Battle of Qala-i-Jangi


The Battle of Qala-i-Jangi was a prisoner-of-war camp uprising that took place between November 25 and December 1, 2001, in northern Afghanistan, following the armed intervention by United States-led coalition forces to overthrow the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which had been harboring al-Qaeda operatives.
Hundreds of men, including many non-Afghans, surrendered near Kunduz and were being held as enemy combatants at Qala-i-Jangi fortress by the Afghan Northern Alliance forces for an interrogation by the American Central Intelligence Agency personnel interested in al-Qaeda suspects. The prisoners violently revolted and the ensuing fighting escalated into one of the bloodiest engagements of the conflict. It took Northern Alliance fighters, assisted by British and American special forces and air support, six days to quell the revolt.
All but 86 prisoners were killed as well as a number of Northern Alliance fighters. The only U.S. fatality was the CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann, the first American to be killed in combat during the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Among the surviving prisoners were two American citizens suspected of fighting with the Taliban: Yaser Esam Hamdi and John Walker Lindh.

Background

In late November 2001, with their military situation in northern Afghanistan becoming critical, many Taliban field commanders agreed to surrender to the Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum, leader of the ethnic-Uzbek dominated National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, outside the besieged city of Kunduz. Hundreds of Al Ansar "guest" foreign fighters also surrendered their weapons, including a large group that had arrived in a convoy one day earlier to a place away of the agreed capitulation site, close to Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum described the Taliban surrender as a "great victory" for the Alliance, a bloodless success that would allow the future reconciliation of citizens of Afghanistan. Thousands of prisoners were transported to the Sheberghan Prison.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. forces wanted to question the captured foreign fighters about possible links with the al-Qaeda international jihadist network, the Afghans decided to transfer such prisoners to Qala-i-Jangi, a 19th-century fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif that Dostum had previously used as his headquarters and ammunition depot. On November 24, between 300 and 500 foreign suspects were transported on flatbed trucks to the fortress, now turned into a prison. The prisoners had not been searched, and some had concealed weapons during the surrender. On the day of the surrender, two prisoners committed suicide with grenades and killed one of Dostum's commanders and some others in two separate incidents at the makeshift prison. Despite the deaths, the National Islamic Movement militia did not reinforce security at the prison. John Kerry's report for the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations later alleged it was a pre-planned "Trojan Horse" style operation, a gambit that would allow a die-hard force of foreign fighters to take over a strategically important fortified position at Qala-i-Jangi and capture a massive munitions stockpile.

