of those in most urgent need lived in rural areas to the south and west of Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum and Atta fought their way up the Balkh Valley and on November 8 reached the Tanghi Pass, the gateway between the valley and Mazar-i-Sharif. The pass was heavily defended, but the Northern Alliance seized it on November 9, triggering a Taliban retreat from Mazar-i-Sharif. The Northern Alliance entered the city on November 10. The fall of the city was a "major shock"; the US Central Command originally believed it would remain in Taliban hands well into the following year. US Army Civil Affairs Teams from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion, and Tactical Psychological Operations Teams from the 4th Psychological Operations Group, were immediately deployed to begin reconstruction in Mazar-i-Sharif. On November 10, operators from C squadron Special Boat Service, inserted via two C-130s into the recently captured Bagram Airfield, caused a political quandary with the Northern Alliance leadership, who claimed the British had failed to consult them on the deployment. The Northern Alliance foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah considered the uninvited arrival to be a violation of sovereignty, and complained to the head of the CIA field office, threatening to resign if the British did not withdraw. The British government had alerted the deputy head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan that they were deploying troops to Bagram, albeit on short notice. Arriving on the first flight, Brigadier Graeme Lamb—the Director Special Forces at that time—simply ignored Abdullah and drove to the Panjshir Valley, where he paid his respects to Ahmad Shah Massoud's grave and held talks with Northern Alliance leaders. The British Foreign Secretary tried to reassure the Northern Alliance that the deployment was not a vanguard of a British peacekeeping army, but Northern Alliance leaders did not believe them; with the threat of the Northern Alliance opening fire on incoming troop transports, the deployment was put on hold. On November 11, in the central north of Afghanistan, ODA 586 was advising General Daoud Khan outside the city of Taloqan and coordinating a batch of preparatory airstrikes, when the General surprised the Americans by launching an impromptu mass infantry assault on the Taliban holding the city. The city fell before the first bomb could be dropped. Fall of Kabul On November 12, the US tracked and killed al-Qaeda's number three, Mohammed Atef, with an air strike in Kabul. That day the