Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (26 page)

We had been warned by the CIA guys the day before that General Ali was a master of doublespeak, and often talked in circles. He would promise the world, but rarely deliver if he did not see the promise as being useful or helpful to his own agenda. The more time we spent in Afghanistan working with indigenous fighters and warlords, the more we realized Ali’s behavior was far from unique. It was just common to the culture. You don’t obtain warlord status without being able to play both sides, and the middle, and around the edges, too.

On the surface, Ali was physically small, quiet, and unassuming. His
formal schooling ended in the sixth grade, which meant little in this harsh environment. What did matter were the hard-knocks education, street experience, and the reputation he earned fighting the Soviets and rival tribes as a young mujahidee. These characteristics had produced a dangerous mix of politician, manager, and warlord who, when stirred sufficiently, became as cocky as a cornered rooster in a henhouse.

General Ali was in good spirits that morning, and was quick to praise his own efforts. His men “generally” had bin Laden surrounded and cut off from any support by the locals, and Ali strongly implied that escaping from Tora Bora was not an option for the al Qaeda leader. This was welcome news to us, for we did not have the manpower, or the permission, to surround the massive battlefield, and we didn’t expect a sizable infusion of reinforcements anytime soon.

We crossed our fingers and took the general’s declaration at face value, since it meshed with the fact that few other people believed the al Qaeda leader would cut and run. Indeed, early radio intercepts told us bin Laden wanted a fight in the mountains, which had been prepared so well in advance. Al Qaeda was confident it could stem the fighting spirit of their fellow Muslim adversaries so as to better focus attention on the American forces that were assumed to be coming.

So we had no reason to doubt that bin Laden wouldn’t fight to the death.

The Prophet Muhammad faced worse odds at the Battle of Badr in the seventh century, an event well known in Islamic circles. Muhammad’s army believed their victory against an overwhelming force of unbelievers was possible only by placing their fate in the hands of Allah.

Certainly, bin Laden, who repeatedly invoked the life, times, and sayings of Muhammad in his war against Crusaders and Jews, knew that a retreat in the face of onrushing
kufar
s would expose him as a superficial follower of Allah’s will and an apostate himself.

After the aborted attempt to get a look at the front lines before running from the press, General Ali offered to take us to the front again this
morning. The general said he had taken care of the media problem, so Bryan, Adam Khan, and I agreed to go. We
had
to go.

George went along as well, a good move, since Ali seemed to respect him. General Ali was not stupid. He knew that George held the large sums of money he so eagerly desired and he seemed to be figuring out that the newly arrived commandos represented his best chance of eliminating bin Laden. The body of Usama bin Laden, dead or alive, equaled a cool $25 million bonus.

This time, we jumped in Ali’s lime green SUV and departed the schoolhouse headed for the southern foothills along the western flank of the battlefield. A few minutes after crossing the dry streambed, Ali’s radio came alive. One of his forward commanders was begging him to stop the bombs from pounding their positions. A U.S. Air Force B-52 was overhead and supposedly their bombs were hitting the friendly muhj, having mistaken them for al Qaeda.
Easy to do from 30,000 feet when everybody is dressed the same down here
.

Ali pleaded for George to stop the bombing, and George looked at Bryan and me sitting in the backseat. “Can you guys get them to stop?”

“Uh, well, er, okay. Pull over,” I said. I jumped from the SUV, grabbed the handheld GlobalStar satellite phone from my belt and dialed up the guys back at Bagram, who quickly relayed the message.

Whether or not the word would make it all the way to the aircraft high above the clouds was anyone’s guess, but I jumped back in the vehicle and gave George a thumbs-up. Ali smiled and thanked us graciously, then radioed his forward commander, likely telling him the problem had been fixed. Bryan and I looked at each other with poker faces, savoring the moment as we rolled along, knowing that a B-52 could only carry so many bombs.

Sure enough, the bomber went Winchester—empty on ammo—and curled out of the area to return to its base. In a real sense, this unforeseen event likely raised our stock with Ali. Having some Americans who could order up or cancel falling bombs whenever they wanted might not be a bad idea after all.

We passed through the press with no problem that day, but not necessarily because of Ali’s promise the night before. More likely, most reporters were napping inside their tents after having stayed up all night
awaiting a much anticipated drop of a giant BLU-82 bomb. The drop had been postponed several times already.

Developed in the 1960s to cut helicopter landing zones in the triplecanopy jungle of Vietnam, the fifteen-thousand-pound BLU-82 was tested during Desert Storm to clear minefields. Now receiving renewed attention in the new global war on terror, it had been yanked out of mothballs as a potential cave buster. If the $28,000 bomb, which was about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, could nail bin Laden, or even scare the shit out of him, it came at a bargain price.

As we crept along a north-south narrow dirt road that skirted the edge of a major streambed, we passed small pockets of Ali’s fighters. We noticed among them a couple of light-skinned Afghans who wore lighter colored beards than the traditional dark-skinned locals. We learned they were from Nuristan Province, and their appearance gave us a little more confidence that we gringos might be able to fit into the surroundings.

The road ended a couple of kilometers farther south, where we dismounted and moved into the foothills. The air seemed thinner, even at this relatively low altitude, and we outlanders were forced to breathe more heavily while trying to hide the pounding of our hearts. Ali appeared to be immune to the physical strain.

