straight at Taliban forces in the city. There were five thunderous explosions and all electric
power was knocked out throughout the capital.
But the United States never took its eye off the ball. The true objective was the total
destruction of al Qaeda and the leader who had engineered the infamous attack on the Twin
Towers — “the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century,” as the president described it. And that
meant a massive strike on the sinister network of caves and underground tunnels up in the
mountains, where bin Laden made his headquarters.
The cruise missiles had softened up the area, but that was only the start. The real
heavyweight punch from the world’s only superpower would come in the form of a gigantic
bomb — the BLU-82B/C-130, known as Commando Vault in Vietnam and now nicknamed
Daisy Cutter. This is a high-altitude, fifteen-thousand-pound conventional bomb that needs to be
delivered from the huge MC-130 aircraft because it is far too heavy
for the bomb racks on any
other attack aircraft.
This thing is awesome. It was originally designed to create instant clearings for helicopter
landings in the jungle. Its purpose in Afghanistan was as an antipersonnel weapon up in those
caves. Its lethal radius is colossal, probably nine hundred feet. Its flash and sound is obvious
from literally miles away. The BLU-82B is the largest conventional bomb ever built and, of
course, leaves no nuclear fallout. (For the record, the Hiroshima atom bomb was a thousand
times more powerful.)
On the upside, the Daisy Cutter is extremely reliable, no problems with wind speed or
thermal gradient. Its conventional explosive technique incorporates both agent and oxidizer. It is
not fuel-air explosive, like the old FAE systems used for much, much smaller bombs. It’s nearly
twelve feet long and more than four feet wide.
The BLU-82B depends on precise positioning
of the delivery aircraft, coordinates gotten
from fixed ground radar or onboard navigation equipment. The aircraft must be perfectly
positioned prior to final countdown and release. The navigator needs to make dead-accurate
ballistic and wind computations.
The massive blast effect of the bomb means it cannot be released below an altitude of
6,000 feet. Its warhead, containing 12,600 pounds of low-cost GSX slurry (ammonium nitrate,
aluminum powder, and polystyrene), is detonated by a 38-inch fuse extender a few feet above
ground level, so it won’t dig a crater. The entire blast blows outward, producing overpressure of
1,000 pounds per square inch. Hence the nickname Daisy Cutter.
The United States has never specified how many of these things were dropped on the
Tora Bora area of the White Mountains, where the al Qaeda camps were located. But there were
at least four, maybe seven. The first one, according to a public announcement by the Pentagon,
was dropped after a reported sighting of bin Laden. We can only
imagine the crushing effect
such a blast would have inside the caves where the al Qaeda high command and senior
leadership operated. Wouldn’t have been too good even if you were standing in the middle of a
field — but a cave! Jesus, that’s brutal. That thing wiped out hundreds of the enemy at a time.
The United States really did a number on the Taliban, flattened their stronghold in Kunduz in the
north, shelled them out of the Shomali Plains north of Kabul, carpet bombed them anywhere they
could be located around the Bagram air base, where, four years later, we were headed in the C-
130.
In the fall of 2001, the Taliban and al Qaeda were mostly fleeing the U.S. offensive or
surrendering. In the subsequent years, they drifted together on the other side of the Pakistani
border, reformed, and began their counteroffensive to retake Afghanistan.
Somehow these hickory-tough tribesmen not only survived the onslaught of American bombing
and escaped from the
advancing Northern Alliance, but they also evaded one of the biggest
manhunts in the history of warfare as an increasingly frustrated United States moved heaven and
earth to capture bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and the rest. I guess their propensity to run like hell
from strong opposition and their rapid exit into the Pakistani mountains on the other side of the
border allowed them to limit their human and material resources.
It also bought them time. And while they undoubtedly lost many of their followers after a
front-row view of what the American military could and would do, they also had many months
to begin recruiting and training a brand-new generation of supporters. And now they were back
as an effective fighting army, launching guerrilla operations against the U.S.-led coalition forces
only four years after they’d lost power, been driven into exile, and had nearly been annihilated.
As we prepared for our
final approach to the great, sprawling U.S. base at Bagram, the Taliban
were once again out there, killing aid workers and kidnapping foreign construction workers.
Parts of eastern and southern Afghanistan have been officially designated unsafe due to
increasingly daring Taliban attacks. There was evidence they were extending their area of
influence, working closely again with bin Laden’s al Qaeda, forging new alliances with other
rebel groups and anti-government warlords. Same way they’d grabbed power last time, right?
Back in 1996.
Only this time they had one principal ambition before seizing power, and that was to
destabilize the U.S.-led coalition forces and eventually drive them out of Afghanistan forever.
I ought to mention the Pashtuns, the world’s oldest living tribal group; there are about forty-two
million of them. Twenty-eight million live in Pakistan, and 12.5
million of them live in
Afghanistan; that’s 42 percent of the entire population. There are about 88,000 living in Britain
and 44,000 in the U.S.A.
In Afghanistan, they live primarily in the mountains of the northeast, and they also have
heavily populated areas in the east and south. They are a proud people who adhere to Islam and
live by a strict code of honor and culture, observing rules and laws known as
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