Hunting bin Laden: Part 3 - Storming the Compound

So, they've found his courier, the Kuwaiti. Obama is in office. America seems unlikely to employ a "forgive and forget" policy. What's next?

Well, it's the final stretches now. They didn't know it at the time, but finding the courier would be the key to the final location and putting the whole issue to rest. The States started by talking around a little, and managed to find out the courier's real name (Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed) from an unnamed third country. Managing to track the man down, an asset in Pakistan saw the man's truck and followed it back to Osama's compound.

It's location was in quiet Abbottabad, a place where there are plenty of schools, a low crime rate, and as far as Pakistan goes, a quiet retirement community. Considering that a very real possibility was Osama hiding in a cave, he seemed to have done quite well for himself. He had the place built especially for his needs (well-defended, secretive compounds don't just spring up), designed as a two-story and adding on a third specifically for Osama and his wife (well, one wife). In the compound he had four wives, aged 29-62, a dozen grandkids, as well as the Kuwaiti, his brother, and their families. It was a veritable community inside a single compound.

A view of the compound; it's a bit of a fixer-upper, but
location, location, location.

Naturally, it was well protected; twelve foot high walls, barbed wire, security cameras... the works. The kind of place where "Ocean's Fourteen" might take place. Oddly, the high security and tech stuff goes against the bin Laden style - a very stripped down, spartan existence. Both air conditioning and heating were low, the beds were made from boards hammered together, and there weren't any pictures or paintings.  There was one particularly memorable item, however. To make sure he kept his youthful appearance, he used "Just for Men" on his beard and hair. I guess he wanted to be...

A jihadi and a hottie.

Now, most of this stuff couldn't be discovered from the outside. They could only get so much info, and no one in the surrounding area had any idea of what was going on inside the mysterious, well-protected house/fortress hybrid. Worried about a major international incident, the Americans desperately wanted to know who was inside before storming it. Their ideas for figuring out who was inside ranged greatly from realistic and practical to hairbrained schemes that the most ridiculous television plotlines wouldn't come up with - one was to lob stink-bombs into the place and hope they come out, and another was to place loudspeakers near the compound and pretend to be the voice of Allah, calling for them to leave. Unfortunately, they would have to deal with copyright issues with the latter. As for definitive proof, there was little; just a lot of circumstantial evidence. They believed Osama to be a man they called "the pacer", who would walk the compound daily, providing only the image of his shadowy silhouette obscured by drapes above him.

Even though bin Laden's influence was fading (even pro-al-Qaeda people didn't like the fact that they were also killing Islamic citizens and offered few solutions to their difficulties) the U.S. was still willing to risk a lot going after him. Fortunately for them, they were now allowed to do covert missions without letting congress or the public know, and this would certainly be one of them. The fallout of saying they think they know where Osama is, having everyone get hyped up, only to have it blow up in their face would be catastrophic. With mounting pressure to capture him, the knowledge that intelligence only lasts for so long, and the fact that if anything leaked to Pakistan it might find its way back to Osama they had to act and they had to act quickly.

Not pictured: popcorn and pizza for the bin Laden hunting
viewing party.

One option was to bomb the city, but that was less than desirable. It would mean civilian casualties and uncertainty whether or not bin Laden was actually there. A covert, secret surprise attack would be much safer, and ideally one that had some variety of deniability. That would mean they would have to get in, kill whomever they needed, and get out without leaving much of a trace - especially if they were wrong. If they were right, they could pretty well get away with it, albeit with a little bit of damaged relations but nothing they couldn't fix later. Now, this is all contingent on if they wanted to go in at all; most people were sitting at about seventy percent certainty, but a number were about fifty-fifty on it, which aren't exactly odds you want to bet something of this great importance on. After careful deliberation, they decided it was worth it. It was just a matter of how and when.

Going in at 11:00 p.m. local time, picking a week without a moon and a day where Pakistani guards would be on the lighter side, they sent in the SEALs, America's cream of the crop in regards to their special forces military. Flying in with stealth helicopters just a few feet above ground level, navigating through trees, they arrived at the compound.

It was probably really, really cool.

Initially the plan was to drop off two dozen mend and fly away, returning to pick them up a short time later. However, bad weather caused the helicopter to clip a rotor and have to make a rough landing, no longer able to fly out of there. They would have to call in a reserve helicopter, and, in order to not let the technology fall into the wrong hands, blow up their massively expensive plaything. The downed helicopter wasn't just a money issue either; when it fell the whole plausible deniability idea went out the door with it. Mind you, I can't see how they could cover up a large contingent of highly trained men storming a compound in Pakistan, but... what do I know.

People cheering in the streets outside the White House
following the news. If they were wearing SEAL jerseys
it would look exactly like a sporting event.

Now was the time to storm the compound, shooting everything in sight. Inside, they found the Kuwaiti, shooting him in the head twice, also shooting his wife in the shoulder. Next up, they shot the Kuwaiti's brother and his wife - both unarmed. Next was bin Laden's son, who was also likely without a weapon. None of that really mattered, though - it would all be for naught if they couldn't find the head honcho.

