However, the narrative has some interesting observations and predictions for Pakistan that cannot be rubbished simply because Azad was a Congressite. This interview was conducted over a period of two weeks (parallel to the proceedings of the Cabinet Mission) and has not been documented in any book except that of Kashmiri’s book on Abul Kalam Azad, which has been out of print for decades. Its discovery is a welcome step towards better historiography on both sides of the border.

Q: The Hindu Muslim dispute has become so acute that it has foreclosed any possibility of reconciliation. Don’t you think that in this situation the birth of Pakistan has become inevitable?

A: If Pakistan were the solution of Hindu Muslim problem, then I would have extended my support to it. A section of Hindu opinion is now turning in its favour. By conceding NWFP, Sind, Balochistan and half of Punjab on one side and half of Bengal on the other, they think they will get the rest of India — a huge country that would be free from any claims of communal nature. If we use the Muslim League terminology, this new India will be a Hindu state both practically and temperamentally. This will not happen as a result of any conscious decision, but will be a logical consequence of its social realities. How can you expect a society that consists 90% of Hindus, who have lived with their ethos and values since prehistoric times, to grow differently? The factors that laid the foundation of Islam in Indian society and created a powerful following have become victim of the politics of partition. The communal hatred it has generated has completely extinguished all possibilities of spreading and preaching Islam. This communal politics has hurt the religion beyond measure. Muslims have turned away from the Quran. If they had taken their lessons from the Quran and the life of the Holy Prophet and had not forged communal politics in the name of religion then Islam’s growth would not have halted. By the time of the decline of the Mughal rule, the Muslims in India were a little over 22.5 million, that is about 65% of the present numbers. Since then the numbers kept increasing. If the Muslim politicians had not used the offensive language that embittered communal relations, and the other section acting as agents of British interests had not worked to widen the Hindu-Muslim breach, the number of Muslims in India would have grown higher. The political disputes we created in the name of religion have projected Islam as an instrument of political power and not what it is — a value system meant for the transformation of human soul. Under British influence, we turned Islam into a confined system, and following in the footsteps of other communities like Jews, Parsis and Hindus we transformed ourselves into a hereditary community. The Indian Muslims have frozen Islam and its message and divided themselves into many sects. Some sects were clearly born at the instance of colonial power. Consequently, these sects became devoid of all movement and dynamism and lost faith in Islamic values. The hallmark of Muslim existence was striving and now the very term is strange to them. Surely they are Muslims, but they follow their own whims and desires. In fact now they easily submit to political power, not to Islamic values. They prefer the religion of politics not the religion of the Quran. Pakistan is a political standpoint. Regardless of the fact whether it is the right solution to the problems of Indian Muslims, it is being demanded in the name of Islam. The question is when and where Islam provided for division of territories to settle populations on the basis of belief and unbelief. Does this find any sanction in the Quran or the traditions of the Holy Prophet? Who among the scholars of Islam has divided the dominion of God on this basis? If we accept this division in principle, how shall we reconcile it with Islam as a universal system? How shall we explain the ever growing Muslim presence in non-Muslim lands including India? Do they realise that if Islam had approved this principle then it would not have permitted its followers to go to the non-Muslim lands and many ancestors of the supporters of Pakistan would not have had even entered the fold of Islam? Division of territories on the basis of religion is a contraption devised by Muslim League. They can pursue it as their political agenda, but it finds no sanction in Islam or Quran. What is the cherished goal of a devout Muslim? Spreading the light of Islam or dividing territories along religious lines to pursue political ambitions? The demand for Pakistan has not benefited Muslims in any manner. How Pakistan can benefit Islam is a moot question and will largely depend on the kind of leadership it gets. The impact of western thought and philosophy has made the crisis more serious. The way the leadership of Muslim League is conducting itself will ensure that Islam will become a rare commodity in Pakistan and Muslims in India. This is a surmise and God alone knows what is in the womb of future. Pakistan, when it comes into existence, will face conflicts of religious nature. As far as I can see, the people who will hold the reins of power will cause serious damage to Islam. Their behaviour may result in the total alienation of the Pakistani youth who may become a part of non-religious movements. Today, in Muslim minority states the Muslim youth are more attached to religion than in Muslim majority states. You will see that despite the increased role of Ulema, the religion will lose its sheen in Pakistan.

Q: But many Ulema are with Quaid-e-Azam [M.A. Jinnah].

A: Many Ulema were with Akbare Azam too; they invented a new religion for him. Do not discuss individuals. Our history is replete with the doings of the Ulema who have brought humiliation and disgrace to Islam in every age and period. The upholders of truth are exceptions. How many of the Ulema find an honourable mention in the Muslim history of the last 1,300 years? There was one Imam Hanbal, one Ibn Taimiyya. In India we remember no Ulema except Shah Waliullah and his family. The courage of Alf Sani is beyond doubt, but those who filled the royal office with complaints against him and got him imprisoned were also Ulema. Where are they now? Does anybody show any respect to them?

Q: Maulana, what is wrong if Pakistan becomes a reality? After all, “Islam” is being used to pursue and protect the unity of the community.

A: You are using the name of Islam for a cause that is not right by Islamic standards. Muslim history bears testimony to many such enormities. In the battle of Jamal [fought between Imam Ali and Hadrat Aisha, widow of the Holy Prophet] Qurans were displayed on lances. Was that right? In Karbala the family members of the Holy Prophet were martyred by those Muslims who claimed companionship of the Prophet. Was that right? Hajjaj was a Muslim general and he subjected the holy mosque at Makka to brutal attack. Was that right? No sacred words can justify or sanctify a false motive.

If Pakistan was right for Muslims then I would have supported it. But I see clearly the dangers inherent in the demand. I do not expect people to follow me, but it is not possible for me to go against the call of my conscience. People generally submit either to coercion or to the lessons of their experience. Muslims will not hear anything against Pakistan unless they experience it. Today they can call white black, but they will not give up Pakistan. The only way it can be stopped now is either for the government not to concede it or for Mr Jinnah himself — if he agrees to some new proposal.

Now as I gather from the attitude of my own colleagues in the working committee, the division of India appears to be certain. But I must warn that the evil consequences of partition will not affect India alone, Pakistan will be equally haunted by them. The partition will be based on the religion of the population and not based on any natural barrier like mountain, desert or river. A line will be drawn; it is difficult to say how durable it would be.

We must remember that an entity conceived in hatred will last only as long as that hatred lasts. This hatred will overwhelm the relations between India and Pakistan. In this situation it will not be possible for India and Pakistan to become friends and live amicably unless some catastrophic event takes place. The politics of partition itself will act as a barrier between the two countries. It will not be possible for Pakistan to accommodate all the Muslims of India, a task beyond her territorial capability. On the other hand, it will not be possible for the Hindus to stay especially in West Pakistan. They will be thrown out or leave on their own. This will have its repercussions in India and the Indian Muslims will have three options before them:

1. They become victims of loot and brutalities and migrate to Pakistan; but how many Muslims can find shelter there?

2. They become subject to murder and other excesses. A substantial number of Muslims will pass through this ordeal until the bitter memories of partition are forgotten and the generation that had lived through it completes its natural term.

