Shortly after 11am, an F-15 roared overhead on a bombing run and a blinding light erupted from the ridgeline. A Stinger missile had been launched and was chasing the fighter plane.
WHEN THE SOVIET UNION’S 40th Army delivered its highly trained airborne troops and Spetsnaz commandos to the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Christmas Eve in 1979, it also delivered a sense of unity to the fiercely independent people in the fractious landlocked nation. Afghanistan has long been a geopolitical prize sought after by empire builders, for it provided the one thing that growing nations desire and need: trade routes. Afghanistan had them running to the east and west and therefore serving the rich economies of Europe, the Middle East and central Asia.
As such, the rugged, remote country, nestled in the heart of central Asia just above the 30th parallel, has had a long history of war dating back to at least the sixth century BC, when it was part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. A series of conquering forces subsequently claimed the forbidding landscape that for a time had been ruled by Alexander the Great and for hundreds of years thereafter was divided, back and forth, between the Persian and Indian empires, until the nineteenth century when the British arrived. And so began another struggle for dominance in central Asia, this time between Imperial Russia and Britain, then one of the most powerful colonisers in the world. The battle would lead to the subsequent creation of Afghanistan proper. By then, Islam had been the country’s religion for more than a thousand years.
The internal politics of modern Afghanistan has echoed the region’s history and been marked by bloody coups, insurgencies and takeovers. The country is a complex mosaic, with bitter and enduring tribal, clan, family, ethnic, religious and feudal rivalries that are as much a result of thousands of years of invasions as they are ancient blood feuds and enmities. Known as badal, the Pashto word for vengeance, the feuds are treated as if they are new battles to be fought and won, whatever the provocation. ‘The Afghan will never turn the other cheek,’ writes Mohammad Yousaf in Afghanistan, the Bear Trap, noting that a killing must always be avenged.
Afghanistan is a country in which homage has long been paid to the tribal warlords or village elders, and clan is everything. Traders, subsistence farmers, shepherds who herd goats and sheep in the high country or desert plains, all pay fealty to the local chieftain.
The official language of Afghanistan is Dari, also known as Farsi, and about half the population speak various dialects of the Persian language. Almost as many speak Pashto, the native tongue of the Pashtuns, who are the dominant ethnic group in the country and come from the Durrani tribe in the south or the Ghilzai tribe in the east.
Ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen and Shi’ite Hazara make up the rest of the population. Effectively, Afghanistan comprises five quite distinct nations within its borders and five very distinct peoples. Some are nomadic, while others are urban.
The repressive Taliban regime, which seized control of Kabul in 1996 under the leadership of the one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar, was mostly ethnic Pashtun. Its fierce opposition, the Northern Alliance, consisted of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen and Hazara. According to the anonymous author of Hunting al Qaeda, the Pashtun warlords are most interested in their own personal power and wealth. ‘If it’s advantageous for them to support the Americans they will, but if it looks like the Taliban is winning, you’ll see a lot of people who had just vowed to fight them to the death switch sides in a blink of an eye. Pashtun warlords have spent the last 25 years of civil war betraying each other on a daily basis.’
Geographically and physically, Afghanistan is a breathtakingly beautiful place. Dominated by the Hindu Kush mountain range, it is often the victim of violent earthquakes and both floods and droughts. Smaller than the Australian state of New South Wales and almost as big as the American state of Texas, the Afghan landscape is vast and varied, from spectacular mountains snowcapped all year through to high-altitude desert regions that change with the winds and shifting sands.
It shares borders with six countries. Pakistan runs along the eastern and southern sides of Afghanistan for 2430 kilometres, while China shares 76 kilometres of an almost unnavigable peninsula of land known as the Varkhan Corridor in the far northeast. Iran is on the west, and to the north are Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Just as the locals have remained independent of each other, so have they remained defiantly independent of the succession of governments in Kabul.
Despite its tumultuous history, Afghanistan had in its own way been functional. Surprisingly, the country refused to choose sides during the Cold War and was blessed with aid and friendship from its neighbour the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, the United States — a continent and an ocean away. Both wanted to dominate the strategically located Afghanistan, which by the end of the 1970s was ruled by a struggling communist government.