He was next on the list. Finding him in his bedroom as he was listened to the events unfold, they barged in, shot his wife in the calf (who then fell unconscious) and shot him twice, killing him. The pictures were never released as they could serve to spark retaliation as they could use him as a martyr. It was May 2nd, 2011, almost a decade after the initial attacks. Shortly after, Obama announced they defeated Osama bin Laden after long last. Never before had a president walked up to a podium with such a cocky strut.

And the Middle East and the the United States never fought again.

Hunting bin Laden: Part 2 - Regruping

After the mishandled attempt at capturing bin Laden so shortly after his attacks, al-Qaeda managed a bit of a resurgence. They began recruiting oversees, showing they can hit targets abroad and not just in their territory. The most notable attack was in 2005 when suicide bombers attacked the people of London on the trains for their morning commute, killing dozens. Especially in recent years, that's kind of the tone for terrorism; crazed individuals killing typically less than a hundred (well, at least in the Western world), but increasingly large amounts due to the fact that weapons are more dangerous than ever and the only major hinderance to committing atrocities is a sense of basic morality.

America's response to this has been to amp up the drone program, effectively increasing what Osama claimed he was trying to prevent - an increased presence of Americans in the Middle East. Eventually, around 2007-2008, America simply stopped asking Pakistan for permission to drone-strike certain areas and began doing it on their own accord. Bringing out more controversy was their decision to also do a cross-border raid that killed mostly women and children, damaging relations with Pakistan and covering the face of the Americans with many an egg. However, at the core of it all they were still eliminating al-Qaeda leaders left, right and centre all from the safety of places hundreds of miles away. It suddenly became very dangerous to be a leader al-Qaeda, but the most important one was nowhere to be found. All the while, terrorists were citing him as their major influence the way rock stars say they learned from some past musician. Osama was the Beatles of modern terrorism.

The search for him never died down, in spite of the fact that they had very little evidence on

Osama bin Laden's father; siring 55 kids. It was
his winning smile and devout religious extremism
that his wives just couldn't resist.

where he might be residing. It mostly came down to where he couldn't be. Initially they believed it couldn't be Yemen as he would be too recognizable, and most likely Afghanistan or Pakistan. From there they searched the history books. They searched where his father hid when he was on the run, hoping he would be in a similar situation (in searching up his father I discovered that bin Laden's dad had over twenty wives and 55 children, which would make keeping track of birthdays a tiresome issue). They discovered he had a network of safehouses everywhere, leading them to believe he could very well be in an urban centre.

From there, they looked for what they referred to as "four pillars" - his family, hints in his messages to the media (if there was a plant, a bird, voices in the background, anything that could lead them in a direction), communication with the other leaders, and his courier network. It was the lattermost of these pillars that eventually led to his capture.

Aguilera: proudly doing her part in the
war on terror.

We know now that bin Laden was holed up in a compound in a quiet town in Pakistan (more on that later). It was isolated; with cell phones being tracked, messaging was very slow in the al-Qaeda world. That meant that much of the messaging had to be done by a courier, transporting whatever had to be transported in and out of the compound to the beck and call of Osama. The courier himself, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, with his real name being Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed (we'll refer to him as the Kuwaiti for brevity, and so I don't have to keep double checking the spelling) had been close to bin Laden for ages. Eventually, the U.S. Jack Bower'ed just the right people - meaning torture - until a few coughed up information about the Kuwaiti and what he might be doing.

So, does that mean that torture works?
Sort of. First off, it was pretty brutal; one man was kept awake twenty hours a day, stripped nude, left cold and isolated, and, interestingly enough, subjected to hours of blaring Christina Aguilera music - a fate typically reserved for suburban fathers of white teenage girls in the 2000-2010 decade. Another man, also tortured (although not as heavily - perhaps with smooth jazz) led to the Kuwaiti as well. Certainly, it looks promising; that is, until you consider that another high ranking member was waterboarded almost two hundred times and still told the Americans the Kuwaiti had retired - another provided only disinformation. So, the answer to the original question is... maybe?

Barack, after being asked where the drone strikes
 are coming from.

It was right around this time finds the end of the George Bush era. New to the warfront is Barack Obama, the first black president that has one letter off the name of the terrorist he's hunting (considering how America looks currently, that's nothing short of a miracle). Being fiercely anti-war on the campaign trail and before, he shifts the tone from saying "war" to "policing", putting a fresh new spin on it. He then took the drone program, amped it up to never before seen levels, and declared stronger than ever that it's Osama season. After what seems like ages, they have their first real lead, and he was feeling like they just might get 'im. American style.

Hunting bin Laden: Part 1 - First Attack and a Chance at Capture

I'll admit it is a little eerie - but not so much that it's worthy
of a conspiracy theory.

