Advising Special Operations Task Force commanders and small unit leaders on female aspects of Civil-Military Operations.Supporting information operations messaging to the female population and “minimiz civilian interference with military operations”.Searching and questioning Afghan women and children.Providing medical care for Afghan women and children.Directly interacting with Afghan women and children.Special Operations Command issued a tasking order which provided directives on CST taskings. Central Command for increased female service member support to the SOF Village Stability Operations (VSO). The Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan communicated a need to the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. The intelligence gap had a significant impact on overall mission success, which led to the first discussion of the CST program in August 2009. As a result, Operators could often find themselves left in the dark. The difficulties in communicating with half the population presented problems for intelligence gathering as well as building trust with locals. Cultural sensitivity towards men speaking with women presented a problem for the male-dominated SOF elements. In the Middle East, the female population is roughly 50%. The Cultural Support Team (CST) program was a United States Army Special Operations Command initiative that was designed to recruit and train female Operators in specific skills with the aim of supporting Special Operations Forces (SOF). So here’s a quick brief on how women, as members of Cultural Support Teams (CSTs), became an important facet in fighting the Taliban. This kind of work doesn’t get a lot of publicity and there are good reasons for that, but I feel it important that Americans see the relevance of how we can act as a force multiplier. When I talk about my time in Special Operations, I often find that few people have heard of “CSTs” and even fewer know what we did in Afghanistan.