by Dalton Fury
Someone asked him to describe the al Qaeda fighters. “All black, from head to toe, with hoods masking their light-skinned faces,” he responded enthusiastically, as if trying to convince us of his sincerity.
We were aware that the preferred Taliban dress was black on black, a semiuniform so distinctive that it was added to the rules of engagement early in the war: All black equaled Taliban or al Qaeda, which equaled threat, which equaled authorization of lethal force.
“Why did you retreat and give up the hard-earned caves and trenches?” I asked the fedayeen commander.
“It is too dark and dangerous at night,” he stated, with a sheepish glance at General Ali. “We must rest at night and partake of food and drink.”
The common daily itinerary for a Muslim fighter during the holy month of Ramadan required fasting from sunup to sundown for thirty consecutive days. Throughout this oncoming battle, that ancient Islamic tradition proved to serve as a consistent default for inaction by the muhj. Apparently the Muslim enemy also respected the same Quranic tradition.
In other words, everyone typically took a breather from the fighting at night in order to get some chow, grab some sleep, regroup, and maneuver forces into position for the next day’s skirmishes. We thought that this particular fight that had been so carefully described by the fedayeen commander seemed to have been possibly staged for our benefit.
Ali and George began to bicker, with the big Texan pressing the general about supporting our move into the mountains with his fighters, and goading him about his lack of aggressiveness during the last couple of days.
Ali jabbed back at the CIA, arguing that Tora Bora was not his only area of concern. He had two thousand fighters at Tora Bora, but his other four thousand men were needed to run the everyday policing of Jalalabad and the outlying areas of the big and troublesome city. It might be possible to bring a few thousand more fighters, if only he had weapons to give them. That meant more money.
George didn’t blink. He reiterated that he would provide everything Ali needed to accomplish the mission of killing bin Laden. I figured another black duffel bag of cash was about to be opened.
But the good news was that Ali had agreed, if only halfheartedly, to Dailey’s three requirements, and that was the affirmation we needed before our boss would agree to do much more than sit around the schoolhouse waiting for a bin Laden sighting. Ali promised to provide us with guides to navigate the mountain trails, and also granted Bryan’s request for pack mules to help move our equipment up the mountains. And he would position our forces with his.
He further pledged to do what he could to help if we ran into significant trouble in the mountains, essentially signing up to provide us with a QRF, should we get into a mess. We doubted the “quick” part of any Afghan QRF. One simple look at the daunting mountains was enough to convey that we would have to hold on for a good while before any of Ali’s men could reach us. It would take them hours, possibly days, to move up the mountains and flush out the al Qaeda fighters.
Throw in the complications that we like to fight at night, while the muhj prefer to sleep, and that we were in the middle of Ramadan, which had its own time limitations. Our chances of being able to depend on any of Ali’s men coming to help us were slim to none, but beggars couldn’t be too choosy. The nearest American QRF was two and a half hours away by helicopter. Those birds would have to land in the foothills to offload because of the SAM and RPG threats and the lack of suitable landing zones or fast-rope points in the mountains. So any Ranger QRF would have to start from the same spot as the muhj.
Nonetheless, Ali had taken the moral high ground and we left it at that. I took him at his word and believed he would send help.
After the meeting broke up, I went back into our room and disconnected my night vision goggles from my helmet, then walked the halfdozen yards over to General Ali’s quarters. His trusty aide Ghulbihar was already dutifully stooped outside the door to await any of his general’s wishes. I explained that I wanted to show Ali something important, how well we can see at night. To reach a boss, you first have to go through the receptionist, so I took time to demonstrate the NVGs for Ghulbihar. It helped persuade him.
Ali was tired but, ever the gracious host, acceded to my bothersome meddling. He was already in bed, but sat up. I knelt next to him.
First, I placed the goggles in front of my own eyes while Ghulbihar explained what I was doing. The slight flicker of a single gas lantern sitting in the far corner illuminated the general’s all-white pajamas and made me wonder if I should have removed my boots before entering and stepping on the carpet. I turned the goggles around and carefully placed them in front of his eyes. Ali leaned toward them with both eyes wide open. The green glow from the NVGs greatly amplified the light of that gas lantern and highlighted his deep facial wrinkles.
I spoke to Ali directly, as if he understood English. “General, with these green eyes, we can hunt for bin Laden at night and see al Qaeda, but not be seen.”
After Ghulbihar translated, the general sighed deeply, then tilted the goggles toward the window, which offered a view of the ongoing bombing of the distant mountains. I told him that the NVGs give a clear view in the dark at ranges in excess of three hundred meters on a starry night. He wasn’t sold on the magic. “Maybe you can see at night, but al Qaeda does not sleep,” he said. “They have brothers guarding every path and trail.”
I couldn’t resist a quick lesson on tactics, waiting patiently while Ghulbihar translated each sentence. “We need to get in and among al Qaeda to defeat them. We can kill those guards. You need to keep the terrain that your fighters capture, and not retreat at sundown. We will go with your men. You have my word,” I told Ali. “Once my men get close enough to see the enemy, they will make the bombs much more effective, killing more enemy faster and ending the fight sooner.”
Ali handed back the NVGs. He looked at me, rubbed his beads in his left hand, and mumbled something. “The general wishes to sleep. He asks you do the same,” Ghulbihar politely translated.
Good enough. Let the guy sleep on it. I don’t need an answer right now anyway. The boys are still two days away. I nodded to the general, smiled as if to say we are gonna have some fun here, then took my toy back to my own room.
7 Leaders’ Recon
So we believe that the defeat of America is something achievable-with the permission of God-and it is easier for us-with the permission of God-than the defeat of the Soviet Empire previously.
– USAMA BIN LADEN, OCTOBER 21, 2001
Bernie’s radio check back to Bagram awoke us on the morning of December 8, 2001. We had stayed up late taking stock of our situation and had managed only an hour or two of sleep during a night that had been chilly and restless. We dug in our rucks for some MRE packets that would be a cold breakfast meal and grabbed bottles of water from a box outside the flimsy wooden door.
As we slowly came to life, I could not help thinking how lucky and proud we were to have been handed this mission. Here we were, thousands of miles away from Ground Zero in New York City, at the most extreme and sharpest end of the spear in the hunt for Usama bin Laden. We were enormously thankful for the opportunity.
It was going to be “fly by the seat of your pants” war fighting, in which it would be impossible to predict what might happen within the next hour, much less a day in advance. My formal military schooling had ended as a young infantry captain at Fort Benning in 1995, where the approved course curriculum contained little on the art of ambiguous and unconventional fighting while connected at the hip to some third world warlord.
This type of work, however, was practiced at the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, and few officers understood it better than the Task Force Dagger commander, Colonel Mulholland, who did not like it at all. He had voiced his strong objections to going after al Qaeda in a mountainous environment with an unknown army of indigenous fighters and without a solid support structure in place. If things fell apart from here on out, nobod
y could blame Mulholland. He had sent up the red flags of warning.
Our own task force commander was not without his own reservations. General Dailey certainly could not be described as impetuous or flippant when the lives of his men were on the line. [14] In fact, the general leaned slightly toward the cautious side, as most prudent commanders often do. But Dailey also knew the opportunities to nail bin Laden were going to be few and far between, and killing bin Laden was the premier mission of the war to date, no doubt about it. It required a commander willing to take a deep breath, grasp the moment, suppress the high-risk nature of the mission, and let loose the dogs of war. Whether or not Dailey was personally comfortable with the whole deal or not was irrelevant. He had pulled the trigger, and we respected him for that.
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 kufars 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.
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br /> 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.
