THE TRAIL OF THE WOLF: HUNTING BIN LADEN

THE TRAIL OF THE WOLF:HUNTING BIN LADEN by Warren Gray

Washington Blew it at the Battle of Tora Bora

America’s first golden opportunity to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, the al-Qa’ida terrorist mastermind behind the horrific 9/11 attacks, came in mid-December 2001, at the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Delta Force commandos, Navy SEALs, and CIA operatives from Task Force 11 were on-scene, but due to the strange politics of fighting a proxy war and not wishing to “offend” our Eastern Alliance allies, Afghan militia forces were given the lead in assaulting bin Laden’s mountain stronghold, and the obvious escape route over the Durand Line into Pakistan was never sealed.

A Delta Force major, currently known only by his pseudonym “Dalton Fury,” leading a team of 50 commandos assigned to find and kill bin Laden, had planned to carefully sneak in behind him from Pakistan, do the deed, and leave the body with the local Afghan mujaheddin. But the bold operation was never approved because the United States armed forces had explicit orders to let the Afghan Eastern Alliance take the lead in the fighting. Fury had never seen any of Delta’s tactical plans disapproved before. He was stunned.

His only remaining option was an almost suicidal frontal assault by his small force and hundreds of friendly Afghan mujaheddin fighters, against a dug-in and ruthlessly determined al-Qa’ida army of more than 1,000 foreign insurgents. They closed to within one nautical mile of bin Laden’s location, but the Afghans, true to form, fired a few shots and then left for the night, going back down the mountain. Fury now had to make a very painful choice: to try to take bin Laden with only 50 men, or wait until morning when the Afghans would return. He reluctantly aborted the unilateral Delta assault, a decision that “still bothers me. It leaves me with a feeling of somehow letting down our nation at a critical time.”

Not Worth the Risk to Play Cowboy

The very next morning, their unreliable muj allies claimed to have negotiated a ceasefire with al-Qa’ida, something which the Delta operators disbelieved and disregarded. When they began advancing uphill, the Afghans aimed their weapons at the American team. It took a full 12 hours to end the fictitious ceasefire, allowing al-Qa’ida forces valuable time to relocate over the mountainous border into Waziristan.

“So there’s always that doubt that we might have run into him,” Fury concluded sadly. “We also might’ve got up there and found nothing. It wasn’t worth the risk at that particular moment to go up there and play cowboy. It was better to be cautious, refit, go up there with the entire force the next day, and play the battle out as we had planned.” But due to political complexities, constraining rules of engagement, and divided loyalties, they never got that chance.

So Osama bin Laden escaped over the towering mountains into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northern Pakistan, with the aid of vaunted Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the militant Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddinorganization, and lived for several years in the vicinity of Miram Shah, North Waziristan, a lawless tribal region where the inhabitants lived by the ancient code of honor known as Pashtunwali, based on hospitality, sanctuary, and revenge. That same hostile area along the Afghanistan–Pakistan (AfPak) border became the primary target of the CIA’s Operation Sylvan Magnolia armed drone program, utilizing MQ-1L Predators and MQ-9A Reapers launched from Shamsi Airfield in Baluchistan, Pakistan, and later and most recently from Forward Operating Base Fenty at Jalalabad Airport, Afghanistan.

Osama’s Personal Escort

Then, in 2006, bin Laden was personally escorted to Chitral in the Northwest Frontier Province of far northern Pakistan by Colonel Sayed Akbar of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency’s notorious Directorate S (External Operations), in charge of secret Pakistani relations with al-Qa’ida leaders. Fortunately, the Afghans later arrested Akbar for plotting suicide attacks near Kabul.

The Chitral District is an exceedingly remote and spectacularly beautiful area, accessible only by four very high mountain passes and a single road from the Afghan border, the perfect haven for a terrorist leader on the run. There, he was surrounded by a double defensive layer of Lashkar al-Zil (“Shadow Army”), or LaZ, al-Qa’ida commandos in the general vicinity of his Chitral stronghold, and his personal Black Guard force protecting him at close range around the clock, 300 handpicked, fanatical bodyguards who took a blood oath to defend him to the death.

Chitral is so wild and remote, high up in the majestic Hindu Kush range, that poet and writer Robert William Service may just as well have been describing it in 1912 when he wrote, “On the ragged edge of the world I’ll roam, and the home of the wolf shall be my home.” The FBI and CIA sent armed operatives into the area to arrest bin Laden in 2006, but they came up empty-handed. The following year, the government of Pakistan, unable to guarantee the safety of tourists in the Taliban-infested district, finally declared Chitral off-limits to all foreigners.

