Special Ops veterans' secret mission to rescue 500 Afghans in Kabul rivaled a 'Jason Bourne thriller,' commander says

The group of volunteers worked to ferry Afghans to Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via Getty Images

• An all-volunteer group of US Special Operations veterans carried out a covert nighttime mission on Wednesday.
• As many as 500 Afghan assets, enablers, and their families were escorted to safety, ABC News reported.
• The mission was modeled on Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad, a former Green Beret captain said.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

An all-volunteer group of American Special Operations veterans of the Afghan war carried out a secret nighttime mission, called the "Pineapple Express," to ferry at-risk Afghans and their families to safety, according to ABC News.

The media outlet reported that the group worked under cover of night on Wednesday, and in tandem with the United States military and embassy, to transfer hundreds of Afghans into a US military-controlled zone of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport.

As many as 500 Afghan special operators, assets, enablers, and their families were handed over to the protective custody of the American military by Thursday morning, ABC News reported.

Read more: Conservatives haven't cared about Afghans lives for 20 years, why are they pretending they do now?

Army Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret commander who led the private rescue effort, told the media outlet that the Wednesday night operation was akin to a "Jason Bourne" thriller.

Covert movements were coordinated by more than 50 people in an encrypted chat room, ABC News said. The Afghans were known as "passengers" and were guided remotely by "shepherds," who are former US special operations forces and CIA commanders, using GPS pin drops, and met by "conductors'" wearing a green chem light at the staging points, the media outlet added. Their identity was confirmed by a yellow pineapple graphic on their smartphones.

The operation was modeled on Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad, the historic network of secret routes to help Black Americans escape slavery, former Green Beret Capt. Zac Lois told ABC News.

The Wednesday operation was an element of the "Task Force Pineapple," an informal group that formed on August 15 to get a former Afghan commando who had been targeted by the Taliban into the airport, the media outlet said.

Task Force Pineapple was working on another rescue mission on Thursday night when an explosion near the airport killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 US troops, the media outlet said.

Some of the group's Afghan passengers were wounded, and, according to ABC News, members of the Task Force Pineapple are assessing whether any of the Afghans they were helping had been killed.

"Dozens of high-risk individuals, families with small children, orphans, and pregnant women, were secretly moved through the streets of Kabul throughout the night and up to just seconds before ISIS detonated a bomb into the huddled mass of Afghans seeking safety and freedom," said Mann.

Jason Redman, a combat-wounded former Navy SEAL and author shepherding Afghans, told ABC News that Thursday night was a "roller-coaster" ride and described it as "chaotic."

He also expressed frustration that "our own government didn't do this," he said. "We did what we should do, as Americans," Redman added.

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