BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — On a cool autumn night in early October, three U.S. helicopters filled with Afghan commandos and U.S. Special Forces raced over the hillsides just outside of Herat city, Herat province, Afghanistan. The occupants' mission: kill or capture Gulam Yahyah, the top insurgent leader in western Afghanistan.
The next morning, the helicopters and passengers returned to their point of origin. Yahyah and over a dozen insurgents were dead after a gun fight that lasted hours and ended abruptly after introducing U.S. attack helicopters. Yahyah's death set into motion a chain reaction in which his second and third in command were killed and detained, respectively. Days later, the fourth in line for command of insurgents in western Afghanistan simply turned himself in to Afghan authorities.
"The killing of Yahyah, following our successful missions in Shewan, (Farah province) have restored Afghans' faith in their government in western Afghanistan," said Col. Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, the regional Afghan national police chief. "Yahyah was destroying peoples' lives and making them worry. Now the security situation is back to normal and people are going back to their lives. We've received a large number of phone calls thanking Afghan security forces and U.S. Special Forces for securing the area. Yesterday, people showed us where the enemy hides explosives because they trust us."
Though Afghan commandos and U.S. Special Forces have been doggedly hunting insurgents, particularly insurgent leaders, for years, the elimination of Yahyah and his associates was a combination of breakthroughs in intelligence and the product of persistence.
"We constantly improve our plans until the right time to implement them," said Lt. Col. Roy Douglas, commander of the Special Operations Task Force in western Afghanistan. "We have people who can focus on everything in the region to find and fight enemies, then move onto the next problem."
Ahmadi said that with Yahyah out of the picture, insurgents across western Afghanistan are scattered and leaderless, causing those who were just guns for hire to quit and making life much harder for those who choose to keep fighting.
"With him gone, the enemy has no shelter," said Ahmadi. "Many enemies from other countries worked with him and now they have nowhere to work from. Many have just quit fighting and turned in their weapons. Those who were just in it for the money will be allowed to join us in the fight against our enemies."