The Battle of Tora Bora occurred from 30 November to 17 December 2001, as part of the United States invasion of Afghanistan during the war in Afghanistan. It took place around the cave complex of Tora Bora in the Safed Koh mountain range, near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. In the battle, the U.S., British, German, and allied Afghan troops fought al-Qaeda; the Taliban, who controlled the country's government; and other Islamic extremists.
Led by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda conducted terrorist suicide attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The U.S. quickly launched a global "war on terror", which included a manhunt for bin Laden, and the invasion of Afghanistan, where the Taliban had allowed al-Qaeda to headquarter. The invasion began on October 7; the U.S. was supported by a multinational coalition.
On November 10, the CIA tracked bin Laden to Tora Bora. In the 1980s, the complex had been used by the Afghan mujahideen to repel the Soviet soldiers who were invading Afghanistan. Prior to 2001, bin Laden had been fortifying it for years. On November 30, the coalition began attacking the complex, with the objective to capture or kill bin Laden.
Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora, likely on December 15, and crossed the Pakistani border soon afterwards. The battle was the last time the U.S. knew his precise location until 2010, when they discovered his safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The U.S. may have had a chance of killing bin Laden during the battle; near the start, CIA officer Gary Berntsen asked American general Tommy Franks to send a thousand Army Rangers into the complex to cut off bin Laden from crossing the border. Franks denied the request. The U.S. denied that bin Laden escaped Tora Bora during the battle until 2005.
With the coalition victory, the remaining Taliban openly active in Afghanistan were expelled. Their emirate had been toppled already with the fall of Kandahar on 7 December. The Taliban regrouped and formed an insurgency against the coalition-installed successor government and its international allies.
Background
Osama bin Laden
In the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), Muslim-majority Afghanistan was invaded by the mostly non-Muslim Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Islamist connected to the royal House of Saud, left his country to organize the Afghan mujahideen, Muslims who fought the Soviets as jihadists; those who engage in jihad, Islamic religious struggle, are called mujahideen. For that purpose, bin Laden and Abdullah Yusuf Azzam founded Maktab al-Khidamat (MaK). MaK built up a large military force. As the United States was in conflict with the Soviets as part of the Cold War, CIA officers also assisted the mujahideen. In 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Azzam was then assassinated, leaving Bin Laden with full control of MaK, which evolved into al-Qaeda. He then left Afghanistan, and moved to Sudan, but returned in 1996 after Sudan expelled him.
In the 1990s, the Taliban formed, and took control of most of the country, enforcing Islamic fundamentalist rule.
Tora Bora
During the Soviet–Afghan War, the CIA and bin Laden alike helped build cave complexes in the mountains of Afghanistan for the mujahideen to use as fortifications. Afghanistan's eastern Safed Koh range had one cave complex, Tora Bora. which was 20 miles away from the Pakistani border. In 2005, a mujahideen veteran, Masood Farivar, described how the caves were used during the war:
"They're rugged, formidable and isolated, If you know them, you can come and go with ease. But if you don't, they're a labyrinth that you can't penetrate. They rise in some places to 14,000 feet, and for 10 years the Soviets pummeled them with everything they had, but to absolutely no avail."
Upon his return to Afghanistan, bin Laden began expanding the complex, and building base camps at high elevations in the nearby mountains. He took the time to intimately familiarize himself with the local geography, committing it to memory while taking long hikes. He had an al-Qaeda training camp established there. He had combat experience in mountainous fortifications, as he commanded a mujahideen force to victory in that setting at the 1987 Battle of Jaji.
In the lead-up to the Battle of Tora Bora in 2001, the complex was described by the Western media as an impregnable cave fortress housing two thousand men, complete with: a hospital, a hydroelectric power plant, offices, a hotel, supply depots, roads large enough to drive a tank into, and elaborate tunnel and ventilation systems. The press published elaborate plans of the complex. When presented with such plans in an interview, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: "This is serious business, there's not one of those, there are many of those".