But things changed when the Red Army stormed into Afghanistan. A common purpose united the disparate people, who answered the call to jihad — holy struggle — and fought the invading forces with a ferocity for which they’d become known throughout history. They called themselves ‘mujahideen’, or ‘soldiers of God’, and the soldiers of the Red Army in turn called them dukhi or dushman — ghosts or bandits — for their fierceness and ability to disappear into the mountains. Their battle cry was, as it had ever been, ‘Allahu Akbar’, God is great.
Physical courage is central to the Afghan character and to be without courage is considered abhorrent. People without courage were despised, according to Mohammad Yousaf, a Pakistan Army brigadier who witnessed the Afghan spirit while coordinating mujahideen operations against the Soviets in the early to mid 1980s.
A month after the invasion, a Soviet reporter, Gennady Bocharov, was holed up in a hotel in Kabul when the mujahideen leaders put on a terrifying show of psychological warfare against the Soviets. As recounted in George Crile’s compelling book Charlie Wilson’s War, a turbaned elder in Kabul sounded out a cry that was picked up by thousands of Muslim faithful.
Allahu Akbar, he sang as dusk settled on the capital, God is great.
A rising crescendo of Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar echoed across the city in response, from men and women alike. It was soon joined by Marg, marg, marg bar Shurawi — death to Soviets, death, death, death.
‘Each of us knew that the fanatics take their time about killing you,’ Bocharov reported, his terror writ large. ‘We knew that the first thing they do is pierce your forearms with knives. Then they hack off your ears, your fingers, your genitals, put out your eyes.’
It took a certain kind of courage to be so brutal, and the Afghan people were renowned for it.
Jock Wallace was a keen student of history and had a scholar’s thirst for knowledge about the places the Australian Army had taken him. An avid reader, he knew something of Afghanistan’s past and had paid close attention to the traditions and tactics of the mujahideen, who had been hailed at home and in the West as heroes and anti-Soviet crusaders during the long war. Ironic, given the circumstances now, he thought.
The Soviet invasion in 1979 was seen through the prism of the Cold War, and immediately extended beyond its country’s borders.
The American president who witnessed the global creep of Soviet communism, a Democrat and former peanut farmer from Georgia named Jimmy Carter, declared the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ‘the greatest foreign policy crisis confronting the United States since World War II’. President Carter subsequently authorised the Central Intelligence Agency to take action against the Soviets’ 40th Army.
As a result, the tribal chieftains and warlords who led the mujahideen became the beneficiaries of covert arms and money from the CIA, as well as from a few other anti-communist nations with geopolitical interests in the primitive but resource-rich Afghanistan. CIA spooks funnelled billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into the country to arm the freedom fighters in their war against the Soviets, initially via Pakistan, whose government lent to the cause the efforts of its formidable intelligence service.
Satellite intelligence maps, anti-tank guns, thousands of the Czech-or Russian-made DShK machine guns, which the mujahideen called the ‘20 shooter’, and thousands of surface-to-air (SAM) Stinger missiles originally built for the US infantry, were smuggled over Afghanistan’s six borders. The arsenal arrived the old-fashioned way, on the backs of camels and donkeys, or hidden in rickety trucks that rolled along a highway known as the Salang Pass. In another twist, the Russians had built the highway during their years of neighbourly friendship with Afghanistan. It was an impressive engineering accomplishment and featured a 3.2-kilometre tunnel cut through the Hindu Kush, granting access through the difficult mountainous terrain.
The mountains belonged to the mujahideen and those who came before them. Over hundreds of years, they had carved a labyrinth of caves in the cliff faces, which provided refuge to the freedom fighters during the brutal winter months and a hiding place from enemy forces.
By 2000, with Afghanistan under fundamentalist Taliban rule, the caves would be taken over by al Qaeda and used by Osama bin Laden, who had moved to Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan in 1996.