3. A good number of Muslims, haunted by poverty, political wilderness and regional depredation decide to renounce Islam.

The prominent Muslims who are supporters of Muslim League will leave for Pakistan. The wealthy Muslims will take over the industry and business and monopolise the economy of Pakistan. But more than 30 million Muslims will be left behind in India. What promise Pakistan holds for them? The situation that will arise after the expulsion of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan will be still more dangerous for them. Pakistan itself will be afflicted by many serious problems. The greatest danger will come from international powers who will seek to control the new country, and with the passage of time this control will become tight. India will have no problem with this outside interference as it will sense danger and hostility from Pakistan.

The other important point that has escaped Mr Jinnah’s attention is Bengal. He does not know that Bengal disdains outside leadership and rejects it sooner or later. During World War II, Mr Fazlul Haq revolted against Jinnah and was thrown out of the Muslim League. Mr H.S. Suhrawardy does not hold Jinnah in high esteem. Why only Muslim League, look at the history of Congress. The revolt of Subhas Chandra Bose is known to all. Gandhiji was not happy with the presidentship of Bose and turned the tide against him by going on a fast unto death at Rajkot. Subhas Bose rose against Gandhiji and disassociated himself from the Congress. The environment of Bengal is such that it disfavours leadership from outside and rises in revolt when it senses danger to its rights and interests.

The confidence of East Pakistan will not erode as long as Jinnah and Liaquat Ali are alive. But after them any small incident will create resentment and disaffection. I feel that it will not be possible for East Pakistan to stay with West Pakistan for any considerable period of time. There is nothing common between the two regions except that they call themselves Muslims. But the fact of being Muslim has never created durable political unity anywhere in the world. The Arab world is before us; they subscribe to a common religion, a common civilisation and culture and speak a common language. In fact they acknowledge even territorial unity. But there is no political unity among them. Their systems of government are different and they are often engaged in mutual recrimination and hostility. On the other hand, the language, customs and way of life of East Pakistan are totally different from West Pakistan. The moment the creative warmth of Pakistan cools down, the contradictions will emerge and will acquire assertive overtones. These will be fuelled by the clash of interests of international powers and consequently both wings will separate. After the separation of East Pakistan, whenever it happens, West Pakistan will become the battleground of regional contradictions and disputes. The assertion of sub-national identities of Punjab, Sind, Frontier and Balochistan will open the doors for outside interference. It will not be long before the international powers use the diverse elements of Pakistani political leadership to break the country on the lines of Balkan and Arab states. Maybe at that stage we will ask ourselves, what have we gained and what have we lost.

The real issue is economic development and progress, it certainly is not religion. Muslim business leaders have doubts about their own ability and competitive spirit. They are so used to official patronage and favours that they fear new freedom and liberty. They advocate the two-nation theory to conceal their fears and want to have a Muslim state where they have the monopoly to control the economy without any competition from competent rivals. It will be interesting to watch how long they can keep this deception alive.

I feel that right from its inception, Pakistan will face some very serious problems:

1. The incompetent political leadership will pave the way for military dictatorship as it has happened in many Muslim countries.

2. The heavy burden of foreign debt.

3. Absence of friendly relationship with neighbours and the possibility of armed conflict.

4. Internal unrest and regional conflicts.

5. The loot of national wealth by the neo-rich and industrialists of Pakistan.

6. The apprehension of class war as a result of exploitation by the neo-rich.

7. The dissatisfaction and alienation of the youth from religion and the collapse of the theory of Pakistan.

8. The conspiracies of the international powers to control Pakistan.

In this situation, the stability of Pakistan will be under strain and the Muslim countries will be in no position to provide any worthwhile help. The assistance from other sources will not come without strings and it will force both ideological and territorial compromises.

Q: But the question is how Muslims can keep their community identity intact and how they can inculcate the attributes of the citizens of a Muslim state.

A: Hollow words cannot falsify the basic realities nor slanted questions can make the answers deficient. It amounts to distortion of the discourse. What is meant by community identity? If this community identity has remained intact during the British slavery, how will it come under threat in a free India in whose affairs Muslims will be equal participants? What attributes of the Muslim state you wish to cultivate? The real issue is the freedom of faith and worship and who can put a cap on that freedom. Will independence reduce the 90 million Muslims into such a helpless state that they will feel constrained in enjoying their religious freedom? If the British, who as a world power could not snatch this liberty, what magic or power do the Hindus have to deny this freedom of religion? These questions have been raised by those, who, under the influence of western culture, have renounced their own heritage and are now raising dust through political gimmickry.

Muslim history is an important part of Indian history. Do you think the Muslim kings were serving the cause of Islam? They had a nominal relationship with Islam; they were not Islamic preachers. Muslims of India owe their gratitude to Sufis, and many of these divines were treated by the kings very cruelly. Most of the kings created a large band of Ulema who were an obstacle in the path of the propagation of Islamic ethos and values. Islam, in its pristine form, had a tremendous appeal and in the first century won the hearts and minds of a large number of people living in and around Hejaz. But the Islam that came to India was different, the carriers were non-Arabs and the real spirit was missing. Still, the imprint of the Muslim period is writ large on the culture, music, art, architecture and languages of India. What do the cultural centres of India, like Delhi and Lucknow, represent? The underlying Muslim spirit is all too obvious.

If the Muslims still feel under threat and believe that they will be reduced to slavery in free India then I can only pray for their faith and hearts. If a man becomes disenchanted with life he can be helped to revival, but if someone is timid and lacks courage, then it is not possible to help him become brave and gutsy. The Muslims as a community have become cowards. They have no fear of God, instead they fear men. This explains why they are so obsessed with threats to their existence — a figment of their imagination.

After British takeover, the government committed all possible excesses against the Muslims. But Muslims did not cease to exist. On the contrary, they registered a growth that was more than average. The Muslim cultural ethos and values have their own charm. Then India has large Muslim neighbours on three sides. Why on earth the majority in this country will be interested to wipe out the Muslims? How will it promote their self interests? Is it so easy to finish 90 million people? In fact, Muslim culture has such attraction that I shall not be surprised if it comes to have the largest following in free India.

