![]() ![]() To verify or debunk Muhajer’s claim, Coffee or Die Magazine spoke to two sources who extensively investigated the Extortion 17 shootdown, both in and out of the military, and asked US Central Command and US Special Operations Command for background information on Muhajer. The other three died in battle over the ensuing years. Yet Muhajer says he is now the only one who was there who is still alive. Muhajer has told me, and the farmers confirmed, that four Talibs were left unscathed. Another source from the area says some in the hideout had years of experience from fighting against the Russian invasion in the 1980s and could calculate distances and target points with great expertise. They aimed so precisely, he recalls, as they had done a significant amount of training using RPGs, practicing with stones (they still continue such training). “We were in hideout at Kamal Khil village and shot it when they were landing,” Muhajer remembers. Angered by an earlier drone strike in the area, the Taliban saw the helicopter and took spontaneous action, Mohammad Khan, a 69-year-old villager nearby, told me.Īs for Muhajer, the villagers never hesitated to back up his claim: He was one of them, and he had been with the fighters that night. Locals lead me on foot down the dusty track to the clay walls where the Taliban had been hiding out in 2011. Memorials for the Taliban fighters Americans killed in retaliation for the Extortion 17 shootdown languish. Disabled men huddle in a group on the dirt they’re another visceral reminder of the war waged here. It’s a parcel locals refer to as the ultimate Taliban base throughout much of the 20-year occupation. Children play in the strips of green and wander barefoot through the endless graveyards, each of the dead commemorated with a blank slab of rock as a headstone and sometimes a withered Taliban flag.įinally, the lush greenery emerges between the primitive huts. ![]() Just two months ago, its streets were deemed too dangerous for an American to journey through. To reach the crash site, one must wind slowly through the ancient, narrow streets of the Tangi Valley in Wardak. To try to find the truth and to understand how the landscape has changed, I arranged to visit the Tangi Valley and the small village where Extortion 17 went down. Tahir had escaped the raid, and the SEAL assault force immediately flew to the target area to aid in the hunt for “squirters” - the term US forces used for enemy fighters who escaped an initial strike. The helicopter was rushing to the nearby scene of a raid executed earlier by Army Rangers seeking a so-called high-value target, a Taliban leader named Qari Tahir in the country’s Wardak province, just southwest of Kabul and adjacent to Logar. ![]() Also on board were three Air Force special operators from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, several specially trained Navy sailors attached to the SEAL team, an Army flight crew of two pilots, and three crew members. The US dead included 17 Navy SEALs, most from the elite SEAL Team 6, the same unit (though not the same men) that had killed Usama Bin Laden just three months before. Those 38 casualties included 30 American troops and eight Afghans, plus a military working dog. With one RPG, the Taliban shot an Army CH-47D Chinook from the sky, killing all 38 on board. Extortion 17 was among the Taliban’s greatest single moments of battlefield triumph in the 20-year war with US forces, and one with which a young Taliban official might be tempted to associate himself. He says he wasn’t the one who fired the rocket-propelled grenade it was a “friend of his” hiding out with him. Muhajer never flinches as he tells his story, but he also never looks my way, as I am a woman. ![]()
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