Tora Bora Reconsidered: Lessons From 125 Years Of .
Coalition forces offload from U.S. ArmyChinook during Operation ToriiTora Bora ReconsideredLESSONS FROM 125 YEARS OFSTRATEGIC MANHUNTSBy B e n j a m i n R u n k l ePDr. Benjamin Runkle is a Veteran of OperationIraqi Freedom, former Department of Defense andNational Security Council Official, and author ofWanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo toBin Laden (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).40 JFQ/ issue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 rior to the raid on Abbottabad,Pakistan, in May 2011, theseminal event in the 13-yearhunt for Osama bin Ladenwas the operation to capture or kill theSaudi terrorist at Tora Bora in December2001. Although the operation started withgreat anticipation due to reports that binLaden and al Qaeda’s senior leadership weresurrounded in a remote mountain fortress,anticipation turned to frustration as binLaden’s fate remained uncertain after 2weeks of intense bombing, and frustrationturned to recriminations when bin Ladenappeared alive on a videotape on December27. Unfortunately, much of the debate on thisoperation has been marked by partisan finger-pointing and bureaucratic score-settling,generating more heat than light and doingfuture U.S. commanders and policymakers agrave disservice.But the killing of bin Laden allows formore measured analysis of what went wrongin the hunt for the al Qaeda leader than waspossible while he remained on the run. Thisanalysis is important, as the operationalproblems posed by strategic manhuntsremain relevant given the continued pursuitndupres s . ndu. eduU.S. Air Force (Jeremy T. Lock)COMMENTARY Tora Bora Reconsidered
Runkleof Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al Qaedaleaders, as well as the ongoing hunt for Lord’sResistance Army commander Joseph Konyby U.S. special operations forces (SOF) andour Ugandan allies.This article analyzes the failure tocapture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora in thecontext of the broader history of strategicmanhunts. Starting with the 16-monthGeronimo Campaign in 1885–1886, theUnited States has deployed forces abroad adozen times with the operational objectiveof apprehending—dead or alive—one man.The lessons learned from these historicalcampaigns offer a fuller perspective of thechallenges posed by such operations, andespecially the hunt for bin Laden in December 2001. In particular, history suggests thatthe number of troops deployed has littleeffect on whether an individual is successfully targeted, and that the conventionalwisdom that bin Laden escaped from ToraBora because there were too few U.S. troopspresent is a canard contradicted by 125 yearsof strategic manhunts.The Tora Bora OperationAfter the Taliban’s hold on Afghanistanbegan to disintegrate in the face of the U.S.air campaign and the Northern Alliance’sground assault in mid-November 2001, binLaden and al Qaeda’s fighters fled southeastfrom Jalalabad toward the Pakistan border.Their destination was Tora Bora (Pashto for“black dust”), a series of cave-filled valleysin the White Mountains where ridgelinesrose from wooded foothills to jagged, snowcovered peaks separated by deep ravines. TheTora Bora complex covered an area roughly6 miles wide and 6 miles long and hadwithstood numerous Soviet offensives in the1980s. Moreover, bin Laden was intimatelyfamiliar with the terrain. In 1987, he usedbulldozers from his family’s constructioncompany to build a road through the mountains and later fought his first battle againstthe Soviets at the nearby village of Jaji.During the years before September 11, binLaden kept a house in a settlement near ToraBora and routinely led his children on hikesfrom Tora Bora into the Parachinar regionof Pakistan that juts into Afghanistan on thesouthern slope of Tora Bora. Thus, Tora Boraafforded bin Laden the option of fightingor fleeing.Elements of the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) paramilitary team codenamedn d u p res s .ndu.edu Jawbreaker established a command centerin a schoolhouse in the foothills near ToraBora. Satellite imagery and photographsfrom reconnaissance planes showed deepsnow stacking up in the valleys and passes,leading the team to conclude that bin Ladenwould not be able to leave the mountains anytime soon. Consequently, the plan for ToraBora closely resembled the operations thathad broken the Taliban lines north of Kabul:CIA paramilitary operatives and U.S. SOFwould infiltrate the area to identify targetsfor bombing, which would clear the way forAfghan militias to advance. However, theNorthern Alliance had neither the capacity nor the desire to push as far south asJalalabad. Consequently, team leader GaryBerntsen was forced to rely on local warlords.One was Hazaret Ali, a Pashai tribal leaderwho had distinguished himself as a fieldcommander in the war against the Soviets,and the other was Haji Zaman, a recentlyreturned exile whose base of operationsduring the anti-Soviet jihad had been ToraBora but who was a fierce rival of Ali’s.By December 4, the first observationpost was established on a mountaintopoverlooking the Milewa Valley, and