The world needs both, a durable peace and a philosophy of life. If the Hindus can run after Marx and undertake scholarly studies of the philosophy and wisdom of the West, they do not disdain Islam and will be happy to benefit from its principles. In fact they are more familiar with Islam and acknowledge that Islam does not mean parochialism of a hereditary community or a despotic system of governance. Islam is a universal call to establish peace on the basis of human equality. They know that Islam is the proclamation of a Messenger who calls to the worship of God and not his own worship. Islam means freedom from all social and economic discriminations and reorganisation of society on three basic principles of God-consciousness, righteous action and knowledge. In fact, it is we Muslims and our extremist behaviour that has created an aversion among non-Muslims for Islam. If we had not allowed our selfish ambitions to soil the purity of Islam then many seekers of truth would have found comfort in the bosom of Islam. Pakistan has nothing to do with Islam; it is a political demand that is projected by Muslim League as the national goal of Indian Muslims. I feel it is not the solution to the problems Muslims are facing. In fact it is bound to create more problems.

The Holy Prophet has said, “God has made the whole earth a mosque for me.” Now do not ask me to support the idea of the partition of a mosque. If the nine-crore Muslims were thinly scattered all over India, and demand was made to reorganise the states in a manner to ensure their majority in one or two regions, that was understandable. Again such a demand would not have been right from an Islamic viewpoint, but justifiable on administrative grounds. But the situation, as it exists, is drastically different. All the border states of India have Muslim majorities sharing borders with Muslim countries. Tell me, who can eliminate these populations? By demanding Pakistan we are turning our eyes away from the history of the last 1,000 years and, if I may use the League terminology, throwing more than 30 million Muslims into the lap of “Hindu Raj”. The Hindu Muslim problem that has created political tension between Congress and League will become a source of dispute between the two states and with the aid of international powers this may erupt into full scale war anytime in future.

The question is often raised that if the idea of Pakistan is so fraught with dangers for the Muslims, why is it being opposed by the Hindus? I feel that the opposition to the demand is coming from two quarters. One is represented by those who genuinely feel concerned about imperial machinations and strongly believe that a free, united India will be in a better position to defend itself. On the other hand, there is a section who opposes Pakistan with the motive to provoke Muslims to become more determined in their demand and thus get rid of them. Muslims have every right to demand constitutional safeguards, but partition of India cannot promote their interests. The demand is the politically incorrect solution of a communal problem.

In future India will be faced with class problems, not communal disputes; the conflict will be between capital and labour. The communist and socialist movements are growing and it is not possible to ignore them. These movements will increasingly fight for the protection of the interest of the underclass. The Muslim capitalists and the feudal classes are apprehensive of this impending threat. Now they have given this whole issue a communal colour and have turned the economic issue into a religious dispute. But Muslims alone are not responsible for it. This strategy was first adopted by the British government and then endorsed by the political minds of Aligarh. Later, Hindu short-sightedness made matters worse and now freedom has become contingent on the partition of India.

Jinnah himself was an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. In one Congress session Sarojini Naidu had commended him with this title. He was a disciple of Dadabhai Naoroji. He had refused to join the 1906 deputation of Muslims that initiated communal politics in India. In 1919 he stood firmly as a nationalist and opposed Muslim demands before the Joint Select Committee. On 3 October 1925, in a letter to the Times of India he rubbished the suggestion that Congress is a Hindu outfit. In the All Parties Conferences of 1925 and 1928, he strongly favoured a joint electorate. While speaking at the National Assembly in 1925, he said, “I am a nationalist first and a nationalist last” and exhorted his colleagues, be they Hindus or Muslims, “not to raise communal issues in the House and help make the Assembly a national institution in the truest sense of the term”.

In 1928, Jinnah supported the Congress call to boycott Simon Commission. Till 1937, he did not favour the demand to partition India. In his message to various student bodies he stressed the need to work for Hindu Muslim unity. But he felt aggrieved when the Congress formed governments in seven states and ignored the Muslim League. In 1940 he decided to pursue the partition demand to check Muslim political decline. In short, the demand for Pakistan is his response to his own political experiences. Mr Jinnah has every right to his opinion about me, but I have no doubts about his intelligence. As a politician he has worked overtime to fortify Muslim communalism and the demand for Pakistan. Now it has become a matter of prestige for him and he will not give it up at any cost.

Q: It is clear that Muslims are not going to turn away from their demand for Pakistan. Why have they become so impervious to all reason and logic of arguments?

A: It is difficult, rather impossible, to fight against the misplaced enthusiasm of a mob, but to suppress one’s conscience is worse than death. Today the Muslims are not walking, they are flowing. The problem is that Muslims have not learnt to walk steady; they either run or flow with the tide. When a group of people lose confidence and self-respect, they are surrounded by imaginary doubts and dangers and fail to make a distinction between the right and the wrong. The true meaning of life is realised not through numerical strength but through firm faith and righteous action. British politics has sown many seeds of fear and distrust in the mental field of Muslims. Now they are in a frightful state, bemoaning the departure of the British and demanding partition before the foreign masters leave. Do they believe that partition will avert all the dangers to their lives and bodies? If these dangers are real then they will still haunt their borders and any armed conflict will result in much greater loss of lives and possessions.

Q: But Hindus and Muslims are two different nations with different and disparate inclinations. How can the unity between the two be achieved?

A: This is an obsolete debate. I have seen the correspondence between Allama Iqbal and Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni on the subject. In the Quran the term qaum has been used not only for the community of believers but has also been used for distinct human groupings generally. What do we wish to achieve by raising this debate about the etymological scope of terms like millat [community], qaum [nation] and ummat [group]? In religious terms India is home to many people — the Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs etc. The differences between Hindu religion and Islam are vast in scope. But these differences cannot be allowed to become an obstacle in the path of India gaining her freedom nor do the two distinct and different systems of faith negate the idea of unity of India. The issue is of our national independence and how we can secure it. Freedom is a blessing and is the right of every human being. It cannot be divided on the basis of religion.

Muslims must realise that they are bearers of a universal message. They are not a racial or regional grouping in whose territory others cannot enter. Strictly speaking, Muslims in India are not one community; they are divided among many well-entrenched sects. You can unite them by arousing their anti-Hindu sentiment but you cannot unite them in the name of Islam. To them Islam means undiluted loyalty to their own sect. Apart from Wahabi, Sunni and Shia there are innumerable groups who owe allegiance to different saints and divines. Small issues like raising hands during the prayer and saying Amen loudly have created disputes that defy solution. The Ulema have used the instrument of takfeer [fatwas declaring someone as infidel] liberally. Earlier, they used to take Islam to the disbelievers; now they take away Islam from the believers. Islamic history is full of instances of how good and pious Muslims were branded kafirs. Prophets alone had the capability to cope with these mindboggling situations. Even they had to pass through times of afflictions and trials. The fact is that when reason and intelligence are abandoned and attitudes become fossilised then the job of the reformer becomes very difficult.

