Not all Special Forces have super close combat skills or even shooting skills.

Often they're trained for very different tasks like reconnaissance, dealings with and military training for the locals etc.

They're not all snipers who brawl like Chuck Norris but translators, explosives experts and so on.

Question is of course, if they couldn't brawl very well, why did they pick a fight with the locals instead of moderating the heated discussion and speeding away? Maybe their esprit de corps was a bit higher than their fighting skills or so.