There were about 100 caves on the eastern ridgeline above the Shahi Kot Valley, with dozens directly overlooking the 10th Mountain’s position. Hidden by concealed entrances, the interconnected caves had been tunnelled deep into the mountains and ranged in height from one to several metres, and were up to 30 metres deep. Many had been reinforced with concrete for added protection against the Soviets’ powerful birds of prey, the MIG fighter planes.
After al Qaeda moved in, they positioned mirrors on bends in the tunnels to reflect sunlight to the deepest corners of the caves.
With the collapse of the Taliban, the conquering coalition forces and their Afghan partners swept through the caves, uncovering cache after cache of weapons and munitions. Each new discovery revealed a treasure trove worthy of Aladdin’s Cave and gave a fuller understanding of al Qaeda’s operations.
The terrorists had stockpiled, by the tonne, mortars, cannons, RPGs, Soviet-and US-made Manpad and anti-aircraft missiles, and AK-47 ammunition. Mortar base plates had been cemented in, allowing al Qaeda fighters to easily move mortars in and out of the caves on tracks, while ducking for cover from the coalition fighter planes swooping in for a bombing raid. Among the ordnance, US soldiers and SAS troopers found cell phones and bomb-making manuals with detailed descriptions of the most effective methods to attack people and vehicles and to destroy bridges.
Some caves had been lavishly carpeted and decked out with comfortable bedding, all of which was illuminated by hanging light bulbs powered by solar energy panels set up at the cave entrances. Walls were covered with dog-eared pictures of the world’s most wanted man, and the terrorists’ hero, Osama bin Laden. Soldiers found other necessities for long-term living, including food supplies, bags of wheat flour, wood-fired stoves for heating and cooking, water, punching bags, foreign passports, and makeshift intravenous fluids bags and racks on which to hang them for medical emergencies.
A former CIA chief who covered the region, Milt Bearden, would later tell The Los Angeles Times newspaper that the valley ‘was always the last redoubt [for al Qaeda]. When all else failed, guys would fall back to there. It really is the home-field advantage drawn out to some exponential degree. There’s not a square kilometre that hasn’t been used for an ambush of somebody.’
Jock Wallace looked up at ridgelines that concealed al Qaeda and Taliban sniper and machine-gun hides and artillery posts and was aware of the bitterest of ironies. Charlie Company was being attacked not only by weapons provided by the Soviets, but also by those provided by the Americans to the mujahideen dukhi, to fight the Soviets.
Once upon a time the mujahideen had been the United States’ close friend in fighting the Soviets, and now many of them had become its most vehement enemy.
The enemy had the soldiers surrounded and, as Bearden said, they were capably exploiting every nook and cranny of the valley and mountains.
Fortunately, the men in Hell’s Halfpipe had support — albeit disappointingly occasional — from the skies above. The responses to calls for CAS had been sporadic and often came after long delays, as fighter planes and bombers flew in stacks at different altitudes, unloading strings of bombs and missiles on the AQ hotspots, called in by Jock, Vick, Achey and other soldiers in the valley.
The B-52s were stacked the highest and therefore were safest from the enemy. The fast movers — the F/A-18s, F-16s, F-15Es, F-14s and the Marines’ AV-8 Harrier vertical takeoff jets — flew lower and, while they had the advantage of terrifying speed and even more terrifying 21st-century weaponry, they had a major vulnerability — the SAM, or surface-to-air missile.
Jock wondered whether the enemy in the valley had managed to import the missiles. The CIA had given the mujahideen up to 2500 heat-seeking Stinger missiles during its ten-year-long munificence. In the following decade, as the political landscape of Afghanistan changed, the CIA began an ambitious program to buy them back, offering between US$80 000 and $150 000 per missile.
The program was first authorised by President George Bush Snr and re-endorsed by his successor Bill Clinton, but it had largely failed. By 1996, about 600 of the missiles were known to be in circulation. The warlords and local Afghan commanders were not giving up their weapons easily. By then the ruling authority in Afghanistan was the repressive Taliban, yet another virulent enemy of the West and a regime that provided safe harbour to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist training camps, and the US commanders had no way of knowing if they had secured any of the circulating SAMs.
