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Chechen militant group within the ranks of Osama bin Ladens elite force, the International Islamic Front for Confronting the Crusaders and the Jews. The Chechen group, known as the Majlis-al-Shura Al-Askari-e-Mujahedin Al-Shishan [Military Advisory Council of the Mujahedin of Chechnya], immediately established a distinct presence among the Islamist-Jihadist forces in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani intelligence officials noted the decisive role that this mixed force of Chechens, Uzbeks, and Uighurs would play during battles in Waziristan in October and November, citing them as the most professional and hardened fighters facing Pakistani security forces. A sprinkle of Uzbek, Chechen, and Uighur mujahedin also appeared in the ranks of the Taliban and Gulbaddin Heckmatyars Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan, offering their expertise and manpower to the various Afghan forces in eastern and southern Afghanistan, where most of the fighting against U.S. and coalition forces was taking place. Chechen mujahedin were now dispersed throughout Pakistans badlands. In late November 2004, a few Chechens attempted to rob a money changer in Quetta, whom they accused of stealing money from the jihad. One of them was arrested and subjected to a few days of torture by the Pakistani police, finally identifying their safe house. As the police were closing in, most of the Chechen mujahedin escaped. But four of them remained, and they managed to hold the vastly larger force of police at bay for more than a day, inflicting heavy casualties before they were overwhelmed and killed by the police. The Waziristan police chief announced that his forces had recovered grenades, explosives, and bombmaking material from the house. In March 2005, Pakistani intelligence agents uncovered a plot by Chechen mujahedin in Waziristan to kidnap and execute a senior Russian diplomat and his family in Islamabad. Chechen mujahedin were later observed casing key Russian diplomatic facilities throughout Pakistan. A police raid on a safe house in Islamabad turned up communiqus in the name of the Majlis-al-Shura Al-Askarie-Mujahedin Al-Shishan taking responsibility for the operationbut the Chechens involved, as well as a Saudi accomplice, managed to evade the Pakistani dragnet and find refuge in Waziristan. The growing presence of Chechen mujahedin was noted by

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American and Pakistani officials as the fighting escalated in the spring of 2005. In one early May engagement in eastern Afghanistan, a small group of Chechens and Pakistanis held their ground and gave cover to retreating Afghan and Arab mujahedin as superior U.S.-led forces closed in on them. According to the governor of Zabol Province, two Chechens and one Pakistani were killed in the standoff (and about forty more Afghans were killed by U.S. aerial bombing of the withdrawing force). These were well-trained, well-armed people . . . not just a rogue group, Colonel James Yonts told the Associated Press. They didnt flee, they stood and fought. By early summer, every substantial clash between Pashtun tribal forces and U.S. and Pakistani security forces saw Chechens and Uzbeks play a leading, and often decisive, role. The Chechens always led from the front and elected to hold the line while covering the withdrawal of their fellow mujahedin. Their success led to an increase in the flow of foreign mujahedin into camps in Waziristan, from where they launched operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. One senior Western security official noted that there had been an increase in foreign fighters: Chechens, Arabs, Middle Easterners in the region, explaining that Western intelligence [could] see this from the dead bodies and also from the radio traffic we pick up in different languages. One milestone in the escalating war in Afghanistan was a major special operation against elite U.S. forces in the eastern province of Kunar, on June 28, 2005a series of clashes that signaled, more clearly than the ongoing resistance in other parts of Afghanistan, a new phase in the war. The decision to launch the strategic offensive was based on the jihadists new confidence in their grassroots support in Afghanistan. In mid-June, Mullah Akhtar Usmani assured the Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the Taliban was enjoying greater support from the Afghan people because of American brutality against Muslims and their bias against Muslim countries. . . . The Taliban are everywhere. In some places they are very dominant and in others they are not. They are dominant in the eastern, southern and southwestern provinces. This widespread grassroots presence, the jihadists felt, would help to sustain and support their offensive in Afghanistan.

