American soldiers wait to board a Chinook helicopter at Forward Operating Base Airborne in Wardak Province.
The nights were hot in Jalalabad, and although we had a ceiling fan in the guest room to help cool us, we all woke up very dehydrated.
Making it to Tora Bora meant we were facing a marathon, and I told Haroon that at the very least we needed to drink if we were going to keep our wits about us. The last thing we wanted was to be lethargic and disoriented if we got into trouble in Taliban territory.
By the time we left the WADAN staff house it was already over 100 degrees. The road to Tora Bora was as dangerous as the one from Kabul to Jalalabad, but not because of traffic accidents: the hilly terrain created a perfect environment for bandits and the Taliban to wait in ambush.
We knew that to get to Tora Bora safely we’d need the help of the Nangarhar provincial governor, an outsize and controversial figure named Gul Agha Sherzai. Originally from Kandahar Province, Sherzai was the son of a teashop owner and dog fighter who became famous as a mujahedin commander against the Soviets.
When Mullah Omar holed himself up in Kandahar after his government in Kabul collapsed in 2001, he was pursued by two different Pashtun tribes: the Popolzai, led by Hamid Karzai, and the Barakzai, led by Sherzai. Both were assisted by U.S. Special Forces, who directed air strikes against Taliban positions.
When Kandahar fell, Karzai went on to become the new Afghan president; Sherzai was named governor of Kandahar Province in 2004. But his tenure was short-lived: he was removed after allegations surfaced that he ruled the province like a warlord, committing widespread human rights abuses, using checkpoints on Highway 1 to extort money from travelers, setting up protection rackets, and trafficking in opium. Despite this, he remained a close Karzai ally and was eventually named governor of Nangarhar Province (a post he resigned in October 2013 when he announced his candidacy for the Afghan presidency in 2014).
Haroon had contacted Sherzai’s press secretary, and we’d arranged to meet him outside the gates of the governor’s compound that morning. But when we arrived, the press secretary told us that Sherzai had been summoned to Kabul by Karzai for a special meeting; he didn’t know when he’d return to Jalalabad.
We explained that we wanted to go to Tora Bora and that Governor Sherzai had in the past provided a security escort to journalists trying to get there. Would he do the same for us? The press secretary called his counterpart at the Afghan National Police provincial headquarters a few blocks away and arranged a meeting with the deputy chief of police, Muhammad Massum Hashimi.
My journey to Tora Bora in 2001 had been the culmination of the trip that began when I crossed the Amu Darya from Tajikistan into Afghanistan. After my failed attempt to drive that converted bus to Kandahar with Tony Avila, we regrouped and made a plan to go to Tora Bora instead. It was there that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters had retreated, possibly on their way to refuge in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Americans had already begun daily air strikes on their positions in the mountains.
Like our shelved attempt for Kandahar, this would be a dangerous trip. On November 19, 2001, just a few weeks earlier, four foreign journalists had been killed in an ambush while traveling in a convoy from Jalalabad to Kabul: Italian reporter Maria Grazia Cutuli, Spanish reporter Julio Fuentes, Afghan photojournalist Azizullah Haidari, and Australian photojournalist Harry Burton.
But Avila, videographer Tony Zumbado, and soundman Manny Garcia and I made it there safely after a harrowing drive that took the entire day aboard our newly christened “Tora Bora Bus.”
In my journal, I wrote about what we witnessed after we arrived.
DECEMBER 2001: GUNFIRE LULLABIES
The White Mountains soar 12,000 feet into an azure-blue sky. They are snowcapped, jagged, princely. And because America’s blood enemy, Al Qaeda, is burrowed into their crevices, they are being blasted away, slowly but relentlessly, with every passing American B-52 and B1-B bomber.
You hear the planes before you see them—and then it is just their contrails: dual streams of smoke sketching arcs overhead. They drop their payloads and bank south, back across eastern Afghanistan, back across the Indian Ocean to their bases at Diego Garcia. They fly so high their crews cannot possibly know what their bombs look, sound, smell like, when they finally hit the ground. The kill zone. This is what they look like: they look like birds, their black smoke plumes look like birds to me. In one I see a rooster, in another a swan. Distinct silhouettes, battlefield Rorschach tests, ink blots of ordinance against the Afghan horizon.
