Special Ops: A Photo History
Afghanistan
During the early years of the Bush administration, American commanders began to argue for the need to re-fashion the U.S. military into smaller, more nimble units, a strategy that was especially suited to the tactics and approaches of the special ops teams. This trend accelerated dramatically after 9/11, when it became clear that the nation's chief enemy was not a conventional army, but a loosely knit network of terrorists hiding in the caves of Afghanistan and the crowded streets of places like Sanaa, Yemen. In 2001, before uniformed soldiers set foot on Afghanistan, a small contingent of special ops units were at work in the country, where they allied themselves with local tribal militias to dislodge the Taliban from its hold on power. In the above photo, special ops patrol in 2001, in Kunduz, a region where the operatives felt they could cover ground more effectively on horseback than in conventional vehicles.