Soon after Jock had arrived at the US Marines’ forward operating base at Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan the previous December, two shoulder-fired Stingers had been targeted at US warplanes. It gave the air component command full warning that air support was vulnerable to attack from the Stinger.
So far that morning, the terrorists had unleashed a mother lode of weaponry and Jock was thinking al Qaeda would be just as likely to have the odd SAM stashed away in a bunker. Sneaky bastards had everything else, he thought. In fact, they even had the ubiquitous Garmin global positioning system (GPS) equipment and Northface tents and parkas, as had been discovered earlier that morning by the Mako Three One patrol.
‘In case anyone was guessing as to whether they did or didn’t have SAMs on site, it was soon confirmed about mid-morning,’ Jock recalls now.
Shortly after 11am, an F-15 roared overhead on a bombing run and a blinding light erupted from the ridgeline. A Stinger missile had been launched and was chasing the fighter plane. Forward air controller Stephen Achey radioed the pilot who instantly took evasive action and corkscrewed his aircraft straight up, throwing ‘chaff’ as the missile followed in a similar corkscrewing manoeuvre.
From their position further north in the bowl, Grippe and LaCamera were watching in awe at the pilot’s skill in outrunning the SAM.
‘What the hell is that?’ LaCamera said out loud, before answering his own question. ‘That’s a surface-to-air missile,’ he exclaimed as the SAM chased the fast mover.
The pilot’s counter-manoeuvres saw the plane spiral higher and higher, straight up in the sky, while his ‘chaff’ counter-measures hit the missile, detonating it in a shower of flames and smoke.
‘That made it very hard to get air [support] after that,’ Jock says.
By then, the fast movers had unleashed a string of 27 MK82 weapons set for airbursts, the better to attack enemy firing positions and troops in the open. Several fighter planes had also launched more precision-fired JDAMs, which ripped into targets, blowing them to pieces.
Forward air controllers called in CAS non-stop, some of which was answered. According to a US Air Force report on Operation Anaconda published in 2005, Operation Anaconda, An Air Power Perspective, a B-1 bomber dropped several JDAMs on the ridgeline where al Qaeda had been pinpointed. The bomber immediately responded to another call for CAS from soldiers on the valley floor who had located an al Qaeda lair, onto which the bomber fired several more.
Between 10am and 12.30pm, a total of 25 JDAMs were fired in Operation Anaconda. Boom, boom, boom.
Jock felt every bomb. Each explosion felt like a charge had gone off inside him. He just hoped like hell the SAS patrols were in the clear, especially after Vick had finished explaining the finer points of the JDAM to Jock; how they never go off target. Vick told a good story and his new Aussie mate was convinced.
‘The JDAM is a 2000 pounder that’s been modified. It was produced around World War II, and instead of throwing them away, they built a computerised, motorised tail fin [that] bolts on the old back and guides them in on target,’ Jock says. ‘Supposedly, JDAMs never go off course and if they do, won’t detonate. They are meant to be harmless to us.’
Jock saw a plane overhead and knew it would be searching out its targets on the high-tech electronic system in the belly of the beast. He waited, nervously, and watched in disbelief as a JDAM soared over the hill near them.
Jock looked over at Frank Grippe.
‘Have you guys got men over there?’ he said. ‘A bloody JDAM just landed over there. You better check if they’re alright.’
The JDAM had landed not far from where Sergeant Pete’s mortar platoon had been before they got taken out earlier.
Again, fortune smiled on the men in the Shahi Kot Valley, and no one was injured. The bomb did not detonate. God only knows why, but no one was asking God.
The bombing runs didn’t stop the enemy and the soldiers were still under fire. It felt to Jock as if there were at least a thousand al Qaeda and Taliban hidden throughout the virtually impenetrable mountain ridgelines and in the caves and villages in the valley.