overthe next 3 days about 700,000 pounds ofordnance were dropped on al Qaeda positions. On December 9, a 40-man detachmentarrived at the base of Tora Bora. Under thecommand of a major who would later publisha memoir under the pseudonym “DaltonOn December 16, numerous reportsof genuine surrenders came into the schoolhouse, and by the next day, the battle of ToraBora was over. Estimates of al Qaeda fighterskilled ranged from 220 to 500, although thereal number was likely higher as the bombingliterally obliterated or buried the bodies oflarge groups of fighters. Fifty-two fighters,mostly Arabs, were captured by the Afghans,and another hundred were captured crossingthe border into Pakistan. Yet there was nosign of the campaign’s target. Bin Laden’s fateremained unknown until December 27, whenhe appeared on videotape. Despite beingleft-handed and typically gesturing withboth hands while speaking, a visibly aged binLaden did not move his entire left side in the34-minute video, suggesting he had sustaineda serious injury during the battle.“I am a poor slave of God,” he saidresignedly. “If I live or die the war will continue.”1 The hunt for bin Laden would lastfor almost another decade until it reached itsclimax on a cloudless night in a quiet neighborhood in Abbottabad.Not Enough Boots on the Ground?The most persistent criticism of thebin Laden manhunt as executed at Tora Borais that the Bush administration failed todeploy enough U.S. troops and thereby letbin Laden escape certain capture or death.On December 3, 2001, CIA team leaderGary Berntsen sent a request to the agency’shistory suggests that the number of troops deployed has littleeffect on whether an individual is successfully targetedFury,” the operators were supplementedby 14 Green Berets, 6 operatives, a few AirForce specialists, and a dozen British commandos. The bombardment—which includedover 1,000 precision-guided munitions anda 15,000-pound BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter”bomb—continued for another week, and onat least two occasions directly targeted binLaden. Although SOF could hear the frantic,anguished cries of the al Qaeda operativesvia a captured radio, the Afghan militiaswithdrew each night from the groundgained during the day in order to break theirRamadan fast. Haji Zaman further complicated the siege by opening surrender negotiations with al Qaeda that were likely a stallingtactic for the terrorists to escape.headquarters asking to assault the cave complexes at Tora Bora and block escape routes.He also appealed directly to the head of U.S.Central Command (USCENTCOM) SOFduring a meeting in Kabul on December 15.Similarly, Brigadier General James Mattis,commander of the Marines in Afghanistan,reportedly asked to send the 1,200 Marinesstationed near Kandahar into Tora Bora. ButUSCENTCOM denied all requests for moretroops. Consequently, as Peter Bergen concluded, “there were more American journalists at the battle of Tora Bora than there wereU.S. soldiers.”2USCENTCOM commanders citedthree broad arguments for why troop levelswere kept so low during the operation. First,issue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 / JFQ 41
COMMENTARY Tora Bora Reconsideredformer Deputy Commander of USCENTCOM Lieutenant General Mike DeLongargued, “The simple fact is, we couldn’t puta large number of our troops on the ground[at Tora Bora].”3 The roads from Jalalabadto Tora Bora were horrible and ran throughvillages loyal to the Taliban and al Qaeda,making the stealthy or efficient deploymentof large numbers of U.S. troops improbable. Moreover, the weather conditions atTora Bora’s high altitudes and the lack ofpotential landing or drop zones for air insertion and resupply would have made sucha mission dangerously unpredictable andlogistically unprecedented.Second, USCENTCOM CommanderGeneral Tommy Franks later explained: “Iwas very mindful of the Soviet experienceof more than ten years, having introducedwas kept on the sidelines,” while “bin Ladenand an entourage of bodyguards walkedunmolested out of Tora Bora and disappearedinto Pakistan’s unregulated tribal area.”6Bergen similarly concluded, “The Pentagon’sreluctance to commit more American bootson the ground is a decision that historiansare not likely to judge kindly.”7 Even formerBush administration defense official JosephCollins noted, “It was the lack of expertinfantry that allowed Osama bin Laden toescape at Tora Bora.”8Yet even where USCENTCOM’s logicis questionable, the history of strategicmanhunts suggests that a larger U.S. groundforce would not have significantly increasedthe chances of capturing bin Laden at ToraBora, as additional troops have never been aguarantor of success in similar campaigns.it would have taken 9,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops tocompletely cordon off the 100 to 150 potential escaperoutes out of Tora Bora620,000 troops into Afghanistan.”4 USCENTCOM believed that the deployment of largescale U.S. forces would inevitably lead to conflict with Afghan villagers and alienate ourAfghan allies. Both Ali and Zaman had madeit clear that eastern Afghans would not fightalongside the American infidels, and