During the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban placed cash bounties on coalition special forces. The Americans had a price on their heads. So did the British and the Canadians. But one country’s operators carried a bounty worth double what was offered for any other Allied force. And that country was not the United States. It was Australia. A regiment of roughly 300 operators from a quiet suburb in Perth had become so devastating to Taliban networks that the insurgency was willing to pay a premium

just to get rid of them. So how did this small unit become the single most feared special operations force in Afghanistan? To understand that, we have to go back decades before Afghanistan, back to the jungles of Vietnam where the legend began. If you enjoy deep dives into elite military units and the battles that shape their reputations, consider liking the video and subscribing. It really helps the channel grow. The Australian Special Air Service Regiment was formed in 1957 at Campbell Barracks

in Swanborn, a beachside suburb of Perth. It was modeled on the British SAS and shared their motto, who dares wins. But the Australians would develop their own identity and they would do it in the worst possible classroom. In 1966, the first SASR squadron deployed to Fuok Tui Province in South Vietnam. They operated in small patrols of four to six men moving through dense jungle so slowly and so quietly that they made other special forces look clumsy. They would sit in ambush positions for hours,

sometimes days, waiting for Vietkong patrols to walk into their kill zones. When contact happened, they unleashed a volume of fire designed to convince the enemy they were fighting a much larger force. Then they vanished. By the time the last SASR squadron withdrew from Vietnam in 1971, they had completed over 1,200 combat patrols. Their own losses were staggeringly low. One killed in action, one died of wounds, three accidentally killed. Meanwhile, they had eliminated at least 492 and possibly as many as 598

enemy fighters. The Vietkong gave them a name that would follow the regiment for the rest of its history. They called the Australians Marang, which means phantoms of the jungle. But Vietnam was a different kind of war and the Phantoms would need to adapt to a very different landscape when the call came again three decades later. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington. Within weeks, a coalition

led by the United States was forming to strike al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Australia was among the first nations to pledge support and the government in Cber knew exactly which unit to send. In October 2001, one squadron of the Special Air Service Regiment deployed to Afghanistan under Operation Slipper. The regiment staged through Kuwait, then moved into southern Afghanistan where they helped United States Marines from Task Force 58 established the first coalition forward operating base, Camp Rhino, southwest of

Kandahar. From there, the regiment conducted long range vehicle-mounted operations across hundreds of kilometers of open desert, pushing into the Helman Valley near the Iranian border. These were some of the first coalition boots on the ground in what would become America’s longest war. But the SASR unit’s defining moment of that first deployment came in March 2002 during a massive operation called Anaconda. US intelligence had identified up to a thousand al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters regrouping in the Shahi Kat

Valley in eastern Afghanistan. Coalition planners assembled a force of over 2,000 troops to crush them. The SASR role was reconnaissance. They infiltrated the valley 10 days before the main assault, hiding in the freezing mountains at altitudes above 3,000 m, mapping enemy positions, and reporting back to coalition commanders. When the operation kicked off on March 2nd, everything went sideways. Intelligence had underestimated enemy strength. Troops from the US 10th Mountain Division were dropped into the valley and immediately

pinned down by withering fire from entrenched al-Qaeda fighters on the surrounding ridge lines. A helicopter carrying US Army Rangers was shot down, leaving 24 Americans stranded and under assault from all sides. That is when two SASR operators on a mountain observation post above the valley became the lifeline. They provided sniper overwatch and began calling in in precision air strikes directly onto the al-Qaeda positions, closing in on the downed Americans. For hours, these two Australians directed

bomb after bomb onto the enemy advance, buying time for the Rangers to hold on. By the time the dust settled, an estimated 300 al-Qaeda fighters had been killed by the air strikes the SASR teams guided in. The American commander of the entire operation, Lieutenant General Frank Hagenbeck, did not mince words about the Australians afterward. He said they displayed the qualities that made them the elite of small unit infantry throughout the world and that in his view they would never ever be defeated.

