Tora Bora 2001

Soviet Army reports described the most sophisticated caves used by the Afghan rebels as "the last word in NATO engineering." Some of the caves were upgraded in the mid-to-late 1980's, when the rebels were receiving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in covert aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia.

- Bin Laden Is Reported Spotted in a Fortified Camp in Eastern Afghanistan, New York Times, 25 november 2001

Forty-one caves in all, it had everything then: a bakery, a hotel with overstuffed furniture, a hospital with an ultrasound machine, a library, a mosque, weapons of every imaginable stripe; a service bay with a World War II-era Soviet tank inside, in perfect running order.

- A Nation Challenged: Caves and Tunnels; Heavily Fortified 'Ant Farms' Deter bin Laden's Pursuers', New York Times, 26 november 2001

It has its own ventilation system and its own power, created by a hydro-electric generator. Its walls and floors in the rooms are smooth and finished and it extends 350 yards beneath a solid mountain. It is so well defended and concealed that – short of poison gas or a tactical nuclear weapon – it is immune to outside attack.

- Al-Qa'ida almost 'immune to attack' inside its hi-tech underground lair, The Independent, 27 november 2001

This is serious business. And there's not one of those. There are many of those.

- Donald Rumsfeld, tv-programmet Meet the Press, NBC, 2 december 2001

Det avancerade grottkomplex som Viktor Kutsenko beskrev (mer eller mindre sanningsenligt?) för Times låg i Zhawar Kili. Det bombades 1998 och återigen 2001. När grottorna i Tora Bora hamnade på dagordningen kom beskrivningarna, som den i Independent, att handla om dem. Ju mer ryktena cirkulerade, desto underbarare blev de. Så fick Usama till slut en hel uppsättning superlyxbunkrar.

Snart nog började grottbunkrarna att falla, och världen fick facit.

These weren't the five-star accommodations with internal hydroelectric power plants and brick-lined walls, areas to drive armored tanks and children's tricycles, and tunnels like capillaries that have captured the world's imagination. Such commodious quarters might exist higher in the White Mountains [länk], but these were simply rough bunkers embedded deep into the mountain. They were remarkable nonetheless.

- Inside the Tora Bora Caves, Time, 11 december 2001


Edward Jay Epstein: Bin Laden's Mountain Fortress