All Americans remember where they were on September 11, 2001. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon led the United States military to undertake Operation Enduring Freedom—the removal of the Taliban regime and their terrorist allies from Afghanistan. Playing what turned out to be a vital role in the early days of the fight against the Taliban was then-Army Special Forces Captain Jason Amerine, whose elite eleven-man team worked with and advised an Afghan opposition leader—Hamid Karzai—during the battle for Tarin Kowt. The victory achieved by the allied forces helped to propel Karzai to become President of Afghanistan.
At the Tenth Annual Conference, now-Major Amerine sat down with Gene Pell, host of the American Veterans Center’s weekly radio series Veterans Chronicles to recount his part in one of the most amazing stories of Operation Enduring Freedom. Stationed in the Middle East in Kazakhstan when the attacks occurred on September 11th, Amerine and his men knew exactly where they would be going next…
Maj. Jason Amerine: When I went Special Forces, my first real assignment was in Kuwait, as part of our rotations there to help defend Kuwait against Iraq. I commanded two Special Forces teams, ODA 572 and then ODA 574. When I took over 574, our mission was to work in Kazakhstan for the better part of a year. In the year leading up to 9/11, I spent much of the year flying back and forth to Kazakhstan to train their paratroopers. They had an insurgency that was sponsored by the Taliban called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan that they were fighting, so we were really teaching counterinsurgency skills to the Kazaks.
Gene Pell: What kind of U.S. presence was there in Kazakhstan, just you and a handful?
Maj. Amerine: Kazakhstan was definitely warming up to the United States; not to anger the Russians, who they also needed as an ally, but Kazakhstan is and will continue to be afraid of the Chinese, so they see their relationship with the United States as a way of countering the threat of China, which goes hand in hand with their friendship of the Russians. So they’ve been opening up for a number of years, and have had the 82nd Airborne up there, as well as a number of military units. Generally, though, it has not been very many at a time. Just one unit will train with them and then leave. So when I was with them, we were the only Special Forces team training with them; the only military unit training with them at the time.
Pell: And you were there on September 11, 2001.
Maj. Amerine: Right, we had been there for about three weeks when September 11th occurred; right there at the end of our training and getting ready to come home. Then, after September 11th, because the air flights were frozen, we ended up staying another 10 days.
Gene Pell: What were your thoughts when you heard about the attacks on New York and Washington and the crash in Pennsylvania?
Maj. Amerine: It’s funny the clarity one has. I received a phone call from my liaison working at the American embassy in Almaty; we were actually outside of Almaty training the paratroopers at the time. He called first to tell us that there had been an accident at the World Trade Center, then he called back later, clearly in tears, to tell us that, in fact, the World Trade Center had been attacked and what was going on. And there was no question in our minds that it was al Qaeda, and there was going to be a war in Afghanistan. We knew it. No doubt, no question. Our thoughts were to get back and get ready for the war. There was no special intel being fed to us, we were just very aware of the terrorist threats. There was that clarity.
Ten days later we went back to the United States and went into a deliberate planning process where we did some last-minute training, and went into isolation in preparation for going into Afghanistan.
Pell: One of the things that intrigues me is that when you went in there, you went in with a force of less than a dozen?
Maj. Amerine: Initially, my team went into Afghanistan with nine, because of weight restrictions, we had to bring in our other two guys about four days later.
