A hostage rescue in Afghanistan

Navy Times:

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The task force was notified almost immediately of the kidnapping, which was kept quiet out of concern that publicizing it might place the hostage’s life in jeopardy and make locating him more difficult, the special operations officer said.

For five days, the kidnappers frequently moved their prisoners around the mountains. Then, after releasing the Afghan hostage, they kept the American in an open-air location for about 45 to 50 days, the businessman said. The kidnappers treated him “reasonably well,” he said. “The food was bread and water, ... but for some reason, my bread always turned out stale. ... Their bread when it’s fresh is good stuff, but after three days old, it’s not much fun anymore.”

Most of the time, two kidnappers were present. “I had one fellow who was with me the whole time — a young guy — and a second young fellow who was often with me, but not always,” he said. “Sometimes they traded off.”

At first, the kidnappers allowed the hostage to keep his hands and feet free, but then they put a chain and two padlocks around his legs. One day, when his captors had left him alone, the engineer broke the padlocks and tried to escape. He made it part way to the nearest house when one kidnapper saw him.

“The guy finally showed up and saw me going down across the valley, and his being about 21 years old and I’m 61, he kind of gained on me,” the engineer said. “I was barefoot, too. ... After that, they tied me up a lot more.”

The kidnappers eventually demanded a ransom for the engineer’s release that far exceeded what had been paid to secure his partner’s freedom. Deadlines came and went. “These fellows wanted either blood or money, and they weren’t getting it that way,” the engineer said.

After about 30 days, frustrated with the slow pace of negotiations, they let the engineer use a cell phone to call his wife.

It was the first of four calls to her he was permitted, allowing him to pass information to her in English, a language his captors did not understand.

The kidnappers moved the engineer for the last time about Oct. 9 or 10, when they put him in a one-room mud hut on a mountainside in Wardak’s Nirkh district, about 30 miles west of Kabul. Roughly a day later, he made the final call to his wife.

Those searching for him at last had a bead on where he was being held.

“The task force was able to locate [the hostage] using a variety of information collection measures,” the special operations officer said. He declined to be more specific, other than to say that human intelligence gathered mostly by Afghan security forces was a key factor, and the FBI also “played a very important role,” he said.

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Surrounded by “treacherous terrain,” the kidnappers’ location represented the most challenging aspect of the rescue mission, he said.

But the rugged remoteness of their hideaway appears to have led to fatal overconfidence among the American’s kidnappers.

“He had captors who thought we wouldn’t be able to deal with that terrain,” the special operations officer said.

That, the officer added, was a mistake. Seven years of experience in Afghanistan have enabled U.S. special operators to adapt to the unforgiving landscape.

“The terrain is really not a challenge any more,” he said. “It slows you down, but it slows them down, too.”

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The element of surprise would prove critical.

As night fell Oct. 14, three Chinook helicopters flew into the mountains and inserted roughly 24 to 30 special operators — most of them Navy SEALs — about three miles from the kidnappers’ hideout to minimize the chance of being seen or heard.

As midnight came and went, the operators climbed slowly toward the objective for 4½ hours. At that altitude, the special operations officer said, “You can’t exactly exert yourself too much or you’ll be spent.” The commandos ascended 2,000 feet before pausing roughly 275 yards from the target.

There they established an objective rally point — typically, the site where a spec ops force stows unnecessary gear and puts security teams out while those making the final approach to the target transform into “pure assault mode,” said a source familiar with such missions.

From the ORP, an assault force of seven operators — all or almost all SEALs, according to the special operations officer — crept toward the objective.

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One of the commandos tossed a pebble against the hut’s tin door — a traditional way visitors announce their arrival in rural Afghanistan.

The rattle of the stone against the door failed to rouse the guards. “They were both zipped up inside their sleeping bags, sleeping,” one behind the hostage on the floor of the darkened hut and the other outside, the engineer said. But their prisoner was awake and suddenly alert.

“I heard the latch rattling and somebody came in,” he said. “The first guy came in with a LED light, and I just presumed that somebody was coming to visit. I didn’t think of it anymore until the second guy came in and I saw the silhouette of the first fellow. Then I knew it was U.S. mil that was coming in. I don’t know how many guys actually came into the room, but it was soon filled up, and it was soon obvious that I was being rescued.

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... “They knew who was who,” the engineer said. the SEALs quickly demonstrated that, aiming their silencer-equipped weapons to shoot and kill the kidnapper in the room before he could fire a round. The engineer said he heard the sounds of the operators shooting and killing a guard posted outside.

The SEALs turned to the now former hostage and told him they were there to take him back.

“I was in favor of that, 100 percent,” he said. “I was very surprised, very amazed and very happy.”

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There is much more in this detailed account of first the hostage's capture and then his rescue. SEALs go through the toughest training of any of the special ops and all of it is tough. The mountains are not a big obstacle to them. They have been very active in Afghanistan and because of the nature of their work we don't get to see much about it. I appreciate seeing a success story like this one.

Hostage taking is a part of the enemy's strategic plan in Afghanistan. It is a way of getting funding for their operations and terrorizing non combatants who are working to better the lives of Afghans. It is normally a low risk operation for the enemy. In this case it was not.