Predator drone reconnaissance sorties were launched, but they were technically forbidden from flying more than six miles from the AfPak border unless in hot pursuit of known insurgents. What was needed was a stealthy, high-altitude, remotely-piloted aircraft with long endurance that could not be detected by Pakistani radar. Lockheed Martin provided the solution with their ultra-secret Desert Prowler program at Area 51, eventually evolving into the strange, bat-winged recon bird known as the “Beast of Kandahar,” which was later confirmed to be the RQ-170A Sentinel unmanned aircraft, operated by the Air Force’s 30th Reconnaissance Squadron from Tonopah Test Range, Nevada, and Kandahar Air Base, Afghanistan. By 2007, Sentinel drones were regularly photographed near Kandahar, and speculation regarding their intended purpose was rife within the aviation community. Were they hunting bin Laden?

Unwittingly Helping the Terrorists

It is noteworthy to mention that while Directorate C (Counterterrorism) of the Pakistani ISI did cooperate with the American CIA in rounding up many al-Qa’ida operatives, their many successes were offset by the negative effects of Directorate S, the more nefarious, plainclothes branch actually training and assisting various Taliban, Kashmiri, and other hostile groups, providing weapons and advanced combat tactics, all funded by billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Pakistan. So we were actually, unwittingly helping the terrorists who were killing our troops in Afghanistan. As explained by a senior Taliban defector in 2009, “For years, we were trained and helped, and fought alongside ISI and (Pakistani) army officers. But they are not mujaheddin; they want to keep Afghanistan weak.”

Most Americans find it exceedingly difficult to comprehend this type of mind-boggling duplicity, intrigue, and betrayal, which are unfortunately all too common in the AfPak theater of operations, but which became glaringly obvious in May 2011.

Then, at some point between 2007 and 2010, Osama bin Laden transferred his base of operations from the very remote Chitral District to Abbottabad, a mere 31 miles from the nation’s capital at Islamabad. His wives reported living inside a million-dollar, ISI-constructed, walled mansion compound in Abbottabad, less than one mile from the Pakistani Military Academy, for the past five years. It remains unclear exactly when the vaunted al-Qa’ida leader made the final move himself, but Abbottabad was clearly a better location for communication with his insurgent forces in the field, although hardly the impenetrable alpine fortress that Chitral had been for him.

This author’s latest book, Mountain Wolf, describes in great detail the extreme difficulties involved in locating and targeting high-value terrorist leaders like bin Laden and Hekmatyar inside the essentially lawless Chitral District of northern Pakistan, and follows the twisted trail leading to his ultimate demise in Abbottabad.

Waziristan Mansion

As we now know, bin Laden was tracked to the walled compound of “Waziristan Mansion,” as the locals were calling it, in 2010. On 29 April, 2011, the morning of the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, President Obama finally issued the “kill” order for bin Laden, opting for a special operations raid instead of a B-2A bombing or a Hellfire missile attack in order to avoid collateral damage and provide positive identification of the target.

Under the overall command of Vice Admiral William H. McRaven, the veteran Navy SEAL officer in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), two dozen counterterrorist SEALs and CIA paramilitary operatives prepared to execute Operation Neptune Spear. Arriving from Jalalabad the night before a new moon to minimize lunar illumination, two highly modified MH-60 Black Hawk stealth special operations helicopters carried the primary assault force, supported by three larger, modified MH-47G Chinook transport choppers bearing Admiral McRaven himself, a support staff, various intelligence personnel, and a backup assault team.

They swooped over the Abbottabad compound at 1:00 a.m. on 2 May, 2011, and the assault force, evenly divided into one combat team and one sweeper team for evidence retrieval, prepared to fast-rope into the western courtyard and onto the rooftop. Included among the assault team was a Belgian Malinois bomb-sniffer/scout dog named “Cairo,” wearing his own special canine body armor. The American news media later described Cairo as “a really scary dog.”

Orbiting high overhead was a single RQ-170A Sentinel from Kandahar Air Base to provide on-scene surveillance of the battlespace with its new hyperspectral FLIR sensor. After all, the Agency had just shut down its Predator drone operations from Shamsi Airfield, Pakistan, ten days previously in response to the growing civilian casualties of the AfPak cross-border drone wars. Their MQ-1L operations were transferred to FOB Fenty, which had already been a drone base for some time.