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The June 28 attacks, a series of ambushes that destroyed a U.S. Navy SEAL patrol and an MH-47 rescue helicopter, were a complex operation requiring excellent intelligence and organizational skills, and an audacity that went far beyond that behind most Afghan operations. Indeed, the Kunar operation was the result of a strategic decision by the jihadist high command to introduce new forces into the theater, including a group of expert terrorists, among whom were Chechens and West Europeans, who were dispatched into an area just across the border in Pakistan. This group was command by Abd-al-Hadi al-Afghani, the amir of Arab mujahedin in Afghanistan. Asadullah Wafa, the governor of Kunar Province, noted that the attacks were carried out mostly by foreign terrorist groupsArabs, Chechens and Pakistanis. They come from the other side of the border, launch their attacks and cross back into Pakistan within thirty minutes. The Chechens were especially useful in Afghanistan because their Russian-language proficiency allowed them to communicate directly with older chieftains and commanders who had learned some Russian during the 1980s, and because they were comfortable in the mountainous conditions of the region. British, French, and other Western European volunteers were also sought after, for their skills in handling electronic and other high-tech instruments. Significantly, these expert mujahedin cooperated with locally recruited and commanded forces, rather than elements of the national parties. In Kunar, they usually cooperated with the mujahedin force named after Biraa bin Malik (an early companion of Prophet Muhammad), which was commanded by Mullah Muhammad Ismail, a former Taliban commander turned local warlord. Such localized resistance forces posed a great challenge to the United States, competing for the same population that U.S. and Afghan forces were trying to engage and recruit. In turn, this opened the door for jihadist spies to penetrate U.S.-Afghan forces. These foreign elements were crucial to the June 28 clash in Kunar Province. Islamist sources insisted from the beginning that they had advance knowledge that Allied forces were planning to insert a deep reconnaissance teamincluding four U.S. Navy SEAL troops with a few Afghan guides and translatorsand that at least one of these Afghans

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was a mujahedin spy. The early warning allowed jihadist commanders to coordinate operations with local forcesincluding the non-Afghan experts from across the border. Abd-al-Hadi al-Afghani and a small team of senior expert terrorists dictated the roles to be played by the nonAfghan mujahedin through specialized groups from several countries. On June 28, a composite force of Afghan mujahedin and nonAfghan expert terrorists waited in scattered positions for the SEAL team to be inserted by helicopter into the rugged and isolated Shorek Darra in Kunars Manogay district. Once on the ground, deep in enemy territory, the SEAL team was surrounded and subjected to intense fire from several directions. According to jihadist reports, two of the SEALs were killed in the firefight, while the other two managed to evade the ambushing forces. Mullah Muhammad Ismail, one of Kunars military commanders cooperating with the jihadist forces, later reported that he had known that the American soldiers were on a spying mission as they were taking pictures and carried different instruments to perform their job. One of the ambushing forces goals was to capture the American soldiers and their equipment. (On August 5, Al-Arabiyah TV broadcast a series of interviews with the British and French mujahedin in this group, in which they were shown analyzing recently captured military documents, plans, and maps for the U.S. command in Afghanistanitems reportedly retrieved from a computer carried by a SEAL.) Although the Americans were killed before they could be captured, the fighters had succeeded in spiriting away their binoculars and other equipment. The Afghan mujahedin were able to track down the third SEAL (who had been wounded in the initial clash), cornering him and ultimately killing him after a long firefight. (The jihadists had expected to capture this SEAL alive, prompting a series of premature false claims by Taliban commanders that one of the SEALs had been captured and eventually beheaded.) The fourth SEAL evaded the mujahedin for more than a day, until he was offered shelter in an Afghan village elders home in accordance with the tenets of Pushtunwali (the tribal code of conduct). The elder sent emissaries to notify Kunar provincial governor Asadullah Wafa, although it wasnt until July 2 that the SEAL was finally picked up by U.S. forces.

