Quotes of the Day

The nine men are buried in a stony field beyond an orchard of pomegranate trees in the village of Zambar, in eastern Afghanistan. Above their graves, multi-colored flags ripple in the mountain wind - deceptively cheerful reminders of the black day when Australia's Special Air Service came to this valley.

What happened during Redback Kilo Three's patrol is a war story the Australian Army would prefer to forget. During a gunfight many believe was the longest engagement by an SAS unit since the Vietnam war, the patrol's six members showed undoubted heroism. But their actions - which led to the deaths of those Afghan men - won no bravery awards. Instead they brought recriminations, investigations, and claims of command failures, insubordination, the killing of civilians, and the souveniring of trophies from the dead. Some troopers were disciplined, and the patrol leader resigned in disgust over what he believes was a cover-up.

The Australians' punishment is no consolation to villager Nan Gul, who was living in Zambar that day in May, 2002. "In our culture," he tells Time, "if you kill somebody, you must give them land, or a son and daughter in marriage to ease the burden of death." He said the same thing, he claims, to the Australian officer who arrived the day after the incident to apologize. "But we have had nothing from the foreigners, only empty promises."

While the dust was still in the air over Manhattan after the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush was assembling a coalition to invade Afghanistan and crush the Taliban, who had provided sanctuary to the terrorists of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. A key element of Australia's contribution to that coalition - a role known as Operation Slipper - was the legendary Special Air Service Regiment. Based in Perth, the regiment is the Australian Army's most highly trained and best equipped unit. It's said to cost more than $A1 million to train one of the 100 or so fighting men who make up each of its three regular, or Sabre, squadrons; they are experts in parachuting, deep-sea diving and waterborne assault, and can handle a variety of complex weapons with deadly skill. They are fit beyond belief, capable of roaming undetected deep behind enemy lines for weeks at time, living off the land while they gather intelligence or conduct guerrilla-style operations.

The first SAS contingent, One Squadron, arrived in southern Afghanistan in late 2001. Under the direction of the American generals overseeing the war, its job was to scour the rugged terrain on foot, locate al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, and help eliminate them. The squadron won high praise from U.S. commanders, particularly for its role in locating and orchestrating an attack on a senior al-Qaeda leader. When Three Squadron replaced One Squadron in April 2002, its members felt they had much to live up to. Redback Kilo Three's first mission, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, kept up the high standard. Led by a patrol sergeant with 12 years' experience in the regiment, the six men of RK3 were at their peak. Perhaps the only weak link was the sixth man on the patrol, a Green Beret soldier on exchange from the U.S. Some troopers thought he was not up to SAS standards - a shortcoming that became more obvious as time went on.

The first mission was daunting: to scale a range of steep mountains and set up an observation point overlooking a road the Australians had dubbed Route Titanium, which large numbers of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters were using as a way to the Pakistan border. After an eight-hour journey by truck, the men had just three hours to climb the mountain under cover of darkness. For the next three weeks, they lived off the land. The survival skills needed for such operations take years to acquire - and are the source of one SAS nickname, "the chicken stranglers." According to the patrol sergeant, his men performed superbly. "It was considered one of the best patrols," he says. "Everybody else got compromised before it was time for them to withdraw from the area.'' But by the end of that first mission, the Green Beret's presence was causing friction. "He had broken the radio before going out,'' says the patrol leader. "He had snapped off a knob and was going to use pliers to turn it on and off.'' The patrol leader was not going to tolerate such sloppiness again. For the next mission, he replaced the American with a young signaller who had undergone SAS training, but had not passed the grueling selection course. For the 20-year-old, nicknamed "G," the offer of a place on an SAS foot patrol was a thrilling opportunity, but his companions were worried. "He was a kid. He had not been given the training or experience,'' they say.

But the patrol leader dismissed their concerns, and on the evening of May 14, the six men silently slipped from a moving four-wheel-drive vehicle on a deserted rocky track south of Taraka Gorge, a steep-sided valley about 130 km southeast of Kabul. Their task was to set up an observation point overlooking a village suspected of harboring Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. Intelligence reports suggested there were gun emplacements and bunkers on the mountainsides and that the enemy were using part of the area as an escape route to Pakistan. The patrol was to observe for one or two days and then remain in place while the rest of the squadron patrolled openly through the valley.

Without a word, the six troopers - some lugging packs that weighed over 50 kg - settled to a slow hike up the sheer hillsides, across shifting shale and over jagged outcrops, scanning the terrain ahead through night-vision goggles that showed the world in shades of green.

Before the first rays of the sun scraped over the icy mountains that marked the Pakistan border, the men had chosen one of the mountain bunkers as their cover for the daylight hours, says one of the troopers, who spoke to Time on condition of anonymity. He describes the decision as a "curious tactic," given that enemy fighters in the area might have been expected to know the bunker's location. It was the first hint, the trooper says, that on this patrol, the leader wasn't doing things entirely by the book.

