The War of the Night Special Forces open the ground war. The making of elite fighters—and the battle they face By John Barry and Arian Campo-Flores NEWSWEEK

Oct. 29 issue — Given a choice, U.S. Army Rangers like to slip in after midnight, when the enemy is likely to be unprepared or, even better, unconscious. The members of the infantry’s elite strike force rehearse their missions in darkness, trudging for miles with 100-pound packs, scoping targets through night-vision goggles, willing their bodies and brains to ignore the urge to lie down and sleep. “We own the night,” the brass likes to brag. IN THE COLD blackness of early Saturday morning, Taliban fighters received the first of what could turn into many nighttime visits from the Rangers. Some 100 troops parachuted into an airfield on the outskirts of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, and opened fire. At the same time Special Operations teams brought in by helicopter raided another Taliban-controlled site. According to U.S. officials, troops gathered intelligence from a complex that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has used as a base. NEWSWEEK has learned that U.S. commanders deliberately avoided targeting the compound as part of its bombing campaign, so that it would remain intact as the focal point for the first ground attack. The forces stayed only a few hours. Before sunup, transport planes and helicopters swept down and retrieved them.

In recent weeks U.S. commanders have privately talked about using specialized troops to scoop up and interrogate Taliban leaders, hoping they’d give up Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Pentagon officials wouldn’t confirm or deny that the troops had captured anyone but said that no Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders had been killed or captured. The Taliban tried to claim one victory in the aftermath of the raid, saying they downed a U.S. helicopter. Two servicemen died and three were injured when a Black Hawk helicopter supporting the attack crashed on return to base in Pakistan. The Pentagon said the Taliban had nothing to do with it. And in a Friday photo op in Shanghai, George W. Bush told reporters, “We are, slowly but surely, encircling the terrorists so that we can bring them to justice.”

That may have been more than a mere toss-off line. In the days before the raid, NEWSWEEK has learned, top intelligence officials in the administration concluded that they had pinned down bin Laden’s location to what one called a “20-by-20-mile area” in Afghanistan. But the area was so full of caves and tunnels that it was, in the words of one source, “impossible to seal.” The aim of the raids, according to this source, was to find better intelligence so that bin Laden and others could be attacked from the air with greater precision: “The preferred method still is dropping a bomb.” PHASE TWO

Last week’s operation was the beginning of phase two of Operation Enduring Freedom, a battle plan unlike any America has ever seen. Until last week we saw the enemy through the familiar and comfortably distant cross hairs of a strike aircraft flying high above the fray. Now the United States is engaging Taliban fighters on the ground, in fleeting, in-and-out strikes. The next phase carries potential rewards—better intelligence, greater accuracy and improved prospects for achieving the ultimate goal: getting bin Laden and chasing the Taliban from power. But close-in fighting in Afghanistan’s forbidding terrain also carries enormous risks: real casualties, potentially embarrassing failures and the possibility that we will reach our military goals before a plan for the future of Afghanistan is in place.

Trained to operate in extreme conditions and hostile territory, often behind enemy lines, Special Forces were created with wars like this one in mind.

Most of the uncomfortable, dangerous work will fall to the various Special Operations forces, the U.S. military’s elite soldiers. Trained to operate in extreme conditions and hostile territory, often behind enemy lines, Special Forces were created with wars like this one in mind. But this conflict will test them as never before. They’re well trained for the task. A volunteer Army in peacetime has not always attracted America’s best. But the ranks of the Special Ops forces are, by any definition, a cut above. They tend to be older, more experienced and better educated than rank-and-file enlisted men. In a heavily blue-collar Army, many Green Berets have college degrees.

Their current deployment is fraught. After three weeks of intense bombing with unclear results, President Bush was beginning to feel pressure to take the fight to the next level. Military commanders were resistant. Why put young men where bombs can go instead? But Bush wanted to send a clear signal to the Taliban—and reassure the American people—that he hadn’t lost his resolve. Bombs alone, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “can’t crawl around on the ground and find people.”

Special Operations forces can, though even longtime soldiers sometimes have trouble making sense of the Special Ops subculture. The Army, Navy and Air Force all have elite troops that fall under the blanket term “special operations,” but their missions are sometimes completely different. (The Marines have their own Special Ops guys, but they fall under a separate command.) NEWSWEEK interviews with active-duty and retired Special Operations soldiers offered a glimpse into the training and operations of the elite forces. GUNG-HO TROOPS

Army Rangers—the men who made the first moves last week—occupy the entry-level rung on the Special Ops ladder. As the Army’s elite light-infantry troops, they are fast-strike soldiers with an especially dangerous mission. They often go into a hostile situation before other troops, fight their way, often outnumbered, into a harbor or airstrip, secure it and then step back when other troops arrive. If you’re a gung-ho young Army recruit, chances are you dream of someday becoming a Ranger. “When I look at the young guys, I still see the look in their eyes,” says Sgt. 1/c Frank Pacheco, who scouts out talent for the Ranger School. “They see the scroll on your shoulder, and it’s admiration, or maybe awe.”

