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

by Dalton Fury

  13

  The Surrender

  This is the greatest day in the history of Afghanistan.

  —AFGHAN WARLORD HAJI ZAMAN

  GHAMSHAREEK, DECEMBER 12, 2001

  Before the sun came up on the morning of December 12, the American and British commandos of MSS Grinch were already on the hill. They stopped momentarily in a sparsely treed area that was strewn with boulders. Just to the west and down the ridge about a hundred meters, approximately one hundred of Zaman’s fighters were spread out, and their commander was sitting on a large rock with a lit joint in one hand and a folding-stock AK-47 propped beside him. Adam Khan and Jim cautiously moved down to coordinate the next move with the man.

  By the way the muhj were acting, Jim realized that something big was going on. As Adam Khan talked to the commander and pieced the story together, Jim’s curiosity changed to anger.

  The commander said that al Qaeda had thrown in the towel! A full surrender of all al Qaeda forces was about to take place!

  As Jim’s fury grew, the local commander raised Zaman on his radio, and the warlord himself issued an order that the foreign commandos were not to proceed any farther into the mountains.

  “Whatever it takes,” Zaman said in Pashto. “Under no circumstances are the Americans allowed to attack al Qaeda. We must see the negotiations through.”

  The notorious warlord had left Hilltop 2685, but was directing the show from not too far away. His voice carried a cocky air of selfassurance.

  Jim knew the surrender gambit was nonsense, and said so. He responded that he had his own orders and intended to see them through. Short of a gunfight, not much could stop the powerful Grinch force from advancing south into the mountains to kill as many al Qaeda fighters as possible. He told the boys to top off their Camelbaks and ruck up. Within twenty minutes after hearing Zaman insist that Americans would not be allowed to take another step toward the enemy, Jim and MSS Grinch began humping up the ridgeline.

  They had covered only about fifty meters when Zaman’s men appeared on the high ground and leveled their weapons—eighty AK-47s—at the commandos. Some of the fighters were only innocent-looking teenage boys who seemed uncertain, but many others were hardened warriors. The local commander yelled a warning for the Americans to halt, reiterated Zaman’s orders, and vowed to follow those instructions. The commander obviously feared Zaman’s wrath more than he did the twenty-five American and British commandos that morning. Only Adam Khan’s calm presence prevented disaster.

  He told Zaman’s man that the commandos had General Ali’s full support to make the attack, and scolded him: “The general will not be happy.” The commander didn’t really care about Ali’s pleasure. He worked for Zaman.

  Jim bottled his anger and weighed his options. The odds in a firefight were probably about even: one highly trained commando against every four untrained Afghans, but getting into a shootout with your supposed allies was not the most diplomatic of moves. So MSS Grinch had little choice but to hold in place and let the cease-fire situation play out a little more. An hour passed uneventfully except for the commandos stewing about being held back.

  A few minutes after 6:00 A.M., Zaman arrived with another dozen of his fighters. He was an arrogant sort who played himself up in front of the Americans whenever he had the chance and now he took full credit for arranging the surrender. He announced that he had arranged to contact the al Qaeda forces by radio in two hours, at 0800, to close the deal and provide surrender details and terms.

  Jim listened intently until Zaman was done with the self-promotion.

  “Okay, I hear what you are saying. Now start from the beginning,” he counseled the strutting warlord. “Tell me what happened.”

  After the battle the previous afternoon, December 11, some of Zaman’s soldiers reached the highest point of Hilltop 2685. There they found the bodies of a dozen dead al Qaeda fighters who had been left behind in their trenches. Zaman’s men wasted no time in stripping them of valuable items. Any Afghan warrior worth his salt goes for the weapons and ammo first, followed by warm blankets, shoes, and foodstuffs. Afterward, a junior Zaman commander barked orders, and several muhj kicked as much dirt into the hole as they could, then rolled rocks the size of bowling balls into the pit before kneeling in prayer beside the partially filled hole.

