Two months into their invasion of Afghanistan, the United States received intelligence that the mastermind of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, was hiding in the Tora Bora cave system in eastern Afghanistan.
Alongside their allies in the Northern Alliance, the Coalition military, including US and British special forces, assaulted the cave, but they failed to capture or kill Bin Laden.
The failure of the Tora Bora mission was blamed on numerous factors.
An investigation of the failed operation by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations concluded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General
Tommy Franks were at fault for not assembling enough U.S. troops to seal the mountainous area during the operation. After studying the matter, the Committee came to a conclusion that Osama bin Laden most likely was present at Tora Bora and his subsequent escape prolonged the war in Afghanistan
A Delta Force commander under the alias Dalton Fury later stated that there were reasons why Bin Laden was able to escape.
- the US mistakenly thought that Pakistan was effectively guarding the border area,
- NATO allies refused to allow the use of air-dropped GATOR mines, which would have helped seal bin Laden and his forces inside the Tora Bora area
- Over-reliance on native Afghan military forces as the main force deployed against bin Laden and his fighters
What if one or more of these factors were changed so that the operation was successful and Osama Bin Laden was killed or captured at Tora Bora in 2001?