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

by Dalton Fury

  That idea worked like a charm when we faced the common foe, the oppressive Taliban, which had ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist while enforcing the most rigid interpretations of the Quran.

  However, at Tora Bora, the mujahideen weren’t fighting the Taliban, they were fighting al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, which made the dynamics significantly different. We might as well have been asking for them to fight the Almighty Prophet Mohammed himself. What motivation did the Afghan Muslims possess for hunting down, raising their rifles, sighting in, and actually shooting an al Qaeda fighter, much less the revered leader?

  I am convinced that not a single one of our muhj fighters wanted to be recognized in their mosque as the man who killed Sheikh bin Laden.

  So beyond getting the Taliban off their necks, the Afghan military and tribal leaders had goals that were much different from our own. They were out to accumulate personal fortunes and political power, to clear the opium fields for business again and protect the drug distribution routes. . . not to avenge the Americans killed on 9/11.

  The CIA and the British paid these warlords handsomely for their questionable loyalty, and in turn, they were expected to pay and equip the amateur fighters who filled the ranks of both the Northern and Eastern Alliances. Material blessings literally fell from the heavens for them, more than they could ever have dreamed. New weapons, ammunition, uniforms, tennis shoes, cold-weather clothing, and blankets were dropped in huge bundles from cargo planes. America was not doing this on the cheap.

  The intent of the local warlords surpassed any desires of the global coalition wanting to kill bin Laden. They wanted as much military hardware as possible to stash away for future tribal conflicts. We armed them for future fights among themselves, and that day will come.

  The astonishing amount of bombs that were dropped during the fight is an easy way to prove how determined our military services had become in killing terrorists. A rule was established early on that no aircraft was to fly all the way to Tora Bora and then return to its base with bombs still hung. Engagement Zones were created to be the final option on the target list, primarily places that we could not see from the OPs but likely locations of enemy fighters.

  The zones were carefully established, although based on nonscientific methods. First we had to check with General Ali on the location of his fighters to make sure they were clear. Then we culled the assessments of Ali and our snipers about the current al Qaeda locations. From that came the extrapolation of where the fleeing enemy might be heading within the next twenty-four hours. The recommended coordinates were relayed to the TOC in Bagram for approval. Generally, the pilots got the coordinates before they launched, and if for some reason they were assigned a definite target before having to egress, the aircraft was free to drop its payload inside the established EZ. A controller was still handling the planes, but primarily to maintain traffic control so they were not running into each other and to ensure that there were no friendlies below them.

  Hostile threats and target discrimination were not required in an EZ. Warriors or widows, orphans or machine-gunners, commanders or cooks, any ant-sized sign of movement during the day or human-sized heat source at night was fair game. A daily average of over one hundred bombs impacted inside the EZs. This harsh reality may not sit well with critics, but it speaks volumes about the willingness of American general officers to ignore political correctness and make the tough calls.

  The guys in the TOC burned as much midnight oil as the guys in the mountains of Tora Bora, cycling through their own battle drill to support the fight with as many fighters, bombers, and gunships as they could wrestle away from the U.S. Central Command, which was running the war. This was PhD-level stuff and they were establishing doctrine on the fly.

  Artillery experts Will, Todd, and an old Ranger buddy named Jim collaborated with intelligence chief Brian to plot the latest EZ coordinates on their digital maps. In all, over 1,200 CENTCOM targets were fatfingered, one at a time.

  Ensuring that all this great stuff could be transmitted in real time back to CENTCOM in Florida and be made useful was a small crew of communicators. Smooth talkers Tony and Happ rigged up critical UHF antennas that allowed the fires experts to update aircraft coming into Afghan airspace on the way to Tora Bora. Sean, from the IT section, hardwired the place like Microsoft headquarters and constantly manipulated the incoming data.

  Once a new free fire area was complete, the team rang up the liaison officer, call sign Rasta, at the Coalition Air Operations Center. Rasta, a navy pilot stuck with staff duty, also had the dubious duty of explaining to the CAOC commanding general why every plane in the theater always seemed to be heading to Tora Bora.

  An enormous amount of U.S. taxpayer money and factory worker effort was expended at Tora Bora. Over 1,100 precision-guided bombs and more than 550 dumb bombs were dropped during the assault on al Qaeda’s hideout. In one single and quite busy twenty-four-hour period alone, 135 JDAMs were dropped. These totals do not include shells put through the deadly accurate 40mm chain guns and 105mm cannons of the AC-130 gunships. Those would number in the many thousands.

  With such hell falling in a relatively small target area, it is easy to understand why some cold, hungry and shell-shocked al Qaeda fighters took a rain check on martyrdom and ran away. Perhaps they were thinking quietly, “Heck, if the Sheikh himself, the Lion of Islam, is running, why shouldn’t I?”

  A day after we returned from the mountains, several of us knelt around a map of the Tora Bora area and informally briefed Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey and Command Sgt. Maj. C. W. Thompson. When we were finished, Dailey stated, “This is something incredibly historical, completely out of the box for Delta, and a great tactical victory.”

