It was a relatively narrow mandate, written for those specific attacks, but it has become the underpinning of an increasingly broad mission around the globe. 14, 2001, when Congress voted overwhelmingly, with virtually no debate, to authorize the American military to hunt down the perpetrators. The ashes of the fallen twin towers were still smoldering on Sept. It was expanded to Yemen, Somalia and Libya before arriving in Niger, a place few Americans ever think of, let alone view as a threat. 11 attacks and traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is a war with sometimes murky legal authority, one that began in the embers of the Sept. More broadly, the deaths have reignited a longstanding argument in Washington over the sprawling and often opaque war being fought by American troops around the world. How did a group of American soldiers - who Defense Department officials insisted were in the country simply to train, advise and assist Niger’s military - suddenly get sent to search a terrorist camp, a much riskier mission than they had planned to carry out? Who ordered the mission, and why were the Americans so lightly equipped, with few heavy weapons and no bulletproof vehicles? Barely 200 yards from the village, the convoy came under deadly fire.įour months later, tough questions remain unanswered about the chain of decisions that led to American Special Forces troops being overwhelmed by jihadists in a remote stretch of West Africa. Short on water, the patrol stopped outside a village before heading back to base the next morning. But the raid was scrapped at the last minute, and the Americans on patrol were sent in its place. A separate assault team was quickly assembled, ready to swoop in on the terrorist camp by helicopter. But while they were out in the desert, American intelligence officials caught a break - the possible location of a local terrorist leader who, by some accounts, is linked to the kidnapping of an American citizen. 3, prepared for a routine, low-risk patrol with little chance of encountering the enemy.
VIDEO AMBUSH NIGER AMERICAN SERIES
Trump angrily disputed the claim, leading to a public feud.īut beyond the rancor, dozens of interviews with current and former officials, soldiers who survived the ambush and villagers who witnessed it point to a series of intelligence failures and strategic miscalculations that left the American soldiers far from base, in hostile territory longer than planned, with no backup or air support, on a mission they had not expected to perform. In a call with one of the families after the ambush, President Trump was accused of diminishing the loss, telling the soldier’s widow that “he knew what he signed up for.” Mr. The deaths set off a political storm in Washington, erupting into a bitter debate over how the families of fallen soldiers should be treated by their commander in chief. The four men, along with four Nigerien soldiers and an interpreter, were killed in a conflict that few Americans knew anything about, not just the public, but also their families and even some senior American lawmakers. La David Johnson, who had gotten separated from the group, also died in the attack - the largest loss of American troops during combat in Africa since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia. 4 during an ambush in the desert scrub of Niger that was recorded on a military helmet camera. These were the last minutes in the lives of three American soldiers killed on Oct. With only the thorny brush for cover, he turned and fired at the militants advancing toward his fallen friend. Sergeant Johnson was hit and went down, still alive.Īt that point, Sergeant Wright stopped running. Sergeant Black lay on his back, motionless and unresponsive.Ĭornered, Sergeant Wright and Sergeant Johnson finally took off, sprinting through the desert under a hail of fire. “Black!” yelled a third American soldier, Staff Sgt. and took up a defensive position, his M4 carbine braced on his shoulder. With one hand, Sergeant Wright dragged his wounded comrade to the precarious shielding of the S.U.V. But the militants, wielding assault rifles and wearing dark scarves and balaclavas, kept closing in. Wright tried to steer while leaning away from the gunfire. KOLLO, Niger - Cut off from their unit, the tiny band of American soldiers was outnumbered and outgunned in the deserts of Niger, fighting to stay alive under a barrage of gunfire from fighters loyal to the Islamic State.
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