When Tora Bora was captured by the U.S.-led coalition in the battle, no traces of the supposed "fortress" were found, despite painstaking searches in the surrounding areas. Tora Bora turned out to be a system of small natural caves housing, at most, two hundred fighters. While supply depots were found, along with Soviet tanks that had been driven into some of the caves, there were no traces of the aforementioned advanced facilities.
A U.S. Special Forces staff sergeant who was in the battle later described the caves:
"[They] weren't these crazy mazes or labyrinths of caves that they described. Most of them were natural caves. Some were supported with some pieces of wood maybe about the size of a 10-foot by 24-foot room, at the largest. They weren't real big."
They described the military as being hesitant to enter the caves for some portion of the battle, due to the foreboding descriptions they had heard:
"I know they made a spectacle out of [the caves' sizes], and how are we going to be able to get into them? We worried about that too, because we see all these reports. Then it turns out, when you actually go up there, there's really just small bunkers, and a lot of different ammo storage is up there."
Journalist Matthew Forney, covering the battle on-location, was allowed access to see "rough bunkers" deep in the mountains:
"[I] saw a chamber of about eight square feet and high enough for a tall man to stand in. The floor was dirt and rubble, but there were signs of habitation. [...] Scattered on the floor [were] boxes of ammunition with Russian writing on them, and a canister about the size of an unexploded cluster bomb [...] Another cave next to it was about the same size and filled with ammunition, mostly bullets for Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades. Another nearby was much bigger and also filled with ammunition. Its cavern sloped up and back and seemed to lead to a passage, but nobody ventured in."
Invasion of Afghanistan
U.S. president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney were inaugurated in January 2001. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom to dismantle the Taliban regime that had sheltered bin Laden. To achieve this goal, the U.S. military joined forces with the Northern Alliance, a group of rebels who had long been waging a guerrilla war against the Taliban.
Through a combination of air strikes and ground operations, the U.S. and its allies quickly gained the upper hand in the invasion, seizing control of key Taliban strongholds and toppling the regime's grip on power. By November 13, 2001, the Northern Alliance had captured the capital city of Kabul.
Prelude
By November 2001, al-Qaeda fighters were still holding out in the mountains around Tora Bora. The CIA, meanwhile, was closely tracking bin Laden's movements in hopes to catch him. On 10 November, they spotted him near Jalalabad traveling in a convoy of two hundred pickup trucks. They then headed towards al-Qaeda's training camp at Tora Bora. The U.S. had expected him to make a last stand at the complex, believing he might have wanted a repeat of his victory at Battle of Jaji. On 29 November, Dick Cheney revealed that bin Laden was believed to be in the general area of Tora Bora, surrounded by a sizable force of loyal fighters.
The lead CIA officer in the Panjshir Valley, Gary Berntsen, sent a detachment to team up with Afghan tribal militias around Jalalabad who opposed the Taliban. The Americans climbed the mountains guided by the locals who knew the terrain. After a few days of climbing, they arrived at bin Laden's training camp, where hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters could be spotted.
Twelve British SBS commandos, and one British Royal Signals Specialist from 63 Signals squadron accompanied the U.S. special operations forces in attacking the complex at Tora Bora. Special Forces Operators of the German KSK took part as well; they were reportedly responsible for protecting the flanks in the mountains and conducting reconnaissance missions.
Battle
On 30 November 2001, a coalition of U.S. Special Forces, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) soldiers, and a detachment of CIA operatives (codenamed "Jawbreaker") led by Berntsen, joined forces with Afghan tribal militias, and began to call in airstrikes on the al-Qaeda training camp.