But today the situation is worse than ever. Muslims have become firm in their communalism; they prefer politics to religion and follow their worldly ambitions as commands of religion. History bears testimony to the fact that in every age we ridiculed those who pursued the good with consistency, snuffed out the brilliant examples of sacrifice and tore the flags of selfless service. Who are we, the ordinary mortals; even high ranking Prophets were not spared by these custodians of traditions and customs.

Q: You closed down your journal Al-Hilal a long time back. Was it due to your disappointment with the Muslims who were wallowing in intellectual desolation, or did you feel like proclaiming azan [call to prayer] in a barren desert?

A: I abandoned Al-Hilal not because I had lost faith in its truth. This journal created great awareness among a large section of Muslims. They renewed their faith in Islam, in human freedom and in consistent pursuit of righteous goals. In fact my own life was greatly enriched by this experience and I felt like those who had the privilege of learning under the companionship of the Messenger of God. My own voice entranced me and under its impact I burnt out like a phoenix. Al-Hilal had served its purpose and a new age was dawning. Based on my experiences, I made a reappraisal of the situation and decided to devote all my time and energy for the attainment of our national freedom. I was firm in my belief that freedom of Asia and Africa largely depends on India’s freedom and Hindu Muslim unity is key to India’s freedom. Even before the First World War, I had realised that India was destined to attain freedom, and no power on earth would be able to deny it. I was also clear in my mind about the role of Muslims. I ardently wished that Muslims would learn to walk together with their countrymen and not give an opportunity to history to say that when Indians were fighting for their independence, Muslims were looking on as spectators. Let nobody say that instead of fighting the waves they were standing on the banks and showing mirth on the drowning of boats carrying the freedom fighters.

Courtesy: Covert Magazine

Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling – especially given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism.

Times management at first refused to confirm Bronner’s situation, then refused to comment on it. Finally, public outcry forced Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to confront the problem in a February 7th column.
After bending over backwards to praise the institution that employs him, Hoyt ultimately opined that Bronner should be re-assigned to a different sphere of reporting to avoid the “appearance” of bias. Times Editor Bill Keller declined to do so, however, instead writing a column calling Bronner’s connections to Israel valuable because they “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack.”

If such “sophistication” is valuable, the Times’ espoused commitment to the “impartiality and neutrality of the company’s newsrooms” would seem to require it to have a balancing editor equally sophisticated about Palestine and its adversary, but Keller did not address that.
Bronner is far from alone

As it turns out, Bronner’s ties to the Israeli military are not the rarity one might expect.

• A previous Times bureau chief, Joel Greenberg, before he was bureau chief but after he was already publishing in the Times from Israel, actually served in the Israeli army.
• Media pundit and Atlantic staffer Jeffrey Goldberg also served in the Israeli military; it’s unclear when, how, or even if his military service ended.
• Richard Chesnoff, who has been covering Mideast events for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli military while Chesnoff covered Israel as US News & World Report’s senior foreign correspondent.
• NPR’s Linda Gradstein’s husband was an Israeli sniper and may still be in the Israeli reserves. NPR refuses to disclose whether Gradstein herself is also an Israeli citizen, as are her children and husband.
• Mitch Weinstock, national editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, served in the Israeli military.
• The New York Times’ other correspondent from the region, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. Israel has universal compulsory military service, which suggests that Kershner herself and/or family members may have military connections. The Times refuses to answer questions about whether she and/or family members have served or are currently serving in the Israeli military. Is it possible that Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira herself has such connections? The Times refuses to answer.
• Many Associated Press writers and editors are Israeli citizens or have Israeli families. AP will not reveal how many of the journalists in its control bureau for the region currently serve in the Israeli military, how many have served in the past, and how many have family members with this connection.
• Similarly, many TV correspondents such as Martin Fletcher have been Israeli citizens and/or have Israeli families. Do they have family connections to the Israeli military?
• Time Magazine’s bureau chief several years ago became an Israeli citizen after he had assumed his post. Does he have relatives in the military?
• CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, while not an Israeli citizen, was based in Israel for many years, wrote a book whitewashing Israeli spying on the US, and used to work for the Israel lobby in the US. None of this is divulged to CNN viewers.

Tikkun’s editor Michael Lerner has a son who served in the Israeli military. While Lerner has been a strong critic of many Israeli policies, in an interview with Jewish Week, Lerner explains:
“Having a son in the Israeli army was a manifestation of my love for Israel, and I assume that having a son in the Israeli army is a manifestation of Bronner’s love of Israel.”

Lerner goes on to make a fundamental point:
“…there is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides [Israelis and Palestinians]. On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family. I don’t deny it.”

For a great many of the reporters and editors determining what Americans learn about Israel-Palestine, Israel is family.

Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth, writes of a recent meeting with a Jerusalem based bureau chief, who explained: “… Bronner’s situation is ‘the rule, not the exception. I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”

Cooks writes that the bureau chief explained: “It is common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their Zionist credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children.”

Apparently, intimate ties to Israel are among the many open secrets in the region that are hidden from the American public. If, as the news media insist, these ties present no problem or even, as the Times’ Keller insists, enhance the journalists’ work, why do the news agencies consistently refuse to admit them?

The reason is not complicated.
While Israel may be family for these journalists and editors, for the vast majority of Americans, Israel is a foreign country. In survey after survey, Americans say they don’t wish to “take sides” on this conflict. In other words, the American public wants full, unfiltered, unslanted coverage.

Quite likely the news media refuse to answer questions about their journalists’ affiliations because they suspect, accurately, that the public would be displeased to learn that the reporters and editors charged with supplying news on a foreign nation and conflict are, in fact, partisans.

While Keller claims that the New York Times is covering this conflict “even-handedly,” studies indicate otherwise:

* The Times covers international reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses at a rate 19 times lower than it reports on the far smaller number of international reports documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
* The Times covers Israeli children’s deaths at rates seven times greater than they cover Palestinian children’s deaths, even though there are vastly more of the latter and they occurred first.
* The Times fails to inform its readers that Israel’s Jewish-only colonies on confiscated Palestinian Christian and Muslim land are illegal; that its collective punishment of 1.5 million men, women, and children in Gaza is not only cruel and ruthless, it is also illegal; and that its use of American weaponry is routinely in violation of American laws.
* The Times covers the one Israeli (a soldier) held by Palestinians at a rate incalculably higher than it reports on the Palestinian men, women, and children – the vast majority civilians – imprisoned by Israel (currently over 7,000).
• The Times neglects to report that hundreds of Israel’s captives have never even been charged with a crime and that those who have were tried in Israeli military courts under an array of bizarre military statutes that make even the planting of onions without a permit a criminal offense – a legal system, if one can call it that, that changes at the whim of the current military governor ruling over a subject population; a system in which parents are without power to protect their children.
* The Times fails to inform its readers that 40 percent of Palestinian males have been imprisoned by Israel, a statistic that normally would be considered highly newsworthy, but that Bronner, Kershner, and Chira apparently feel is unimportant to report.