As soon as the planes had gone, AQ and Taliban fighters emerged from cover and began firing. The fast movers were gone before they could be called back and the troops on the ground knew there would be a long wait before the next lot arrived.
‘The fast movers didn’t stay over target long enough, that was the problem,’ Jock says.
But they couldn’t. The constricted theatre of operations — eight nautical miles by eight nautical miles — didn’t help. The fast movers simply did not have the manoeuvrability of the Apache gunships.
The problems with the CAS were later acknowledged by the Air Force.
‘The unexpected demand for close air support coupled with the deficiencies of the theatre air control system was a jolt,’ wrote Dr Rebecca Grant in the US Air Force report that documented the lessons learned from Operation Anaconda. ‘With the tight airspace crowding aircraft closer together than ever before, many of the aircrews had hair-raising stories to tell about near misses. Others ran out of time while the aircraft ahead of them worked targets.’
The objective language of the report did not mirror the reality of war for Jock Wallace, although the words ‘hair-raising stories’ gave a hint.
Injured soldiers were moaning in Hell’s Halfpipe. The Americans’ ammunition was running low. Al Qaeda had employed the mujahideen tactic of attack-and-take-cover to great effect. And all landing zones in the valley, including those further north, were under intense fire. In between bursts of digging in, Jock manned the radio. He was not aware if any plan to relieve them was forthcoming. Not yet.
‘By lunchtime, the casualties are starting to mount, the Americans have got no idea, nobody’s going anywhere,’ Jock says now. ‘There’s no plan to get out of there, we can’t even get the wounded out … I’ve got my best-case scenario [which is] we all get out of here alive. Or at least I do, at the bare minimum, and I’ll get as many of you out as I can.’
A pragmatist by nature, Jock wasn’t kidding himself or bolstering his confidence with false hope. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, he thought.
He had spent nearly six hours in the valley now and somehow he was still drawing breath. Eight men had been injured and were out of action. He couldn’t explain it. Despite being deeply irreligious, Jock began thinking that maybe, just possibly, it wasn’t his time to die.
‘Slowly, this idea started coming into my head that somehow or somewhere there was something there protecting me,’ he says. ‘When I say protecting me, that’s only for want of a better word. There was something else, there was some force or something on that battlefield that was a governing or guiding hand. I liken it to fate, as in fate was standing there tossing the dice on the people who were there. You saw people side by side — one would walk away, one would go down. Why was it that one, why wasn’t it the other one? Why was one lying in the bottom of a trench, when another was getting belted by shrapnel? Just to test us, I suppose.
‘I’m pretty sure that, on the day, there was this thing that came over me … I still don’t attribute it to a god, but more a chakra or karma, perhaps; even the Buddhists have it as reaching an epiphany or enlightenment. [But I] don’t know that those magic mushrooms exist.’
Signalman Wallace knew what was going on. Command Sergeant Major Frank Grippe was in constant communication with Jock’s liaison officer, Clint, and Jock was passing the information back to the SAS HQ.
Grippe was an optimist and believed wholeheartedly in the ability of his boys and the staying power of the 10th Mountain Division. And he was also counting on the Command’s strategy. ‘We had about 125 people, 85 or so in our position, 45 or so just to the north, just a couple of clicks away,’ Grippe says now, recalling the manpower in their part of the Shahi Kot Valley.
‘We had another blocking position set up. Some of our scouts — you know, hunter-killer teams — were out and about by themselves just gun-fighting with all these al Qaeda. And then another platoon had set up a blocking position on a small canyon out in the hills and they whacked a whole bunch of people that day. They got a watch on Marzak and they were sniping people in Marzak, putting machine-gun fire into Marzak.
‘There were a lot of close-in fights, a lot of long-range shooting going on. I saw my guys shoot guys at 500 metres and knock [the enemy] over, which I know surprised the hell out of the al Qaeda when they were off in the distance like that. All of a sudden, bang, then you hear a snap and the knucklehead bodies are down.’
After all, Grippe believed in the 10th Mountain’s motto, ‘To the Top’. Nothing was going to stop his men.