Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (57 page)

The guys in the TOC burned as much midnight oil as the guys in the mountains of Tora Bora, cycling through their own battle drill to support the fight with as many fighters, bombers, and gunships as they could wrestle away from the U.S. Central Command, which was running the war. This was PhD-level stuff and they were establishing doctrine on the fly.

Artillery experts Will, Todd, and an old Ranger buddy named Jim collaborated with intelligence chief Brian to plot the latest EZ coordinates on their digital maps. In all, over 1,200 CENTCOM targets were fatfingered, one at a time.

Ensuring that all this great stuff could be transmitted in real time back to CENTCOM in Florida and be made useful was a small crew of communicators. Smooth talkers Tony and Happ rigged up critical UHF antennas that allowed the fires experts to update aircraft coming into Afghan airspace on the way to Tora Bora. Sean, from the IT section, hardwired the place like Microsoft headquarters and constantly manipulated the incoming data.

Once a new free fire area was complete, the team rang up the liaison officer, call sign Rasta, at the Coalition Air Operations Center. Rasta, a navy pilot stuck with staff duty, also had the dubious duty of explaining to the CAOC commanding general why every plane in the theater always seemed to be heading to Tora Bora.

An enormous amount of U.S. taxpayer money and factory worker effort was expended at Tora Bora. Over 1,100 precision-guided bombs and
more than 550 dumb bombs were dropped during the assault on al Qaeda’s hideout. In one single and quite busy twenty-four-hour period alone, 135 JDAMs were dropped. These totals do not include shells put through the deadly accurate 40mm chain guns and 105mm cannons of the AC-130 gunships. Those would number in the many thousands.

With such hell falling in a relatively small target area, it is easy to understand why some cold, hungry and shell-shocked al Qaeda fighters took a rain check on martyrdom and ran away. Perhaps they were thinking quietly,
“Heck, if the Sheikh himself, the Lion of Islam, is running, why shouldn’t I?”

A day after we returned from the mountains, several of us knelt around a map of the Tora Bora area and informally briefed Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey and Command Sgt. Maj. C. W. Thompson. When we were finished, Dailey stated, “This is something incredibly historical, completely out of the box for Delta, and a great tactical victory.”

Today, if you Google the words “Tora Bora,” in less than a second you will have at your fingertips an avalanche of documents. This number is extraordinary, but it is public-domain material and lists everything from news reports to bloggers’ opinions.

Surely, the U.S. Army could do better than that because of the rigid importance placed on identifying and documenting “Lessons Learned.” One might assume the Center for Army Lessons Learned would reveal a treasure trove of information about every battle conducted during Operation Enduring Freedom.

The center’s mission is to collect and analyze data and disseminate the accumulated information and resulting expert opinions to commanders, staffs, and students so we don’t make the same mistake twice, and can better plan for future contingencies. The words seem to make perfect sense, right? Well, for an institution that boasts on its Web site that it is the “Intellectual Center of the Army,” the phrase “Tora Bora” shows up in but a single document, as of this writing. The document is entitled
National Security Strategy of the United States of America
.

Strategy
was published in 2002, on the first anniversary of 9/11,
and mentions Tora Bora only in context with the Battle of the Coral Sea in the early part of World War II. The navy did not lose that pivotal battle in the Pacific, but it did not win it either. Coral Sea was important because it marked the beginning of the end of the Japanese empire. Therefore, the conclusion of the center’s study was that Tora Bora was significant, whether successful or not. After all, why would the editors of our
National Security Strategy
allow such a reference if it was not warranted? It was not very enlightening. In my opinion, the center didn’t give it serious attention, because it was not a conventional war, but a very restricted Special Forces operation, a stiletto instead of a broadsword. Our job was to keep moving forward, and to keep the bombs falling. Although we were after the man who was the root cause of the entire conflict, the historians would save their heavy lifting for the fly jockeys and the main battle tankers.

Even so, despite the center’s viewpoint, our nation has never been closer to killing or capturing bin Laden as we were at Tora Bora.