All three SASR squadrons rotated through Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002 before the regiment was withdrawn in November. For 3 years, Australia’s presence in Afghanistan dwindled to almost nothing. But the Taliban was not finished. By 2005, the insurgency had regrouped and was gaining strength across the south. In August of that year, the Australian government sent the special forces back in. this time to Urus Gan province, a rugged and isolated region that would become the center of Australia’s war for

the next eight years. This is where the special air service regiment known as SASR built the reputation that would earn them that double bounty. The special operations task group known as TF66 operated out of Ford operating base Ripley near Taran Cout, the provincial capital. Each rotation lasted about 6 months and typically included an SAS squadron, a commando company from the second commando regiment and support elements. They deployed day and night by vehicle, by helicopter, and on foot, striking Taliban networks across Urus

and into neighboring provinces like Kandahar and Zabul. Their primary mission was counter leadership operations which meant identifying and targeting the specific Taliban commanders running the insurgency. Western forces maintained kill lists of Taliban leaders and SAS teams led by sergeants were assigned individual targets to track across the landscape of southern Afghanistan. It was a relentless grinding hunt. The Taliban noticed. They started calling the Australians greeneyed bearded devils, a

reference to the eerie green glow emitted by the night vision goggles the SASR wore during their con constant nighttime raids. The Australians owned the darkness in a way that terrified insurgent fighters who had grown accustomed to coalition forces operating primarily during daylight hours. If you are finding this breakdown of the SASR operations in Afghanistan valuable, hit subscribe. We cover special forces and military history stories like this every week. Now, let’s talk about the battle

that nearly destroyed them. On September 2nd, 2008, in the valleys near the village of Ka Oruskin, a combined Australian American and Afghan patrol walked into a nightmare. They had been conducting ambush missions in the area northeast of forward operating base Anaconda, a small American outpost. The day before, SASR snipers had killed 11 Taliban fighters in a successful ambush operation. But the Taliban had been watching too. The next morning, two SASR patrols in a command element moved on foot under cover of darkness to set up

ambush positions. At 4 in the morning, five Humvees crewed by US special forces from the seven special forces group and Afghan soldiers rolled into the Anakalai Valley. Two more SASR patrols joined the vehicle convoy along with an explosive detection dog named Sarby. The ambush was set. SASR snipers positioned in the foothills waited for Taliban fighters to move into the open. The northern patrols engaged first, successfully catching armed insurgents in the open. But then the extraction went wrong. The vehicle

convoy had to pull back through the same valley they had entered because there was no alternate route. and up to 200 Taliban fighters were waiting for them. The ambush was devastating. Heavy machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades hit the convoy from multiple directions. Sergeant Troy Simmons commanding one of the SASR patrols described the fight in a later inter interview with the Australian War Memorial. Of his fiveman patrol, only one member was not wounded by the end. Simmons himself was shot in the leg by a

ricochet, blasted by an RPG explosion, shot through the back of his hat, had his rifle destroyed by a bullet, and was shot through the hips. He still has a Taliban round embedded in his pelvis today. During the chaos, the Australians radio Dutch Apache helicopter pilots overhead, begging for fire support. The Dutch refused to engage, staying above 5,000 m for fear of drawing fire. One of the Australians on the ground reportedly told the Dutch pilots that if they were not going to fight, they might as well

leave. And that is exactly what they did. Eventually, American FA18 Hornets arrived and made gun runs on the Taliban positions. The battle lasted 9 hours. Nine Australians were wounded. One American was killed. Taliban casualties were estimated at 80 killed. During the fighting, trooper Mark Donaldson repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to protect wounded soldiers, and he sprinted into the into the open under sustained gunfire to rescue an Afghan interpreter who had been left behind. For his

actions that day, Donaldson was awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia, the country’s highest military honor. It was the first time the award had been given in nearly four decades. And the explosive detection dog, Sarby, who had gone missing during the battle after an RPG blast broke her leash, was found alive 14 months later by an American soldier who spotted her accompanying a local Afghan man. She was flown back to the Australian base at Taran Kout to a hero’s welcome. But the SASR was not

