Time Magazine has an excellent article about the rescue of the only surviving member of the original SEAL team, which also has some startling facts in it. Here are a few excerpts:
A crackle in the brush. That’s the sound the Afghan herder recalls hearing as he walked alone through a pine forest last month. When he looked up, he saw an American commando, his legs and shoulder bloodied. The commando pointed his gun at the Afghan. “Maybe he thought I was a Taliban,” says the shepherd, Gulab. “I remembered hearing that if an American sticks up his thumb, it is a friendly gesture. So that’s what I did.” To make sure the message was clear, Gulab lifted his tunic to show the American he wasn’t hiding a weapon. He then propped up the wounded commando, and together the pair hobbled down the steep mountain trail to Sabari-Minah, a cluster of adobe-and-wood homes–crossing, for the time being, to safety.
…
According to accounts provided to U.S. commanders by the surviving Navy SEAL, the commando team had come under fierce attack from a large group of Taliban fighters, who pounded their location with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and a steady hail of small-arms fire. The clatter of the approaching Chinook may or may not have been audible to the SEALs, but the Taliban surely heard it. A second band of fighters turned and took a bead on the chopper, probably with a rocket- propelled grenade, and in what a U.S. official calls “a pretty lucky shot,” knocked it out of the sky.
Now the four SEALs were truly alone. With night falling and the fog settling, they managed to slip through the Taliban fighters. Crawling and scrambling, they headed toward the high ridges, and the Taliban–who had them outnumbered, probably 5 to 1–gave chase.
U.S. officials say the commandos kept up a running fire fight with their pursuers for more than two miles. The known survivor recalls seeing two of his friends shot. At one point he blacked out, possibly from a mortar round landing close by. When he regained consciousness, two of his teammates–Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, 25, and Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29–were dead, and a third had vanished in the darkness and fog. The surviving SEAL dragged himself at least another mile up into the mountains. It was there he was found four days later by Gulab the shepherd.
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The Taliban was not so agreeable. That night the fighters sent a message to the villagers: “We want this infidel.” A firm reply from the village chief, Shinah, shot back. “The American is our guest, and we won’t give him up as long as there’s a man or a woman left alive in our village.” As a precaution, the villagers moved the injured commando out of Gulab’s house and hid him in a stable overnight, until it was safe for Gulab to make the six-hour trek down to the U.S. base at Asadabad and report that the SEAL–by then the subject of an intense search–was alive. Sometime later, Gulab went back to his village and then returned to Asadabad with the commando, this time reuniting the wounded and weary SEAL with his jubilant comrades.
Joe Katzman at Winds Of Change has some thoughts on the courage those villagers had to face the Taliban and refuse to give up the SEAL:
Note that reply from Shinah. Unlike many of the Arab/Islamic utterances we’ve become used to hearing, this was not an idle boast. The Pashtun code of hospitality extends to everyone. Doesn’t matter if you’re an American commando or Osama Bin Laden himself – they’re honor bound to give sanctuary to strangers, and to conceal or defend any guest to the death. To forfeit that obligation is a death sentence of its own if word gets out, and to attack a village harboring a guest is likely to ignite a blood-feud.
This is, of course, one of the dynamics that complicates the search for Bin Laden and other senior Taliban/al-Qaeda figures, and explains why many are caught in Pakistani cities instead of Afghan hills.
Although there is much sadness in this whole event, the fact that these villagers would risk their lives for him speaks volumes about the character of these people.
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