Uprising

On November 25, two CIA officers, Johnny "Mike" Spann from the highly secretive Special Activities Division, and Dave "Dawson" Tyson, an Uzbek speaker and region expert, arrived at Qala-i-Jangi to carry out prisoner interrogations in the fort's courtyard. The CIA officers questioned selected prisoners, especially one Sulayman al-Faris who was an American citizen born as John Walker Lindh. Approximately two hours after the interviews began, a number of prisoners, some of them with concealed grenades, suddenly stood up and attacked their captors, who were outnumbered about four to one. Attacking in a suicidal manner, revolting prisoners overran and killed Spann and several Afghan guards; they also appeared to be often much better trained than their Northern Alliance captors, many of whom got shocked and frightened by their enemies' display of skill and fanaticism. The prisoners managed to take over the southern half of the fortress, including the armory and ammunition depot, seizing a large store of small arms, grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars and ammunition.
With Spann missing in the chaos, Tyson escaped to the northern and more secure part of the fortress, where he was trapped with a television crew from the German ARD network. He borrowed their satellite phone, and called the U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan, requesting reinforcements. Tyson specifically requested no air support, due to the proximity of allied Afghan forces. CENTCOM sent a quick reaction force from a Task Force Dagger safe house in Mazar-e-Sharif, housing members of Delta Force, some Green Berets and an 8-man team from M Squadron Special Boat Service, the quick reaction force was assembled from whoever was in the building at the time: a headquarters element from 3rd Battalion 5th Special Forces Group, a pair of USAF liaison officers, a handful of CIA SAD operatives and the SBS team. The Afghans also brought reinforcements: their personnel and a T-55 tank entered the compound and started firing into the prisoner-controlled area. Several other television crews arrived on the scene of the battle, ensuring it got wide media coverage; the successive stages of the fighting were filmed extensively, providing rare footage of special forces units in combat. At 2 pm, a mixed special ops team, formed with nine U.S. Army Special Forces and six British Special Boat Service operators, one of them a U.S. Navy SEAL exchange Operator, arrived and joined the Afghans firing at the prisoners from the northern part of the fort. From 4 pm until nightfall, they directed two U.S. fighter-bomber aircraft for nine airstrikes against the entrenched prisoners, who continued to put up a fierce resistance. Despite Tyson's requests, 500-pound GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs were dropped on the armory, which was serving as a base of fire for the prisoners. He and the German journalists were rescued when a relief action by four U.S. troops enabled them to escape.
The next day, the allied Afghan militia set up a command-and-control post near the northern gate to direct their tank and mortar fire. By mid-morning they were joined by U.S./British forces divided into three teams: a close air support team designated CAS-1 that went inside the fortress along the bottom of the northeast tower to direct bombing strikes into the southern courtyard, a second close air support team designated CAS-2 that positioned itself near the main gate of the fortress, and a Quick Reaction Force consisting of four more Special Forces troops, a U.S. Navy surgeon, and eight soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division. At 11 pm, a GBU-31 JDAM guided bomb, weighing 2,000 pounds, was dropped, directed by the Air Force Special Tactics combat controller on the CAS-1 team who called in the JDAM strike. The pilot mistakenly punched in the wrong coordinates, hitting the combat controller's position. The bomb's explosion killed at least four allied militiamen on the northeast tower above the CAS-1 team, flipped over a friendly tank, and injured all members of the CAS-1 team, including five U.S. and two British operators. That night two AC-130H Spectre gunships circled over the fortress, firing at the prisoners. The main ammunition depot was hit, creating a massive explosion which continued to burn throughout the night. One prisoner managed to escape from the fort, only to be captured and lynched by the local population.
By the morning of November 27, prisoner resistance had slackened. The allied forces mounted a systematic assault supported by tanks and other armored vehicles, and defeated a counterattack by the prisoners. By the end of the day, they had recaptured most of the fort, at that point facing sporadic gunfire and some suicide grenade attacks. The Americans recovered Spann's body, which the prisoners had booby trapped with a grenade. Afghan fighters looted the bodies of prisoners, extracting gold teeth, and killed at least two who were found to be still alive.
At that point, the Coalition forces assumed all of the prisoners were dead. In reality, however, well over 100 surviving prisoners had retreated to the basement dungeon of a central building, where they hid and were discovered only when they killed the body collectors who attempted to enter it. The fighting resumed. Northern Alliance fighters fired and threw in grenades and explosives into the basement, and even poured oil in and lit it on fire, but nevertheless the resistance continued. On November 28, General Dostum arrived and personally tried to persuade the last prisoners to surrender, to no effect. The next day, Dostum ordered the dungeon flooded with frigid irrigation water. This tactic worked and the last holdouts finally surrendered on December 1. Of the estimated 300–500 prisoners brought to the fortress, 86 emerged still alive from the flooded basement, including John Walker Lindh. Some survivors later claimed they did not participate in the battle. One also told The Observer reporter Luke Harding that some wanted to surrender earlier, but a group of seven Arabs took control and did not let them.
The Uyghur Turkistan Islamic Party's "Islamic Turkistan" magazine in its 5th edition published an obituary of its member Turghun speaking of his time training at the Al Khaldan training camp and his meeting with Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The Uyghurs in Afghanistan fought against the American bombing and the Northern Alliance after the September 11 2001 attacks. Ibn Umar died fighting against Americans at Qala-i-Jangi that month.