done yet. In the mountains east of Taro, the Taliban still controlled significant territory. In May and June 2010, Australian special forces launched the Sha Walikott offensive, a series of raids designed to smash Taliban strongholds in the Sha Walcott district of Kandahar province. The commandos fought through temperatures exceeding 50° C, clearing insurgent positions in village after village. One commando sniper, Sergeant Gary Robinson, described the fighting simply. It was kill or be killed. He

said they were trying to kill him, so he had no remorse. On June 11th, the Special Air Service Regiment attacked the village of Tyizac to capture or kill a senior Taliban commander. What followed was 11 hours of close quarters combat. Corporal Ben Robert Smith, already a decorated soldier, single-handedly neutralized two machine gun positions during the assault. For this action, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia, making him the most decorated living Australian soldier at the time. The Shiawali offensive

effectively destroyed the Taliban’s presence in the area and earned both the Special Air Service Regiment and the Second Commando Regiment the first Australian Army battle honor since the end of the Vietnam War. So what made the Australian Special Air Service Regiment SASR so exceptionally effective that the Taliban valued their elimination above all other coalition forces? It came down to several factors working together. Their patrol structure of five to six operators meant they move faster,

quieter, and with more tactical flexibility than larger conventional units. Their selection process was brutally demanding with very few candidates making it through. It was not about being the biggest or the fastest. The SASR selected for decision-making under stress, mental resilience, and the ability to operate independently for extended periods in hostile territory. They also carried capabilities that conventional infantry simply did not have. Long range sniper rifles that could engage targets at distances beyond

a kilometer. Night vision equipment that let them own the hours of darkness when Taliban fighters felt safest. Advanced communications gear that allowed small teams to call in devastating air strikes from bombers flying thousands of feet overhead. And perhaps most importantly, they had the training and the temperament to hunt individual human targets with the patience and precision of a predator tracking wounded prey across open ground. For the Taliban leadership in Uruan, the SASR was not just another group of foreign soldiers.

They were the ones kicking in compound doors at 3:00 in the morning and dragging commanders out of their beds. They were the ones sitting on ridgeel lines with sniper rifles, waiting for days to take a single shot. and they were the ones who kept coming back rotation after rotation for eight straight years. But this story does not end with battlefield glory. It ends with something much darker. In November 2020, the Australian Defense Force released the Breitin Report, the findings of a 4-year inquiry into alleged war crimes

committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. The report found credible evidence that members of the special air service regiment and the second commando regiment had unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers, and other civilians. The inquiry described practices including what was called blooding, where junior soldiers were allegedly pressured by senior operators to execute detainees as a kind of initiation right. Weapons and radios were reportedly planted on bodies to make the killings

appear justified. The head of the Australian Defense Force, General Angus Campbell, publicly apologized and announced that two squadron of the Special Air Service Regiment would be disbanded entirely due to what he called a distorted culture. As of early 2026, only one former Special Air Service Regiment Trooper, Oliver Schultz, has been charged with a war crime, and his trial is not expected before 2027. The Australian government has allocated over $318 million to fund the ongoing investigations.

For the SASR veterans who served honorably across 23 rotations in Afghanistan, the war crimes allegations have cast a long shadow over their service. Many feel that the actions of a few have overshadowed the sacrifice and bravery of the majority. 41 Australians died during the 20-year Afghan conflict with about half of those casualties coming from the SAS and the second commando regiment. Four Victoria crosses were awarded. Hundreds of soldiers carry wounds, both physical and psychological, that will never fully heal. The

Australian SASR story in Afghanistan is one of extraordinary capability and devastating consequences. A unit so effective that the enemy valued their destruction above all others. A regiment with a legacy stretching from the jungles of Vietnam to the mountains of Central Asia. And a reminder that the pressures of relentless combat year after year without clear strategic purpose or adequate oversight can break even the best soldiers in the world. The Taliban may have feared the green-eyed, bearded devils more than any other force

in Afghanistan, but the deepest scars from this war were not left on the battlefield. They are still being uncovered today.