Members of the Army’s 1st Ranger Battalion wait for a helicopter to pick them up in Afghanistan in 2012 (U.S. Army photo). | Courtesy U.S. Army U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan was part of CIA operation

An Army Ranger who was killed in Afghanistan earlier this month was part of a secret program that helps the CIA hunt down militant leaders, according to three former special operations soldiers who knew him.

Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Celiz, 32, a longtime member of the 1st Battalion of 75th Ranger Regiment, died on July 12 “of wounds sustained as a result of enemy small arms fire” in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktiya province, the Army announced the next day.


But he was part of a team of Army Rangers supporting the CIA in an intensifying effort to kill or capture top militant targets, even as the broader U.S. military mission focuses on training and advising Afghan security forces.

“They’re pretty active to say the least,” said a former special operations officer with detailed knowledge of the program, which previously went by the code name Omega and now goes by ANSOF. “They’re the main effort out there in terms of frequency of missions right now.”

He, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations.

The Pentagon reports there are 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan — some of them part of a NATO-led mission supporting the Afghan government and the rest part of a separate U.S. mission conducting counterterrorism raids.

Under both of those mandates, U.S. troops try to let the Afghan military units plan their own operations and conduct them with minimal American help.

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But the CIA has always run its own separate counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan from a headquarters in Kabul and a string of bases in border provinces. And since the early months of the Afghan war, the military has loaned small numbers of special operations troops to the agency under the Omega program.

Over the past year, the CIA has ramped up its activities in Afghanistan at the behest of the Trump administration, according to a report in The New York Times, including by expanding its target set to encompass members of regional militant groups like the Taliban, which were long the purview of the military — not just foreign terrorist groups like al-Qaida.

The CIA declined to comment, and the military does not officially acknowledge that it attaches personnel to the CIA.

“There are certain personnel and units that, due to classification, we do not discuss,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bockholt, a spokesman for U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Rangers’ parent organization.

But the Rangers, who lead the military’s counterterrorism task force in Afghanistan, have for years loaned a small number of their most experienced personnel to the CIA to provide helicopter gunships, drones and medical evacuations. Earlier in the war, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 supplied the bulk of the military personnel to support the CIA operations.

“The agency’s got a targeting list separate from the JSOC task force’s,” said a former special operations officer, referring to the Joint Special Operations Command, the military counterterrorism headquarters that oversees most Ranger missions in Afghanistan. “Sometimes it’s the same targets on both lists, sometimes not.”

“The agency uses its Afghans to kill or capture guys off their target list,” he explained. The CIA’s Afghan surrogates “are doing the assaulting and the killing and the capturing,” he added, but the Rangers “are out there with them.”

“The Rangers who get selected for that mission, to support our interagency partners, are typically the most calm, collected, mature, and professional of an elite group,” said an active-duty military officer with detailed knowledge of the program who also knew Celiz.

Describing the types of support the Rangers provide to the CIA teams, the officer added: “It’s mainly about medical and fire support — the things that our guys are just far better prepared for than theirs.”

It’s unclear which militant group or leader was the target of the mission on which Celiz was killed, but like the military, the CIA is also now targeting members of the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, according to the Times.

According to a former Ranger who served in the same unit, Celiz was shot while helping to evacuate a wounded Afghan commando, who later also died.

The U.S. military statement announcing Celiz’s death acknowledged that he was “conducting operations in support of a medical evacuation landing zone” when he was shot, but said nothing about who was being evacuated or about additional casualties.

An official Army biography of Celiz lists him as a mortar platoon sergeant in his Ranger battalion. He was on his fifth deployment with the Rangers after transferring in from the regular Army.

In a statement, Col. Brandon Tegtmeier, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, called Celiz a “national treasure."

The former Ranger who previously served in same unit as Celiz called him the “hardest worker in the battalion.”

“Celiz was a top-notch dude,” agreed the former special operations officer who served with him. “I can’t say enough good things about him. He didn’t talk a whole lot but he was always happy. No matter how bad things sucked, he always had a dumb smile on his face and it drove guys crazy.”

"We called him the Silver Fox," said another former Ranger who worked closely with Celiz, a reference to his gray hair and advanced age for a member of the unit. "He was one of the humblest men I ever met. Where others would fall apart, you could lean on him to pull through."