Senate Report Explores 2001 Escape by bin Laden From Afghan Mountains

[abiab]

THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON — As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has completed a detailed look back at a crucial failure early in the battle against Al Qaeda: the escape of Osama bin Laden from American forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001.

“Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat,” the committee’s report concludes. “But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide.”


The report, based in part on a little-noticed 2007 history of the Tora Bora episode by the military’s Special Operations Command, asserts that the consequences of not sending American troops in 2001 to block Mr. bin Laden’s escape into Pakistan are still being felt.

The report blames the lapse for “laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan.”

Its release comes just as the Obama administration is preparing to announce an increase in forces in Afghanistan.

The showdown at Tora Bora, a mountainous area dotted with caves in eastern Afghanistan, pitted a modest force of American Special Operations and C.I.A. officers, along with allied Afghan fighters, against a force of about 1,000 Qaeda fighters led by Mr. bin Laden.

The committee report, prepared at the request of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s Democratic chairman, concludes unequivocally that in mid-December 2001, Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were at the cave complex, where Mr. bin Laden had operated previously during the fight against Soviet forces.

The new report suggests that a larger troop commitment to Afghanistan might have resulted in the demise not only of Mr. bin Laden and his deputy but also of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. Mullah Omar, who also fled to Pakistan in 2001, has overseen the resurgence of the Taliban.

Like several previous accounts, the committee’s report blames Gen. Tommy R. Franks, then the top American commander, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, for not putting a large number of American troops there lest they fuel resentment among Afghans. General Franks, who declined to comment for the committee’s report, has at times questioned whether Mr. bin Laden was even at Tora Bora in late 2001.

The report represents unfinished political business on the part of Mr. Kerry. Before and during his unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign, he hammered on the failure to catch Mr. bin Laden.

The Foreign Relations Committee’s report draws on previous accounts, including books by two C.I.A. officers, Gary Berntsen and Gary Schroen, and by a commander in the Army’s elite Delta Force who goes by the pen name Dalton Fury. The analysis in their books of the flawed tactics at Tora Bora is generally echoed in the official Special Operations Command history.

The 2007 history said that it “has been determined with reasonable certainty” that Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001, but that the fewer than 100 American troops committed to the area were not enough to block his escape.

The Senate report was prepared by the Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic staff, whose chief investigator, Douglas Frantz, is a former journalist who has reported extensively on the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.

The report describes how Americans at Tora Bora intercepted Mr. bin Laden’s voice in radio transmissions to his fighters, as well as references to “the sheikh.”

The former Delta Force officer who uses the name Fury told staff members that C.I.A. officers “had a guy with them called Jalal and he was the foremost expert on bin Laden’s voice.”

“He worked on bin Laden’s voice for seven years and he knew him better than anyone else in the West,” the former officer said. “To him, it was very clear that bin Laden was there on the mountain.”

The report says some villagers who were paid to help in the fight were given global positioning system devices and told to push a button wherever they saw fighters or arms caches. The coordinates were then sent to American military spotters to call in airstrikes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/world/asia/29torabora.html

 

[abiab]

Poor senate

Pakistan must help break al-Qaeda, warns Brown
Gordon Brown has told the BBC that Pakistan must do more to "break" al-Qaeda and find Osama Bin Laden.

Eight years after the 2001 attacks on the US, nobody had been able "to spot or detain or get close to" the al-Qaeda leader, the prime minister said.

Pakistan's security services must join fully in the "major effort" to isolate the terrorist group, he warned.

Meanwhile, a Senate report claims US forces had Bin Laden "within their grasp" in Afghanistan in late 2001.

But it says calls for US reinforcements were rejected and Bin Laden was able to escape into Pakistan's unregulated tribal areas.

Air strikes

The report, prepared by the Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff, says US commanders chose to rely on air strikes and "untrained Afghan militias" to pursue Bin Laden in the mountainous Tora Bora area.

In interviews on Sunday, Mr Brown said progress had been made against the Taliban in south Waziristan by Pakistan's government.

But he told the BBC: "We've got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody's been able to get close to [Ayman] Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda.

"And we've got to ask the Pakistan authorities, security services, army and politicians to join us in the major effort that the world is committing resources to, and that is not only to isolate al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan."

He said he would be talking to Pakistan's leaders to say, if the international community is putting so much effort into building up Afghanistan to control its own affairs "then Pakistan has got to be able to show that it can take on al-Qaeda".

He said the terrorist network posed a "continuing threat", adding: "I believe that after eight years, we should have been able to do more, with all the Pakistani forces working together with the rest of the world, to get to the bottom of where al-Qaeda is operating from."

'Political surge'

He added that, eight years on, "we want ... to see more progress in taking out these two people at the top of al-Qaeda, who have done so much damage and are clearly the brains behind many of the operations aimed at Britain".

In a separate interview with Sky News, Mr Brown said Britain was prepared to help "rebuild the education system in Pakistan" where, he said, propaganda in madrassas - Islamic schools or colleges - and ordinary schools was "supportive of extremist action".

But he said other issues concerning education and unemployment made up a climate which "feeds dissent" and the Pakistani authorities had to deal with these.

On Saturday the prime minister said Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai would be expected to make commitments on training up Afghan troops and tackling corruption, at a conference in London in January.

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said it was "vital ... to match this military surge with a political surge" - and that was the thinking behind the London conference.

But he played down reports that British troops could be home by Christmas 2010: "The speed at which British troops can come home, is dictated by the speed at which Afghan forces can step up."

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "I think the right attitude is not to have an end date, but an end state, in mind - we want Afghan forces to be able to protect their own country."

But if Afghan forces were increased from 90,000 to 134,000 - as they hope to achieve in the next year - that would be a "significant step on the road to Afghanistan being able to provide its own security for its own people," he went on.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8384994.stm