A tactical plan drawn up by the Delta experts is rarely denied, and in fact I cannot remember anyone ever saying no once Delta determined what it needed to do to accomplish its assigned mission. This one worked its way up through our various commanders, but somewhere way, way above us, it was denied. We would not be allowed to infiltrate through Pakistan.
Any plan has negatives, including this one. Just resupplying such recon teams with water, ammunition, and radio batteries would have been a tall order. That did not mean, however, that we should not do it. We were Delta and we could overcome such things. Having Delta guarding the far side of the mountain passes, closing the ring, would have made a huge difference. But our plan was shot down.
Over the years, it has come to be believed that Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf refused permission for us to have the staging access we needed for a cross-border infiltration and that Central Command decided the issue was too sensitive to press. This is only partly true.
Author Ron Suskind, in
He displayed satellite imagery to prove that Pakistan’s military was not yet in place to accomplish the task. Further, the CIA man strongly suggested that Pakistan could not be counted on to fulfill their promise of troops to secure the area.
According to Suskind, President Bush was not completely swayed, and opted to trust our Muslim allies in the new war on terror. The back door would remain wide open to the enemy. We were not pleased.
With their southern flank secure, al Qaeda could focus on the west, north, and east, and they built their defenses accordingly, around the assumption that those big border mountains were inviolate.
On the ground, we knew that back in 2001.
Even our huge advantage in air surpremacy was not going to work in our favor, at least for a while. Those valuable air assets were not yet even based inside Afghanistan. Bagram airfield and the Kandahar airport, dubbed FOB Tahoe, were not ready to accept aircraft. For the present, the planes were still bedding down well to the northwest in Uzbekistan and to the southeast in a remote stretch of Pakistan, and the air fleet was being downsized in a strange attempt to fool the terrorists. It was not difficult for us to envision how the great distances could hamper air support during a gunfight in Tora Bora, with us out there at the tip of the spear.
Aware of all of the things that were not likely to be successful, or were disapproved by some higher levels, the squadron boss Ashley, operations officer Super D, and the rest of the staff went to work to identify things that might make our mission work.
Recent satellite imagery and pictures from high-flying reconnaissance planes allowed the analysts to measure what was happening in the mountains. The information was packaged into a color-coded PowerPoint slide show. Winter temperatures were frigid, the mountain range was sheathed in low and lingering clouds, and deep snow was stacking up in various valleys and passes.
The clear conclusion was that those vital passageways were so clogged that al Qaeda and bin Laden could not be leaving the mountains anytime soon, which meant they would have to make a major defensive stand.
Ashley wanted to make those possible exit routes even more dangerous by dropping some CBU-89 GATOR mines into the passes. The GATORs would spread a minefield that would both deny enemy foot soldiers their escape routes and also knock out vehicles, leaving the enemy trapped and shaping the battlefield more to our liking.
Even this logical request was disapproved at some higher level, most likely even above the four-stars at CENTCOM. Later, after the battles were done, we learned that indeed there had been a political twist to it because some of our allies threatened to opt out of the fighting should the GATORs be employed.
Multiple sources still said that bin Laden was in the mountains and reported that he was still alive, well protected, and moving continually on horseback from cave to cave. Additionally, we learned that he enjoyed widespread support among the local population.
That was no surprise. Since at least 1985, he had been providing jobs and jihad opportunities for many residents during the construction of the trenches, bunkers, and caves that comprised the mountain redoubt. Either his fellow Muslims in the area genuinely believed in him or bin Laden had simply bought their allegiance. This is not meant to suggest that all Muslims support bin Laden or are the enemy, for they clearly do not and are not. It’s very likely many were just too scared to turn on him.
Save for the big intelligence coups that it was winter in the Afghan mountains and bin Laden could ride a horse, neither we operators nor our commanders had much to go on. We knew our ability to move crosscountry mounted in the Toyota pickups was limited, so the only remaining solution was for us to just walk up the mountains.
A final piece of bad news was that our first-line quickreaction force, or QRF, would not be made up of American Rangers after all, but of Afghans. We all initially overestimated the ability and willingness of the Afghan muhj, but for the time being, we were going to bet our lives on them. Thinking the muhj could do as well as the Rangers was a complete pipe dream.
One limitation was the inability of the muhj to fight at night, a deficiency that was originally chalked up to their not having much night vision capability. We would soon learn that the muhj did not really need any night vision equipment; they had no desire to fight in the dark.
It was a friction point that would get even uglier when the shooting started.
Things were shaping up for an interesting next couple of weeks.
Bin Laden’s major assumption, as well as personal desire, was that the United States would introduce massive numbers of conventional troops, just what the Soviets had done in this same terrain. He figured that large numbers of Americans would face the same challenges as Russians. In his mind, it all added up to another opportunity for his guerrillas to inflict large-scale casualties on another superpower. After our turn-tail-and-run withdrawal from Somalia, he had to believe that hard and costly combat might invoke an American or even worldwide outcry to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Of course, details of al Qaeda’s defensive disposition remained unknown while we were planning at the ISB. Satellite imagery is nice, but clarity, confirmation, and documentation of the al Qaeda fortress came only after American boots had walked the ground.
A small cluster of task force planners, commanders, and Delta operators gathered inside a makeshift briefing area at the ISB. White sheets of target cloth served as walls, and we took seats in rickety chairs. It was a pretty dilapidated feel for a place in which such an important mission was being finalized.
A laptop computer sat on a large cardboard box next to a small projector that threw the image of a slide with black letters on the wall: A SQUADRON MISSION BRIEF, 2 DEC 2001.
Our sister assault troop would continue the hunt for Mullah Omar in the south. Our teammates had been in that fight since the beginning and were well versed in the Taliban order of battle there.
Meanwhile, the majority of our Unit would focus on bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan. As close as I can remember, it went something like this: On order, conduct linkup with the Eastern Alliance Opposition Group in the vicinity of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to facilitate killing or capturing Usama bin Laden.
That was a pretty simple and direct set of orders. Meet and greet some local Afghan mujahideen, then go find bin Laden and kill or capture him.
Placing the word “capture” in the mission statement was standard practice, because some targeted personalities are more valuable alive than dead. They might have valuable information that can lead to someone higher up the food chain or reveal critical information that might disrupt a planned terrorist operation.
The fact is that the live-or-die decision is not complicated for a Delta operator. When an operator enters a room, his first task is to eliminate all threats in his designated sector. If the targeted individual happens to be standing there, he determines his own fate. If he is unarmed and not displaying hostile intent, then he lives and is chalked up under the capture category.
Delta does not waste time looking at the face, but takes an instant snapshot of the entire person before