Americans, whose elected representatives give Israel uniquely gargantuan sums of our tax money (a situation also not covered by the media), want and need all the facts, not just those that Israel’s family members decree reportable.

We’re not getting them.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and a board member of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). For more information on Ethan Bronner and his upcoming speaking tour on college campuses, join IAK’S email list. Alison can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org

Kabul fell on November 12, and bin Laden, along with other Al Qaeda leaders, fled to Jalalabad, a compact city in eastern Afghanistan surrounded by lush fruit groves. (He was quite familiar with the area, having maintained a compound in a Jalalabad suburb in the 1990s.) Tracking bin Laden closely was Gary Berntsen, a bear-sized CIA officer with a pronounced Long Island accent, who arrived in Kabul on the day it fell. Berntsen had been serving in Latin America on September 11 when he was yanked to run the CIA’s fast-moving ground operations in Afghanistan. It was a perfect job for an operative with a distinctly independent and aggressive style.

By November 14, Berntsen was receiving a stream of intelligence reports from the Northern Alliance that the Al Qaeda leader was in Jalalabad, giving pep talks to an ever-growing caravan of fighters. Berntsen dispatched an eight-man CIA team to the city. To provide them with local guides, he made contact with Hazarat Ali–an Afghan commander, longtime opponent of the Taliban, and nose-picking semi-illiterate. Ali sent three teenaged fighters to escort the U.S. team into Jalalabad, which was now crawling with fleeing Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

But bin Laden wasn’t in Jalalabad for long. Following the fall of Kabul, Jalalabad descended into chaos; no one was in charge for at least a week. Abdullah Tabarak, a Moroccan who is alleged to be one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, reportedly told interrogators that, during the month of Ramadan, which began on November 17, bin Laden and his top deputy, Egyptian surgeon Ayman Al Zawahiri, left Jalalabad and headed about 30 miles south. Their destination was Tora Bora, a series of mountain caves near the Pakistani border. Berntsen’s team remained one step behind them, for now.

Tora Bora was not yet a familiar name to many Americans. But what would unfold there over the subsequent days remains, eight years later, the single most consequential battle of the war on terrorism. Presented with an opportunity to kill or capture Al Qaeda’s top leadership just three months after September 11, the United States was instead outmaneuvered by bin Laden, who slipped into Pakistan, largely disappeared from U.S. radar, and slowly began rebuilding his organization.

What really happened at Tora Bora? Not long after the battle ended, the answer to that question would become extremely clouded. Americans perceived the Afghan war as a stunning victory, and the failure at Tora Bora seemed like an unfortunate footnote to an otherwise upbeat story. By 2004, with George W. Bush locked in a tough reelection battle, some U.S. officials were even asserting, inaccurately, that bin Laden himself may not have been present at the battle.

The real history of Tora Bora is far more disturbing. Having reconstructed the battle–based on interviews with the top American ground commander, three Afghan commanders, and three CIA officials; accounts by Al Qaeda eyewitnesses that were subsequently published on jihadist websites; recollections of captured survivors who were later questioned by interrogators or reporters; an official history of the Afghan war by the U.S. Special Operations Command; an investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and visits to the battle sites themselves–I am convinced that Tora Bora constitutes one of the greatest military blunders in recent U.S. history. It is worth revisiting now not just in the interest of historical accuracy, but also because the story contains valuable lessons as we renew our push against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It was no accident that bin Laden had chosen to retreat to Tora Bora. He knew the place well. Huthaifa Azzam, a Jordanian who was close to bin Laden during the anti-Soviet jihad, when both were crossing back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan, recalls that, in 1987, the Al Qaeda leader used bulldozers from his family’s construction company to build a road through the mountains. The aim was to allow for the movement of his Arab fighters from his base at Jaji, near the Pakistani border, to Jalalabad, then occupied by the Soviets. Bin Laden spent more than six months building the road.

That year, bin Laden engaged Soviet forces in a battle at Jaji. He joined about 50 other Arab fighters in managing to hold off a much larger group of Soviet soldiers. Jaji received considerable attention in the Arab world, and, for the first time, bin Laden was widely seen not as a mere financier of jihad but also as a successful military commander. After a week, bin Laden was forced to retreat from Jaji. But the battle was arguably a resounding victory for the future Al Qaeda leader, as he burnished his image–and lived to fight another day.

During the years leading up to September 11, bin Laden maintained a mountain retreat in a settlement near Tora Bora called Milawa–a three-hour drive up a narrow mud-and-stone road from Jalalabad. The buildings that made up the settlement were strung across ridges that, in winter, lay far above the snow line, commanding striking views of the expanses below. They included a series of scattered lookout posts, a bakery, and bin Laden’s two-bedroom house, all built of the baked mud and stone that typifies Afghan villages. Next to the house was a rudimentary swimming pool. Spread in front of it was a broad field–today scarred by massive bomb craters–where Al Qaeda members cultivated crops. From bin Laden’s home, all he could see was his own fiefdom; the nearest village was thousands of feet below and out of sight.

In the winter of 1996, the Al Qaeda leader took Abdel Bari Atwan, a Palestinian journalist based in London, on a walking tour of a frigid Tora Bora. “I really feel secure in the mountains,” he told Atwan. “I really enjoy my life when I’m here.” Bin Laden sat for photos with Atwan in the Tora Bora caves. He surely understood that the setting would have a certain resonance in the Muslim world, since it was in a mountain cave that the Prophet Muhammad first received the revelations of the Koran.

According to his son, Omar, bin Laden would routinely hike from Tora Bora into neighboring Pakistan on walks that could take anywhere between seven and 14 hours. “My brothers and I all loathed these grueling treks that seemed the most pleasant of outings to our father,” Omar bin Laden later recalled. Bin Laden told his sons they had to memorize every rock on the routes to Pakistan. “We never know when war will strike,” he instructed them. “We must know our way out of the mountains.”

Now bin Laden had chosen Tora Bora as the place for his climactic confrontation with the United States. Fouad Al Rabia–a Kuwait Airways engineer, then in his mid-forties, who was in Afghanistan on something of a religious vacation–was with Al Qaeda when the group retreated from Jalalabad to Tora Bora. “Simply being out on the street was an invitation to be killed,” he later told officials at Guantánamo. “We walked from there to the baseline edge of the mountains. … This was an escape route to get out of the country, because it is the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That was the only way to get out.”

At least five Guantánamo detainees have given eyewitness accounts of bin Laden’s presence at Tora Bora. Typical of this group is Sulaiman Al Nahdi, a 27-year-old Yemeni who explained that he saw bin Laden “in a valley that was downward of the mountains,” where he “talked about the jihad for approximately one hour,” after which Ayman Al Zawahiri “made a few comments.” Similarly, Khaled Qasim, a 24-year-old Yemeni, was in the mountains in November 2001 when he saw bin Laden. The Al Qaeda leader, Qasim recalled, “was passing by and just said ‘hi’ and went on his way.”