But there was a stunning setback when one of the MH-60 stealth birds wobbled severely, apparently stalling inside the vortex ring state and brownout created by its own rotor wash, and made a controlled crash landing inside the western courtyard, snapping off its unusual tail boom as it impacted the south concrete wall and rolled onto its side, thus rendering the sophisticated helicopter unflyable. The shaken but thoroughly professional SEALs and Army flight crew simply grabbed their weapons, climbed out, and prepared to destroy the expensive aircraft with sizzling thermite grenades and other powerful explosives to prevent it from falling into al-Qa’ida, Pakistani, or Chinese hands later. This was precisely why there were three backup helicopters orbiting nearby. Accidents happen, especially in the heat of battle. The second MH-60 landed outside the north wall of the compound instead of allowing the SEALs to fast-rope.

“Osama! “Osama!”

Fully aware that there were approximately two dozen women and children present, complicating their task enormously, the SEALs then breached the outer courtyard walls with explosives, taking AKM assault rifle fire from al-Kuwaiti inside the guest house window to the south. Within the next several minutes, after withering fusillades of fire and lead streaked across the courtyard, the courier and his wife were killed in the nearby guest house, where they lived. On the first floor of the main mansion, his brother took a very precise head shot and toppled backward to the floor.

A woman’s voice, later identified as one of bin Laden’s wives, shrieked from the third floor landing, “Osama! Osama!” This inadvertently assisted the SEALs with the identification process.

As the assault force approached the staircase, one of bin Laden’s adult sons, Khaled, blocked the SEALs and was shot in the head. Then the shooting subsided as the combat team and sweeper team cleared the second floor of the mansion, rounding up frightened women and children. Osama bin Laden was briefly seen looking over the third-floor railing from above, so the assault force proceeded upstairs. After clearing part of the third floor, room-by-room, the SEALs opened the master bedroom door and came face-to-face with the unarmed bin Laden, his youngest wife, Amal al-Sadah, and their 12-year-old daughter, Safiyah.

There was a brief moment in which it appeared possible to capture the terrorist leader alive, but then Amal suddenly rushed the SEALs to give her husband enough time to reach his iconic AKS-74U carbine and Makarov pistol nearby. Uncertain whether she might be armed, one SEAL shot her in the calf of the leg to immobilize her, while bin Laden apparently did take advantage of the brief diversion to go for his weapons. He never made it.

Another SEAL double-tapped him with an HK416 carbine (other rumors include a new HK45CT pistol in .45 ACP, SIG P226R, P239, or new Colt CM901 7.62mm carbine). One bullet struck Osama in the chest and the other impacted just above his left eye, traversing through the front of his brain behind both eyes and doing catastrophic damage. He was killed instantly, and his tall, lean body hit the bedroom floor with a resounding thud. His left eyeball and a significant portion of his skull were blown away, exposing his bloody, ravaged brain. It was a truly gruesome sight.

Osama’s Visit to the Sharks

After positively identifying the body using a CIA facial-recognition program and his own wife’s visual identification, the SEALs transported his corpse first back to Jalalabad, then via CV-22B Osprey (with Navy F/A-18 fighter escort) to the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, on patrol in the North Arabian Sea. He was buried at sea within 24 hours, per Islamic custom. There were no American casualties in the blazing, surprise attack.

Osama bin Laden often boasted that, “I’m fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God.” Operation Neptune Spear accomplished at least part of that objective, but it remained doubtful that the departed al-Qa’ida leader’s wretched soul was in heaven now. For the United States of America, his long-overdue death brought closure to the horrors of the fiery 9/11 terrorist attacks and put other terrorist leaders on notice. No matter how long it takes, regardless of setbacks, hardships, an incredibly difficult hunt, and even a decade of brutal warfare, justice will be served. God bless America!

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Warren Gray is a former career intelligence officer with experience in the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC.) He also served in Europe and the Middle East, earned parachutist wings, eight more military qualification badges, and 20 military medals. He holds four college degrees, including a Master of Aeronautical Science degree, and is a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Combat Targeting School. His latest published novel, Mountain Wolf, is an incredibly detailed and realistic account of the relentless hunt for Osama bin Laden from 2009 until his recent death in Pakistan. It is now available from www.publishamerica.com. Warren Gray’s web site may be viewed at www.freewebs.com/warrengray/.