  Today, if you Google the words “Tora Bora,” in less than a second you will have at your fingertips an avalanche of documents. This number is extraordinary, but it is public-domain material and lists everything from news reports to bloggers’ opinions.

  Surely, the U.S. Army could do better than that because of the rigid importance placed on identifying and documenting “Lessons Learned.” One might assume the Center for Army Lessons Learned would reveal a treasure trove of information about every battle conducted during Operation Enduring Freedom.

  The center’s mission is to collect and analyze data and disseminate the accumulated information and resulting expert opinions to commanders, staffs, and students so we don’t make the same mistake twice, and can better plan for future contingencies. The words seem to make perfect sense, right? Well, for an institution that boasts on its Web site that it is the “Intellectual Center of the Army,” the phrase “Tora Bora” shows up in but a single document, as of this writing. The document is entitled National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

  Strategy was published in 2002, on the first anniversary of 9/11, and mentions Tora Bora only in context with the Battle of the Coral Sea in the early part of World War II. The navy did not lose that pivotal battle in the Pacific, but it did not win it either. Coral Sea was important because it marked the beginning of the end of the Japanese empire. Therefore, the conclusion of the center’s study was that Tora Bora was significant, whether successful or not. After all, why would the editors of our National Security Strategy allow such a reference if it was not warranted? It was not very enlightening. In my opinion, the center didn’t give it serious attention, because it was not a conventional war, but a very restricted Special Forces operation, a stiletto instead of a broadsword. Our job was to keep moving forward, and to keep the bombs falling. Although we were after the man who was the root cause of the entire conflict, the historians would save their heavy lifting for the fly jockeys and the main battle tankers.

  Even so, despite the center’s viewpoint, our nation has never been closer to killing or capturing bin Laden as we were at Tora Bora.

  As uncomfortable as it may be to accept, we have now known for years that bin Laden was not killed or captured at Tora Bora.

  So regard
less of how one chooses to spin the facts, the battle must be viewed as a military failure. This harsh reality is not to imply in any way that the American and British commandos, controllers, and intelligence operatives did not perform according to billing, for they certainly did. Even so, how can any other claim of success be made? It was, without a doubt, a tremendous tactical victory. But throw in the strategic assessment, too, and the fight at Tora Bora can be classified only as being partially successful operationally.

  General Ali once had promised the CIA that he would attack on November 26, 2001, but he repeatedly stalled, apparently satisfied with small daylight skirmishes in the foothills. He did not want to order his entire army of fighters to smash al Qaeda.

  The mujahideen had gained a worldwide reputation as being committed, fearless, and invincible soldiers of Allah because they had defeated the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s. The problem was that the muhj commanders believed their own headlines and vastly overestimated the abilities of their shoot-and-loot troops.

  During our very first meeting, General Ali had proudly stoked the embers of the muhj myth, and arrogantly reminded us that the Russians had been unable to defeat the mujahideen after a decade of fighting. He airily stated that we Americans, the latest players on the scene, likewise would be no match for the seasoned enemy defending Tora Bora.

  It took only a couple of days for us to prove that reputation of fierceness was a thin cover for the muhj not doing their jobs.

  When the American and British commandos became the spearhead of the assaults, led the way into the mountains, and refused to leave the field at night, Ali’s men suddenly became vastly more successful. More than eight thousand meters of al Qaeda terrain was captured in less than five days, several hundred new martyrs were created, and several hundred more of the less committed al Qaeda fighters chose survival and fled the mountain redoubt that had been touted as inviolate. Usama bin Laden ran away. Even the staunchest critics might find difficulty in classifying this as anything but a success.

  Only two days after insulting our capabilities, General Ali retracted his statement, and I accepted his compliment gracefully on behalf of the USA. We had made him a believer. We easily punctured the myth that al Qaeda was some kind of superforce. We didn’t need ten thousand troops to rout the enemy, but maybe we did need that many to actually kill bin Laden.

  Throughout the Tora Bora operations, no Delta operator killed anyone in any way other than by dropping bombs on their heads. Some of the best snipers, explosives experts, and knife fighters in the world were forced to curb their enthusiasm because the Afghan muhj had to be in the forefront, and their hearts were not in it.

  It was like working in an invisible cage, and if we had been given the ticket to engage in real war fighting, the Delta boys could have made a huge difference.

  And had Lieutenant Colonel Ashley’s request been approved to push the snipers up the mountain from the south, out of Pakistan, we probably would have been more directly involved. It would have been an extremely taxing climb at that altitude, but after crossing the border and then scaling the high peaks down the other side, it’s very likely the Delta snipers would have gotten the drop on bin Laden.

  Then there was Ashley’s request to close the mountain passes and trails by seeding them with GATOR mines. That also was rejected, but those mines would have killed more al Qaeda fighters and possibly the man himself as they fled toward the border.