Khalid Al Hubayshi, a Saudi explosives expert, was in the Tora Bora trenches as the Al Qaeda leader prepared for his showdown with the United States. Bin Laden, Hubayshi told The Washington Post, “was convinced” that American soldiers would land in the mountains. “We spent five weeks like that, manning our positions in case the Americans landed,” he recalled.

As bin Laden set about preparing for a U.S. maneuver that never came, Gary Berntsen’s team remained on his trail. Several days after arriving in Jalalabad, the group moved into a schoolhouse in the foothills near Tora Bora, which they used as a base. Berntsen’s sources on the ground continued to tell him that bin Laden was in the area.

At the end of November, the team of eight decided to split into two groups of four, one of which would head farther into the mountains with ten Afghan fighters as guides. The team’s members included an Air Force combat controller who specialized in calling in airstrikes, and they took with them a laser capable of “painting” targets with a signal that U.S. bombers could then lock onto. The expedition was delayed when a poorly packed RPG carried on a mule blew up, killing two of the Afghan guides. Finally, the group reached a mountaintop from which it could see several hundred of bin Laden’s men arrayed below. For the following 56 hours straight, the team called in airstrikes from all of the bombers available in theater.

Berntsen had not asked anyone for permission to begin the battle of Tora Bora. About 24 hours after the airstrikes had begun, Berntsen’s supervisor, Hank Crumpton, head of counterterrorism special operations at the CIA, called him and asked, “Are you conducting a battle in Tora Bora?” Not quite knowing what his boss’s reaction might be, Berntsen simply said, “Yes.” Crumpton replied, “Congratulations! Good job!”

As the fighting got underway, bin Laden initially sought to project an easy confidence to his men. Abu Bakr, a Kuwaiti who was at Tora Bora, said that, early in the battle, he saw bin Laden at the checkpoint he was manning. The Al Qaeda leader sat with some of his foot soldiers for half an hour, drinking a cup of tea and telling them, “Don’t worry. Don’t lose your morale, and fight strong. I’m here. I’m always asking about you guys.”

But, despite Al Qaeda’s arsenal of rockets, tanks, machine guns, and artillery, its position was becoming perilous. At altitudes of up to 14,000 feet above sea level, Tora Bora’s thin air provides a tough environment at any time of year–and, in December, temperatures drop to well below zero at night. As the battle raged in the mountains, snow was falling steadily. What’s more, it was Ramadan, and the ultra-religious members of Al Qaeda were likely observing the fast from dawn to dusk. Meanwhile, U.S. bombs rained down on the snow-covered peaks unceasingly, preventing sleep. Between December 4 and 7 alone, U.S. bombers dropped 700,000 pounds of ordnance on the mountains.

Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, a Yemeni doctor who was treating the Al Qaeda wounded, believed that the situation was growing untenable. “I was out of medicine and I had a lot of casualties,” Batarfi later told the Associated Press. “I did a hand amputation by a knife, and I did a finger amputation with scissors.” Batarfi said he personally told bin Laden that, if they did not leave Tora Bora soon, “no one would stay alive” under the U.S. bombardment. But the Al Qaeda leader seemed mainly preoccupied with his own escape. “He did not prepare himself for Tora Bora,” Batarfi said, “and, to be frank, he didn’t care about anyone but himself.”

Bin Laden recounted his experiences at Tora Bora on an audiotape that aired on Al Jazeera in 2003. He recalled that, on the morning of December 3, heavy U.S. bombing began around the clock, with B-52s dropping some 20 to 30 bombs each. “American forces were bombing us by smart bombs that weigh thousands of pounds and bombs that penetrate caves,” bin Laden said.

On December 9, a U.S. plane dropped an immense BLU-82 bomb on Al Qaeda’s positions. Known as a Daisy Cutter, the 15,000-pound bomb was used in the Gulf war to clear minefields. Berntsen remembers that the Daisy Cutter was followed by a wave of additional U.S. airstrikes. “We came right in behind it with B-52s,” he says. “Like three or four of them. … Each of them has twenty-five five-hundred-pounders, so everything goes in there. Killed a lot of people. A lot of bad guys.” That night, Al Qaeda member Abu Jaafar Al Kuwaiti and others “were awakened to the sound of massive and terrorizing explosions very near to us.” The following day, he later recounted on an Al Qaeda website, he “received the horrifying news” that the “trench of Sheik Osama had been destroyed.”

But bin Laden was not dead. A subsequent account on an Al Qaeda website offered an explanation of how he saved himself: Bin Laden had dreamed about a scorpion descending into one of the trenches that his men had dug, so he evacuated his trench. A day or so later, it was destroyed by a bomb.

The United States appeared to have Al Qaeda on the ropes. But, on the U.S. side, all was not well. A dispute was raging among officials about how to conduct the battle. By late November, Crumpton–a soft-spoken Georgian widely regarded as one of the most effective CIA officers of his generation–feared that bin Laden might try to escape Tora Bora. He explained this to Bush and Cheney personally at the White House and presented satellite imagery showing that the Pakistani military did not have its side of the border covered. CIA Director George Tenet remembers Bush asking Crumpton if the Pakistanis had enough troops to seal the border. “No, sir,” the CIA veteran replied. “No one has enough troops to prevent any possibility of escape in a region like that.” Still, Crumpton thought the United States should try–and that meant more troops would be required.

Back in Kabul, Berntsen was thinking along the same lines. On the evening of December 3, one member of his team, a former Delta Force operator who had gone deep into Tora Bora, came to the Afghan capital to brief Berntsen about the lay of the land. He told Berntsen that taking out Al Qaeda’s hard core would require 800 Rangers, elite soldiers who had gone through the Army’s most rigorous physical training. That night, Berntsen sent a lengthy message to CIA headquarters asking for 800 Rangers to assault the complex of caves where bin Laden and his lieutenants were believed to be hiding, and to block their escape routes. Crumpton says, “I remember the message. I remember talking not only to Gary every day, but to some of his men who were at Tora Bora. Directly. And their request could not have been more direct, more clear, more certain: that we needed U.S. troops there. More men on the ground.”

That bin Laden was at Tora Bora was not, by this point, a secret. The New York Times had reported it on November 25. Four days later, when asked by ABC News whether the Al Qaeda leader was at Tora Bora, Dick Cheney said, “I think he’s probably in that general area.”