MajorFury was “convinced that many of Ali’sfighters, as well as those of his subordinatecommanders such as Zaman and Haji Zahir,would have resisted the marines’ presenceand possibly even have turned their weaponson the larger American force.”5Finally, General Franks firmly believedthat the light-footprint approach—U.S.airpower supporting indigenous groundforces—had already succeeded in overthrowing the Taliban and would succeed in ToraBora too. Franks was concerned that takingthe time to introduce significant numbersof U.S. ground forces would disrupt themomentum of the coalition-Afghan offensive, thereby giving bin Laden a chance toslip away.In the ensuing decade, a conventionalwisdom regarding the operation has formed.The Democratic staff of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee argued in a 2009 reportthat “The vast array of American militarypower, from sniper teams to the most mobiledivisions of the Marine Corps and the Army,42 JFQ/ issue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 For example, the 1916 Punitive Expeditionto apprehend Pancho Villa deployed twiceas many troops as the 1885–1886 GeronimoCampaign used operating over the sameterrain in northern Mexico—11,000 versus5,000. Yet it was the earlier, smaller campaign that was successful. Similarly, bothOperation Just Cause to arrest Panamanianstrongman Manuel Noriega and the UnitedNations operation in Somalia targetingwarlord Mohammad Farah Aideed involvedapproximately 20,000 troops pursuingindividuals in urban environments. Yet theformer succeeded in capturing Noriega whilethe latter failed to capture Aideed. And in1967, 16 American Green Berets trained the200 Bolivian rangers who captured (andlater executed) Che Guevara. Thus, it is clearthat some variable other than troop strengthexplains the difference between success andfailure in past manhunting campaigns.In reality, because of the need foroperational surprise, smaller is often better instrategic manhunts. In 1886, when GeneralNelson A. Miles ordered Lieutenant CharlesGatewood not to go near the hostile Chiricahua Apaches with fewer than 25 soldiers,Gatewood disobeyed, later recalling: “Hell, Icouldn’t get anywhere near Geronimo withtwenty-five soldiers.”9 One Marine officerserving in the 1927–1932 hunt for Nicaraguaninsurgent leader Augusto Sandino noted,“Large bodies of troops had not the mobility necessary to overtake bandit groups andforce them to decisive action.”10 The initialplan to capture Mohammad Farah Aideedin June 1993, codenamed Caustic Brimstone,called for a small force of 50 operators to bedeployed to Mogadishu to capture the clanleader. And a raiding force was eschewedaltogether on June 7, 2006, for fear it wouldtip off Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s lookouts,leading to the F-16 strike that killed the alQaeda in Iraq leader.Beyond historical considerations, thespecific conditions at Tora Bora underminethe conventional wisdom regarding inadequate troop strength. In an early Decembermeeting at the White House, PresidentGeorge W. Bush asked Hank Crumpton, theCIA official heading the agency’s Afghancampaign, whether the Pakistanis could sealtheir side of the border during the Tora Boraoperations. “No sir,” Crumpton said. “No onehas enough troops to prevent any possibilityof escape in a region like that.”11 Indeed, if weapply the planners of March 2002’s OperationAnaconda assumption that between 90 and100 troops were required to block each passout of comparable terrain in the Shah-i-KotValley, then it would have taken 9,000 to15,000 U.S. troops to completely cordon offthe 100 to 150 potential escape routes out ofTora Bora, a number that was logisticallyimpossible to deploy there in December2001. Moreover, Major Fury noted that “Wehad to operate in virtual invisibility to keepAli on top of the Afghan forces,” and that“It would have been a major slap in Ali’sface” had thousands of Rangers and Marinesshown up. If the Afghan militias “didn’t turnon [U.S. forces] then they definitely wouldhave gone home.”12Two historical operations conductedover the same terrain provide counterfactuals that refute this conventional wisdom.In March 2002, 3 months after bin Ladenescaped from Tora Bora, roughly 2,000 U.S.troops from 10th Mountain and 101st Infantry divisions, in addition to SOF and U.S.trained Afghan allies, were deployed to theShah-i-Kot Valley in eastern Afghanistanto trap several hundred al Qaeda fightersand a suspected senior leader. But as SeanNaylor notes in Not a Good Day to Die, “Atleast as many al-Qaeda fighters escaped theShahikot as died there,” despite the reliance upon thousands of U.S. conventionalndupres s . ndu. edu
