US started bombing Tora Bora on 8 December, he got a call from Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations. ‘He asked me about the possibility of sending troops into the tribal agencies of Khyber and Kurram, as there was a possibility of bad guys coming over the border from Afghanistan. I didn’t think it was a good idea, as we had no government presence, no police, no intelligence in those areas …’
Coming from the tribal areas himself, he knew it would upset decades of delicate balance since the days of the Raj. The British had found the only way to deal with the Pashtun tribes along the frontier was by stick and carrot, giving subsidies to their chiefs or ‘maliks’ and putting in representatives called Political Agents who could impose collective punishment on the whole village or tribe for any misdemeanour.13 As long as the tribes stayed quiet, government would stay out of their affairs. The idea was they would serve as a buffer or ‘prickly hedge’ to guard the entrance to British India.
When Pakistan was created in 1947 this policy continued and these so-called tribal areas were left semi-autonomous, with federal control extending only a hundred yards either side of the road. The Pakistan army had never entered these areas, yet would now be doing so at the behest of kafir foreigners and against one of the key tribal principles of melmastia – providing hospitality to a guest or those who come looking for sanctuary (which of course also made it the perfect hiding place).
General Aurakzai feared this could spark a tribal uprising. ‘But the Americans said if we didn’t do it, there was the possibility of hot pursuit, which would have been humiliating for us, so I said we must act. It was also an opportunity to open up these inaccessible areas. We spoke to the local tribesmen and said either you allow in Pakistani troops or you will have US troops and aerial bombing, which they were very averse to. So they promised full support, as long as we were not a permanent presence, and told us they would not harbour foreign terrorists. Three days later, on 11 December, we dropped troops on the passes. There was no road, so the main body had to go on foot and equipment carried on mules. Within ten days we had arrested 240 al Qaeda and killed ten. We lost seven of our own men. It was all going well. But then unfortunately India mobilised its forces on our eastern border [in reaction to an attack on its parliament] and we had to decide what to do as we couldn’t be in both places.’14
Berntsen was convinced that had Bush not refused the request for more soldiers, the al Qaeda leader would have been killed at Tora Bora instead of becoming a recruiting tool for jihadis, and the world would have been a different place. ‘There isn’t a day when I don’t think “If only”,’ he told me. ‘We didn’t need much more. If we’d had six to eight hundred men we could have finished the job. Afghanistan was a flawed masterpiece.’
In 2009 a Senate report chaired by Senator John Kerry on what happened at Tora Bora would reach the same conclusion: ‘The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan.’
In Jalalabad I went to see one of the three main commanders to whom the Americans had contracted out the fight, to hear his version of events.
Haji Abdul Zahir was the closest thing Afghanistan had to mujaheddin aristocracy. He was the nephew of the late Abdul Haq and the son of Haji Qadir, who had also been a commander, and was one of five Vice Presidents to Karzai and one of the few Pashtuns in the administration. In July 2002 Haji Qadir was assassinated by gunmen as he left his office in Kabul, his truck riddled with thirty-six bullets.
Haji Zahir’s house was a study in warlord chic. A golden chandelier dominated the marble entrance hall, and a sweeping staircase led up to a balcony with a billiards table. Everywhere there were blown-up photographs of himself and his late father and uncle. He was waiting for me, lounging on cushions on a raised platform beneath a gilt-framed oil painting of his father with an Afghan flag.
A servant brought us glasses of fresh pomegranate juice and small bowls of almonds and pistachios, and Zahir’s personal cameraman appeared to record the interview. But Zahir’s words were drowned out by what I thought at first was screaming, but which he explained was the sound of birds.
‘I keep hundreds of birds,’ he said. ‘I love birds.’ I presumed he meant fighting birds – a tradition in a country where just about every hobby involves fighting – but he looked pained when I asked. ‘Not fighting birds,’ he pouted. ‘I like them singing, it’s very sweet.’15
Somebody was dispatched to take out the birds, and he began to talk about Tora Bora, using floor cushions to illustrate the topography. ‘From the beginning the mission was not strong enough and the plan was weak,’ he said. ‘If you have enemies on this pillow and you don’t surround it, then they will run away. So without any plan the planes were flying and bombing, but the ways were open so of course they ran away.’
Like Berntsen, he had no doubt that bin Laden was there. ‘I myself caught twenty-one al Qaeda prisoners, some from Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi and Chechnya. One was a boy called Abu Bakr, and I asked him when he had last seen bin Laden. He said ten days earlier bin Laden had come to his checkpoint and sat with them for twenty minutes and drank tea and said, “Don’t worry, don’t lose morale, we’ll be successful and I am here.”’
Zahir went to join the fight after he switched on CNN one evening and saw an interview with his rival commanders Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman. ‘They were saying they were in Tora Bora with 3,000 soldiers. Then General Ali called me and asked, “Why aren’t you here?” I said, “We can’t just go without any plan,” but then I spoke to my father who was at the Bonn Conference [to choose the interim Afghan government] and he said, “This is our fight, so prepare your things and go.” I got 1,100–1,200 men ready, and we arrived there at night. The first shock was that Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman had boasted on CNN they had all these men, but in fact there weren’t even four or five hundred. They were just telling the Americans they had more to get more money.’
They had a meeting, and divided the area into three. Haji Zaman was to be in charge of Wazir valley, General Ali in charge of Milawa where bin Laden’s refuge was, and Zahir in charge of Tora Bora and Girikhel village. According to Zahir, Ali was being directed by the Americans while Zaman was liaising with the British. ‘There was a lot of money floating around. The US were paying $100–150 per day for each soldier, and the others claimed they had 3–5,000 men. I didn’t receive anything from them, not one gun, one bullet, one dollar. I spent $40,000 of my own money.’ (Later I would meet Hazrat Ali, who said Zahir had got the same as them.)
After a day of preparation they all set off up the mountains to their areas. By then the bombing of the encampment at Milawa had started. The plan had been to attack al Qaeda from the Wazir valley side, to trap them as the special forces wanted. Then, on 11 December, the evening the attack was due, Zaman, whose men were that side, said that al Qaeda had sent a radio message asking to be given till 8 o’clock the following morning, when they would surrender.
‘I didn’t agree,’ said Zahir. ‘I said, if they want to surrender, why not today? They’re the enemy – why are we giving them twelve hours to run away?’ But Zaman replied that they needed time to get in contact with each other, and halted the advance of his troops.
Zahir believed that Zaman had been bribed to let them disappear over the passes, and was convinced that the majority escaped. ‘Supposedly there were six to eight hundred people,’ he said. ‘I captured twenty-one. Ali and Zaman got nine. Dead bodies were not easy to count, but around 150. That means at least four to six hundred got away. For all that money spent and energy and bombing, only thirty were caught.’
To this day he remains mystified by the Americans. ‘Why weren’t there more Americans in Tora Bora?’ he asked. ‘Even after Delta Force arrived, they weren’t more than fifty or sixty. Believe me, there were more journalists than soldiers. It would have been easy to get bin Laden there. I