Meanwhile, the additional forces that Crumpton and Berntsen were requesting were certainly available. There were around 2,000 U.S. troops in or near the Afghan theater at the time. At the U.S. airbase known as K2 in Uzbekistan were stationed some 1,000 soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division, whose specialty is fighting in harsh terrain. Hundreds of those soldiers had already deployed to Bagram Air Force Base, 40 miles north of Kabul. In addition, 1,200 Marines were stationed at Forward Operating Base Rhino, near Kandahar, from the last week of November onward. Brigadier General James Mattis, the commander of the Marines in the Afghan theater, reportedly asked to send his men into Tora Bora, but his request was turned down. In the end, there were more journalists–about 100, according to Nic Robertson of CNN and Susan Glasser of The Washington Post, who both covered the battle–in and around Tora Bora than there were Western soldiers.

Yet, when Crumpton called General Tommy Franks to ask for more troops, Franks pushed back. The general, who had overall control of the Tora Bora operation, pointed out that the light-footprint approach–U.S. reliance on local proxies–had already succeeded in overthrowing the Taliban, and he argued that it would take time to get more U.S. troops to Tora Bora.

The U.S. force was to remain tiny throughout the battle. On December 7, on-the-ground responsibility for Tora Bora passed from Berntsen to a 37-year-old major in the elite and secretive Delta Force, who would later write a memoir using the pen name Dalton Fury. Under Fury’s command during the battle were 40 Delta operators from the “black” Special Forces, 14 Green Berets from the less secretive “white” Special Forces, six CIA operatives, a few Air Force specialists, including signals operators, and a dozen British commandos from the elite Special Boat Service. They were joined by three main Afghan commanders: Hajji Zaman Gamsharik, who had been living in exile in the comfortable environs of Dijon, France, before he returned to Afghanistan as the Taliban fell; Hajji Zahir, the 27-year-old son of a Jalalabad warlord; and Ali, the commander who had been helping Berntsen. The Afghan commanders disliked each other more than they did Al Qaeda. “For the most important mission to date in the global war on terror,” Fury later wrote, “our nation was relying on a fractious bunch of AK-47-toting lawless bandits and tribal thugs who were not bound by any recognized rules of warfare.”

Why was the Pentagon so unwilling to send more troops? Recently, I asked Franks to comment on his decision. He reiterated his preference for a light footprint and his concern about the time it would take to put additional troops on the ground. He also said that he could not be sure that bin Laden was at Tora Bora because of “conflicting intelligence” that alternately placed him in Kashmir, around Kandahar, and near the Afghan-Iranian border.

Lt. General Michael DeLong, Franks’s top deputy, recalled in his 2004 memoir that the Pentagon did not want to put many American soldiers on the ground because of a concern that they would be treated like antibodies by the locals. “The mountains of Tora Bora are situated deep in territory controlled by tribes hostile to the United States and any outsiders,” he wrote. “The reality is if we put our troops in there we would inevitably end up fighting Afghan villagers–creating bad will at a sensitive time–which was the last thing we wanted to do.”

There may also have been a reluctance to send soldiers into harm’s way. The Pentagon’s risk aversion is now hard to recall following the years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the thousands of American soldiers who have died–but it was quite real. In the most recent U.S. war–the 1999 conflict in Kosovo–not a single American had been killed in combat. And, at that point in the Afghan war, more journalists had died than American soldiers. Fury says that the 14 Green Berets who were on the ground at Tora Bora from the “white” Special Forces were told to “stay well short of even the foothills,” some four kilometers from any action–“pretty much out of harm’s way.” The Green Berets did call in airstrikes but were not allowed to engage in firefights with Al Qaeda because of concerns that the battle would turn into a “meat grinder.”

Then there was Iraq. In late November, Donald Rumsfeld told Franks that Bush “wants us to look for options in Iraq.” Rumsfeld instructed the general to “dust off” the Pentagon’s blueprint for an Iraq invasion and brief him in a week’s time. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers would later write, “I realized that one week was not giving Tom and his staff much time to sharpen” the plan. Franks points out in his autobiography that his staff was already working seven days a week, 16-plus hours a day, as the Tora Bora battle was reaching its climax. Although Franks doesn’t say so, it is impossible not to wonder if the labor-intensive planning ordered by his boss for another major war was a distraction from the one he was already fighting.

Franks briefed Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials about the war plan for Iraq on December 4. But both men agreed that the plan needed work. Rumsfeld gave Franks and his staff eight days to revise it. “Well, General,” he told Franks, “you have a lot of work ahead of you. Today is Tuesday. Let’s get together again next Wednesday.”

On December 10, American signals-intelligence operators picked up an important intercept from Tora Bora: “Father [bin Laden] is trying to break through the siege line.” This was then communicated to the Delta operators on the ground. Around 4 p.m. that same day, Afghan soldiers said they had bin Laden in their sights, according to the official U.S. military history of the battle. Later that evening, Fury received a new piece of signals intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts. The information was so precise that it appeared to pinpoint the Al Qaeda leader’s location to within ten meters. At the time, Fury was in the schoolhouse that he had been using as a base. About 15 minutes later, he received another bit of intelligence–somewhat less precise–placing bin Laden two kilometers from the first location. To this day, Fury doesn’t know which information was more recent and therefore more accurate, but he drove into the foothills and got to within about 1,900 meters of the first location.

Fury now found himself in a quandary. This was almost certainly the closest to bin Laden’s position U.S. forces had ever been, but, at the same time, three of his men were pinned down in a ferocious firefight with some Al Qaeda foot soldiers. And, as dusk fell, Fury’s key Afghan ally, Hazarat Ali, had retreated from the battlefield back home to break his Ramadan fast. Fury was under explicit orders not to take the lead in the battle and only to act in a supporting role for the hundreds of Afghans in Hazarat Ali’s ragtag army. Now, he had no Afghan allies to guide him at night into the craggy moonscape of upper Tora Bora. Fury reluctantly made the decision to bail on that night’s mission.

Muhammad Musa, who commanded 600 Afghan soldiers at Tora Bora, later said that he was not impressed by the U.S. forces on the ground. “[They] were not involved in the fighting,” he said. “There were six American soldiers with us, U.S. Special Forces. They coordinated the air strikes. … My personal view is, if they had blocked the way out to Pakistan, Al Qaeda would not have had a way to escape. The Americans were my guests here, but they didn’t know about fighting.”

In fact, the five dozen or so Americans on the ground at Tora Bora fought well. There were just far too few of them to cordon off a huge, mountainous area and prevent Al Qaeda from escaping into Pakistan.

December 12 and 13 were eventful days. December 12 was when Franks briefed Rumsfeld on the revised war plans for Iraq. December 13 was the day that Pakistani militants attacked the Indian parliament, raising the possibility of war between two nuclear-armed states. India moved hundreds of thousands of soldiers to its border with Pakistan. “We had to respond,” Pakistani Minister of the Interior Moinuddin Haider told me. “All our armed forces went to combat that situation, and we also moved to the borders.” Suddenly, Pakistan’s attention was diverted away from sealing its northwestern border against an Al Qaeda escape.

