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