The shock waves of the explosions are dulled as they cross the valley toward us. But they are still persuasive, their concussions a silencing voice, ripe with anger, full of vengeance. We watch from a forward front-line position. There are dozens of other journalists here. It is a theater of war and war as theater. Tripods, microphones, lenses are all pointed toward the action. Only the faces of the television correspondents look away—looking back into their cameras with the detonation of thousand-pounders providing the backdrop. The very ground we stand on was, only a week ago, an Al Qaeda camp. But that was before the BLU 82. Before the Daisy Cutter. The largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal. It detonates just prior to hitting the ground, sucking up all the surrounding oxygen and leaving a path of destruction five football fields wide in the pattern of a daisy. The U.S. bomber dropped one here, and now there is nothing but scorched earth. Trees burned down to their roots—trucks, tanks, weapons incinerated.
The mujahedin fighters, or muj, allies in the American effort to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, look at the journalists with a mix of amusement and contempt. They laugh as reporters who can’t tell the difference between outgoing and incoming duck or fall to the ground when muj tanks fire into the hills. They laugh louder when reporters scramble for their cars when the occasional Al Qaeda mortar and machine gun round does whiz overhead. While I shoot the latest explosion with my mini DV camera, a print reporter on my right is hugging the ground in a fetal position. The muj tease him, imitating rocket fire by making whistling noises. They are, after all, children of war.
I talk to a soldier named Zacara. He says he is fourteen but can’t be more than twelve. He says in his entire life he has not known a day without war. A generation raised on gunfire lullabies, most trained to do nothing more but clean and fire their Russian PKM machine gun or rocket-propelled grenades. These men—and boys—are as rough as the landscape, calloused to the fears of battlefield dilettantes. But the contempt is mutual. Most reporters must hire the same muj from local commanders for their own protection against bandits, landscapes littered with landmines, cluster bombs, and other dangers. Some are honorable, duty bound, willing to risk their own lives for those in their care. Others are mercenaries, ready to fight for paychecks rather than principles. Willing to side with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or America if the price is right.
The office of Deputy Chief Muhammad Massum Hashimi was long and narrow, with sixteen chairs, eight on each side, leading up to his desk at the end. On the wall behind him were the requisite pictures of President Karzai and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Men were already seated in most of the chairs closest to Hashimi when we were brought inside the office. We shook hands with him and a few of the men on the right side nearest the deputy chief’s desk, uniformed officers who got up and relinquished their seats for us in a display of typical Afghan hospitality. We sat down and were offered chai and waited while Hashimi finished the three or four different conversations he was having with his men—all while taking phone calls.
When he was through, I introduced myself and explained what we wanted to do. Haroon interpreted. When Tora Bora was mentioned, Hashimi’s calm, relaxed expression turned into pretend exasperation. The road to Tora Bora, he said, was watched closely by criminals and the Taliban and often mined with improvised explosive devices. There had just been an attack on the road last week, he told us.
“That’s why we need your help,” I explained. “Is it possible to get a police escort from here to Tora Bora?”
The deputy chief considered the question. Then his phone rang and he answered it. He excused himself and left the room. That’s when the remaining men, some of his senior staff, began asking us questions: Why did we want to go to Tora Bora? What would we do there? And some personal questions as well: Were we married? Any children? How old was I? Really? That old? But you have the body of a twenty-five-year-old. Then Hashimi came back into the room and sat behind his desk.
“How important is it for you to go to Tora Bora?” he asked me.
I exaggerated, implying that what I reported from Tora Bora could impact the U.S.-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement. Almost universally, Afghan National Security Forces wanted some kind of continued help from the U.S. military and its allies after the withdrawal. The bilateral agreement would spell out exactly what kind of help that would mean: air power, ground forces, more weapons, supplies, spare parts? Hashimi raised his eyebrows at my answer.
“In that case,” he said, “I must do my very best to help you. But the road is very dangerous.”
“What about a helicopter?” I asked “That way we could avoid the road completely.” Hashimi nodded slightly and told us to come back the next day after he discussed the issue with the Nangarhar police chief. While I didn’t want to lose a day, I was committed to making the trip safely, especially since it wouldn’t be just my life at risk. A helicopter was the smartest move, and based on Hashimi’s response I was cautiously optimistic.
We left his office. We still hadn’t had anything to drink, and we were all parched. I told Haroon that he and Hakim had exceptions to the fast since the Koran allows travelers to forgo fasting during their journey. He agreed. But we still didn’t want to be conspicuous. Hakim drove around to several different shops until we found one with a refrigerated beverage cooler. Because we were so sapped of energy and dehydrated, we bought a half-dozen large cans of Hakim’s favorite, Monster Energy Drink (energy drinks have become very popular in Afghanistan since the Americans arrived) and equal amounts of water. Then we drove around town looking for a place to drink them without being seen.
