Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (17 page)

In his book
Against All Enemies
, former White House counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke recounted a tabletop exercise by intelligence officials and analysts conducted in 2000. The participants were divided into two groups, one playing the role of al Qaeda and secretly developing weapons of mass destruction to be used against the United States. That group also was asked to determine where in the world al Qaeda might likely hide the weapon. The second group countered the first and began with the assumption al Qaeda had already developed a weapon.

It didn’t take long for the al Qaeda role players to determine an excellent place to hide their nefarious activities. From studying satellite imagery, topography, and safe havens, the choice was obvious. Clarke referred to the place as a “valley in Afghanistan called Tora Bora” and it was such a logical place for terrorists that U.S. assets began to photograph it from the air continuously and map the numerous cave entrances.

I can assure you that Tora Bora is much more than a single valley. Indeed, it is a vertical no-man’s land, a hellish place of massive, rocky, jagged, unforgiving snow-covered ridgelines and high peaks separated by deep ravines and valleys studded with mines.

What Clarke’s experts were not tasked with determining, nor were they even capable of doing so at the time, was how this mountainous redoubt might look if bin Laden had prepared it for an assault by foreign troops.

However, any student of mujahideen tactics in the Soviet-Afghan war could make a pretty good assumption that it might have become impregnable, both from the air and ground. During the twelve years since the Soviet withdrawal, the defenses in the Tora Bora Mountains had matured and expanded significantly.

The hardworking guys in the intelligence shop didn’t get much sleep and didn’t have as much to work with as did those tabletop teams Clarke described. Where were the satellite photos? Where were those maps of cave entrances? I don’t know, but they weren’t with the men who needed them most. Our intel people were reinventing the wheel by having to study the forbidding Tora Bora area from scratch. Things looked pretty bleak.

The fortress was densely pocked with well-built bunkers that were cloaked from ground and air observation by remarkable camouflage. Al Qaeda used a defense-in-depth concept to impede an attacking force at various points while allowing defenders to reposition farther back in other prepared and well-stocked positions.

An attacking force had two basic approaches from which to choose. They could stick to the low ground in the valleys and ascend steadily while moving deeper into the mountains. Or they could take the well-worn footpaths used by drug smugglers, goat herders, and generations of mujahideen and outside warriors dating back to Alexander the Great.

But modern enemy weapons now overlooked those ancient foot routes—DShK-38 12.7mm heavy machine guns and 82mm mortar tubes, SVD 7.62mm Dragunov rifles, RPGs, AK-47s, and PKM machine guns. Any force attacking uphill, already tired from the climb and with limited lateral space in which to maneuver, would certainly face an unfriendly welcome. Once committed to a particular avenue of approach, the decision to continue or turn around would require great caution.

The helicopter option was quickly ruled out for Tora Bora. At least two camouflaged ZPU-1 14.5mm AAA guns and several dozen SA-7 SAM rockets were waiting down there, and the low-flying birds would be fat and easy targets. The last thing we wanted was another Mogadishu, with a helicopter shot down. Such a tragedy always seemed to shift the mission away from its original objective and into recovering friendly forces.

Lieutenant Colonel Ashley, our squadron commander, knew the muhj had been very successful in shooting down Soviet helicopters with shoulderfired rockets in the 1980s, and he also was a veteran of Somalia and vividly remembered that disaster.

The restrictions that would limit helicopters in such terrible mountain
battlefield conditions further dampened hopes of getting any quick reaction force to a trouble spot in a hurry.

The more we studied how to tackle those mountains, the more the situation started to display many of the trappings of a modern siege.

Centuries ago, a commander typically could surround the stronghold, sit tight, and wait for the defenders to starve themselves into capitulation. Sieges of castles or towns usually began in the spring or summer, when the attackers could retain some level of personal comfort, and dry weather supported the use of fire and heavy siege engines.

Or the ancient commander could choose to attack the fortified position, which was obviously more hazardous. So far, everything we had seen about Tora Bora tilted us toward the latter and riskier method.

In the modern year of 2001, our snipers would serve as archers and our bullets as fire-tipped arrows. Our pickup trucks would be the war chariots, and rusty but usable Afghan tanks and black-market mortars would stand in as ballistas and bombards. Our fighters and bombers could rain down JDAMs and BLU-82s like ancient Greek fire.

There was another intriguing option, and we liked it enough to plan it out. What about going in the back door, across the 14,000-foot mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border? What if several teams could insert safely by helicopter into Pakistan, on the far side of the highest Tora Bora peaks. They would have bottled oxygen and acclimate themselves as they ascended even higher, and once they crested the peaks and found any signs of al Qaeda, they would be in business.

The commandos would own the high ground and could accurately target bunkers or cave openings with lasers for U.S. warplanes to strike them with relative impunity.

