Hunting al Qaeda

When the citizen-soldiers of Beast 85 went off to fight the enemy, they could not have imagined that the largest obstacle they would face was not the suffocating heat, disease, or even the enemy itself, but an increasingly risk-averse high command and the modern American military’s culture of “playing it safe.”

Even while being shot at, they were not allowed to shoot back, ending up sitting on their hands for days and weeks on end.

Then, the men of Beast 85 did what Green Berets do; they found a way to get the job done. They hunted, cornered, and captured some of the highest-level terrorists in Afghanistan, including 1) one of the Taliban’s top generals, 2) the man responsible for a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign, and 3) a key player in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud (the “Lion of Panjshir”)—a man who struck fear into Osama bin Laden’s own cold and murderous heart.

But their actions only seemed to rile the military’s play-it-safe leadership, who at every turn let the bad guys slip away to fight another day. That did not deter Beast 85, who proved themselves collectively to be one of the gutsiest and bravest units in the war.

Written by the men who were there, Hunting al Qaeda takes no prisoners in its critical look at what went right (plenty, when they were allowed to do their job), what went wrong (plenty more), and what happens when Green Berets are unleashed in the most hostile place on the planet.