Aftermath

Of the 86 prisoners who survived the battle, one was found to be John Walker Lindh, an American convert to Islam who had moved to Afghanistan to help the Taliban battle the Northern Alliance prior to the September 11 attacks. Shortly after the battle, an embedded journalist working for CNN, Robert Young Pelton, managed to identify the badly injured and hypothermic Lindh as an American. Lindh was then separated from other prisoners and his life was saved by an American special forces medic. Lindh was later repatriated to the United States to face charges of treason. In 2002, he was found guilty of aiding and supporting the enemy and sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole.
In early 2002, at least 50 other surviving prisoners were transferred to Camp X-Ray at the newly constructed Guantanamo Bay detention camp at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were mostly Arabs, including 21 Saudis and nine Yemenis, but there were also some nationals from other countries such as Russian national Rasul Kudayev, who had allegedly joined the Afghanistan-based Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Abdul Jabar, an Uzbek member of the IMU. In 2004, after three years of detention without trial, the U.S. citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which affirmed the right of U.S. citizens to habeas corpus and trial; he was released from United States custody without charges and was deported to his native Saudi Arabia.
being decorated for his combat actions during the battle by General Bryan D. Brown, chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command
For his actions during the battle, Major Mark E. Mitchell, a U.S. Army Special Forces officer, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the first such decoration to be awarded since the Vietnam War. Additionally, a U.S. Navy corpsman, Chief Petty Officer Stephen Bass, was awarded the Navy Cross to for his actions while attached to the British Special Boat Service. Bass' Navy Cross was the first navy cross awarded since Operation Just Cause. A biography of Bass can be found within the book The Navy Cross: Extraordinary Heroism in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Conflicts.
Johnny "Mike" Spann, the only U.S. fatality, was recognized as the first American killed in combat during the U.S. 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. For his "extraordinary heroism" in fighting off the prisoners long enough to allow his colleagues to escape, Spann was posthumously awarded the CIA's Intelligence Star; because the Intelligence Star is considered analogous to the Silver Star, the Department of Defense allowed him to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. At Spann's memorial at the cemetery, officials said that, after being attacked, Spann "fought with his AK-47 until it ran out of ammunition, then drew his pistol and emptied it, before turning to hand to hand combat which saw him shot." Mike Spann’s family visited the fortress after his death. Afghan doctors who were present on site at the time of the riot told the Spann family they "thought Mike might run and retreat, but he held his position and fought using his AK rifle until out of ammo, and then drew and began firing his pistol," and that the only reason that they and several others were able to live was "because Mike stood his position and fought off the prisoners while enabling them the time to run to safety."

Controversies

Due to the high number of prisoner casualties, and the use of massive firepower against them, the Northern Alliance and the foreign coalition forces were accused of breaking the Geneva Conventions by using disproportionate means. American soldiers found a number of the dead with their arms tied behind their back. Abdulaziz al-Oshan, one of the detainees, later summarized the incident and told American authorities at Guantanamo Bay: "They called it an uprising and it's not; it's some kind of massacre." Amnesty International called for an independent inquiry, but the U.S. and British governments rejected this, arguing that the fierce and well-armed resistance of the uprising fully justified the use of air-power and heavy weapons against the revolting prisoners.
The Afghan forces were criticized for mismanagement of the prisoners, which is believed to have enabled the uprising. The captives were not properly searched and some carried grenades into the prison. Dostum later admitted this had been a mistake. Also, as Qala-i-Jangi had been previously a Taliban base, many of the prisoners had been there before and knew its layout. Dostum had planned to hold the men at a nearby airfield, but the U.S. was using it to ferry in supplies. By questioning the prisoners in a group, rather than separately, protected by few guards, the interrogators put themselves at risk with men known to be dangerous. George Tenet, director of the CIA, dismissed the accusations of mismanagement and praised his agents as "heroes"; in Bush at War, the journalist Bob Woodward described Spann as a hero whose actions saved the lives of many.

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