The following night, RK3 hiked deeper into the mountains. On the bare hillsides, the troopers saw "countless tracks, fortifications and bunkers along the ridge lines," the patrol leader later wrote in his report. When they reached their objective, a ridge overlooking the valley and the village of Bhalkhel, they discovered a gun emplacement and a Russian-built heavy machine gun with a range of more than 3,500m. The patrol leader - according to his own report - ordered his men to set up an observation post about 40 m from the gun. Because there were no rocks or shrubs big enough to shield them, they would have to build two fake bushes from pieces of smaller plants. At this point, says the trooper, dissent began to emerge. Constructing hides so close to the weapon was too risky, some of the men thought: they could keep watch just as effectively, and more safely, from further away. "There were other places to hide,'' the trooper says. The leader disagrees: "There was nowhere f______ else," he tells Time. He stood firm, the hides were built, and the men took their places, three of them lying behind and partly under each bush. "They were the sort of bushes you see in a cartoon," says the trooper, "where you could pick them up and walk around." Some of the men were convinced it was only a matter of time before they were discovered. As the rising sun revealed other gun emplacements on the hills around them, they grew more and more uneasy. Around midday, a man armed with a rifle strolled up the track. The soldiers froze. Spotting the odd-looking bush from about 10 m away, the man "went for his weapon," according to the patrol report. "It was the last thing he did,'' says the trooper. The SAS men opened fire. Alerted by the gunshots, armed men fanned out from the village below, some climbing the path toward the gun emplacement. The troopers fired shots and threw a grenade in an effort to keep them back, but the Afghans split up and outflanked them. Within minutes, bullets were whizzing from all directions. Machinegun rounds churned up the dirt, Kalashnikov bullets cracked overhead and rocket-propelled grenades screamed past. One grenade tore between two troopers who were just meters apart, detonating behind them with an ear-shattering airburst. The soldiers blazed away at the Afghans, trying to stop them from reaching the high ground. Discarding their packs, the Australians headed for a small plateau about 30 m away where there was slightly more cover.

The scout made it first to the shelter of a small depression behind a rock. The patrol leader followed, carrying the radio. On the way - according to some of the men - he dropped his M-4 automatic rifle, and when he reached the depression knocked the scout out of the way. "You don't do that,'' says the trooper. "It's not the Anzac way. And you don't leave your weapon.'' The trooper says the leader told the scout to fetch his rifle, which he did under heavy fire.

The patrol leader disputes this account. His first priority, he says, was to move the radio to safety. Its weight, and its antenna and trailing cables, made it impossible to pick up the rifle. As for claims that he pushed the scout, "That just didn't happen." Nor did he order the scout to brave a hail of bullets. Instead, the young trooper was told to "retrieve my rifle, which was approximately 5 m away, when he could," and "he carried out this task during a lull in fire."

The radio kept the patrol leader in touch with the coalition base at Bagram, and in theory gave him access to the might of the U.S. Air Force. Convinced he was under attack from al-Qaeda fighters, he called for air support. It was refused: the risk of anti-aircraft missiles meant the Americans were unwilling to fly at the low altitude necessary. Headquarters also ruled out flying in more troops because the landing zone was deemed too dangerous.

The patrolmen were on their own. As the firefight blazed on, one of the attackers fell dead, hit by the SAS sniper from about 80 m away. The sniper himself had a lucky escape. As he crouched beside a small tree, a .50-caliber bullet ripped through the trunk about 10 cm from his head. The Afghans kept on shooting. Soon the men noticed bullets landing in the dust behind them: a machine gun on a distant mountaintop was taking pot shots at their rear. Some of the tribesmen tried repeatedly to scale a nearby peak from where they could rain bullets down on the Australians. As far as the SAS men knew, they were surrounded by al-Qaeda forces.

Thirty-five kilometers to the south, the rest of Three Squadron were lying about on their vehicles, dozing in the sun after an exhausting night patrol, when a message came over the radio - Kilo 3 was in trouble. Forming a convoy, the squadron charged to the rescue, telling the patrol they were on the way. But it would take them more than two hours to reach the besieged men: RK3 would have to hang on until nightfall. As the shadows lengthened, and the assault grew less intense, the troopers saw the SAS vehicles' lights heading up the Taraka valley and heard the reassuring drone of an AC-130 gunship, with its 105-mm cannon and thermal imaging technology. With the AC-130 crew calling down directions, the Australians put on their night vision goggles and prepared to pull out. But as the patrol leader gave the order to move, he was told that one of his men had left a camera - an item forbidden on patrols - in the pack he'd shed near the bush hides. In a move that was extremely complex in the circumstances, the leader decided to split the patrol and send three of the men to retrieve the pack. On the way down the hill, the trooper who'd left the camera souvenired a turban, a rifle and a magazine of bullets from a dead villager, against the express instructions of his patrol leader. When the patrol leader learned about this, "I told him, 'We'll talk later,'" he says. Section J of the rules of engagement issued to all coalition troops states that "Looting and the taking of war trophies are prohibited." "It's a court-martial offense," says the leader. "People get thrown out of the Army (for it)."