  The burial detail stood, picked up their thin prayer blankets, wrapped them around their shoulders, and stood motionless over the makeshift mass grave for a few moments before the cold got to them and they trembled. They wondered who might have the better deal, the buried martyrs who were on their way to paradise, ready to cash in on Allah’s promises, or the shivering gravediggers who had to continue the fight.

  With the contested hilltop finally and officially captured by the muhj, an al Qaeda lieutenant then allegedly radioed Zaman to request a cease-fire and terms for surrender, and after a little customary tribal discussion, the warlord agreed. He gave them ten minutes to surrender. Of course, nothing happens that fast.

  Jim nodded, listening with a growing sense of skepticism as Zaman described how the negotiations had been going throughout the night of December 11 and the early morning of December 12.

  The al Qaeda negotiator finally requested that they be turned over to the United Nations. Zaman balked, admitting he held no sway with that organization, and directed the enemy to start coming off the mountain at ten o’clock to surrender. Almost unnoticed, the talking had just let the clock slip another two hours.

  The negotiator protested, telling Zaman they were worried that the Americans would kill them, and the al Qaeda fighters wanted permission to retain their weapons as they surrendered.

  “Absolutely not!” Jim snorted. “No weapons. No deals.”

  It was possible that al Qaeda really did want to surrender, because they had been undergoing increasingly intense day-and-night bombing, and likely were low on basic supplies and morale. The signals intercepts painted a clear picture of crisis and despair. Two nights earlier, Hopper and the Admiral had crawled about among them and wreaked havoc on their frontline stronghold before OP25-A destroyed the valuable mortar position. And after last night’s no-holds-barred round of bombing, al Qaeda fighters might actually have felt defeat was inevitable. It was possible, but was it likely?

  But Jim was not buying the story. It sounded too clean. Too easy. Too much like a schoolyard stall tactic. Our seasoned Delta warrior raised the bullshit flag and pressed the warlord for more details.

  Zaman insisted that all enemy forces would be surrendering, and although he didn’t specifically mention Usama bin Laden, it was clearly implied that the big guy also would be giving up.

  Jim couldn’t figure out just yet who was doing the stalling. Was al Qaeda using Zaman to buy time? Or could Zaman perhaps be in cahoots with al Qaeda and delaying the fight to allow the enemy to consolidate its forces, reposition, or even escape?

  Almost as a sideshow, the muhj of General Ali who had accompanied Jim and the Grinch boys were happy to come to a stop. A surrender sounded good to them. Heck, they would have been pleased to have the day’s ground battle conclude before it ever got started. Then they could stroll back down with a bunch of al Qaeda prisoners who would have their arms raised high in the air and parade them around the press and local women and children like a bunch of American Indians arriving back at the teepees after a big buffalo hunt.

  A centuries-old code of Afghan warrior ethics was in play. In tribal warfare, when one side is outmatched and concedes the field, the Kalashnikovs are traded for teacups and the evil adversaries become honored guests and sit cross-legged around plates of broiled sheep and fried dates, resting and fattening up until the next time. It is tradition and custom.

  Jim continued to work every angle. Even should the surrender turn out to be legitimate, he demanded that Zaman agree that if any of the top twenty-two most wanted al Qaeda members listed by the U.S. State Department happened to be in the surrendering group, then Jim and the boys would take the
m into custody.

  He demanded that Zaman pick a spot in the mountains for the surrender at which Jim could get a good look at each of the fighters’ faces before the muhj whisked them away to who knows where. The place chosen was the training field directly in front of bin Laden’s old rubbled home.

  Then, in all seriousness, Zaman asked if Jim planned to execute the surrendering al Qaeda prisoners on sight, and if not, would he like Zaman’s men to do it for him? Jim said he didn’t care if they were turned over to American hands dead or alive, but the commandos would follow the established rules of engagement and not shoot prisoners.

