The Other War

A new book sheds critical light on military operations in Afghanistan.

Three years ago this month, U.S. troops in Afghanistan waged a key battle against al Qaeda terrorists in southeastern Afghanistan. To the extent Operation Anaconda is known outside military circles, it is generally viewed the way senior military commanders have portrayed it-as a heroically fought, successful operation, albeit with some friction between the Army and the Air Force over the role of air power. A new book, published this month, promises to dispel that view.

In Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (The Berkley Publishing Group, 2005), author Sean Naylor paints a riveting and disturbing picture of an operation hampered by turf wars between Army and Navy special forces, abysmal intelligence, reliance on an ad hoc task force of troops who had never trained together, and planners more focused on the coming war in Iraq than on operations in Afghanistan. As in an earlier battle fought at Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters escaped.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry repeatedly criticized President Bush for the military's failure to capture al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. The failure, Kerry said, stemmed from a Pentagon decision to "outsource" military operations to Afghan militias, who failed to block the terrorist leader's escape into Pakistan in December 2001.

The debacle at Tora Bora had a galvanizing effect on military leaders, particularly those who felt the war in Afghanistan had relied too heavily on inconstant Afghan militias and not enough on conventional U.S. forces. By using small teams of special operations forces and targeted air power in support of the loose confederation of northern tribal militias, known collectively as the Northern Alliance, military planners orchestrated the successful overthrow of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban party in the capital city of Kabul in late 2001.

That formula proved far less effective when later applied at Tora Bora. There, the U.S. military's Afghan allies were sympathetic to the Taliban and had little incentive to pursue fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Hundreds are believed to have escaped, including Osama bin Laden. So military planners tried a different approach in March 2002 when going after al Qaeda guerrillas in the southeast in what was known as Operation Anaconda.

Naylor was one of eight journalists embedded with U.S. forces during Operation Anaconda. His account, based on firsthand observation, secret documents and interviews with nearly 200 participants, chronicles the largest battle-and what might be the biggest missed opportunity-in the war against al Qaeda. Eight U.S. soldiers died in the operation and 28 were wounded.

The book already has hit a nerve at the Pentagon. Months before it was published, Naylor says, U.S. Special Operations Command officials launched an investigation into who leaked information to him. It's no wonder, given the failures Naylor's reporting revealed: When estimating enemy strength and position, mission planners discounted human intelligence in favor of information collected from spy satellites and reconnaissance aircraft-information that proved disastrously incomplete.

A convoluted command and control structure and a decision by senior officials to deny artillery support for the mission further hindered the operation.

There were heroes in Operation Anaconda as well. Naylor tells the gripping story of how a 13-man classified commando unit saved Anaconda from ruin in a harrowing, icebound mountain reconnaissance operation that went a long way toward mitigating the mission's intelligence failures.

Not a Good Day to Die won't make senior military leaders and Pentagon officials happy. But if future planners read it and learn from it, the result might be better military operations.