a new mechanism with effect.

  Ambassador Crocker was no rookie to the US Foreign Service. He had served as US ambassador to Afghanistan from July 25, 2011 through July 13, 2012. Prior to that, he had served as ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, and Iraq.

  Note several salient points from Ambassador Crocker’s speech.

  First, Crocker thought the problem of Taliban infiltration might be even worse than General Allen thought it was. And of course General Allen thought it was worse than the official Pentagon estimates, in part because Allen was taking into account “Taliban influence” even if the Green-­on-­Blue attackers might not always technically have been Taliban members.

  Second, the ambassador refers to the Green-­on-­Blue attacks as being “very troubling.” If these attacks were “very troubling” to the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, then why didn’t the official military investigation, in the 1,250-page report, make any effort to account for the names or the identities of the seven unidentified Afghans, if for no other reason than to rule out possible Taliban infiltration of that mission? Was there no concern that they could have been hostile to the American forces, given the clear history of Green-­on-­Blue violence?

  Third, when Ambassador Crocker estimated that Taliban infiltration might be higher than the military has first estimated, he went on to say, “—and our own vetting in the US military is not that great, let’s face it.” So Crocker was openly questioning the military’s ability to effectively vet Afghan forces to root out Taliban membership and Taliban influence.

  That dangerous problem was manifestly evident on August 6, 2011, as twenty-­six NATO forces had already been murdered in Green–on
-­Blue attacks in 2011 alone. Why not even make an attempt to identify the seven unidentified Afghans? Or at the very least, why not address the possibility that the seven unidentified Afghans could have been Taliban infiltrators or sympathizers? Or why not at least try and eliminate the possibility that Extortion 17 had been infiltrated from the beginning by seven Taliban infiltrators or sympathizers?

  The military’s silence on the question is telling.

  The failure to even address this question marks either inexcusable negligence or a sleight-­of-­hand cover-­up.

  Chapter 14

  A Forced Suicide Mission

  It is important to understand a bit about the “platform” for Extortion 17’s mission. In military-­speak, a “platform” usually is the type of ship, plane, or vehicle that is being used to advance a military mission.

  For example, there could be multiple platforms for launching a Tomahawk cruise missile: a B-52 bomber, a US naval cruiser, or a submarine, just to name a few.

  Likewise a helicopter is a type of platform used to advance a military mission. As platforms, helicopters are often designed primarily for particular types of missions.

  The CH-47D Chinook helicopters, code-­named Extortion 16 and Extortion 17, were old helicopters, whose primary mission was and remains troop and cargo transport. The Chinooks were designed to carry troops to the edge of a battle zone. That’s exactly what Extortions 16 and 17 had done earlier in the evening on August 5, 2011.

  But the Chinooks were vulnerable if ordered into a hot zone with substantial antiaircraft fire, especially if they had to fly into those zones unprotected.

  Unfortunately, both the Colt Report and General Mattis’s conclusions failed to address this issue, and in fact, General Mattis’s conclusion was misleading in several respects on the issue of mission planning and execution.