The Australians withdrew in the darkness, still unaware that the men they'd been fighting were not al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters but residents of Bhalkhel village. During the gun battle, they'd killed at least two villagers. But worse was to come. Two kilometers away, on a ridge on the other side of the valley, about 40 tribesmen from Sabari village were taking cover for the night in a series of bunkers hidden among wild olives and holly trees. They were guarding their homes, as they did every night, from their rivals in Bhalkhel, with whom they had been feuding for months over rights to the area's forests.

When they heard gunfire coming from the Bhalkhel positions, "We thought the Bhalkhel were attacking us, so we opened fire too," says one of the men, Abdul Hassan. Some of the bullets and RPGs targeted the SAS rescue convoy, which was making its way through the valley without lights. By now, however, the odds had changed. A U.S. forward air controller traveling with the Australians summoned the AC-130, call sign reaper, whose laser-guided bombs smashed into the Sabari bunkers.

Hassan was peppered with shrapnel and hurled into the air by an explosion. "I was sure I was fighting the Bhalkhel, so the last thing I expected was for bombs to fall from the sky," he says. When he regained consciousness, his best friend Alif Shah was lying beside him. "A fire was burning inside his chest," Hassan recalls. "He was dead." The tribesmen on the ridge were too dazed and panicked to count the bombs, but Kamil Shah, who watched in horror from nearby Zambar village, says "80 to 100 bombs fell that night." His brother was up on the hill, and Kamil and several other villagers grabbed a few rope cots to use as stretchers for the wounded, but the intensity of the bombing forced them back until daybreak. One of the tribal elders had a walkie-talkie. He managed to call a nearby police station, whose officers contacted the coalition base at Khost, about 60 km away, to say U.S. warplanes were killing innocent tribesmen. Once out of the valley, three squadron found a safe area and made camp. There, says the patrol leader, the trooper who had taken the trophies began showing them off, even putting on the dead man's turban. When the patrol leader found out about this he informed the squadron sergeant-major, who confiscated the looted items and launched an investigation. As soon as the squadron arrived back at Bagram, according to another soldier close to the events, the accused trooper and the other three SAS men on the patrol complained to senior officers that the leader had made poor decisions under fire and put lives at risk, and said they would refuse to go on patrol with him again. The patrol leader says the men concocted this story because they resented his taking action against the trophy-taker. The incident, and the investigation, were referred to the major commanding Three Squadron, Vance Khan, who segregated the patrol from the rest of the squadron and took its members off operational duties. According to the patrol leader, Khan called the squadron's members together, reminded them of the rule against taking cameras on operations, and smashed the RK3 trooper's camera in front of them. Khan told the patrol members he would deal with them when they returned to Australia, but the leader said, "'That's not acceptable,' " he recalls. "People forget things in four months." Because "the allegations against me were serious," he reported the incident to the SAS regimental commander. The trooper who had taken the camera on patrol and looted the body was charged with a minor offense, received a permanent administrative warning and was required to write a "show cause" letter setting out why he should be allowed to remain in the Army. The patrol leader's second in command was brought back to Australia early, and had to write a show cause letter. The other two SAS men had to write similar letters. The patrol leader says the investigation found in favor of his version of events; the young signaller, "G," also told Time that version was accurate. But the experience left the leader disillusioned: he applied for a discharge, and has vowed never to deal with the Army again. "It was a cover-up," he says. The Army refused to comment to Time, citing operational security issues.

Back in Afghanistan, the disaster at Zambar has become a textbook case for coalition forces of what can go wrong if a unit doesn't get its local intelligence right. A newly arrived U.S. lieutenant was briefed on the incident when he arrived at the Khost base two months ago. Back in 2002, he says, "we didn't understand that if somebody around here starts shooting, they aren't necessarily shooting at you. These people all have enemies." After studying reports of the incident, the lieutenant has concluded that in the chaos of battle, at night, and in rough, unfamiliar terrain, the SAS squadron commander wrongly assumed that his men were under attack by al-Qaeda, and believed the only way to save them was to call in an air strike.

That's of little comfort to the Sabari villagers. The morning after the bombs fell, they say, Australian and U.S. officers drove into Zambar in their Humvees to apologize. They promised compensation, says Haji Khannamuddin, but three years on, not a penny has been paid. He and other village elders say most of the men killed on the mountainside that night were fathers. They leave behind almost 50 children, with no means of support other than handouts from fellow villagers. It's a terrible price to pay for somebody else's mistake.

With reporting by Tim McGirk/Zambar

Rory Callinan can be emailed at Rory_Callinan@timeinc.com.au

• Rory Callinan
• The Special Air Service, the Australian Army's elite reconnaissance unit, is not much given to talking about itself: secrecy is key to its effectiveness as well as its mystique. What is known of the regiment's operations has made its name a synonym for valor. But even the SAS sometimes stumbles. In 2002, during the war to drive al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, the actions of one SAS patrol triggered a chain of disasters whose aftershocks are still being felt. In this special report, Time reveals for the first time what went wrong and how it scarred the lives of all those involved.