  Time dragged on, but Zaman was still exuding confidence and insisted that al Qaeda was not stalling. A time had been established on how long the surrender would take. Given the rugged terrain and the dispersal of enemy, it would take several hours for them to navigate in from the distant caves and bunkers and reach the designated surrender location. The warlord’s latest promise was that by five o’clock in the afternoon, it would all be over. The two sides had been haggling since the previous day, and al Qaeda was not yet getting with the surrender program.

  Jim intuitively decided that Zaman was dirty.

  He told the warlord if any al Qaeda fighters refused to come out of the hills during that obviously elastic surrender time, and were seen carrying weapons by the Americans after the surrender, then he would immediately move the OP teams up and begin dropping bombs. The warlord stood silent for a few seconds after that ultimatum, then turned on his heels and left the field.

  While Jim was dealing with Zaman, I dialed up Ashley on the satellite phone and filled him in. He agreed that we had to let the alleged surrender run its course until 5:00 P.M., since we really had no choice. But when that deadline expired, it was important to resume the fight immediately. The negotiation itself was a clear sign of weakness in al Qaeda. The enemy was on the run; we could feel it, and we would not take the pressure off just so the Afghans and al Qaeda could continue bargaining like they were in a marketplace.

  Still more players became involved, and a new time element surfaced. News of this magnitude would never hold for long because it had too many headline possibilities for the major personalities, and too many people knew about it. The story that was passed to the media stated that a twenty-four-hour cease-fire had been agreed upon, and actually had started at eight o’clock on the morning of December 12!

  We had not been told of that, and would not abide by it. It would mean that things would remain on hold overnight. A whole day and a night of granting respite to a savage enemy that was cracking under the pressure. Keep pounding them, and you hold all the cards. Instead, Zaman was frittering away that advantage. So if we played by their rules, we would have to wait around until 0800 the next morning before going to full speed again. No way.

  Overhead, an irritated fighter pilot waiting to drop his load turned the bright blue sky into his personal notepad. He had been given the news, too, and wrote a message in the heavens for all to see. Turning his afterburners on and off to create contrails, he circled back and forth until he spelled out: “ON 8.”

  We could not have made it any clearer to everyone below that we were tired of waiting while the enemy fighters were given the priceless gift of time. By eight o’clock the next morning, our forward commandos would have established new positions and the great game would be back on with full fury.

  The only time that mattered to us was Zaman’s earlier pledge that it would all be done by five o’clock this afternoon. Screw tomorrow.

  Six older, heavyset men with long gray beards came to the schoolhouse. All wore thick gold turbans that appeared four sizes too big and white Afghan men’s dresses that draped down from their shoulders to their toes. The Shura had arrived. We crammed inside General Ali’s small room to listen to the elders describe the village telegraph version of how the surrender unfolded. Word travels fast.

  They confirmed that when Zaman’s and Ali’s forces closed in on Hilltop 2685 the previous afternoon, they were met with a surprise offer of surrender. The enemy asked only for a few minutes to collect their modest belongings, but then Zaman showed up and began directing the show.

  According to the Shura, the warlord told the enemy fighters to leave their weapons and descend to the foothills, and the councilmen also confirmed that the al Qaeda fighters had asked to be turned over to the United Nations. Zaman gave them a few hours to consider their options and offered to negotiate surrender terms with the American representatives at the schoolhouse.

  “Negotiate?” George, the CIA lead dog, was seething. He was in no mood to talk about any surrender with the archenemies of the United States. “America won’t negotiate with terrorists who need to be killed and not pampered,” he barked. “Al Qaeda is a worldwide problem. We must kill them all.”

  It was hard to read the Shura, but they got the point. It wasn’t that hard to understand. They stared at George without responding, and then the meeting broke up.

  Soon after the meeting, the signals interceptors picked up several radio calls of al Qaeda fighters still negotiating with Zaman. There was no doubt that the whole surrender gesture was a hoax. The “negotiations” were a simple stalling tactic to buy time, and the enemy wanted to drag out the discussions for as long as they could to make the battlefield safe for them to do whatever they wanted.

