One other question - when was this Tora Bora episode taking place exactly?
Did it coincide with the parliament attacks and the subsequent Op. Parakram? If so, that might explain why the Pak Mil presence along the Afghan-Pak border was not as large as it could have been.
The Pakistan India standoff occurred in December 2001 as well...our entire Army was facing a most likely war on the eastern front and had to mobilize a huge force in the same month...
The operation in Tora Bora was launched in December 2001 and the Al Qaeda conveyed its intention to surrender to the local anti Taliban commander, the US and UK forces were present and the area was practically under siege...however this intention to surrender was to buy time and OBL and some others escaped.
The huge failure of the allies to capture the very terrorist which was a known threat and the primary objective of the war should puzzle all the experts who instead claim that Pakistan deliberately let the Al Qaeda into its country...please explain that how the most modern militaries in the world with all sorts of radio, optical and thermal surveillance instruments on ground, air and in space failed to capture Bin Laden despite surrounding the Al Qaeda?
Was it because of the terrain?
If it was the terrain which helped Osama then what of Pakistan Army which does not have similar technology available and also has the same terrain to contend with?
Can PA stop all the routes in such terrain so as to enable just a few highly trained persons being captured?
This is the toughest terrain on earth and can even hide the movement of a 100 trained fighters unless there is hi tech surveillance via air and satellite 24/7 and prior intelligence...which Pakistan did not have at its disposal...
Also all this intelligence and operational detail was revealed later by the assets on ground after the failure had occurred...
Do you think the US was sharing real time intel with us on Osama?
Seeing the mutual mistrust which still prevails, i am 100% sure they did not share this intel with Pakistan due to their own reservations and it was not very easy for Pakistan to keep track of Osama especially since our link was with the Pashtuns who were at the time running for their lives and had common cause with all those against the US invasion...
Many later revealed that OBL was indeed present in Tora Bora...
The CIA officer Gary Berntsen led the CIA team in Afghanistan which was to hunt Osama bin Laden and he claims in his book Jawbreaker that his team had pinpointed the location of Osama in Tora Bora.
He claims that OBL could have been captured if he had been given the troops requested by him of USCENTCOM.
Similar views have been expressed by other CIA and SAS operatives as well...
The Al Qaeda is a shadow organization and does not present a coherent front...Army could not stop Al Qaeda infiltration in twos and threes across such a porous border even if we had sent all the Army there...certainly no chance without intelligence sharing and hi tech surveillance...
The PA was severely restricted on many counts and could not seal the border for both political and humanitarian reasons.
Few complications are listed below...
1) Army Chief was head of state and was thinking politically...
2) Whole nation was against the US invasion.
3) Hundreds of Thousands of tribals were crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan to escape the war.
4) Pakistan and India suffered a diplomatic meltdown and mobilized for war.
5)The food and necessities of life had to go from Pakistan to Afghanistan and sealing border would have caused another crisis.
6) OBL and Al Qaeda hierarchy was in Tora Bora surrounded by the Allies and had shown willingness to surrender.
7) No intelligence sharing by Allies with Pakistan on the hunt of Osama bin Laden.
8) Lack of hi tech round the clock surveillance to focus on small groups moving from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
All this factored into the analysis, it was not simply a bid to let AQ enter Pakistan deliberately and then mint money...the fact that we captured many AQ operatives is a success of our intelligence agencies and the special operation teams... this capability of our agencies was known to our planners who would have factored this into their calculation and banked on the intelligence sweep approach rather than to seal the borders and suffer severe backlash from all around...
Even Pakistan letting US use its airspace was seen in a very negative light by the nation... the emotions of the nation and the situation in Afghanistan suggested caution or risk a massive civil unrest...and when India mobilized for war...the Army had nothing better to come up with...
Now in hindsight it irks us that OBL escaped but it was not a simple matter of letting him escape or not...it was not entirely our choice to make...the Allies launched a war to capture him and who could have thought that he would escape from their clutches?
Who could have dared to further anger the nation and create unrest in the tribal areas on the 1% chance that OBL will escape the Allies and come to Pakistan....certainly it could never have been the open claim of GOP in front of its people that it will seal the border and actively help Allies in eliminating the former Mujahideen, our nation was not ready for such a complete U-Turn and keeping in mind the very low probability of OBL's escape the decision was not taken to seal the border completely since even this extreme action would have not guaranteed us Osama's capture in case he evaded the allies...
When India mobilized for war the PA was no more in a position to seal the border even when it was revealed that OBL has evaded the allies in Tora Bora...the best it could do therefore was intelligence sweeps and targeted attacks on Al Qaeda with the help of locals which was going on rather well till the Lal Masjid fiasco was used by Al Qaeda to instigate an attack on Pakistan through TTP and put us on the back foot.
However now the things are looking up and i think both the nation and the military has learned what to expect of the extremists and how they can be dealt with... a valuable lesson but very costly...
Was it avoidable?
Certainly not entirely as far as i think...even if OBL did not crossover to Pakistan the extremists had to fight for space and this is what they did...
Musharraf's main fault is not the failure to capture Osama.
His main fault is not dealing with TTP before it grew out of hand and created a power vacuum in FATA.
The Tribal Leadership was being eliminated and we were focusing more on Al Qaeda...that is what was wrong...we were focused on the foreign elements and TTP was eliminating the very locals who were going to help fight the foreign elements for many reasons...