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After the initial ambushes, the events of June 28 continued to unfold as the jihadist commanders had planned. As expected, the SEALs radioed back to their base, calling for an emergency rescue and reinforcements. According to jihadist reports, the Afghan spywith the help of an expert terroristused the captured equipment to activate an emergency signal for extraction by a helicopter, and the jihadists were able to activate a distress beacon for the rescue helicopter to home in on as they tried to locate the SEALs. The MH-47 Chinook, with eight SEALs and eight Army crewmen onboard, flew straight into a second jihadist ambush near Asadabad, with devastating results. Taliban Mujahedin shot down the aircraft while it was flying close to the ground, Commander Mullah Rauf explained, Using only small arms and simple [RPG-7] rockets. Mullah Muhammad Ismail reported that the helicopter caught fire after being hit by rockets fired by the Taliban. None on board survived. (Afghan jihadist sources acknowledged privately that Chechen expert mujahedin had fired the lethal RPG barrage and that the operation was attributed to the Taliban to boost morale among Afghans.) Mullah Ismail reported that the jihadist forces managed to vacate the area before a pair of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and a pair of A-10 Warthog attack jets swarmed in after the downing of the Chinook. The U.S. jet fighters and helicopters were still scrambling over the area and some bombing had already taken place by the time his forces safely reached their hideouts, Mullah Ismail asserted. The nonAfghan teamincluding a few Chechens, two British, and one French mujahedinwas back in its Pakistani safe haven by the end of the day. The downing of the Chinook was a strategic first for the mujahedina distinct shift from the defensive attrition and terrorizing of the American forces and Afghan population to new offensive operations against foreign forces, designed to force their withdrawal and, eventually, to replace the regime of Hamid Karzai in Kabul with an Islamist regime. Indeed, the Taliban and jihadist leaders were quick to claim responsibility for the Kunar operation and to stress its ramifications. As Kunar was the stronghold of jihad versus the Russian communists, explained local mujahedin commander Mullah Salar Haqyar, thank God it is the same against the Americans right now. Leading Taliban

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commander Mullah Dadullah told the Pakistani daily Ausaf that the Kunar incident was the opening shot in a decisive offensive, declaring that the current spree of attacks against the United States will continue till Septemberwhen the next Afghan parliamentary elections would be heldand thereafter. The dramatic success in Kunar had paved the ground for victory of the Taliban and now people are willing to cooperate with them. . . . Now attacks will be launched against the enemys army from all sides, Mullah Dadullah predicted. He also claimed that there is disorder in the official Afghan Army and its high-level officers are in contact with the Taliban. Mullah Dadullah, described as the military coordinator for the Taliban, elaborated on the significance of the Kunar clash in a July 18 interview with Al-Jazeera TV.The unfolding jihadist offensive was characterized by significant changes in tactics, types of weapons, financial support, and support of the Afghan people, he said, emphasizing the growing grassroots support among Afghans and their ability to supply a regular flow of accomplished fighters for the cause. All Afghan people are Muslims; they all have weapons and know how to use their weapons. The majority of them are supporter[s] of [the] Taliban and their Jihad against the enemies of Islam. Few have been drawn to the dollars [i.e., attracted by cash incentives to join the American side]. There are also Arab mujahedin in Afghanistan. Mullah Dadullah announced that the jihadist forces currently have advanced weapon systems and [they] are getting even more advanced weapons, [and] logistic and hi-tech support systems in the next few months. The jihadist command structure was also adapting to meet the challenges of the new offensive. On July 25, spokesman Mofti Latifollah Hakimi explained that the Taliban had established two 14-member military councils from Kunar to Ghazni and from Ghazni to Balkh, which would be holding consultations with the Mujahedin Supreme Council in all affairs. By the summer of 2005, the Islamist-Jihadist leaders were convinced that these new forces and weaponry would enable them to defeat the U.S.-led forces through a new series of swift and audacious strikes. Taking cities is not part of our present tactics, Mullah Dadullah explained on Al-Jazeera. Our tactics now are hit and run; we attack