53lowed by the crack of gunire over their heads, ODA
1333’s intelligence chief recalls. As the Americans
and Afghans scrambled for protective cover, Apache
helicopters wheeled low outside the base, hunting
for the ighters responsible, blanketing the perimeter
with gunire and briely quieting the attacks.
BY THAT TIME,the sun was out and the ighting had
died down enough to set up camp. When the Afghan
troops were inally able to shed their combat gear,
it was clear many of them had been toddlers when
the war began in 2001. Some infantry soldiers still
had baby faces, unlike the bearded, tattooed Special
Forces team members. All were motivated to get back
into the ight. The Taliban had not seized control of a
provincial capital in Afghanistan since 2015. It wasn’t
going to happen again on their watch.
On Aug. 12, ODA 1333 prepared to mount a
counterattack. U.S. Special Forces Team ODA 1212,
which arrived overnight, would also push inside the
city. The teams would be further aided by 60 addi-
tional Afghan commandos and aerial footage from
MQ-9 Reaper drones. The goal was to secure the gov-
ernment facilities, police headquarters, prison and
district center under attack. The operational plan
was coordinated with Afghan forces, which had in-
curred more than 100 casualties from two straight
days of ighting. As they left the outpost and headed
into the city, team members could see decomposing
corpses in front of burned-out buildings.
For those who lived in Ghazni, the scene was
apocalyptic. Gunire rattled through the air, rockets
hissed and airstrikes crashed in the distance. Sami
Ahmadi, a 24-year-old English student at Ghazni
University, gathered his family and huddled in-
side his basement for shelter. “We were terriied,”
he recalls. “Police were killed, their bodies lying in
the road.”
As forces pushed farther into the city, waves of
citizens emerged, carrying what they could in their
arms to lee the ighting. They were migrating north
on foot to seek safety in nearby towns, or even onto
Kabul. Behind them, small teams of Taliban were
laced through Ghazni’s narrow, serpentine streets.
The insurgents had stormed the prison on the
southeastern edge of the city to free captured ight-
ers, but that attempt was ultimately thwarted. Their
efort to breach the provincial government building
was quashed as well. But the Taliban put up a tough
ight in the streets. At one point, as ODA 1333’s con-Two Afghan boys
paint a blast wall
in Ghazni; the
Taliban attacked
the city ahead
of the Muslim
holiday Eid
al-Adha