BEFORE THE TALIBAN took control of Kabul in August, the U.S.-backed Afghan commandos known as Zero units were the ghosts of the Afghan battlefield. Along with their CIA advisers, they were feared and, in recent years, virtually invisible.

But in the hectic, violent weeks between the Taliban victory and the U.S. military withdrawal, fighters belonging to a Zero unit known as 01 — and other linked militias known collectively as National Strike Units, or NSUs — helped the Americans secure Hamid Karzai International Airport. Firing warning shots day and night, 01 fighters sought to corral and search crowds of Afghans and foreigners trying to enter the airport to board evacuation flights, much as Taliban fighters struggled to maintain control at other airport entrances around the same time.

One evening in late August, an Afghan 01 commander whose fighters were guarding the airport’s northwestern gate asked an Intercept journalist taking photographs to identify himself to the fighter’s American handler. The handler, who was wearing a baseball cap and had a pistol strapped to his waist, suggested that if the journalist wanted to leave on an evacuation flight, he should do so immediately. Soon, the man said, he’d be evacuating “my guys,” referring to the 01 fighters. After that, the gate would be closed for good. The American then turned to the 01 commander and explained the value placed on a free press by citizens of the country to which he and his fighters would soon be flown.

The CIA’s ability to evacuate its allies appears to have far outstripped that of other U.S. government entities and signals its pivotal role in the war. The agency evacuated as many as 20,000 Afghan “partners” and their relatives, the Washington Post reported, nearly one-third of the 60,000 Afghans the U.S. has taken in overall. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.

Most coverage of the CIA’s efforts has been laudatory. But the Zero units were known for deadly night raids that killed an untold number of civilians across Afghanistan. The Intercept documented 10 raids conducted by 01 in Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, in which at least 51 civilians, including children, were killed — many at close range, in execution-style assaults. Most 01 missions were led by a small number of CIA “advisers,” as their Afghan fighters knew them, or U.S. special forces borrowed from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command.

“The U.S. should not be offering safe haven to those who committed war crimes or serious human rights abuses,” said Patricia Gossman, associate director for the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, who wrote a report on the units’ abuses. “In Afghanistan, these forces were never held accountable for their actions, which included summary executions and other abuses. The U.S. and any other countries resettling members of these units should screen arrivals and investigate any for their possible involvement in human rights violations.”

Most of the Zero unit members were flown to Qatar, where CIA paramilitary officers worked to get their former Afghan colleagues sent to the U.S., according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of the operation. The former Afghan commandos are being housed on U.S. military bases, including two in Virginia and New Jersey, and at Ramstein Air Base in Germany while they await resettlement, according to the former senior U.S. official, two former senior Afghan intelligence officials, and a former commando from a different Afghan unit who was evacuated to the same U.S. base as some Zero unit members. Another small group of Zero unit members is in the United Arab Emirates, but they are expected to come to the U.S. within weeks, one of the former Afghan officials told The Intercept. Both former Afghan officials said they have spoken with relatives who previously belonged to the Zero units and are now in the United States.

Once known within the U.S. government as the Mohawks, Zero units started as an irregular commando force controlled by the CIA. The intelligence agency trained the teams to serve as guerrilla fighters out of small U.S. outposts, mainly in the north and east of the country, near the Pakistan border. Much of the original purpose of the program was to enable the CIA to conduct cross-border raids into Pakistan, a politically fraught and rarely approved activity for U.S. personnel.

The Zero units allowed the U.S. to conduct deniable operations and avoid accountability and were similar in some respects to the CIA’s Phoenix program during the Vietnam War. For that program, the agency created Provincial Reconnaissance Units comprised mostly of South Vietnamese guerrillas led by American commanders. Like the Afghan Zero units, the PRUs gathered intelligence and assassinated suspected Viet Cong.

In 2010, the Afghan government signed an agreement with the CIA to turn the NSUs into a joint program with Afghanistan’s former intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, according to the two former senior Afghan officials, who were involved in the arrangement. While the missions would be jointly run, the units continued to be funded exclusively by the U.S. government, the two former Afghan officials told The Intercept. The change allowed the CIA to claim plausible deniability against accusations of human rights abuses or war crimes.

But in 2019, Afghanistan’s most senior defense official, then-Afghan national security adviser Hamdullah Mohib, told The Intercept that 01 was controlled by the CIA. “Quite frankly, I’m not fully aware … of how they work,” he said at the time. “We’ve asked for clarification on how these operations happen, who are involved, what are the structures of this. When they were set up, why are they not in Afghan control?”

Just after President Joe Biden took office in January, the CIA gave the NDS one year’s budget and said the agency would no longer support Zero units or continue funding them, one of the former Afghan intelligence officials told The Intercept.