Word: tora
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...days after each mission, the commanders involved meet for a debriefing--called a "hot wash" because the facts are still so fresh--to share information and discuss lessons learned. Perhaps the most important knowledge so far came during the U.S. operation in Tora Bora last December, when Afghan allies proved ineffective as a fighting force. Rumors persist that Afghan soldiers allowed Osama bin Laden to slip away into Pakistan, a claim that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied again last week. Whether bin Laden escaped over the snow-capped mountains or not, U.S. forces now know that while "air power...
...Shah-i-Kot--or even its intensity. (After a week of fighting, U.S. and French planes were still bombing enemy positions relentlessly.) Privately, in the Pentagon, a conviction is growing that the battle may be a climactic moment in the war. Before Christmas, in the ridges and caves of Tora Bora, the Americans had let their Afghan proxies do most of the fighting on the ground. As a result, hundreds--perhaps thousands--of al-Qaeda fighters escaped to fight another day. In Shah-i-Kot the brunt of the dirty work has been borne by Americans. After a week...
...model" in Washington parlance had involved small numbers of U.S. special forces on the ground directing awesome U.S. air power and Afghan proxy infantry. That model proved effective in putting the Taliban to flight from Afghanistan's major cities. It was less successful in last December's standoff at Tora Bora, where thousands of al Qaeda-linked fighters appear to have escaped what had been presented as a ring of steel...
...Shah-i-Kot?or even its intensity. (After a week of fighting, U.S. and French planes were still bombing enemy positions relentlessly.) Privately, in the Pentagon, a conviction is growing that the battle may be a climactic moment in the war. Before Christmas, in the ridges and caves of Tora Bora, the Americans had let their Afghan proxies do most of the fighting on the ground. As a result, hundreds?perhaps thousands?of al-Qaeda fighters escaped to fight another day. In Shah-i-Kot the brunt of the dirty work has been borne by Americans. After a week...
When some 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters appeared to slip the dragnet at Tora Bora last December, the American forces learned a valuable lesson: If you want to get things done in Afghanistan, do them yourself. That's why when it traced a group of some 500 suspected bin Laden loyalists to a cave network in the Shahi Kot mountain range in Paktia province, the U.S. last weekend sent 1,000 of its own men - together with 200 special forces troops from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Denmark and Norway - to take a leading role in the ground offensive. Although...