Bin Laden: before Abbottabad (merged thread)

[ilots]

Back in 2001, we were buying loyality...plain and simple.

Renting; not buying. You don't buy Afghan loyalty, you only rent it.

[davidbfpo]

Wayback in the days of Imperial (British) India and along the Afghan border the Brits recruited and paid a mainly local military, known as the South Waziristan Scouts for example to defend the frontier and police what is now the FATA. Yes, Pashtun loyalty maybe different from Afghan, but it was effective and occassionally bloody. The Scouts had a tiny cadre of British officers and some, technical NCOs.

I understand the current Pakistani para-military forces along the same frontier, usually referred to as the Frontier Corps, largely follow the Imperial mould and have more local officers.

If an Afghan soldier or dirt farmer can earn more fighting for the Taliban, is there any surprise he changes sides?

From a distant armchair.

davidbfpo

[davidbfpo]

The link to Tom Odom's excellent review on SWJ Blog: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/200...ill-bin-laden/

Thanks Tom; your review combines experience and perspective.

davidbfpo

[SWJED]

Ditto David's comments Tom.

[SWJED]

Part 1



Part 2

[Entropy]

A third ditto on David's comments. I'll have to get this book to compliment the others I have - it sounds like it provides a new perspective on the hunt for UBL at Tora Bora.

[Tom Odom]

Thanks guys but DF deserves the credit. I merely reviewed it.

It does offer a no BS view of what happened and I can see why highers would not be happy that it is out. DF is objective in laying out the facts and conditions as he faced them, especially conditions beyond his control. Factual accounts like his make flights of fancy analysis on what went wrong or what should have been done read like the fantasy most are.

Good book. Great soldier leading great soldiers.

Tom

[Entropy]

Steve Coll's blog has a bit about Dalton's book at the end of an interesting post on Haqqani:

I keep up with the Bin Laden news so you don’t have to; this includes reading the recently published book, “Kill Bin Laden,” authored by the pseudonymous Delta Force commander who was present at Tora Bora in December 2001. Despite all of the pseudonyms and uncertainties about source material, it seems to be a reliable account and it has some interesting bits in it about the battle and about Delta. Overall, however, it does not provide a fundamentally new picture of what happened at the battle. It tracks other accounts in key respects: Osama was there; on December 14th, he was under heavy bombardment and thought he would die; sometime after that, he escaped; the Afghan militias that the United States relied upon did not see the battle as we did and were unreliable, under-motivated partners; and our intelligence about Bin Laden’s movements and inner circle, then and later, was incredibly poor. Delta, at least, had virtually no human sources to work with, and it could not even be sure Bin Laden was alive or dead for long after the battle, never mind figure out where he might be hiding.

[davidbfpo]

This article by Peter Bergen appeared 22nd December 2009, sub-titled 'How Osama bin Laden slipped from our grasp: The definitive account':http://www.tnr.com/article/the-battl...m_medium=email

I am sure there were other threads on the battle, but this I think is the most recent and Dalton Fury does get a mention.

[Pete]

Tom Ricks was writing about Tora Bora in his blog the other day. Click below to read it.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts...a_who_is_right

[davidbfpo]

The BBC is due to broadcast a TV programme tomorrow, part of the excellent series 'The Conspiracy Files' entitled 'Is Osama Bin Laden dead or alive?'. Link to a pre-broadcast article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/8444069.stm

The series website and the programme will be available tomorrow evening: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...es/default.stm

Opening lines:

Osama Bin Laden died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from a US bomb or from a serious kidney disease. Or so the conspiracy theory goes. The theory that has developed on the web since 9/11 is that US intelligence services are manufacturing the Bin Laden statements to create an evil bogeyman, to justify the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and back at home. So is the world's most wanted man still alive?

Ending lines:

former CIA agent, Art Keller, is more damning:
"I think those conspiracy theories that he is dead are pretty much laughable," he says. It's easier to explain things away with a conspiracy than to face up to the difficult reality. In this case, the difficult reality is that we're trying to operate in possibly the worst area in the world and track someone who's very crafty and elusive and putting considerable effort to stay off our radar."

I know Bin laden's name appears in many threads, notably the recent 'Kill Bin Laden' thread, but so many issues are involved here: politics, info warfare etc it deserves its own thread.

[SWJ Blog]

How Bin Laden Escaped in 2001: The Lessons of Tora Bora

Entry Excerpt:



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