i U.5. RaNGeRS aND THG BaTTLG I OFTORa BORa (DecEMBer 12-17,2001) I
n October 2001, the United States and its allies began nnilitary
the defenses of the al-Qaeda fighters, who pulled back with their
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operations in Afghanistan in an effort to destroy the al-Qaeda
weapons to fortified positions higher up the mountain,Tribal
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terrorist movement operating from that country, and also to topple
militiamen opposed to theTaliban regime maintained their advance
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the Taliban fundamentalist regime and install a democratic
through this difficult terrain with the aid of air attacks coordinated
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â– government. By November 2001, the U.S.A. had come to believe
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that the al-Qaeda forces and its leader, Osama bin Laden, were
negotiated a truce with a local militia commander to give them time
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based in theTora Bora complex of caves within the White Mountains
to surrender their weapons, though it is now believed that this was
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of eastern Afghanistan, near the Khyber Pass into northwestern
a ruse to buy time for senior al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden,
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Pakistan, Tora Bora, able to accommodate up to 1,000 persons and
to escape into the tribal areas of Pakistan,
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believed to contain a very large cache of weapons left over from the
mujahidin
campaign against the Soviets in the 1980s, also included
by U,S, and British special forces,The ai-Qaeda forces then
Combat restarted on December 12, the combination of militiamen,
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outposts created by the enlargement and strengthening of natural
allied special forces and allied air power enabling progress into the
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caves achieved with the assistance of the CIA in the early 1980s,
cave and bunker positions extending through this mountain region.
On December 3, a group of 20 U,S, special force soldiers was airlifted into the area by helicopter to support the forthcoming operation, and two days later Afghan militiamen took the ground below the mountain caves and established tank positions from which to shell
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U.S. special forces entered Kandahar airport on December 15,2001, and here
joined U.S. Marines in setting up a base of operations and a detention camp for ai-Qaeda prisoners captured in the Tora Bora campaign.
â–ş Men of the Afghan Nationai Army and U.S. Marines disembark from the rear of a U.S. Army Boeing CH-47 Chinook in Afghanistan's rugged Tora Bora mountains.