By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 23, 2001; Page A01TUNGI, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 -- Stopping their Humvees behind a sand dune, the U.S. Special Forces unit crept up to the six sleeping truckers without a sound or a glint of light. Some of the truckers were jolted awake with rifle barrels poked in their necks. Others were yanked out of their cabs by their feet.
Within seconds, they were handcuffed with plastic restraints and escorted to the Humvees, where one of the soldiers barked orders into a helmet-mounted microphone while another accused the truckers of hauling oil "to help terrorists."
Less than 10 minutes later, two helicopters descended from the moonless sky and fired rockets at the trucks -- two diesel tankers and a flatbed loaded with 85 barrels of gasoline and kerosene -- setting off a searing explosion that catapulted some of the oil drums hundreds of feet into the air.
The operation, which was described in detail today by two of the truckers, occurred last Friday near Tungi village in the central part of Kandahar province, less than 10 miles from the border with Pakistan and only about 50 miles southwest of the city of Kandahar, one of the Taliban's last two strongholds.
The location of the attack and the accounts of witnesses provide a rare first-hand account of covert U.S. military activity in southern Afghanistan, illustrating the Pentagon's new emphasis on cutting off Taliban supply lines and the extent to which U.S. soldiers are attempting to minimize civilian casualties.
Although the Pentagon has acknowledged that several hundred Special Forces personnel are in Afghanistan, the presence of those units near the Pakistani border suggests U.S. ground troops are now active in a wide swath of southern Afghanistan. On Wednesday, the Pentagon showed a video of another tanker blasted apart by a U.S. warplane on a road west of Kandahar.
The increasing role of special operations units is part of a new phase of America's war in this country. With most of the north in the hands of opposition groups, the Pentagon has shifted its focus to targeting small groups of Taliban leaders and members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, who are hunkering down in the south.
Today a Taliban commander in the border town of Spin Boldak permitted an American reporter and three Pakistani journalists to visit the site of the attack without Taliban guards. [The Taliban today ordered the departure from Afghanistan of more than 100 international journalists it had allowed to visit Spin Boldak for three days.]
The Pakistani owner of the three trucks said that more than a dozen other oil tankers have been attacked by U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan over the past 10 days. In most cases, he said, the drivers had been removed before the trucks were hit.
Plastic hand restraints were found in the sand next to the charred carcasses of the three trucks as well as near another burned-out tanker just a few miles down the dirt road upon which the three trucks were traveling. Pieces of lead shrapnel that appeared to have come from a rocket also were scattered about near the vehicles.
Fear and Darkness
The three trucks set out from Iran on Nov. 12, plying a rutted, dirt road between the Iranian border and Spin Boldak that is a favorite route of smugglers. This is how much of Afghanistan's heroin is shipped out -- and how oil, electronic goods and other commodities are shipped in.
Normally the journey to Spin Boldak takes about three days. But since the war started, truckers do not drive at night, afraid that their headlights might invite an airstrike.
Now the daylight trip takes five to six days. And in an often futile attempt at camouflage, drivers have started to cover the tops of their brightly colored trucks with tree branches and scrub brush.
The three truckers, hauling about $5,500 worth of fuel in each vehicle, took similar precautions. On Friday night, they stopped at dusk, for safety but also to pray. It was the first night of Ramadan, the start of the Muslim fasting month.
A few hours later, they were fast asleep. Habibullah, the driver of the lead truck, the flatbed, was in his cab. Abdullah and Shahzada, the drivers of the two tankers, along with their three assistants, were sleeping on the soft, brown sand between the trucks.
"The next thing I can remember is a gun poking into my neck and a man's knees on my chest," Abdullah said.
Habibullah panicked. "I first thought they were bandits," he said. "I thought they were going to kill me."
When he opened his eyes, Abdullah said he initially could not see much because there was no moonlight.
He said he was quickly handcuffed with plastic restraints and hauled off toward a nearby sand dune. As he was being escorted to the soldiers' vehicles -- his description matched that of a Humvee -- he said he caught sight of six commandos on the ground, each holding onto a trucker.
Abdullah and Habibullah, both of whom use only one name, provided descriptions of equipment on the soldiers that are common to Special Forces units: night-vision goggles, bulletproof chest plates and helmet-mounted radio microphones.
"Their glasses were green and glittering," Abdullah said. "And they kept talking on the radio."
After taking the men to the top of the sand dune, one of the soldiers began questioning the truckers in what Habibullah called "very bad Persian."
"He said, 'Who are you?' " Abdullah said. "We said we are drivers. These are our trucks. We are taking fuel from Iran."
"But they said, 'No, these trucks belong to terrorists and you are providing help to terrorists,' " he said.
Abdullah said the soldiers then marched them up another sand dune that was several hundred feet from the trucks. "They told us, 'Don't try to run. We're going to hit your tankers,' " he said.
While the Persian-speaking soldier was conversing with the truckers, Abdullah said another one was talking on his radio. The others kept their guns trained on the truckers, he said.
Less than 10 minutes later, the two truckers said they heard the whump-whump of approaching helicopters. Their lights were off, and with no moon, they were invisible to those on the ground, Habibullah said.
"We started to panic," he said. "We couldn't understand what was going on."
Then, without warning, the helicopters unleashed a barrage of rockets at the trucks, the drivers said. Habibullah's truck was the first to explode, sending oil barrels shooting into the air. The tankers were hit moments later, emitting a massive fireball and a wave of intense heat that nearly knocked the drivers over.
"I've never seen an explosion that big," Abdullah said. "It was so bright, it was like daytime."
After the fire began to subside, two of the soldiers pulled knives from their belts and cut off the truckers' hand restraints. The Persian speaker told a man hauling kindling with a tractor, who also had been sleeping nearby, to take the truckers to the nearest village.
Then, without saying another word, the truckers said, the soldiers got back in their Humvees and sped off toward the south.
Oil for 'Common People'
Acrid smoke still lingered in the air at the desolate turnoff where the trucks had been hit. Charred oil barrels, their tops blown off and their sides distended, lay sprinkled about like shattered aluminum cans. Nothing was left of the trucks except mangled metal.
The plastic hand restraints were scattered on the second dune. There were also tire tracks in the area and pocked footprints in the sand, from what appeared to be rubber-soled boots. "Afghans don't have shoes like that," said Abdullah, 32, a chatty man with a pointy black beard.
Akhtar Mohammed, the owner of the trucks, said he cannot understand why his vehicles were targeted. The oil, he insisted, was destined for "common people" in Spin Boldak, although he did acknowledge that some of it likely would have been sent to Kandahar and some of it smuggled into Pakistan.
"In the name of Osama and the Taliban, they are just penalizing the common people," he growled as he examined the wreckage. "This is cruel and excessive. It's farmers and ordinary people who buy our oil, not the Taliban."
He said he cannot afford to replace the Russian-built trucks, which cost about $13,000 apiece. That means Abdullah, Habibullah, Shahzada and their assistants will be out of work, he said.
"How will they feed their families now?" he asked. "What is the point of this?"
Abdullah said he is grateful to be alive, but he is not about to thank the U.S. soldiers for extracting him before firing upon his truck.
"It's because of the grace of Allah," he said, "that we are alive today."