  Afew hours after the Shura departed, Zaman himself came to the schoolhouse in hopes of fulfilling his commitment to al Qaeda over terms of surrender. After listening to Jim’s firm lecture that the bombing would resume, Zaman had driven somewhere to freshen up and had changed into a chocolate brown tailored suit, with shiny brown leather dress shoes and a little silver hat. Perhaps he wanted to look the part of a serious diplomat, but that image was soiled when he arrived with a couple of truckloads of ragged triggermen. Still, he strutted with pride.

  George and I sat on a beautiful green, red, and gold carpet that had been spread about twenty meters north of the schoolhouse. The afternoon skies were clear and a very welcome sun warmed us. Now we would get to hear all the details of the cease-fire from Zaman himself.

  As we waited for Ali to join us, Haji Zaman said to me, “This is the greatest day in the history of Afghanistan.”

  “Why is that?” I asked. He was not aware that we already had concluded that the surrender was a fraud.

  “Because al Qaeda is no more. Bin Laden is finished!” he boasted.

  General Ali arrived, clad in his standard modest clothing of browns and whites. He obviously was still aggravated that Zaman’s people got to the hilltop first the day before, and now his rival warlord had used that edge to freelance surrender negotiations that Ali had not approved.

  George laid the situation out clearly. The CIA deputy chief told the two leaders, in few words, that they were smoking crack if they thought a less than legitimate surrender would weaken America’s resolve to kill or capture bin Laden. Nor would the Americans be leaving the Tora Bora area before that job was done.

  “After this meeting, the bombs will start falling again,” George pledged.

  In fact, even though the Muslim armies on the battlefield were conducting their cease-fire, the Americans and British had never agreed to it, so some bombs were being called by the boys in OP25-A and 25-B on the higher elevations. No fighter, bomber, or gunship would return home still carrying ammunition, but without the forward observation posts, much of the target area was hidden.

  Zaman said a dozen Algerians were ready to surrender immediately but feared that the American commandos would kill them on the spot. The Algerians demanded permission to retain their rifles but would come off the mountain with weapons slung across their backs.

  My turn. “No weapons, or risk being shot by my men. No conditions whatsoever,” I responded.

  I shook my head side to side and smirked, essentially signaling that I thought Zaman was full of shit. Looking at me incredulously, he asked, “Commander Dalton, why do you not accept surrender? In e
very war surrender is an option.”

  We were tired of his showmanship, and I answered, “Haji Zaman, you grossly underestimate our resolve here. Your al Qaeda brothers can fight or flee, hide deeper in the mountains, or they can lay down their Kalashnikovs and raise a white flag, but any conditional surrender is unacceptable in this battle.” I paused to make sure he was still following my translated words. “We attack in one hour.”

  After committing ourselves to resume the fight, George and I rose, deliberately turned our backs to the warlords, and walked away, an insulting and dismissive gesture that left them alone with their personal aides to ponder their next move.

  The Americans had no intention of playing fair.

  Bernie got on the satellite radio and arranged for some bomber support from Bagram to get on station. Throughout the fight, certain areas were designated as engagement zones, or EZs, which for all intents and purposes were free-fire areas for any bomber or aircraft willing to oblige. We intended to clear hot any available aircraft to engage at will inside those zones, with the only condition being to first make certain that none of our guys or Ali’s men were in the area before hell broke loose.

  There was no sign of any surrendering al Qaeda.

  Jim’s patience had run out and he laid the law down to Zaman’s field commander, the same joint-smoking guy who had given him such a bad time earlier in the day. The surrender was a hoax, Jim declared, and pointed out that no enemy fighters had arrived. MSS Grinch were saddling up again and getting ready to head out. Jim, Hopper, and Pope planned to occupy new observation posts and get the air strikes pinpointed on better targets, expanding the battlefield. Too much valuable time had already been wasted in this surrender charade.

  The senior Delta operator looked hard at the muhj commander to be sure the man took in what he had to say next: “Don’t raise your weapons at us.”