As uncomfortable as it may be to accept, we have now known for years that bin Laden was not killed or captured at Tora Bora.

So regardless of how one chooses to spin the facts, the battle must be viewed as a military failure. This harsh reality is not to imply in any way that the American and British commandos, controllers, and intelligence operatives did not perform according to billing, for they certainly did. Even so, how can any other claim of success be made? It was, without a doubt, a tremendous tactical victory. But throw in the strategic assessment, too, and the fight at Tora Bora can be classified only as being partially successful operationally.

General Ali once had promised the CIA that he would attack on November 26, 2001, but he repeatedly stalled, apparently satisfied with
small daylight skirmishes in the foothills. He did not want to order his entire army of fighters to smash al Qaeda.

The mujahideen had gained a worldwide reputation as being committed, fearless, and invincible soldiers of Allah because they had defeated the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s. The problem was that the muhj commanders believed their own headlines and vastly overestimated the abilities of their shoot-and-loot troops.

During our very first meeting, General Ali had proudly stoked the embers of the muhj myth, and arrogantly reminded us that the Russians had been unable to defeat the mujahideen after a decade of fighting. He airily stated that we Americans, the latest players on the scene, likewise would be no match for the seasoned enemy defending Tora Bora.

It took only a couple of days for us to prove that reputation of fierceness was a thin cover for the muhj not doing their jobs.

When the American and British commandos became the spearhead of the assaults, led the way into the mountains, and refused to leave the field at night, Ali’s men suddenly became vastly more successful. More than eight thousand meters of al Qaeda terrain was captured in less than five days, several hundred new martyrs were created, and several hundred more of the less committed al Qaeda fighters chose survival and fled the mountain redoubt that had been touted as inviolate. Usama bin Laden ran away. Even the staunchest critics might find difficulty in classifying this as anything but a success.

Only two days after insulting our capabilities, General Ali retracted his statement, and I accepted his compliment gracefully on behalf of the USA. We had made him a believer. We easily punctured the myth that al Qaeda was some kind of superforce. We didn’t need ten thousand troops to rout the enemy, but maybe we did need that many to actually kill bin Laden.

Throughout the Tora Bora operations, no Delta operator killed anyone in any way other than by dropping bombs on their heads. Some of the
best snipers, explosives experts, and knife fighters in the world were forced to curb their enthusiasm because the Afghan muhj had to be in the forefront, and their hearts were not in it.

It was like working in an invisible cage, and if we had been given the ticket to engage in real war fighting, the Delta boys could have made a huge difference.

And had Lieutenant Colonel Ashley’s request been approved to push the snipers up the mountain from the south, out of Pakistan, we probably would have been more directly involved. It would have been an extremely taxing climb at that altitude, but after crossing the border and then scaling the high peaks down the other side, it’s very likely the Delta snipers would have gotten the drop on bin Laden.

Then there was Ashley’s request to close the mountain passes and trails by seeding them with GATOR mines. That also was rejected, but those mines would have killed more al Qaeda fighters and possibly the man himself as they fled toward the border.

I do not recall exactly when I heard that a thousand or so U.S. Marines had made an “amphibious assault” in landlocked Afghanistan. Their job was to establish a forward operating base south of Kandahar in late November 2001. As far as I know, they had not been asked to participate in the Tora Bora battle, which was a good thing, because the introduction of conventional American troops would have caused our operation to unravel.

The local Shura undoubtedly would have needed only one look at the marines before deciding that General Ali’s days as the rock-star warlord were done. I’m also convinced that many of Ali’s fighters, as well as those of his subordinate commanders such as Zaman and Haji Zahir, would have resisted the marines’ presence and possibly even have turned their weapons on the larger American force.

Two Marine Corps general officers asked me the “what-if” question a day of two after the Tora Bora battle. My position had nothing to do with the capability or courage of their marines and everything to do with the sensitivity and peculiar dynamics of the tribal mountain area and overall battle. We had to operate in virtual invisibility to keep Ali on top of the Afghan forces. A full introduction of combat-ready American marines would have tilted an already dangerous alliance.