of the 10th Mountain Division with automatic weapons, fought a set-piece five-day battle with courage, skill, and tenacity and defeated prisoners who had gained weapons and attacked their captors. In the end, 26 SOF and 10th Mountain soldiers killed or captured almost 600 of the enemy (Hagenbeck, Franklin, Lieutenant General, U.S. Army, interview, 31 December 2003).
Such a feat was repeated in Iraq more than a year and a half later on 6 April 2003 when a small group of SOF, in a position they called 'The Alamo,' defeated an attacking Iraqi tank-led assault in broad daylight. They did so with some of their own weapons including the Javelin missile, one of the new equipment additions during the '90s, and their ability to call on Navy and Air Force fighter aircraft armed with precision munitions (
CAPTURE OF KANDAHAR
The battles to capture Kandahar in the south indicate the effective teamwork that developed between SOF and Northern Alliance forces. Two simultaneous ground operations were set in motion to capture the city. From the north, anti-Taliban forces under Hamid Karzai teamed with Captain Jason Amerine and his U.S. Special Operating Forces to advance on the city, fighting the biggest battle near Tarin Kowt, using precision munitions from allied aircraft, destroying more than thirty Taliban vehicles and killing about three hundred Taliban (Brown, Brigadier General John,
Karzai and his troops got the Taliban to surrender the city and leave, and were advancing on Kandahar from the north by 6 December (Stewart, CMH, p. 22). Meanwhile another force under Gul Sharzai, and again working with U.S. Special Forces, advanced on the city from the south. Karzai later appointed Sharzai to his former post as governor of the city (Stewart, CMH, p. 25).
SPECIAL FORCES THOUGHTS
From their operation in Afghanistan and also later in Iraq come some timeless truths:
(U.S. Army Infantry Conference, 'Lessons Learned,' U.S. Army Infantry Center, Fort Benning, Georgia, 2003)
From that bold beginning, U.S. and other nations' Special Operations Forces combined with Northern Alliance forces to defeat Taliban forces during the next several months until an interim government was established under Hamid Karzai in December. Those Special Operations Forces, plus conventional infantry from the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan and Afghan Northern Alliance Forces, won those first battles of this new war.
OPERATION ANACONDA
But there was one more first battle in Afghanistan. Colonel John Mulholland, Commander of Task Force Dagger, a joint special operations task force, recommended to General Franks that conventional U.S. forces undertake the planning for destruction of Al Qaeda that his forces had located, thus showing the level of teamwork in the U.S. military reached in the 1990s between Special Operating Forces and conventional forces.
Franks turned to the overall combined land force commander, Lieutenant General (LTG) Paul T. Mikolashek, whose Combined Force Land Component Command (CFLCC) headquarters had been established in Kuwait in November 2001 (Stewart, CMH, p. 16). General Mikolashek verbally assigned the mission to the Afghanistan ground commander, Major General 'Buster' Hagenbeck, Commanding General of 10th Mountain Division. Hagenbeck used his division headquarters to form Coalition Joint Task Force Mountain and named the operation Anaconda. Operation Anaconda showed just how far this interdependence of the Regional Combatant Commander, in this case General Tommy Franks, and the service department, in this case the Army, had come in the 1990s. Under Goldwater-Nichols, the Regional Combatant Commander commands assigned military forces directly under command of the Secretary of Defense and the President as Commander in Chief. Services provide forces to the Regional Commander. Service Chiefs are able to anticipate and make recommendations to regional commanders, the Secretary of Defense, and the President in their roles as members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All through the 1990s these relationships matured in actual operational practice. They work well for the nation.
In this case Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki had been in discussions about providing a conventional force headquarters to the theater for follow up operations. Shinseki invited Major General Hagenbeck to accompany him on a Thanksgiving trip to the region to visit troops (Shinseki, Eric, General U.S. Army (ret.), notes, January 2004). Shinseki's forward thinking and service department, regional command teamwork provided Hagenbeck the opportunity to do a leader's reconnaissance, invaluable for a commander in visualizing an operation.
In addition, Anaconda showed how far the U.S. Army and the Joint team had come in being able to combine units rapidly from different organizations into an effective fighting team, and how interdependent the services had become in conducting operations. It also demonstrates the wide versatility of U.S. division headquarters, capable of fighting division formations, and, as in this case, of providing battle command for a joint task force and of rapidly pulling various units together into a coherent combat team. It also showed how rapidly U.S. forces could project power at strategic distances — a capability repeated in Iraq a year later.
Major General Hagenbeck's 10th Division headquarters assumed planning responsibility for the mission on 15 February 2002, and attacked on 2 March (Stewart, CMH, p. 33).
Hagenbeck had more than 1,400 U.S. and allied troops from a number of different organizations in Operation Anaconda. His combat elements included 3d Brigade of two battalions from the 101st Airborne Division, one battalion and elements of another brigade from 10th Mountain Division, some elements of Mulholland's Task Force Dagger, and additional coalition and joint SOF units, along with various logistics units including medical units and support from air forces. The task force also had CH-47 helicopters and support of AH-64 attack helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division, the latter a result of weekend deployment of those aircraft from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Afghanistan. Other air assets came from U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts and U.S. Marine Cobra helicopters. Hagenbeck also had support of the U.S. Ambassador; his deputies Brigadier Generals Gary Harrell and Mike Jones, who coordinated a variety of special forces and other agencies in theater; and the CIA station chief (Gray, David, Colonel, U.S. Army, notes, 30 December 2003, and Hagenbeck, notes, 31 December 2003). Other forces available for Operation Anaconda included troops from Canada, SAS soldiers from Australia, and Afghan troops with Special Forces advisors.
The area of operations featured rocky terrain varying from 8,000 feet to 11,000 feet in elevation with sharp narrow crevices, deep ravines, no vegetation, and weather that ranged from a windchill of -20 degrees F to 60 degrees F. Enemy forces in the objective area were among the best Al Qaeda had, veteran fighters who ran the terrorist training camps. They were armed with modern equipment including automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs), and mortars. Hagenbeck told me they even reinforced their positions with more fighters during the first three days of fighting (Hagenbeck interview, 31 December 2003). Destroying them would seriously hurt Al Qaeda.
Colonel Frank Wiercinski, 3d brigade commander of the 101st Airborne, commanded U.S. conventional forces, called Task Force Rakassan. They were to be air assaulted into blocking positions on various hills and peaks in the mountainous terrain of the Shah-I-Kot Valley located about sixty miles south of Gardez (
