As he waited for the man he came to kill, Capt. Mathew Golsteyn felt a rising sense of dread. He wasn’t supposed to be out here hiding by the road in insurgent-held terrain in Marja, in southern Afghanistan, with just a single teammate. He was putting his career as a Special Forces officer in jeopardy, along with their lives.
A thin figure dressed in black came into view, walking toward him, unarmed: Rasoul. Until earlier that morning in February 2010, the man had been his prisoner. Golsteyn was convinced that he was a Taliban operative responsible for a bomb that killed two of his men. But in this guerrilla war, the enemy didn’t wear uniforms, and Rasoul had refused to talk.
In an interview this spring, Golsteyn recounted what happened next. He called in a crucial ally from a local tribe that opposed the Taliban, who confirmed his suspicions about Rasoul. But according to Golsteyn, the Green Berets made a terrible mistake. They had inadvertently allowed Rasoul to see the informant, who, terrified, told Golsteyn: “If he leaves here, me and my family are dead.”
Golsteyn said he faced a dilemma. By that point, American forces were under instructions to try to avoid holding prisoners and instead hand them off to their allied Afghan forces. But the Afghan partners who were with Golsteyn had no way to transfer Rasoul from the front lines to a detention center — and even if they did, Golsteyn knew, there was a good chance he would be released by the corrupt and ineffective Afghan judicial system. The support of the informant’s tribe was essential to the Green Berets’ safety and the success of their operation. “That was the mission,” Golsteyn said. “The whole mission.”
And so, he decided, Rasoul had to die. But he couldn’t just shoot him in handcuffs, he told me. Not only would it incriminate the others at their makeshift base — it also just felt wrong. Was setting him free just to ambush him while he was defenseless so different? Golsteyn reasoned that it was.
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