As Taliban fell, U.S. special forces on ground sought to distinguish friend from foe

By SUSAN SEVAREID
Associated Press Writer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – As the Taliban militia crumbled in December, distinguishing friend from foe became even more difficult for U.S. special forces, according to an American colonel who advised the tribal leader now serving as Afghanistan's prime minister.

At the time, fighters affiliated with the Taliban were switching sides quickly, and special forces spearheading the U.S. ground effort relied more than ever on intelligence information from their Afghan allies to know if even people standing next to them could be trusted.

"One day they're the enemy and they're shooting at us, and the next day they were part of the force" allied with the United States, the colonel, who could only be identified by his first name, Dave, said Friday. "It was unnerving."

These days, U.S. special forces are somewhat more comfortable in Afghan streets, where they have begun assessing community needs to help the local leadership devise plans aimed at rebuilding the country.

On Friday, a team visited a neighborhood on the outskirts of Kandahar, locating water pumps, talking with grocers about food supplies and asking residents about schools, police stations and whether they feel streets are safe from crime.

The colonel said he became Hamid Karzai's principal military adviser in mid-November, training his ragtag followers of shopkeepers, farmers and businessmen for the final push against Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan and advising Karzai during Taliban surrender negotiations last month. Karzai was sworn in two weeks ago as the country's interim prime minister.

"In the final days before the surrender, it became more and more difficult to determine who was friendly and who was the enemy," said the colonel, commander of the Special Operations Command and Control Center in the southern city of Kandahar and now military adviser to the Kandahar governor.

Dave said he discussed security concerns with Karzai about the actual surrender talks in Said Alim Kalay, about 12 miles north of Kandahar, fearing local commanders would launch large groups ostensibly to negotiate their surrender as a ploy to attack. In the end, he said, the number of representatives attending two-to-three days of surrender negotiations was limited to four.

As to terms of surrender, he said: "The only thing I wanted to be sure about was that there were no conditions for surrender ... that there would be no negotiation for the senior Taliban." The rest, he said, was up to Karzai.

Many Taliban leaders, not granted formal protection under the surrender terms, had fled the Kandahar region by the time their forces surrendered and leadership loyal to Karzai was in place in the south.

"I don't think that anyone was trying to help them, just that the Taliban leadership took advantage of the time, using their underlings to negotiate the surrender so they could slip out," said Dave, who said he'd been present for some talks but not the final negotiations.

Part of the job as Karzai's military adviser was training him to delegate some military responsibilities – a daunting task, considering no chain of command existed.

"He just didn't physically have time to negotiate a surrender, assist and provide his views on the future of Afghanistan as well as run a war," Dave said.

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