A tactical plan drawn up by the Delta experts is rarely denied, and in fact I cannot remember anyone ever saying no once Delta determined what it needed to do to accomplish its assigned mission. This one worked its way up through our various commanders, but somewhere way, way above us, it was denied. We would not be allowed to infiltrate through Pakistan.

Any plan has negatives, including this one. Just resupplying such recon teams with water, ammunition, and radio batteries would have been a tall order. That did not mean, however, that we should not do it. We were Delta and we could overcome such things. Having Delta guarding the far
side of the mountain passes, closing the ring, would have made a huge difference. But our plan was shot down.

Over the years, it has come to be believed that Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf refused permission for us to have the staging access we needed for a cross-border infiltration and that Central Command decided the issue was too sensitive to press. This is only partly true.

Author Ron Suskind, in
The One Percent Doctrine
, replayed an event that unfolded deep inside the White House. As President Bush and Vice President Cheney watched, a senior CIA operative laid a map of Afghanistan out on the floor and argued for an immediate commitment of American troops to seal Pakistan’s side of Tora Bora, thus cutting off a potential al Qaeda escape route.
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He displayed satellite imagery to prove that Pakistan’s military was not yet in place to accomplish the task. Further, the CIA man strongly suggested that Pakistan could not be counted on to fulfill their promise of troops to secure the area.

According to Suskind, President Bush was not completely swayed, and opted to trust our Muslim allies in the new war on terror. The back door would remain wide open to the enemy. We were not pleased.

With their southern flank secure, al Qaeda could focus on the west, north, and east, and they built their defenses accordingly, around the assumption that those big border mountains were inviolate.

On the ground, we knew that back in 2001.

Even our huge advantage in air surpremacy was not going to work in our favor, at least for a while. Those valuable air assets were not yet even
based inside Afghanistan. Bagram airfield and the Kandahar airport, dubbed FOB Tahoe, were not ready to accept aircraft. For the present, the planes were still bedding down well to the northwest in Uzbekistan and to the southeast in a remote stretch of Pakistan, and the air fleet was being downsized in a strange attempt to fool the terrorists. It was not difficult for us to envision how the great distances could hamper air support during a gunfight in Tora Bora, with us out there at the tip of the spear.

Aware of all of the things that were not likely to be successful, or were disapproved by some higher levels, the squadron boss Ashley, operations officer Super D, and the rest of the staff went to work to identify things that might make our mission work.

Recent satellite imagery and pictures from high-flying reconnaissance planes allowed the analysts to measure what was happening in the mountains. The information was packaged into a color-coded PowerPoint slide show. Winter temperatures were frigid, the mountain range was sheathed in low and lingering clouds, and deep snow was stacking up in various valleys and passes.

The clear conclusion was that those vital passageways were so clogged that al Qaeda and bin Laden could not be leaving the mountains anytime soon, which meant they would have to make a major defensive stand.

Ashley wanted to make those possible exit routes even more dangerous by dropping some CBU-89 GATOR mines into the passes. The GATORs would spread a minefield that would both deny enemy foot soldiers their escape routes and also knock out vehicles, leaving the enemy trapped and shaping the battlefield more to our liking.

Even this logical request was disapproved at some higher level, most likely even above the four-stars at CENTCOM. Later, after the battles were done, we learned that indeed there had been a political twist to it because some of our allies threatened to opt out of the fighting should the GATORs be employed.

Multiple sources still said that bin Laden was in the mountains and reported that he was still alive, well protected, and moving continually on horseback from cave to cave. Additionally, we learned that he enjoyed widespread support among the local population.

That was no surprise. Since at least 1985, he had been providing jobs and jihad opportunities for many residents during the construction of the
trenches, bunkers, and caves that comprised the mountain redoubt. Either his fellow Muslims in the area genuinely believed in him or bin Laden had simply bought their allegiance. This is not meant to suggest that all Muslims support bin Laden or are the enemy, for they clearly do not and are not. It’s very likely many were just too scared to turn on him.

Save for the big intelligence coups that it was winter in the Afghan mountains and bin Laden could ride a horse, neither we operators nor our commanders had much to go on. We knew our ability to move crosscountry mounted in the Toyota pickups was limited, so the only remaining solution was for us to just walk up the mountains.

A final piece of bad news was that our first-line quickreaction force, or QRF, would not be made up of American Rangers after all, but of Afghans. We all initially overestimated the ability and willingness of the Afghan muhj, but for the time being, we were going to bet our lives on them. Thinking the muhj could do as well as the Rangers was a complete pipe dream.

One limitation was the inability of the muhj to fight at night, a deficiency that was originally chalked up to their not having much night vision capability. We would soon learn that the muhj did not really need any night vision equipment; they had no desire to fight in the dark.

It was a friction point that would get even uglier when the shooting started.

Things were shaping up for an interesting next couple of weeks.