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battalions, Special Forces’ cutting edge was provided by twelve-man operational detachments alpha, more commonly known as ODAs or A-teams. By 2001 Special Forces focused on “unconventional warfare”—teaching insurgents how to wage war against enemies of the United States. Afghanistan seemed to validate their approach. But that didn’t stop CENTCOM from ensnaring Special Forces in a confusing and often conflicting chain of command that was to affect with nearly disastrous results the rest of the war in Afghanistan.
    The commander of all of CENTCOM’s “white” (i.e., those whose existence is not classified) special operations forces was a former head of SEAL Team 6, the Navy’s rough equivalent of the Army’s Delta Force. That officer, Rear Admiral Albert Calland, split the special ops command in Afghanistan. In the north, where the Northern Alliance’s presence offered great opportunities for unconventional warfare, he created Task Force Dagger, with Mulholland’s 5 th Group at its core. To special ops planners, the south offered more potential for a force designed to conduct special reconnaissance and direct action; in other words, a force that specialized first in finding the enemy, then killing him. The force Calland established to do that—Joint Special Operations Task Force (South)—was led by another SEAL, Commodore Robert Harward, and comprised largely special ops units from allied countries, rounded out by some SEALs and Special Forces. It was called Task Force K-Bar.
    Many, especially those in the Army, worried about Navy operators being thrust into extended land operations. But in the north the plan worked better than anyone had dared hope.
     
    WITH Mikolashek’s support, Task Force Dagger put unconventional warfare (UW) doctrine to work on a massive scale in Afghanistan, allying with the warlords who would become American surrogates or, in the language of UW, “G-chiefs” (the G stands for guerrilla ). According to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Rosengard, Dagger’s operations officer, the key to understanding and implementing that doctrine was to reduce it to its bare essentials. For a UW operation to work, a potential G-chief must be able to answer “yes” to three simple questions, he said.
    “The first one is ‘Do we have a common goal today, recognizing tomorrow may be different?’ The second question is ‘Do you have a secure backyard?’” Rosengard said. Without a sanctuary in which Special Forces could meet with and organize indigenous troops, “we’ll only run away from the enemy all the time and never get anywhere.”
    The third question is even more basic: “Are you willing to kill somebody?”
    “With those three things, I can do business,” Rosengard said. “It’s no more complicated than that. Bragg [Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where Special Forces doctrine is written and taught] will make that a mile long and teach people a course for eight weeks.”
    In the Northern Alliance, Task Force Dagger found an organization whose leaders could answer with a resounding “yes” to each of the three questions. Despite the assassination of its charismatic leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, only two days before the September 11 attacks, the alliance remained a force in being, with its own “secure backyard” in northeastern Afghanistan. Once the A-teams got their feet on the ground and put their heads together with their chosen G-chiefs, the combination of American know-how and air power with Northern Alliance muscle proved unstoppable when opposed by the Taliban’s ragtag army.
    The Taliban’s collapse heralded an extraordinary success for Task Force Dagger, but it also posed new and difficult challenges. The Northern Alliance had proven worthy allies in the fight to topple the Taliban. But once that victory had been achieved, the alliance’s leaders were more interested in consolidating power for themselves in Kabul, or in fighting among themselves, than they were in crushing the Al