As it turned out, December 12 and 13 also marked the defining moment in the battle of Tora Bora. Hajji Zaman, one of the Afghan warlords allied with the United States, had opened negotiations with members of Al Qaeda for a surrender agreement. “They talked on the radio with Hajji Zaman,” an Afghan frontline commander told me, “saying they were ready to surrender at four p.m. Commander Zaman told the other commanders and the Americans about this. Then Al Qaeda said, ‘We need to have a meeting with our guys. Will you wait until eight a.m. tomorrow?’ So we agreed to this.”

News of the cease-fire did not sit well with the group of 20 Delta operators who, by December 12, had made their way deeper into Tora Bora, to an area near bin Laden’s now-destroyed two-room house. In Kabul, Berntsen went ballistic when he heard about the proposed surrender. “Essentially I used the f-word. … I was screaming at them on the phone. And telling them, ‘No cease-fire. No negotiation. We continue airstrikes.’”

As Fury remembers it, U.S. forces only observed the cease-fire for about two hours on December 12–resuming bombing around 5 p.m. that day. At some point during the episode, an American pilot protested the proposed surrender by drawing a giant “8” in the sky, followed by the word “ON.” Zaman’s deadline of 8 a.m. came and went on December 13 without any of the militants inside Tora Bora surrendering.

That afternoon, American signals operators picked up bin Laden speaking to his followers. Fury kept a careful log of these communications in his notebook, which he would type up at the end of every day and pass up his chain of command. “The time is now,” bin Laden said. “Arm your women and children against the infidel!” Following several hours of high-intensity bombing, the Al Qaeda leader spoke again. Fury paraphrases: “Our prayers have not been answered. Times are dire. We didn’t receive support from the apostate nations who call themselves our Muslim brothers.” Bin Laden apologized to his men for having involved them in the fight and gave them permission to surrender.

Khalid Al Hubayshi, one of the Saudis holed up in Tora Bora, says that bin Laden’s aides instructed the hundreds of mostly Arab fighters who remained alive in the mountainous complex to head to Pakistan and turn themselves in to their embassies. Al Hubayshi is still angry about the behavior of the Al Qaeda leader: “We had been ready to lay down our lives for him, and he couldn’t make the effort to speak to us personally,” he told journalist Robert Lacey.

The following day, on December 14, bin Laden’s voice was again picked up by American signals operators, but, according to the interpreter who was translating for the Delta team, it sounded more like a pre-recorded sermon than a live transmission. It appeared that bin Laden had already left the battlefield area. He had likely used the cover of Al Qaeda’s “surrender” to begin his retreat.

Abdullah Tabarak, the Moroccan who was allegedly one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, says that the top leaders of Al Qaeda separated as they made their escape to Pakistan. Ayman Al Zawahiri left the mountainous redoubt with Uthman, one of bin Laden’s eleven sons. Osama fled with another of his sons, 18-year-old Muhammad, accompanied by his guards. Tabarak continued to use bin Laden’s satellite phone as the Al Qaeda leader escaped, on the reasonable assumption that it was being monitored by U.S. intelligence.

By December 17, the battle of Tora Bora was over. Fury estimated that there were some 220 dead militants and 52 captured fighters–mostly Arabs, as well as a dozen Afghans, and a sprinkling of Chechens and Pakistanis. Around 20 of the captured prisoners were paraded for the cameras of the international press. They were a bedraggled, scrawny lot who did not look much like the fearsome warriors everyone assumed them to be.

Ten days later, a videotape surfaced of bin Laden. He appeared to be visibly aged and contemplating his own death. “I am just a poor slave of God,” he said. “If I live or die, the war will continue.” During the 34-minute video, he did not move his entire left side.

Tora Bora would return, briefly, to the forefront of American politics in 2004. With just over a month to go before election day, John Kerry attacked President Bush for failing to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora. Franks, who had by this point retired from the military (and who would go on to join the boards of Bank of America and Chuck E. Cheese’s), retorted several weeks later with a New York Times op-ed, writing, “We don’t know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora.” Cheney weighed in the same day, calling Kerry’s criticisms “absolute garbage.” On October 27, Bush said Kerry’s remarks about the battle were part of a “pattern of saying anything it takes to get elected.”

Kerry remains furious about Tora Bora today. “They declared Osama bin Laden the world’s number-one criminal, and went out boldly proclaiming, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ and talking about the dangers of Al Qaeda,” he told me recently. “And when they had an opportunity to completely, not only decapitate it, but probably to leave it with the minuscule, last portion of its tail, they never showed up.” His anger is justified. Bin Laden was clearly at Tora Bora, and sending so few troops was indeed a major failure. It’s a lesson that bears remembering today as the United States continues to pursue Islamist militants in both Afghanistan and Pakistan: In the hunt for members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, there is simply no substitute for boots on the ground. Afghan proxies, Pakistani soldiers, drones–these are not unimportant tools in the war on terrorism. But they are not effective substitutes for U.S. troops. If we want to kill bin Laden and Zawahiri–and other top Al Qaeda leaders–we are probably going to have to do it ourselves.

The major participants in the battle of Tora Bora have long since moved on with their lives–Fury and Berntsen both retired and wrote books; Crumpton left the CIA and became the Bush State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism–yet the sense that something went very wrong in late 2001 has not left them. Fury is haunted by the moment on December 10 when bin Laden may have been less than 2,000 meters away. In his memoir, he wrote that the incident “still bothers me. In some ways, I can’t suppress the feeling of somehow letting down our nation at a critical time.” Earlier this month, he elaborated: “It’s a tough stigma to live with and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

As for bin Laden: If his 1987 escape at Jaji created his mythic persona, then his 2001 escape from Tora Bora helped to cement it. While he no longer presides over Al Qaeda as directly as he once did, there can be little doubt that he remains its general guide–and that he played a key role in rejuvenating the organization after 2001. Still, in 2005, the CIA shuttered Alec Station, the unit that had been tasked with hunting bin Laden and Al Qaeda’s other top leaders for the previous decade. The analysts and officers were reassigned to other missions. Today, most informed observers believe bin Laden is in or near Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province on the Afghan border, perhaps in Bajaur or Chitral. But the fact is, as a longtime American intelligence analyst puts it, “there is very limited collection on him personally.” That’s spook-speak for a blunt truth: We haven’t a clue where he is.

The Al Qaeda leader, who is now nearing his fifty-third birthday, has released several audio recordings in recent years, but the last time he was seen on video was in September 2007. In the course of a long statement that touched on everything from the Kennedy assassination to taxes, he taunted the United States for “being the greatest economic power and possessing the most powerful and up-to-date military arsenal,” yet failing to stop the September 11 attacks. His once-graying beard had been dyed jet black. He looked healthy and rested and confident, like a man who had been granted a new lease on life and was planning to make the most of it.

Copyright 2009, The New Republic