The military campaign was a striking success for a new style of warfare, in which U.S. commandos took center stage and played a vital role in organizing the Afghan resistance and directing punishing air strikes.
The strategy enabled the United States to topple the five-year-old Taliban regime, install a friendly government and ensure that Al Qaeda could no longer use Afghanistan as a base of operations for terrorism — all at a modest cost.
But the U.S. strategy also had a decided drawback: The decision to let proxy forces bear the brunt of the ground fighting may have allowed many Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, possibly including Osama bin Laden, to escape.
When it came to capturing the Taliban stronghold in Kandahar, the Pentagon allowed its Afghan allies to take the lead. But its surrender failed to yield Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar or other top figures in his regime.
Later, in Tora Bora, the United States again relied on its Afghan proxies, mainly fighters controlled by Commander Hazarat Ali, and the Pakistani soldiers who patrolled the border. Washington did not dispatch a large U.S. ground force to cut off escape routes of Al Qaeda fighters, allowing hundreds to slip across the border, according to reports from Pakistan.
After the battle over the caves in the mountainous region of Tora Bora, the Pentagon considered sending in hundreds of ground troops when it appeared that Afghan forces might be unable or unwilling to scour the area for Al Qaeda leaders. But U.S. officials remain reluctant to do so and now hope that incentives, like money and winter clothing, will secure the cooperation of Afghans.
Smuggling ring reported
However, according to new U.S. intelligence, some low-level militia commanders have smuggled Arab fighters, perhaps dozens, out of Afghanistan for up to $5,000 a head. One defense official said it was suspected several of the commanders were running this smuggling network but that Ali stopped it.
While final judgments must await a clearer determination of bin Laden’s fate and those of his aides, some experts say it was a mistake to be so heavily dependent on Afghan proxies and not to involve U.S. ground troops in the final and potentially decisive chapter of the war at Tora Bora.
The conflict in Afghanistan was anything but simple. The Pentagon had to contend with a shortage of military bases in the region. Coalition partners like Pakistan did not welcome the arrival of large numbers of U.S. troops. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to the north, were firmly within the Russian sphere of influence.
There was also the problem of forbidding terrain, a population with a deep suspicion of foreign forces and an anti-Taliban resistance that was not a coherent insurgency but an array of bickering and ethnically diverse factions.
These factors shaped much of the U.S. military planning. The air campaign had to rely primarily on long-range Air Force bombers operating from Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean. Also, warplanes were dispatched from the United States and Navy aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean.
Anxious about stirring up deep-seated resentments about the intervention of foreign forces and fearful of becoming ensnared in an Afghan quagmire, regular Army troops were used to defend airfields in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Marines established a forward base in Afghanistan but were largely kept out of the fray.
Role of Special Forces
Special operations forces are a standard part of the Pentagon’s military repertory, but they played a far more important role in Afghanistan than in previous campaigns.
The idea was for the American commandos to help arm the Afghan resistance, assist them in planning their attacks and support them by calling in air strikes, which involved some of the most advanced weapons the U.S. military has to offer.
The use of the special operations forces enabled the U.S. bombing to shift from fixed targets like airfields and command posts to mobile targets like enemy troops and defensive positions that were difficult to discern from the air.
“New and old techniques were brought together,” a senior U.S. official said.
“It involved Special Forces [troops] riding on horses and slogging on foot. And it involved high-tech weapons, sensors and surveillance,” the official added. “Those parts had to be worked together.”
There was a panoply of commandos. Army Green Berets organized weapons shipments to the disparate Northern Alliance factions in the north and whatever Pashtun resistance could be organized in the south. The Special Forces teams rode with Afghans on horseback.
The Green Berets called in air strikes, using radios and laptop computers to transmit bombing coordinates to U.S. pilots, and laser designators to pinpoint other targets. Air Force Special Tactics units performed a similar role.
Navy Seals, hiding in the countryside, carried out long-range reconnaissance. The CIA also deployed its Special Operations Group, a small unit that worked with the anti-Taliban forces and conducted operations in both northern and southern Afghanistan.
But there were some situations that could not be so easily handled by the trinity of special operations, air power and Afghan allies on the ground.
The foreign Taliban fighters were dedicated opponents, but their Afghan allies in the Taliban preferred negotiated surrenders and back-room amnesties to last stands.
Leaders evade capture
As the U.S. proxies wheeled and dealed, many of the Taliban’s top leaders slipped away, possibly with the tacit acquiescence of the anti-Taliban Afghans. The list of the missing includes Omar, who is high on the U.S. wanted list but who managed along with many other top Taliban officials to evade the siege of Kandahar.
Tora Bora was another case where the strategy appears to have produced less than a decisive victory. The problem was that the area is vast and wild bordering Pakistan. Sealing it off was more than the Afghan resistance could do even when it was aided by about 100 special operations forces and backed up by Pakistan troops on their side of the border.
“Even with the snow, the way to Pakistan is open,” Gen. Ahmad Fahim, now the defense minister of the Afghan government, warned as the battle unfolded.
“Bin Laden is constantly changing his location. He can cross the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and go back again,” the general said.
Seizing Tora Bora was not the Americans’ goal; trapping Al Qaeda leaders and their fighters was. Three senior Al Qaeda officials, including Mohammed Atef, the terrorist network’s chief of military operations, may have been killed by U.S. bombs during the campaign.
One retired U.S. military officer said the deployment of helicopter-borne and light infantry troops might have enabled Washington to “tighten the noose” around bin Laden.
Indeed, if bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda leaders remain at large into the future, the Bush administration’s decision not to use ground troops in Tora Bora may loom as one of the most debated aspects of the U.S.-led campaign, which started Oct. 7.
“I would agree that had we been more aggressive, we might have obtained our objective of getting the leadership,” said Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret, CIA officer and director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
“But one thing I would say in defense of the strategy is that the Taliban are really fugitives,” he said. “It is the same with Al Qaeda’s forces in Afghanistan.”
Nonetheless, with many Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders unaccounted for, the war lacks the closure that many had expected.
