Tora Bora Reconsidered
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COMMENTARY | Tora Bora Reconsidered Coalition forces offload from U.S. Army Chinook during Operation Torii Lock) T. (Jeremy U.S. Air Force Tora Bora Reconsidered LESSONS FROM 125 YEARS OF STRATEGIC MANHUNTS By BENJAMIN RUNKLE rior to the raid on Abbottabad, appeared alive on a videotape on December Pakistan, in May 2011, the 27. Unfortunately, much of the debate on this seminal event in the 13-year operation has been marked by partisan fin- P hunt for Osama bin Laden ger-pointing and bureaucratic score-settling, was the operation to capture or kill the generating more heat than light and doing Saudi terrorist at Tora Bora in December future U.S. commanders and policymakers a 2001. Although the operation started with grave disservice. great anticipation due to reports that bin But the killing of bin Laden allows for Laden and al Qaeda’s senior leadership were more measured analysis of what went wrong Dr. Benjamin Runkle is a Veteran of Operation surrounded in a remote mountain fortress, in the hunt for the al Qaeda leader than was Iraqi Freedom, former Department of Defense and anticipation turned to frustration as bin possible while he remained on the run. This National Security Council Official, and author of Laden’s fate remained uncertain after 2 analysis is important, as the operational Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to weeks of intense bombing, and frustration problems posed by strategic manhunts Bin Laden (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). turned to recriminations when bin Laden remain relevant given the continued pursuit 40 JFQ / issue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 ndupress.ndu.edu RUNKLE of Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al Qaeda Jawbreaker established a command center On December 16, numerous reports leaders, as well as the ongoing hunt for Lord’s in a schoolhouse in the foothills near Tora of genuine surrenders came into the school- Resistance Army commander Joseph Kony Bora. Satellite imagery and photographs house, and by the next day, the battle of Tora by U.S. special operations forces (SOF) and from reconnaissance planes showed deep Bora was over. Estimates of al Qaeda fighters our Ugandan allies. snow stacking up in the valleys and passes, killed ranged from 220 to 500, although the This article analyzes the failure to leading the team to conclude that bin Laden real number was likely higher as the bombing capture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora in the would not be able to leave the mountains any literally obliterated or buried the bodies of context of the broader history of strategic time soon. Consequently, the plan for Tora large groups of fighters. Fifty-two fighters, manhunts. Starting with the 16-month Bora closely resembled the operations that mostly Arabs, were captured by the Afghans, Geronimo Campaign in 1885–1886, the had broken the Taliban lines north of Kabul: and another hundred were captured crossing United States has deployed forces abroad a CIA paramilitary operatives and U.S. SOF the border into Pakistan. Yet there was no dozen times with the operational objective would infiltrate the area to identify targets sign of the campaign’s target. Bin Laden’s fate of apprehending—dead or alive—one man. for bombing, which would clear the way for remained unknown until December 27, when The lessons learned from these historical Afghan militias to advance. However, the he appeared on videotape. Despite being campaigns offer a fuller perspective of the Northern Alliance had neither the capac- left-handed and typically gesturing with challenges posed by such operations, and ity nor the desire to push as far south as both hands while speaking, a visibly aged bin especially the hunt for bin Laden in Decem- Jalalabad. Consequently, team leader Gary Laden did not move his entire left side in the ber 2001. In particular, history suggests that Berntsen was forced to rely on local warlords. 34-minute video, suggesting he had sustained the number of troops deployed has little One was Hazaret Ali, a Pashai tribal leader a serious injury during the battle. effect on whether an individual is success- who had distinguished himself as a field “I am a poor slave of God,” he said fully targeted, and that the conventional commander in the war against the Soviets, resignedly. “If I live or die the war will con- wisdom that bin Laden escaped from Tora and the other was Haji Zaman, a recently tinue.”1 The hunt for bin Laden would last Bora because there were too few U.S. troops returned exile whose base of operations for almost another decade until it reached its present is a canard contradicted by 125 years during the anti-Soviet jihad had been Tora climax on a cloudless night in a quiet neigh- of strategic manhunts. Bora but