The 9/11 Wars (103 page)

  
23
.
Feith,
War and Decision
, p. 78.

  
24
.
United States Special Operations Command History
, 6th edn, 2007, p. 96. Schroen,
First In
, pp. 265–7. Hamid Karzai,
Letter from Kabul
, Wiley, 2006, p. 117.

  
25
.
Author interview with Noman Benotman, former Libyan militant, March 2011. See also Quillam Foundation, Camille Tawil,
The Other Face of al-Qaeda
, London, 2010, p. 17.

  
26
.
Author interview with Mohammed Ishaq Mir Ali, Nowshera, October 2002.

  
27
.
Schroen,
First In
, p. 345. Anthony Davis, ‘The Fall of Kabul’,
Jane’s Defence Weekly
, November 13, 2001.

  
28
.
See Karzai’s own account in
Letter from Kabul
.
United States Special Operations Command History
, p. 97.

  
29
.
Author interviews with Zaheer Arsala, Kabul August 2008, Abdul Qadir, Hazrat Ali, Jalalabad, November 2001.

  
30
.
Jason Burke, ‘Mujahideen back to “rob and beat us” ’,
Observer
, November 18, 2001.

  
31
.
Report of interrogation of Saleem Ahmed Saleem Hamden, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 062870902.

  
32
.
Abdullah al-Shihri, ‘Aide to Bin Laden surrenders’, Associated Press, July 14, 2004. Bin Laden on Tape: Attacks “Benefited Islam Greatly” ’, CNN, December 14, 2001.

  
33
.
Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today: A Report to Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 111th Congress first session
, November 30, 2009. p. 5

  
34
.
Jagdallak was where the final remnants of a retreating British army had been destroyed by local tribesmen in 1842.

  
35
.
Philip Smucker, ‘How bin Laden got away: A day-by-day account of how Osama bin Laden eluded the world’s most powerful military machine’,
Christian Science Monitor
, March 4, 2002.

  
36
.
Author interviews with Hazrat Ali, Haji Din Mohammedi, Haji Zaheer Arsala, Jalalabad, October 2002.

  
37
.
Author interviews with Zaheer Shah, Hazrat Ali in Jalalabad, October 2002. Memorandum for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input, US9AF–000782DP, Awal Malim Gul, February 15, 2008, secret, author collection. Jasan Burke, ‘Guantanamo Bay files rewrite the story of Osama bin Laden’s Tora Bora escape’,
Guardian
, April 26, 2011.

  
38
.
Author interviews with Jan Mohammed and other commanders, Peshawar, June 2002.

  
39
.
Rashid,
Descent into Chaos
, pp. 242–3 .

  
40
.
John F. Burns, ‘10-month Afghan mystery: Is bin Laden dead or alive?’,
New York Times
, September 30, 2002.

  
41
.
‘How Al Qaeda slipped away’,
Newsweek
, August 19, 2002.

  
42
.
Author interview with Mohammed Shah Shinwari, Hadda, October 2002.

  
43
.
Author interview with police chief, Asadabad, Kunar, October 2002. Memorandum for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input, Sabar Lal Melma, US9AF–000801DP, June 5, 2005, secret, author collection.

  
44
.
President Musharraf’s aides later claimed that at least 300 had been handed over to the Americans. A variety of activists, such as the lawyer, politicians and cleric Javed Ibrahim Parachar, who was based in Kohat, secured the release of at least 300 more, he told the author in Kohat, July 2005. The total is likely to be around 600.

  
45
.
See the testimony of Musab Omar Ali al Mudwani, quoted in Worthington,
The Guantanamo Files
, p. 41. For wives, see testimony of Salem Ahmed Salem. Bahlul was leading a group of two and a half dozen others, largely members of bin Laden’s security detail, who swiftly became known as the ‘Dirty Thirty’ to their captors. Memorandum for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input for Guantanamo Detainee, US9YM-000039DP, Ali Hamza Suleiman al-Bahlul, June 5, 2005, secret, author collection.

  
46
.
He had decided to travel after long conversations with a cleric and after viewing videos of ‘Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya and how the soldiers mistreated the women and the children’. He had hoped to fight in Chechnya or with the Taliban but was not unhappy to find himself in a camp connected to al-Qaeda.

  
47
.
Author interview, Kabul, 2008.

  
48
.
Interview with Mohammed al-Tamimi, in the Arabic newspaper
al-Hayat
, September 20, 2006, quoted in Tawil,
Brothers in Arms
, p. 183. Ayman al-Batarfi, Summary of Administrative Review Board Proceeding ISN 556, 2006, p. 14.
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/ARB_Transcript_ 2397-2490.pdf
. A Yemeni fighter remembered ‘anti-aircraft guns’, but these appear to have been Soviet-era manually operated weapons entirely unsuited to defence against contemporary air power. Memoranda for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input, US9AG-000238DP, Nabil Said Hadjarab, January 22, 2007, and US9YM-00054920, Omar Said Adayn, June 2008, secret, author collection.