Getting in isn’t easy. To be considered, prospective Rangers must first learn to jump out of airplanes at the Army’s Airborne School. Parachuting is considered a basic skill for any Special Operations unit.

Those who make it through jump school can apply for Ranger School, which trains Rangers as well as other elite infantrymen. Rangers like to call themselves “three-time volunteers,” signing up for the Army, then Airborne, then Rangers. Those who survive the punishing Pre-Ranger Course—a battery of physical and mental tests that quickly separates serious candidates from wanna-bes—are eligible for the school, 61 days of intense training at Fort Benning, Ga. Candidates must master rock and mountain climbing while wearing full gear, boots and heavy packs, “fast rope” from helicopters onto land and into water, find their way back to base from deep wilderness without the aid of maps—all on three or four hours’ sleep and barely enough food and water to stay alive. “We stress them in all kinds of ways,” says Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Kelso of the Ranger Training Brigade. Soldiers make it through training by constantly repeating, “If I can just make it to tomorrow morning.” Few do: two thirds of Rangers wash out during training.

Rangers usually train with live ammunition. Before graduating, they must learn to use, take apart and put back together a dozen or more weapons and pieces of equipment, from handguns to shortwave radios. The point of all this is to teach the infantrymen to work alone and in groups and to improvise when things don’t go as planned. A Ranger, says Kelso, “will continue his mission even if he has to crawl to the target.” MIDNIGHT MAP-MAKING

For many soldiers, the Rangers are challenging enough. But especially gifted and motivated Rangers may move up to the Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group—the storied Green Berets. In Afghanistan, they have been assigned to train and advise Northern Alliance forces fighting the Taliban, and could take part in future raids in the South. More cerebral than their Ranger brethren, Green Berets often work with foreign governments and rebel groups, and conduct long-range surveillance and intelligence missions. Special Forces soldiers will hide behind enemy lines for days or weeks at a time, still and silent, observing enemy movements and reporting back through “whisper microphones” or handheld devices. Green Berets value mental toughness over sheer physical strength, and tend to go into a hostile situation with more brains than brawn. Their combat training is every bit as physically grueling as the Rangers’—and they can and will fight if they need to—but Green Berets spend as much time, if not more, learning foreign languages and immersing themselves in the history and culture of far-flung regions they are assigned to. A Ranger might be awakened in the middle of the night to march 20 miles in a swamp. A Green Beret would be roused out of bed and ordered to draw a freehand map of a country selected at random, labeling every city, river and mountain range.

Compared with the boisterous and sometimes boastful Rangers, Green Berets tend to be quieter and more modest. “You can’t be a Rambo,” says former Green Beret F. Andy Messing. “Some of these guys are 145 pounds soaking wet. It’s about brains. You see a lot of guys playing chess in their team rooms. These are not guys who read comic books.” They also tend to be older than other Special Operations soldiers, in their mid-30s—but must maintain the same physical standards required of 18-year-old recruits. The months away wreck plenty of marriages. Many Green Berets have been through at least one divorce. ‘SNATCH AND GRAB’ OPERATIONS

Rangers and Green Berets will likely handle most of the heavy lifting in Afghanistan, but other Special Operations forces may play a role. The Army’s small and clandestine Delta Force counterterrorism group, trained in “close quarter” operations, could be used in a potential “snatch and grab” operation to get bin Laden or his Qaeda lieutenants. Air Force Special Forces, air-combat specialists, have the unenviable job of getting troops on and off the battlefield. Navy SEALs, equal to the Green Berets in agility and especially skilled at underwater maneuvers, may yet see action, though in landlocked Afghanistan the Rangers and Green Berets may have the edge.

Yet for all the training and technology, Special Operations forces haven’t always lived up to their hype. Their missions are difficult; if they weren’t, elite troops wouldn’t be sent to fight them. Yet few Americans can forget the smoking hull of an American helicopter in the aftermath of Desert One, the disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran. Or the 1993 images of an American soldier being dragged dead through the streets of Mogadishu after a botched Special Operations attempt to grab Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. The elite troops can’t count on much cover from the Pentagon brass, many of whom regard the troops as pampered and overrated “glory boys” who break rules and drain resources from the regular troops. In the weeks before last week’s attack, there was a fierce debate inside the Pentagon about whether the elite troops would be effective in finding and taking out bin Laden.

The man overseeing the Afghanistan mission, Gen. Tommy Franks, was vocal in his doubts. A lifelong artilleryman, he brought with him a traditional Army skepticism about the usefulness of Special Ops soldiers. Rumsfeld was so torn over what to do that he briefly considered “stovepiping” the Special Forces in the region—putting them under separate command, if only to stop the bickering in the ranks. Whether the job in Afghanistan is finished by Special Forces or regular Army, the fighting will likely not end there. The sad reality of this new kind of war is that by the time it’s over, there could be plenty of action for them all.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2001