U.S. Air Force (Francisco V. Govea II)RunkleSoldiers fire at targets on Tora Ghar mountains from Luy Kariz, Afghanistantroops.13 And whereas the Bush administration has been faulted for not deploying anadditional 800 to 3,000 troops, in the 1930sand 1940s the British hunted the Faqir ofIpi with 40,000 troops over similar terrainin Waziristan but never caught their prey.Thus, it appears troop strength was not thedetermining variable of success in the binLaden manhunt.The Role of Physical TerrainA better argument for the failure tocapture or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora liesin the terrain over which the operation waswaged. Describing the difficult terrain, MajorFury told 60 Minutes concerning attackingbin Laden’s position there that on a scale of 1to 10, “in my experience, it’s a ten.”14 ColonelJohn Mulholland, commander of 5th SpecialForces Group in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, noted, “there was noshortage of ways for [al Qaeda], especially forpeople who knew that area like the back oftheir hands, to continue to infiltrate or exfiltrate.”15 Consequently, in 2008 CIA DirectorGeneral Michael Hayden ascribed the failuren d u p res s .ndu.edu to capture or kill bin Laden to the “ruggedand inaccessible” terrain of the border area.16Physical terrain is obviously a factorin every military operation, whether a tankbattle or SOF raid. Hence, it is true thatterrain can play a role in any individual strategic manhunt. Marine officers in Nicaragua,for example, attributed Sandino’s ability toelude his pursuers to the unique difficulties offighting in the inhospitable terrain of Nicaragua’s jungles. Similarly, then-USCENTCOMCommander General Joseph Hoar believedthe odds were against capturing Aideed dueto the warlord’s ability to simply disappearinto the narrow alleyways of Mogadishu. Yetdespite these examples, U.S. forces have captured their quarry in mountains (Geronimo,Che), jungles (Emilio Aguinaldo, Charlemagne Peralt), and urban environments(Noriega, Pablo Escobar). Thus, it wouldbe incorrect to say that any single type ofterrain determines success or failure in astrategic manhunt.Although the terrain of Tora Borawas undeniably a hindrance, it was not thedecisive variable in the broader hunt for binLaden. Five hundred al Qaeda fighters werekilled by U.S. forces at Tora Bora, and theterrain apparently did not save bin Ladenfrom being wounded. During the first 3 yearsof the manhunt, 1998–2001, bin Laden wasnot hidden among mountains and caves, butrather lived openly in the plains around Kandahar. Moreover, since the 2007 advent of the“drone war” against al Qaeda in Pakistan’stribal areas, more than half of al Qaeda’s top20 senior leaders have been killed despitethe forbidding terrain. Thus, the problemwas not merely one of terrain masking binLaden’s movements, but rather of pinpointinghis fixed location.The Centrality of Human TerrainMore important than physical terrainis the human terrain over which a manhuntis conducted, which refers to the attitudes ofthe local population among which the targetoperates. These attitudes determine theavailability of the three variables that historically have proven decisive to the outcomesof strategic manhunts: human intelligence,indigenous forces, and a border across whichissue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 / JFQ 43
U.S. Air Force (D. Myles Cullen)COMMENTARY Tora Bora ReconsideredU.S. and Canadian soldiers prepare to depart BagramAir Base to Tora Bora, Operation Mountain Lionthe target can seek sanctuary. In the case ofTora Bora, each of these variables was slantedagainst U.S. forces, and it was the inhospitable human terrain around Tora Bora thatled to the failure to apprehend bin Laden inDecember 2001.Human Intelligence. Perhaps the clearest dividing line between successful strategicmanhunts and failed campaigns is the abilityto obtain actionable intelligence on the targeteither from the local population or sourceswithin the target’s network. Conversely, inevery failed strategic manhunt, there hasbeen a distinct inability to obtain intelligence on the targeted individual’s movements or location from the local population.Whereas Mexican farmers tipped off the U.S.cavalry to Geronimo’s location in August1886, 30 years later General John J. Pershing complained, “If this campaign shouldeventually prove successful it will be withoutthe real assistance of any natives this sideof” the border. Unfortunately for Pershing,historian Herbert Mason notes, “Going intoChihuahua to lay hands on Villa was like theSheriff of Nottingham entering SherwoodForest expecting the peasants to help himland Robin Hood.”17 Alternatively, SaddamHussein, al-Zarqawi, and more recentlyAnwar al-Awlaki were successfully targeted44 JFQ/ issue 70, 3 rd quarter 2013 based on intelligence gained from capturedmembers of their networks.The hunt for bin Laden reinforces theselessons. Although the CIA was working eightseparate Afghan tribal networks, and by thetime of the September 11 attacks had morethan 100 recruited sources inside Afghanistan, these assets could rarely predict wherebin Laden would be on a given day. Despiteseveral years of effort, the CIA was unableto recruit a single asset with access to binLaden’s inner circle. As a former senior U.S.counterterror official told Pete
[at Tora Bora].” 3 The roads from Jalalabad to Tora Bora were horrible and ran through villages loyal to the Taliban and al Qaeda, making the stealthy or efficient deployment of large numbers of U.S. troops improb-able. Moreover, the weather conditions at Tora Bora’s high altitudes and t
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