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Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today

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1 111TH CONGRESS " ! S. PRT. 1st Session COMMITTEE PRINT 111–??? 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 John F. Kerry, Chairman ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION NOVEMBER 30, 2009 Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations Available via World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE ??–??? PDF WASHINGTON : 2009 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5012 Sfmt 5012 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB seneagle COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin BOB CORKER, Tennessee BARBARA BOXER, California JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JIM DEMINT, South Carolina ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming JIM WEBB, Virginia ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York DAVID MCKean, Staff Director KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director (II) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB CONTENTS Page Letter of Transmittal ........................................................................................... v Executive Summary ............................................................................................. 1 1. Flight to Tora Bora .......................................................................................... 3 The Sheikh Arrives .......................................................................................... 5 Other Voices, Same Conclusion ....................................................................... 7 ‘‘A Controversial Fight’’ .................................................................................... 9 2. The Afghan Model: A Flawed Masterpiece or Just Flawed? ........................ 10 A Shift in Attention and Resources ................................................................ 12 ‘‘We’re Going to Lose Our Prey’’ ...................................................................... 13 Flight from Tora Bora ...................................................................................... 13 3. An Alternative Plan ......................................................................................... 15 Troops Were Ready to Go ................................................................................ 17 The Price of Failure .......................................................................................... 19 Endnotes ............................................................................................................... 21 APPENDIXES Appendix I.—‘‘A Flawed Masterpiece,’’ Michael E. O’Hanlon, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002 ................................................................................................. 25 Appendix II.—United States Special Operations Command History, 6th Edi- tion ........................................................................................................................ 33 (III) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 5905 Sfmt 5905 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 5905 Sfmt 5905 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC, November 30, 2009. DEAR COLLEAGUE: This report by the committee majority staff is part of our continuing examination of the conflict in Afghanistan. When we went to war less than a month after the attacks of Sep- tember 11, the objective was to destroy Al Qaeda and kill or cap- ture its leader, Osama bin Laden, and other senior figures in the terrorist group and the Taliban, which had hosted them. Today, more than eight years later, we find ourselves fighting an increas- ingly lethal insurgency in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan that is led by many of those same extremists. Our inability to fin- ish the job in late 2001 has contributed to a conflict today that en- dangers not just our troops and those of our allies, but the stability of a volatile and vital region. This report relies on new and existing information to explore the consequences of the failure to eliminate bin Laden and other extremist leaders in the hope that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Sincerely, JOHN F. KERRY, Chairman. (v) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6604 Sfmt 6604 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6604 Sfmt 6604 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB TORA BORA REVISITED: HOW WE FAILED TO GET BIN LADEN AND WHY IT MATTERS TODAY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY On October 7, 2001, U.S. aircraft began bombing the training bases and strongholds of Al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban across Afghanistan. The leaders who sent murderers to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon less than a month earlier and the rogue government that provided them sanctuary were running for their lives. President George W. Bush’s expression of America’s de- sire to get Osama bin Laden ‘‘dead or alive’’ seemed about to come true. Two months later, American civilian and military leaders cele- brated what they viewed as a lasting victory with the selection of Hamid Karzai as the country’s new hand-picked leader. The war had been conceived as a swift campaign with a single objective: de- feat the Taliban and destroy Al Qaeda by capturing or killing bin Laden and other key leaders. A unique combination of airpower, Central Intelligence Agency and special operations forces teams and indigenous allies had swept the Taliban from power and ousted Al Qaeda from its safe haven while keeping American deaths to a minimum. But even in the initial glow, there were concerns: The mission had failed to capture or kill bin Laden. Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat. But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan al- lowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who con- tinues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics world- wide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today’s pro- tracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan. Al Qaeda shifted its locus across the border into Pakistan, where it has trained extremists linked to numerous plots, including the July 2005 transit bombings in London and two recent aborted attacks involving people living in the United States. The terrorist group’s resurgence in Pakistan has coincided with the rising violence orchestrated in Afghanistan by the Taliban, whose leaders also escaped only to re-emerge to direct today’s increasingly lethal Afghan insurgency. This failure and its enormous consequences were not inevitable. By early December 2001, Bin Laden’s world had shrunk to a com- plex of caves and tunnels carved into a mountainous section of (1) VerDate Nov 24 2008 10:07 Nov 30, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\DOUG.TXT MikeBB PsN: MIKEB 2 eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora. Cornered in some of the most forbidding terrain on earth, he and several hundred of his men, the largest concentration of Al Qaeda fighters of the war, en- dured relentless pounding by American aircraft, as many as 100 air strikes a day. One 15,000-pound bomb, so huge it had to be rolled out the back of a C-130 cargo plane, shook the mountains for miles. It seemed only a matter of time before U.S. troops and their Af- ghan allies overran the remnants of Al Qaeda hunkered down in the thin, cold air at 14,000 feet. Bin Laden expected to die. His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. ‘‘Allah commended to us that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole,’’ he wrote, ac- cording to a copy of the will that surfaced later and is regarded as authentic. ‘‘Allah bears witness that the love of jihad and death in the cause of Allah has dominated my life and the verses of the sword permeated every cell in my heart, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together.’ How many times did I wake up to find myself reciting this holy verse!’’ He instructed his wives not to remarry and apologized to his children for devoting himself to jihad. But the Al Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Af- ghan allies, and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected. Requests were also turned down for U.S. troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Paki- stan. The vast array of American military power,
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