Escape from Tora Bora Strategic blunders allowed thousands of fighters to flee on foot over the mountains
The Guardian
September 4, 2002Osama bin Laden and most of his top-ranking Arab associates were able to escape from Afghanistan last year because of a series of avoidable strategic blunders by US military commanders, well-placed sources in Kabul have told the Guardian. Of the 3,000-4,000 "foreign militants" trapped in Afghanistan last November after the collapse of the Taliban, most got away.
Several high-profile military operations to capture them - most notably last December in the Tora Bora mountains - failed because Britain and the US sent in too few troops of their own. Instead, the US commander in Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, relied too heavily on local anti-Taliban warlords who were more interested in making money than in hunting enemies of the US.
American intelligence officials have privately described this strategy as the "gravest error of the war".
The Guardian has learned that Bin Laden almost certainly escaped from Tora Bora in the first or second week of December last year - despite a huge US military operation to flush him out. According to reliable sources in Kabul, he fled at night in a convoy of "eight or nine" vehicles. Pakistani tribesman came into Afghanistan to collect his party of about 26 in exchange for a large sum. "His wives travelled separately," the source added.
US special forces coordinating the Tora Bora assault, where al-Qaida fighters had been sheltering in caves, closed a northern escape route, but fatefully left a snowy track to the south open. "The US operation was like a Swiss cheese with too many big holes," another source in the new Afghan administration said.
By early this year virtually all of Bin Laden's Arab fighters had vanished -escaping to Iran or Pakistan. Some headed directly east: over the mountains and into the tribal areas of Pakistan. Others went into Pakistan further south, via the seedy town of Spin Boldak. An Afghan who crossed near the town said avoiding border guards merely involved a "seven-hour stroll".
The route to Iran also began in Spin Boldak but led west across the Baluchistan desert - a three-day journey by car on a route frequented by heroin smugglers - and then into Iran near Zahedan. "It's easy to do. You cross the border at night and on foot. The other routes into Iran are more heavily guarded," one Afghan, who entered Iran illegally, said.
According to an intelligence source in Washington, the CIA believes that up to 500 al-Qaida members escaped into Iran in the early months of this year. It is convinced that elements of the Tehran government aided their getaway.
The existence of the Iranian route was only officially recognised by Tehran last month, when it was revealed that 16 al-Qaida members had been arrested and expelled to Saudi Arabia. Until then, Iran had denied an al-Qaida presence.
Fleeing fighters faced innumerable obstacles - not least Afghanistan's appallingly potholed and dusty roads. With the collapse of the Taliban regime, local warlords set up a series of roadblocks: often just a piece of string manned by guards with Kalashnikovs - but still only passable by paying a large bribe.
At night the mountains in eastern Afghanistan last December were freezing cold. Most al-Qaida fighters had fleecy jackets and thick trousers - but none had the sleeping bags or sophisticated thermal clothing of their American enemies.
The Arab fighters, though, did have the advantage of local knowledge and relative wealth. One Arab managed to get to Kandahar after paying a taxi driver $3,000 in cash. Others stranded near the town of Ghazni hired locals to guide them south across deserts where there are no roads.
The failure to intercept the fleeing militants marks a huge blow to the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
Legal documents lodged with the Casablanca appeals court show that at least some of the escaping Arabs went armed with specific plans to attempt new attacks. The documents, which relate to the trial of three Saudis suspected of plotting to blow up British and American naval vessels in the Straits of Gibraltar, give an insight into the flight from Afghanistan from al-Qaida's perspective.
As Bin Laden's fighters came under heavy US bombing in the Afghan mountains in December he delivered a crucial message. The Taliban could no longer ensure the safety of al-Qaida fighters, he said, and it was now imperative that they disband. Fighters should make their way to Pakistan, Iran or other countries, and from there return home to carry on the fight.
Court documents in the Moroccan case describe how one of the Saudi plotters, Zouhair Tabiti held a lengthy discussion in the Gardez mountains with a top al-Qaida member called Ahmed Billal - the same man who claimed responsibility for planning the suicide bombing of Djerba.
Billal told Tabiti that he and his two accomplices should make their way separately to Morocco. They then discussed in detail what terrorist mission the Saudis would attempt once back in Morocco. They considered bombing a bus station and a tourist site in Marrakesh, even debating the ethics of killing fellow Muslims, before settling on a strike against ships using a water-borne suicide bomb.
The idea must have appealed to Billal, who is thought by US intelligence sources to be behind a similar attack in October 2000 against the USS Cole, off Yemen, which killed 17 Americans.
In the end, the Gibraltar plot was foiled. The three Saudis were intercepted and arrested, and are now in jail in Morocco awaiting trial. But their successful escape from Afghanistan, via Tehran and Rome and thence to Rabat, begs a simple question: how many more of Bin Laden's army got away, and where are they now?