Battle of Tora Bora

It is believed that bin Laden and his key supporters fled there after Jalalabad fell, and eventually escaped to Pakistan during the Battle of Tora Bora. There is much controversy over the policies and tactics with which the battle was fought, involving decisions up to the level of the U.S. President. Principally Afghan forces, with Special Forces and Delta Force assistance, pursued bin Laden; this led to an opinion that “because there were not enough boots on the ground, that some bad guys got away. The way to rectify that was to increase the became the later concept for Operation ANACONDA in the Shahi-i-Khot Valley.

Tora Bora is an extremely rugged area, south of Jalalabad, as having two valleys running north and south. One U.S. soldier called it a "vertical no man's land, a hellish place of massive, rocky, jagged unforgiving snow-covered ridgelines and high peaks separated by deep ravines and valleys studded with mines.

Forces to be deployed
There was considerable argument, up to the Presidential level, on how to proceed against Tora Bora, where bin Laden had been identified. CIA had proposed putting American troops on the Pakistan side of Tora Bora, saying Pakistan could not contain bin Laden. President Bush, according to Suskind, decided to trust Pakistan. As an alternative, it had been proposed to mine the passes leading out of Tora Bora, but some U.S. allies had said they would leave the coalition if mines were used.

MG Dell Dailey, the senior United States Special Operations Command officer in Afghanistan, briefed Delta that killing bin Laden was their goal. He was concerned about the risk, although not as strongly as COL Mulholland; these were professional judgments about fighting in an unknown mountainous environment, with unknown allies and no support base. Bertsen wrote that Dailey did not want to read the CIA operational order for Tora Bora. While the details were redacted, the CIA team asked for a Ranger battalion as a quick reaction force, rather than Afghans.

After an air strike on December 9, Delta troops arrived as an assault element, to supplement Special Forces observation teams in place. The Special Forces personnel had been ordered to stay four miles from the battlefield, giving Delta Force a clear field. A first Delta probe went in on the 10th for reconnaissance. British Special Boat Service operators joined the effort on the 11th; signals intelligence sugggested bin Laden was still in the area.

Delta went in again on the 12th, after considerable friction with two different Afghan leaders. Eventually, they thought they had spotted him and called in multiple airstrikes, believing they had killed him. In a subsequent interview with CBS News Fury said he thinks "bin Laden was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel from an American bomb, and was then hidden a town next to the al Qaeda cemetery..." was sheltered by Afghans, and "It’s my understanding they believe he got into a vehicle. He moved as far as he could and then got out and walked across or was carried across into Pakistan. Free and clear...When this is all over and this all dies down, and once we finally do grab Osama Bin Laden, I think the fact that we lost him in Tora Bora will move out of my memory so to speak. I'm looking forward to those days."

Explanations at command level
GEN Franks, on December 14, said Pakistani forces were providing assistance on the routes out of Afghanistan into Pakistan. Opposition forces are moving north and south from Jalalabad forming "a hammer and an anvil." He did not know bin Laden's location.