Hakim pulled under the shade of some trees next to a riverbank where local boys were cooling off and swimming. With our backs to them, we tilted the cans and took huge gulps of the sugary, heavily caffeinated sodas.
“I feel like were all teenagers in high school sneaking away to drink a six-pack of beer,” I said, and we all laughed and continued to drain the cans, getting some of our energy back.
After finishing his drinks, Alex got out of the car and walked up to the riverbank. Almost immediately, some young boys began talking to him. Because of his Cuban heritage, black hair, and olive skin, a lot of people had already mistaken him for a local: people here had darker complexions than those in Kabul.
We could see what was happening through the rearview mirror.
“Better go up and save him, Hakim,” I said, “before he gets into trouble.” Hakim got out of the car and walked over.
“Those people in the restaurant over there are watching us, too,” Haroon said, pointing to a small complex of mud-brick building behind us. “They probably think we’re bad Muslims, drinking and smoking.”
“Probably,” I nodded. “But if they really knew who we were it could be a lot worse.”
We laughed, but I was starting to feel anxious about our chances of getting to Tora Bora. I had learned that the longer things took, the less likely they were to happen. Tora Bora seemed an essential piece of this story, the place in which a dozen years ago we thought we would see the destruction of the Taliban and maybe even the capture of Osama bin Laden. Back then I believed I might be witnessing the end of the war. But how wrong I was.
What was it like today, I wondered. Who was in control? When I’d worked for the major American television network NBC News, my bosses were obsessed with the caves of Tora Bora. It was there, after all, inside the White Mountains, that Osama bin Laden had reportedly built a multilayered underground fortress with room for thousands of fighters, an elaborate ventilation system, an munitions depot, a hospital, roads, even a hydroelectric plant to power it all. Was it real or just myth? We felt pressure from New York to find out.
I detailed one of our attempts that ended in utter folly:
DECEMBER 2001: THE CAVES
Our fixer has introduced us to a wily muj named Attica. Attica has a penchant for showiness that’s evident almost immediately from the double-barreled sawed-off shotgun he carries, hanging from a shoulder sling. Attica says he got the shotgun from a captured Al Qaeda cave—and if we’re ready, he can take us to one.
“But it is so dangerous,” he tells us. Jim Avila, the NBC correspondent I am working with, looks at me and raises his eyebrows. We both know this mean the price is going up. To get anywhere, to do anything in Afghanistan, you must pay for a guide. By the time we get done negotiating, Attica has spelled out the multiple perils that may befall us from U.S. bombs, stray Al Qaeda fighters, or even other muj. We’ve topped four figures.
“Afghani-scam,” I say to Avila. He nods. But the caves are not just a story in Tora Bora, they are an obsession. After nine weeks of American bombing, they have developed an almost mythical quality. The last hideout of Osama bin Laden. What did they look like? How do the Al Qaeda live in them? Do they have cable? Everyone wants to peer inside the caves, including our bosses at NBC. We have to find someone who can take us in. Attica says he can—cash on delivery. Two people only: Avila, a handheld camcorder, and me. But there’s more. We have to dress like Afghans. “Otherwise it is too, too dangerous.” Attica repeats his mantra. We believe he is simply toying with us. Shelling out the cash is not enough; he needs to make us look silly as well.
An hour later we are driving toward the front lines and the supposed captured Al Qaeda caves. Jim is dressed like a Pashtun, with a long flowing shirt and baggy pants. I’m given some fatigues and a heavy shawl, called a patu, to cover up my camera. We’re both wearing pakools, traditional wool caps, to cover our heads. According to the guards at our compound, neither of us looks very convincing. But soon, we’ll discover, it won’t matter at all. When we drive by the hordes of media covering that day’s bombing runs, despite our disguises, a few of them recognize us. Soon they are all in their vehicles, following us down the road. Our secret tour of the captured Al Qaeda caves has now become a fifty-car convoy. In the confusion, Attica slips out of our truck and disappears. The whole thing is off. Thankfully, no money has changed hands, but Avila and I, all dressed up with nowhere to go, are left leading a parade of story-hungry journalists down a road that will end in ridicule.
The next day, when we return to the deputy chief’s office, he tells us the only safe way to Tora Bora is indeed by helicopter—but the national police in this province don’t have one.
