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As the sun rose Oct. 19, 2001, in the Dari-a-Souf valley in northern Afghanistan, Captain Mike Nash waited to meet his new Afghan ally.1 General Abdul Rashid Dostum was the commander of the largest armed faction of the Northern Alliance. An ethnic Uzbek and former Soviet tank officer, Dostum had been fighting the Taliban in the canyons of the "Valley of the River of Caves" for years. He had been described to Nash in intelligence reports as a "ruthless warlord," who would likely be unreceptive to Americans and might even attempt to kill him at their first meeting.
Nash and the 11 other men of U.S. Army Special Forces A-detachment 595 had arrived only a few hours earlier, flown in during the night by the crew of an MH-47E Chinook helicopter from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Relying on their multi-mode radar, the pilots had brought the SF soldiers over mountains higher than the Rockies and had flown them through a nighttime dust storm that forced back two MH-60 escorts. To reach the detachment's objective, the Chinook had to conduct an aerial refueling while flying at 110 knots only 300 feet above the ground, in the moonless dark.
From the time of their arrival until 5 a.m., Nash, his executive officer and his team sergeant received a complete intelligence update. The ominous personality profile of Dostum that Nash had received in Uzbekistan was recast during the update. Dostum was now described as a smart, pragmatic fighter who was eager for the American soldiers to join him.
At 9 a.m., an advance security party of 30 Afghan horsemen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, PK machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, rode into the American base camp. Dostum soon followed, also on horseback, guarded by 20 more heavily armed riders.