/ 17 April 2002

Bin Laden slipped away from Tora Bora

OSAMA bin Laden probably got away during the battle for Tora

Bora late last year because the US military failed to commit ground

troops to the mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan, The

Washington Post said on Wednesday quoting US intelligence officials.

General Tommy Franks, top US commander in the US war in

Afghanistan, misjudged the interests of Afghan allies and did not

perceive the setbacks soon enough because he ran the war from

Florida, some civilian and military officials told the daily.

The failure to capture the suspected terrorist mastermind and

leader of the al-Qaida network at Tora Bora is described in a

series of after-action reviews as the gravest error in the war and

a significant defeat for the United States, the officials said.

After singling out for months Saudi-born extremist bin Laden as

public enemy number one and the evil mastermind of the September 11

terror attacks on the United States, President George Bush has

lately refrained from mentioning him, extolling instead the success

in dismantling al-Qaida and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Franks’ chief representative, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, said it was

important at the Tora Bora battle to include Afghan allies to take

a supporting role.

Franks, he added, ”still thinks that the process he followed of

helping the anti-Taliban forces around Tora Bora, to make sure it

was crystal clear to them that we were not there to conquer their

country…was absolutely the right thing to do.”

However, the reviews conducted privately inside and outside the

military chain of command concluded that corrupt local militias did

not keep promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some

colluded in the escape of fleeing al-Qaida fighters.

Franks was running the war from Tampa, Florida, with no

commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel, and US

troops did not arrive for three days. ”No one had the big picture,”

one defence official said.

Based on intercepted communications and interviews of captured

al-Qaeda fighters who gave consistent accounts of a bin Laden

rallying speech to his men around December 3, US intelligence

officials believe the al-Qaeda leader was inside the cave complex

at Tora Bora when the battle began November 30.

While there is a remote chance that he died there, the officials

said, the intelligence community is persuaded that he slipped away

in the first 10 days of December.

”We messed up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting

the Afghans do all the work,” said a senior official with direct

responsibilities in counter terrorism.

”Clearly a decision point came when we started bombing Tora Bora

and we decided just to bomb, because that’s when he escaped. We

didn’t put US forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk, and

that is what we have had to change since then.” – Sapa-AFP