who was a fierce rival of Ali’s. borhood in Abbottabad. U.S. Air Force (Jeremy T. Lock) T. (Jeremy U.S. Air Force By December 4, the first observation The Tora Bora Operation post was established on a mountaintop Not Enough Boots on the Ground? After the Taliban’s hold on Afghanistan overlooking the Milewa Valley, and over The most persistent criticism of the began to disintegrate in the face of the U.S. the next 3 days about 700,000 pounds of bin Laden manhunt as executed at Tora Bora air campaign and the Northern Alliance’s ordnance were dropped on al Qaeda posi- is that the Bush administration failed to ground assault in mid-November 2001, bin tions. On December 9, a 40-man detachment deploy enough U.S. troops and thereby let Laden and al Qaeda’s fighters fled southeast arrived at the base of Tora Bora. Under the bin Laden escape certain capture or death. from Jalalabad toward the Pakistan border. command of a major who would later publish On December 3, 2001, CIA team leader Their destination was Tora Bora (Pashto for a memoir under the pseudonym “Dalton Gary Berntsen sent a request to the agency’s “black dust”), a series of cave-filled valleys LESSONS FROM 125 YEARS OF in the White Mountains where ridgelines rose from wooded foothills to jagged, snow- history suggests that the number of troops deployed has little covered peaks separated by deep ravines. The effect on whether an individual is successfully targeted STRATEGIC MANHUNTS Tora Bora complex covered an area roughly 6 miles wide and 6 miles long and had withstood numerous Soviet offensives in the Fury,” the operators were supplemented headquarters asking to assault the cave com- By BENJAMIN RUNKLE 1980s. Moreover, bin Laden was intimately by 14 Green Berets, 6 operatives, a few Air plexes at Tora Bora and block escape routes. familiar with the terrain. In 1987, he used Force specialists, and a dozen British com- He also appealed directly to the head of U.S. bulldozers from his family’s construction mandos. The bombardment—which included Central Command (USCENTCOM) SOF company to build a road through the moun- over 1,000 precision-guided munitions and during a meeting in Kabul on December 15. tains and later fought his first battle against a 15,000-pound BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter” Similarly, Brigadier General James Mattis, the Soviets at the nearby village of Jaji. bomb—continued for another week, and on commander of the Marines in Afghanistan, During the years before September 11, bin at least two occasions directly targeted bin reportedly asked to send the 1,200 Marines Laden kept a house in a settlement near Tora Laden. Although SOF could hear the frantic, stationed near Kandahar into Tora Bora. But Bora and routinely led his children on hikes anguished cries of the al Qaeda operatives USCENTCOM denied all requests for more from Tora Bora into the Parachinar region via a captured radio, the Afghan militias troops. Consequently, as Peter Bergen con- of Pakistan that juts into Afghanistan on the withdrew each night from the ground cluded, “there were more American journal- southern slope of Tora Bora. Thus, Tora Bora gained during the day in order to break their ists at the battle of Tora Bora than there were afforded bin Laden the option of fighting Ramadan fast. Haji Zaman further compli- U.S. soldiers.”2 or fleeing. cated the siege by opening surrender negotia- USCENTCOM commanders cited Elements of the Central Intelligence tions with al Qaeda that were likely a stalling three broad arguments for why troop levels Agency (CIA) paramilitary team codenamed tactic for the terrorists to escape. were kept so low during the operation. First, ndupress.ndu.edu issue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 / JFQ 41 COMMENTARY | Tora Bora Reconsidered former Deputy Commander of USCENT- was kept on the sidelines,” while “bin Laden insurgent leader Augusto Sandino noted, COM Lieutenant General Mike DeLong and an entourage of bodyguards walked “Large bodies of troops had not the mobil- argued, “The simple fact is, we couldn’t put unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared ity necessary to overtake bandit groups and a large number of our troops on the ground into Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area.”6 force them to decisive action.”10 The initial [at Tora Bora].”3 The roads from Jalalabad Bergen similarly concluded, “The Pentagon’s plan to capture Mohammad Farah Aideed to Tora Bora were horrible and ran through reluctance to commit more American boots in June 1993, codenamed Caustic Brimstone, villages loyal to the Taliban and al Qaeda, on the ground is a decision that historians called for a small force of 50 operators to be making the stealthy or efficient deployment are not likely to judge kindly.”7 Even former deployed to Mogadishu to capture the clan of large numbers of U.S.