After several hundred meters of tough ground, we reached two aging T-55 battle tanks and a T-62, all formerly Soviet property and now controlled by the muhj. They were ominously positioned, with a commanding view of the entire mountain range, their main gun tubes raised skyward as if they were ready to shoot rounds over the tall peaks and hit Pakistan. A couple of muhj crewmen were still asleep on the ground behind one of the tanks, wrapped in thin blankets. Two alert fighters had seen the general’s vehicle approaching and were on their feet, waving and smiling, certainly wondering who the hell the new light-skinned fellas accompanying Ali were.

Somewhere up in those beautiful White Mountains waited a thousand or more al Qaeda fighters, hunkered down and largely invisible to the American bombers circling overhead and invisible to us on the ground as well.

Bryan and I made a few notes, checked our maps a dozen times, and marked our location on our Garmin GPSs. Ali pointed to the bombers far above and said that if the bombers were not overhead, then al Qaeda mortars would be in full swing and certainly would have welcomed us by now.

He also mentioned that enemy snipers had been harassing his tank crews the last few days, which kept his men down behind the tanks or buttoned up inside. Ali seemed to be testing us, always alert to our reactions.

About twenty minutes later, we loaded into the vehicle and drove back through the journalists’ base camp again before turning south to head for the eastern front. The drive was quiet until we turned the last corner, where we came face-to-face with dozens of reporters mingling with muhj fighters.

As Adam Khan maneuvered to turn the vehicle around, we noticed two more tanks and a couple of armored personnel carriers. Whether or not they worked was anyone’s guess, but they apparently made excellent backdrops for the international picture-taking media. The news of a sweet photo spot must have spread quickly that morning. As we made our way back to the schoolhouse, we counted four more press vehicles crammed with reporters and photographers zooming past us, heading to the choice real estate and the collection of old armor before their next deadline.

As much as Ali’s inability to control the roaming scores of journalists and their paid local
chogi
boys had become a problem, the real issue was the questionable constraint placed on us by our higher headquarters. The requirement to not be seen or photographed by the press actually limited our freedom of movement more than the enemy did.

Both comical and frustrating at the same time, the snag prompted George to berate Ali a little. He reminded him again of the importance of keeping the presence of American commandos secret, for his own good and ours. Ali nodded in slight shame, and again shrugged his shoulders as if to say that he was unsure whether his men had carried out his order for media control. This is when we started to wonder if Ali’s orders were ever disseminated at all, much less enforced, or if such orders were more like advice to be taken or left at one’s whim.

For the second time in as many days, our attempts to conduct a solid reconnaissance of the battlefield had met with limited results, but that was about to change.

As we arrived at the schoolhouse, a notorious special guest was waiting
for General Ali, the distinguished-looking rival warlord Haji Zaman Ghamshareek, the defense minister of the Eastern Shura and leader of a second opposition group of muhj. About a dozen of his fighters were with him. We vividly remembered that it had been Zaman’s boys who had tried to swipe our trucks just a few nights earlier.

In his fifties, Zaman was of average size, and his jet-black hair so noticeably contrasted with his close-cropped gray beard that I wondered whether he colored it. He wore a tan traditional Afghan wool hat and had a habit of talking with his hands, which exposed surprisingly well-manicured fingernails. He was well educated, and had at least an elementary command of the English language.

Zaman had been one of the more infamous mujahideen junior commanders during the Soviet-Afghan War. When the Taliban took over, Zaman departed Afghanistan for France. He had visited Alexandria, Virginia, numerous times over the years and was known to favor the bite of fine Johnny Walker Red scotch.

When the Taliban fell from grace after 9/11, the articulate and cunning warlord returned to his homeland to reclaim his former VIP status. He was said to have influential friends within neighboring Pakistan, including members of the Pakistani intelligence service.

Fundamentally, his rivalry with Ali stemmed from the desire of both men to be the sole ruler of Nangarhar Province in general, and the city of Jalalabad specifically.

Zaman was an ethnic Pashtun, whereas General Ali claimed allegiance to the minority Pashai tribe, which meant that he had to augment his small following of loyal fighters with men from other tribes. The recruitment effort could secure loyalty only as long as the daily CIA paycheck continued, highlighting the importance of keeping George happy. For the present, Zaman’s rival group of muhj was allied with, but subordinate to, Ali’s command for this particular battle. Keeping all of the players straight was going to be difficult.

It did not take a master of observation to notice the high tension between the two warlords and their men as Ali and Zaman met on the front porch and shared some tea. After a few minutes of the usual meaningless pleasant welcoming, they were arguing on a subject unknown to us, so George and Adam Khan joined them.

Zaman was disagreeing with Ali’s tactics. He felt that relying solely on heavy bombing without threatening al Qaeda with maneuver forces was a mistake. Zaman even pressed Ali to employ the new American commandos immediately. All of that was good news to us.
Should we be dealing with this guy instead?

Zaman then offered to take us right up to the front, all the way up, to get a better look. He confidently said there would be no problems with the press.

Ali balked. Making the same trip again unnerved him, but after some squabbling between the two, Zaman seemed to have shamed Ali into it.
Were they playing chicken?