(I suppose I should preface this blog by saying that writing this on September 11th was purely coincidental. I read books and write on them at my own pace, and it just happened to land like this. Nothing more than a coincidence, but hey, so is the picture on the right, but it's always a little interesting nevertheless.)

I was in grade six when the Twin Towers went down. It would have been a normal day I wouldn't have taken note of, but there was a stark difference; Garfield wasn't on the TV when I got out of bed and came downstairs. Instead, my parents were watching the news of the worst terrorist attack on American soil before or since with ten times the loss of life on the second on the list. I didn't know much of what the attacks meant or why they happened, but even as a child I knew whatever it was, it was big. I feel it's the only time when watching the news I've witnessed a major world-changing event that will define how the following decades will proceed. Also, it left me without a compass for my thoughts on lasagna and Mondays for that particular day of school.

Soon after, Osama bin Laden became perhaps the most notorious person in the world after revealing it was he who commanded the attacks under the terrorist group al-Qaeda. He couldn't immediately reveal it was him because that would force the hand of then Afghanistan President Mullah Omar. If he showed himself to be the mastermind behind the attacks and Omar wouldn't hand him over, the repercussions of it would pretty much mean a flat out war between the two countries, and Omar couldn't afford that. Knowing this, Osama laid low for a while and didn't immediately take ownership until he was hidden well enough - and once they started bombing Taliban targets and the cat was out of the bag.

I was really hoping to find a picture of Osama
bin Laden not smiling politely, but you take what
you can get.

Ironically, Osama carried through on this plan to get the Americans out of the middle east, thinking that if they struck the United States at home they would surely have to back out of there. It wasn't the greatest plan; striking at the strongest military in the world and thinking their reaction would be to slink away like a wounded animal was perhaps being a touch optimistic. To be fair, there were many that thought this way - specifically, the Taliban, al-Qaeda's older brother. They told him it would be unwise to start a war with the U.S. and attacking them would have massive, bloody repercussions at the expense of Afghanistan. Since al-Qaeda still had to listen to the Taliban, they offered them a deal; they would assassinate the leaders of the remaining anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan to earn the right to go after the States. Of course, Osama's plan backfired terribly. It only took until September 17th for President Bush to sign the plans to overthrow the Taliban and hunt down and if need be kill the leaders of al-Qaeda, with the big prize being Osama himself.

When the United States went hunting for them they came with all the might of a rich, powerful and bloated military budget paired with a thirst for blood the Americans haven't seen in ages. They absolutely devastated al-Qaeda, using drone strikes, the use of torture, and a willingness to bend the rules on what they can and cannot do in foreign countries. Pre-9/11 al-Qaeda was doing quite well for itself, with a very almost mundane bureaucratic air about it: they had disability insurance and vacation time, media outreach, and thirty-two pages of bylaws (The Office: Kabul?). Afterwards, their economy was in shambles, their infrastructure literally exploded and their allies either dead or scattered. With the major population centres no longer being safe they resorted to moving to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan where they had to deal with very limited amounts of communication due to the lack of infrastructure in the area. For Osama personally things were faring little better. Two months after the attacks, he had lost his longtime military commander, a whole bunch of his family was fleeing into exile, and since al-Qaeda's funds were running out he had little financial support.

The Americans reducing Tora Bora to a fiery hellscape
significantly reduced its ratings on Tripadvisor.

He decided to flee to Tora Bora, a complex of caves in eastern Afghanistan where he had previously used the mountainous terrain to hold off the Soviet Union in 1987 to great success. His battles there had made him somewhat of a military hero, and he was hoping to relive that and once more stand against a more powerful army using the tactical advantage of a difficult terrain in which he and his forces were familiar. Quickly, the Americans discovered he was there and pressed their attack - but not as heavily as one would imagine.

Fearing political retribution of the dangers of bringing a large number of soldiers into remote Afghanistan, already hostile to the U.S. and likely to get in skirmishes with civilians and villagers, they refrained from sending in too many. Instead, they opted to pay off the local Afghani warlords in the area and supported them with American firepower in the form of bombing runs in lieu of personnel. It appeared to be working at the time (at least somewhat) and a number of audacious military plans were denied - one of them being a plan to scale the mountainous region around them and descend on them from above, sandwiching them between the friendly(ish) Afghani warlord fighters and themselves. I believe the planning for that was a number of fifteen-year-old consultants getting together and considering what would be the most "awesome" way to take bin Laden down. The Americans, however, decided to lean on the side of caution and rely on planes and bribes. There were more journalists there than western soldiers.

It didn't pan out.

Much to the dismay of the Americans that paid them, the warlords agreed upon a ceasefire between the two, and Osama ordered his men to retreat. His closest bodyguards scurried away to Pakistan where they were promptly arrested - but Osama wasn't with them. He remained in Afghanistan and found shelter elsewhere. It was only December of the same year as the tragic, fateful events of September 11th, and they were so close to bringing the perpetrator to justice. Considering the cost, effort and time that would be put into finding him over the next several years, it's incredible to think that the Americans lost him by putting too much restraint on their efforts in the first few months.