CIA intelligence had indicated that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were trapped in the caves early in the battle, and on 1 December, Berntsen requested General Tommy Franks to send less than a thousand U.S. Army Rangers to block off the mountain passes into Pakistan and cut off bin Laden's escape. However, Franks denied the request, as he agreed with the Bush administration that Pakistan would capture bin Laden if he tried to cross the border. Berntsen and former CIA agent Gary Schroen later claimed that not deploying the Rangers had allowed bin Laden to escape. Bernstein also blamed the American military's reliance on Afghan militias. Journalist Peter Bergen later reconstructed the U.S. troop placements at Tora Bora, and claimed that Franks' refusal to deploy was "one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history". Historian Carter Malkasian, who advised American commanders in Afghanistan, has argued that bin Laden always had a good chance of escaping the caves, and that the Rangers would not have been able to completely seal off the mountain range.
On 3 December, Hazrat Ali, one of the Afghan commanders, announced that the push to capture the mountain stronghold would begin. However, Ali's failure to properly communicate the plan of attack to the other commanders resulted in many fighters being ill-prepared at the outset of the offensive. On 5 December, the Afghan fighters wrested control of the low ground below the mountain caves from the al-Qaeda fighters. The Jawbreaker team and Special Forces teams equipped with laser designators called in Air Force bombers to take out targets; non-stop heavy air strikes including laser-guided bombs and missiles lasted for 72 hours.
The tribal militias that the U.S. coalition was coordinating with lacked the motivation to engage in the fight wholeheartedly. To them, al-Qaeda was a group of fellow Muslims, and with the battle taking place during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the fighters would retire every evening to break their fast and spend time with their families off the mountain. Moreover, the two Afghan commanders, Ali and Mohammed Zaman, had a strong dislike and mutual distrust of each other. As a result, their factions often shot at each other instead of focusing on fighting al-Qaeda. The animosity between the leaders and their respective militias was not a favorable sign for a successful outcome against a determined and cohesive enemy.
The al-Qaeda fighters withdrew to higher fortified positions and dug in for the battle. On 8 December, a team of elite Delta Force soldiers led by Major Tom Greer (also known as Dalton Fury) arrived. They had put on traditional clothing and grown thick beards to blend in with the Afghan militias, and were carrying the same types of weapons as them.
The Americans were able to pick up a radio from a dead al-Qaeda fighter. This allowed the U.S. forces to eavesdrop on the al-Qaeda fighter's communications, including bin Laden himself. Greer has said that there was "no doubt" that it was bin Laden's voice on the other end of that radio, citing a CIA operative named "Jalal", who had spent seven years studying bin Laden's voice, confirming it.
Two British SBS Commandos from M Sqn were embedded with A Sqn Delta, one of whom continued to work for JSOC, albeit in a different capacity. During the hours of darkness, the al-Qaeda fighters would light fires, which would reveal their specific location and aid laser-designated targeting for air-launched weapons.
The Afghan fighters continued a steady advance through the difficult terrain, backed by airstrikes and U.S. and U.K. Special Forces.
The U.S. bombed the bunker that bin Laden was believed to be hiding in on 9 December; however, he had already evacuated the bunker on the previous day. Peter Bergen writes that bin Laden had a premonition of danger when he dreamed of a scorpion crawling into one of the trenches his men had dug for him.
On 10 December, Delta Force intercepted radio communications indicating that bin Laden was on the move, attempting to break through the siege line. Later that day, Afghan soldiers claimed they had spotted bin Laden and had him surrounded. In the evening, more communications revealed bin Laden's location just 10 kilometers away. However, Delta Force could not act on this opportunity due to being engaged in a fierce firefight with other al-Qaeda fighters, and their Afghan allies leaving to break their fast for Ramadan. Thomas Greer later expressed deep regret for the failure to capitalize on this opportunity, feeling that he had let down his country in its time of need.
On 12 December, al-Qaeda forces, facing defeat, negotiated a ceasefire with a local Afghan militia commander to give them time to surrender their weapons. In retrospect, however, some critics believe that the truce was a device to allow important al-Qaeda figures, including bin Laden, to escape.