  I do not recall exactly when I heard that a thousand or so U.S. Marines had made an “amphibious assault” in landlocked Afghanistan. Their job was to establish a forward operating base south of Kandahar in late November 2001. As far as I know, they had not been asked to participate in the Tora Bora battle, which was a good thing, because the introduction of conventional American troops would have caused our operation to unravel.

  The local Shura undoubtedly would have needed only one look at the marines before deciding that General Ali’s days as the rock-star warlord were done. I’m also convinced that many of Ali’s fighters, as well as those of his subordinate commanders such as Zaman and Haji Zahir, would have resisted the marines’ presence and possibly even have turned their weapons on the larger American force.

  Two Marine Corps general officers asked me the “what-if” question a day of two after the Tora Bora battle. My position had nothing to do with the capability or courage of their marines and everything to do with the sensitivity and peculiar dynamics of the tribal mountain area and overall battle. We had to operate in virtual invisibility to keep Ali on top of the Afghan forces. A full introduction of combat-ready American marines would have tilted an already dangerous alliance.

  However, the marines might have made the difference if used in another way. Had they been committed to assist the Pakistan army in blocking the key passageways that threaded out of the Tora Bora mountains, or at least to keep those new allies honest about sealing the border, we almost certainly would have captured and killed more fleeing al Qaeda. And we might even have bagged bin Laden.

  Leaving the back door open gave the rat a chance to run.

  18

  Former Unit Member

  All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.

  —HERODOTUS

  By the end of 2002, about the time we were hunting Mr. Gul Ahmed, an apparent reluctance to take aggressive, pro-active action had seeped back into the overall American military leadership. The old pre-9/11 thinking was on the rise again, and I found the lack of urgency to be frustrating. A commander or two talked the good game of maintaining momentum and keeping the pressure on al Qaeda, but they were not showing the will, desire, and mental toughness to order American troops into harm’s way.

  At a time when our nation expected us to be taking the greatest risks, some officers were unable to get past worrying about the potential loss of life among the troops. In my opinion, they should have been in a very different profession.

  During a briefing about targeting a suspected al Qaeda associate, a senior officer wondered aloud about the mission and its accompanying risk and asked, “Is it worth getting one of your guys killed?”

  The question shocked me, and I answered bluntly, “Sir, there isn’t a target out there worth getting one of the boys killed, but if the American people can’t depend on Delta to take the risk, then we might as well pack it in.

  If not Delta, then who?

  Certainly, a commander must weigh the stakes when making such a commitment, particularly when politics are involved. He looks at the available intelligence and debates the pros and cons during his decisionmaking cycle, and if the intelligence meets the threshold for action, say 80 percent or so, then the mission is likely a go.

  But what happens when the intelligence is rated as only 50 percent accurate? Or if only a single source of intelligence is available and the information cannot be corroborated? Is the mission still a go?

  In my opinion, postponing a decision with your fingers crossed while you hope that the intelligence might improve after another hour or another day borders on downright negligence and hypocrisy. Analytical paralysis only helps the window of opportunity close faster.

  Some men may be lost because of a commander’s call, and that is tragic, but war requires a steel stomach and a hardened mind. It must be understood that those who do perish are volunteers who are unafraid of paying the ultimate price in the global war on terror. They are fighting for their buddies, for their families, and for their country.

  It wouldn’t be until the next phase in the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, that the enormity and pace of the war put the Special Ops forces into overdrive, and audacity found its rightful place in the psyche of many a commander.

  Obviously, we did not exist in an information-free bubble. The news channels were roaring about Iraq, and the scuttlebutt inside our tents in Afghanistan was about who in Delta would be going in first. The Afghan campaign was slipp
ing to the back burner as resources were channeled to prepare for a massive invasion of Iraq, an invasion that I was still not sure would actually happen.

  Instead of immediate redeployment to that brewing trouble spot, our squadron was given a couple of weeks of leave back home. There would be no yellow ribbons tied around the old oak trees, because we stayed black even when out of the danger zone.

  In Delta, when the plane lands back at home station, the post band is not there to welcome the returning troops. There are no crowds of family, friends, and local townspeople waving American flags and homemade signs. There is no mustering into formation while the commander shares some emotionally charged comments over a microphone on a podium.

  Yes, this deployment is over, but the moment that the plane rolls to a stop and the ramp is lowered, the job begins anew.

  The boys load onto buses and head for the compound, where they repack their bags for a no-notice hostage rescue anywhere in the world.

  A Delta operator may retrieve his wedding ring from his wall locker and slide it onto his finger, but then it is immediately back to business. They place fresh batteries in their NVGs, weapon sights, and ear protection. They clean their weapons with solvent and high-pressure air before applying a light coat of gun oil. They charge their interteam radio batteries and load pistol and rifle magazines before replacing them in their kit bag.

  After taking a shower and winding down with a cold beer or two in the squadron lounge, a few minutes are spent remembering their fallen comrades, whose eyes watch over them from a wall of honor. Before jumping in their pickup truck or on their Harley-Davidson to head home to the families, they reach down to make a final check that their beepers are attached to their belts.