guess.
Then we were slammed by a silly deception plan that had been dreamed up by parties unknown. The majority of the Rangers and our Delta teammates were being sent home! Somebody had decided to try and fool Usama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban into thinking that the Joint Special Operations Task Force had left the theater of operations, so the bad guys would let down their guard. The naivete of that idea still boggles my mind today.
“Aren’t we at war?” we asked. Why were we not pouring all available assets into Afghanistan, rather than withdrawing our strength? What about helping the 5th Group Green Berets deliver the coup de grace to the Taliban? Moreover, what about the deadly and dangerous business of hunting and killing terrorists in their rugged mountain redoubts and desert lairs? Why were we drawing down just as we were about to embark on what was arguably the most important mission ever given to our organization?
Fortunately, a couple of hundred Rangers would be arriving at Bagram eventually and could form a potential quickreaction force should we get into big trouble. None were yet in the country, however, so the key word remained only a “potential” QRF, not a real one. Still, it was a bright spot in a sea of ambiguity. No helicopters or air assets were yet based in the country, but some of those stationed within flying distance also were being sent home. Crazy stuff.
Ours not to reason why. Our sister squadron was at the ISB for another few days, heading back to the States after a busy month and a half, and we picked their brains for lessons learned. During their brief stint, they had raided Mullah Omar’s house in Kandahar on October 19, conducted mounted reconnaissance missions south of that city, and executed in-and-out missions that destroyed fleeing Taliban convoys. Their most striking mission involved the first nighttime combat HALO (high altitude, low opening) parachute jump since the Vietnam War.
Another friendly face at the ISB was that of Gus Murdock, who had been our squadron commander until just a few months before 9/11, when he had been corralled to head a new organization. Gus was now in charge of a mix of sister-service operators, support personnel, fixed- and rotarywing aircraft planners, and some top military and civilian intelligence geniuses, and they would fight deep in the shadows and along the seams of the war on terror.
Within a day or so, a small advance party from our squadron flew ahead to Bagram, dubbed FOB Yukon. They were to determine whether Yukon could be suitable as a staging base for us, and what they found was not exactly a fixer-upper.
Built by the Soviets during their own Afghan war, Yukon had plenty of real estate, buildings, and a runway, but was in terrible shape. Derelict Soviet jets and rusted airplane parts littered the area, and years of bombardment had left the old runway severely cratered. Most windows were shattered in the gutted buildings and there was no running water or electricity. Hundreds of unmarked land mines were hidden beneath an inch or so of fine brown dust.
Still, Yukon could be made workable, and our unit engineers assumed the monumental task of turning it into a long-term station that could support combat operations for an indefinite period. They worked miracles.
In his book
It didn’t take long for the al Qaeda role players to determine an excellent place to hide their nefarious activities. From studying satellite imagery, topography, and safe havens, the choice was obvious. Clarke referred to the place as a “valley in Afghanistan called Tora Bora” and it was such a logical place for terrorists that U.S. assets began to photograph it from the air continuously and map the numerous cave entrances.
I can assure you that Tora Bora is much more than a single valley. Indeed, it is a vertical no-man’s land, a hellish place of massive, rocky, jagged, unforgiving snow-covered ridgelines and high peaks separated by deep ravines and valleys studded with mines.
What Clarke’s experts were not tasked with determining, nor were they even capable of doing so at the time, was how this mountainous redoubt might look if bin Laden had prepared it for an assault by foreign troops.
However, any student of mujahideen tactics in the Soviet-Afghan war could make a pretty good assumption that it might have become impregnable, both from the air and ground. During the twelve years since the Soviet withdrawal, the defenses in the Tora Bora Mountains had matured and expanded significantly.
The hardworking guys in the intelligence shop didn’t get much sleep and didn’t have as much to work with as did those tabletop teams Clarke described. Where were the satellite photos? Where were those maps of cave entrances? I don’t know, but they weren’t with the men who needed them most. Our intel people were reinventing the wheel by having to study the forbidding Tora Bora area from scratch. Things looked pretty bleak.
The fortress was densely pocked with well-built bunkers that were cloaked from ground and air observation by remarkable camouflage. Al Qaeda used a defense-in-depth concept to impede an attacking force at various points while allowing defenders to reposition farther back in other prepared and well-stocked positions.
An attacking force had two basic approaches from which to choose. They could stick to the low ground in the valleys and ascend steadily while moving deeper into the mountains. Or they could take the well-worn footpaths used by drug smugglers, goat herders, and generations of mujahideen and outside warriors dating back to Alexander the Great.
But modern enemy weapons now overlooked those ancient foot routes-DShK-38 12.7mm heavy machine guns and 82mm mortar tubes, SVD 7.62mm Dragunov rifles, RPGs, AK-47s, and PKM machine guns. Any force attacking uphill, already tired from the climb and with limited lateral space in which to maneuver, would certainly face an unfriendly welcome. Once committed to a particular avenue of approach, the decision to continue or turn around would require great caution.
The helicopter option was quickly ruled out for Tora Bora. At least two camouflaged ZPU-1 14.5mm AAA guns and several dozen SA-7 SAM rockets were waiting down there, and the low-flying birds would be fat and easy targets. The last thing we wanted was another Mogadishu, with a helicopter shot down. Such a tragedy always seemed to shift the mission away from its original objective and into recovering friendly forces.
Lieutenant Colonel Ashley, our squadron commander, knew the muhj had been very successful in shooting down Soviet helicopters with shoulderfired rockets in the 1980s, and he also was a veteran of Somalia and vividly remembered that disaster.
The restrictions that would limit helicopters in such terrible mountain battlefield conditions further dampened hopes of getting any quick reaction force to a trouble spot in a hurry.
The more we studied how to tackle those mountains, the more the situation started to display many of the trappings of a modern siege.
Centuries ago, a commander typically could surround the stronghold, sit tight, and wait for the defenders to starve themselves into capitulation. Sieges of castles or towns usually began in the spring or summer, when the attackers could retain some level of personal comfort, and dry weather supported the use of fire and heavy siege engines.
Or the ancient commander could choose to attack the fortified position, which was obviously more hazardous. So far, everything we had seen about Tora Bora tilted us toward the latter and riskier method.
In the modern year of 2001, our snipers would serve as archers and our bullets as fire-tipped arrows. Our pickup trucks would be the war chariots, and rusty but usable Afghan tanks and black-market mortars would stand in as ballistas and bombards. Our fighters and bombers could rain down JDAMs and BLU-82s like ancient Greek fire.
There was another intriguing option, and we liked it enough to plan it out. What about going in the back door, across the 14,000-foot mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border? What if several teams could insert safely by helicopter into Pakistan, on the far side of the highest Tora Bora peaks. They would have bottled oxygen and acclimate themselves as they ascended even higher, and once they crested the peaks and found any signs of al Qaeda, they would be in business.
The commandos would own the high ground and could accurately target bunkers or cave openings with lasers for U.S. warplanes to strike them with relative impunity.