  
49
.
Tora Bora Revisited
, p. 21.

  
50
.
United States Special Operations Command History
, p. 98.

  
51
.
In early December there were only about 1,300 US troops in country.

  
52
.
MI6 former senior official, London, February 2009.

  
53
.
Bin Laden also ordered his wives not to remarry and his ‘women kinsfolk’ to avoid cosmetics so as not to resemble the ‘whore-ish and mannish females of the West’ and warned his sons not to join al-Qaeda and the armed struggle. Al-Majallah, ‘Al-Majallah Obtains Bin Laden’s Will’, October 27, 2002, pp. 22–6, quoted in ‘Foreign Broadcast Information Service Report, Compilation of Usama Bin Laden’s Statements 1994 to 2004’, published 2004. Available at:
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ubl-fbis.pdf
.

  
54
.
According to a declassified version of an official history of US special forces’ operations during the Afghan campaign of late 2001, published in 2007, ‘All source reporting corroborated his presence on several days from 9–14 December.’ The claim was based on accounts of commanders and intelligence officials.
United States Special Operations Command History
, p. 101, 6th edn, March 2008, quoted in
Tora Bora Revisited
, p. 10.

  
55
.
A further intercepted message was probably a pre-recorded sermon played to cover the senior leadership’s flight. Ilene R. Prusher, ‘Two top Al Qaeda leaders spotted’,
Christian Science Monitor
, March 26, 2002. Memoranda for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input and Recommendation for Guantanamo Detainee, US9SA-000062DP, US9SU-000054DP, Mohammad Salah Ahmad, November 15, 2007, and AF-0003148, Harun al’Afghani, August 2, 2007, secret, author collection.

  
56
.
On NBC’s
Meet the Press
on December 2, 2001 Tim Russert, the host of the programme, showed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with the artist’s rendering of bin Laden’s fortress.

Russert:
The Times
of London did a graphic, which I want to put on the screen for you and our viewers. This is it. This is a fortress. This is a very much a complex, multi-tiered, bedrooms and offices on the top, as you can see, secret exits on the side and on the bottom, cut deep to avoid thermal detection so when our planes fly to try to determine if any human beings are in there, it’s built so deeply down and embedded in the mountain and the rock it’s hard to detect. And over here, valleys guarded, as you can see, by some Taliban soldiers. A ventilation system to allow people to breathe and to carry on. An arms and ammunition depot. And you can see here the exits leading into it and the entrances large enough to drive trucks and cars and even tanks. And it’s own hydroelectric power to help keep lights on, even computer systems and telephone systems. It’s a very sophisticated operation.

Rumsfeld: Oh, you bet. This is serious business. And there’s not one of those. There are many of those. And they have been used very effectively. And I might add, Afghanistan is not the only country that has gone underground. Any number of countries have gone underground. The tunnelling equipment that exists today is very powerful. It’s dual use. It’s available across the globe. And people have recognized the advantages of using underground protection for themselves. (
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4697166259112889282#
).

  
57
.
‘Yemeni doctor describes bloody siege at Tora Bora’, Associated Press, September 7, 2007. Memorandum for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input, US9YM-000627DP, Ayman al-Batarfi, April 29, 2008, secret, author collection.

  
58
.
Andy McNab, ‘SAS hero Andy McNab describes regiment’s Al-Qaeda battle’,
Daily Mirror
, February 16, 2002, pp. 26–7. In fact, few knew very much about the caves or anything else. Intelligence on the actual defences was minimal, and the vast surveillance resources that would later be used by the America military and, by extension, some of its allies, were not yet available.

  
59
.
The number was 300 according to Susan B. Glasser, ‘The battle of Tora Bora: secrets, money, mistrust’,
Washington Post
, February 10, 2002.

  
60
.
‘Dalton Fury’ was, unsurprisingly, a pseudonym. Dalton Fury,
Kill Bin Laden
, St Martin’s Press, 2008, pp. 277–8.

  
61
.
‘How Osama Bin Laden escaped’,
Foreign Policy
, December 11, 2009.

  
62
.
His body was found by local tribesmen weeks later and buried. A shrine was built over his tomb, which has since become a place of pilgrimage. Djamel Loiseau, ‘Itinéraire d’un soldat d’Allah’,
France
, 3, April 13, 2007. The story of the Briton who died was cited by the bombers who struck London in 2005 as a key inspiration. Home Office,
Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on
7
th July 2005
, 2006. p. 19.

  
63
.
See Memorandum for Commander, US Southern Command, CSRT Input, US9TS-000510DP, Riyad Nassr Muhammed Atahar, September 15, 2008, secret, author collection.