“What if we drove by ourselves,” I asked, “could we get there safely?”
“You might get there,” Hashimi said, “but I don’t know what might happen after that.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the Taliban control Tora Bora,” he said, shrugging his shoulders slightly.
And so there was the answer. The Taliban’s revolving door in and out of Afghanistan, shut down at the beginning of the war, now seemed to be back in operation. Not only had they not been defeated there twelve years ago, but many of them, along with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda fighters, had escaped. That might not have mattered, I thought, had the Afghan government been less corrupt and a little more effective in all the years since.
While the government hadn’t lost the military war, primarily because of the tens of thousands of international troops that had been keeping them in power, they had lost the public trust and their faith that what the government could offer was substantively different or better than what the Taliban could provide. That doubt had created a hole large enough for the Taliban to slink through, and they had once again become a viable threat. Back then, I had believed things would turn out so much differently. Even the myth of bin Laden’s caves had been destroyed. So how could the war not be over?
From my journal:
DECEMBER 2001: SMOKE PLUME BIRD
These are the faces of the enemy: Al Qaeda prisoners captured by the muj. At Commander Haji Zahir’s mud-hut compound, they are paraded in front of the media like the latest fashions from Paris. Shutters click, cameras whir. But these are not the wild-eyed fanatics we had created in our imagination. These are not the single-minded, suicidal killers we half expected to see. Instead, the muj lead out groups of bandaged and broken men and make them sit on wooden bed frames. They looked disoriented, shell-shocked, ready to call it quits and go home. One man has a bandaged head, another a bandaged foot. One covers his face with his hands, another with a scarf. It is a Taliban/Al Qaeda perp walk. No questions allowed. The men are simply introduced as Arabs. There are nine in the first group, all wounded in some way. Then a second group of nine is led out all at once. Their hands are bound behind their backs with red rope. They look somewhat healthier, but no more fearsome. They are subdued, defeated for the moment. A Western correspondent next to me looks on them with disdain, says with satisfaction, “Death to America, huh?”
The local commanders here say the war is over. The back of Al Qaeda is broken. The caves overrun. Although usually prone to gross exaggeration, they do have some evidence. U.S. bombing backed up by muj fighters and U.S Special Forces on the ground have left hundreds of dead Al Qaeda fighters in the White Mountains and hundreds more running for the exits, Osama bin Laden among them. Two captured Al Qaeda fighters say they saw bin Laden ten days ago, that he shaved his beard before bidding them farewell.
Today we have driven an hour into the White Mountains to another captured Al Qaeda base. There are deep craters everywhere. Acres of twisted metal, burned-out tanks and trucks, shreds of clothing, shoes, an ammo belt, a Taliban black turban, bits and pieces of the Koran. And there is a cave. It is very close now, just a short climb up a steep hill. When I reach it, I see a teardrop opening dug into solid rock. I turn on the light on my camcorder and step inside. It is nothing more than a rabbit’s burrow, 6 x 8 at the most. Not even high enough to stand up. A hole in the side of the mountain. Simply a place to run for cover. It is filled with nothing more than a pile of spent machine gun rounds. It is interesting, eerie even, but far from mythical. And no signs of Osama bin Laden. He was gone, long gone, disappeared, like the smoke plume birds made by the American bombs.
But bin Laden wouldn’t escape forever, although for years after, it did seem that he had. In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, twenty-five U.S. Navy Seals lifted off from forward operating base Jalalabad in two modified Blackhawk helicopters. The operation’s reputed code name: Geronimo;*their destination: a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In a forty-minute assault during which one of their helicopters crashed, they killed America’s most wanted man, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, ending a manhunt that had lasted nearly a decade. One of bin Laden’s sons, two other men, and one woman were also killed. Inside the compound, the Seals collected five computers, ten hard drives, and dozens of other storage devices—a jackpot of intelligence on the inner workings of Al Qaeda.
Bin Laden was given a burial at sea, dropped from the deck of the American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into the Arabian Sea. His body was prepared in accordance with Islamic law, according to U.S. officials.
In August 2013, a few weeks after I left Jalalabad during my most recent trip, I heard from contacts in the area that the Afghan National Police in Nangarhar had fought a two-day battle with the Taliban just outside Jalalabad. Twenty-two officers were reportedly killed in the firefight, along with seventy-six Taliban. Contrary to what I had witnessed a few weeks earlier during the protests in Taloqan City, some of the ANP were still willing to fight. But which battles they would choose to engage was still anyone’s guess.