A representative from the US’s lower house of Congress has prompted an outcry from Republicans for saying that the Bush administration ‘intentionally let bin Laden get away’ in order to justify the Iraq war.
There’s been a lot written about foreign militants escaping from the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan in 2001, but less well known are the numbers of fighters who escaped at Kunduz at the request of Pakistan and with permission from Dick Cheney and George Bush. Ahmed Rashid writes about it in ‘Descent into Chaos.’
For Pakistan, the stalemate in Kunduz was turning into a disaster as hundreds of ISI officers and soldiers from the Frontier Corps aiding the Taliban were trapped there.
They had been ordered to quit Afghanistan after 9/11 and had two months to escape, but instead they had stayed on to fight alingside the Taliban. Musharraf telephoned Bush and asked for a huge favor — a US bombing pause and the opening of an air corridor so that Pakistani aircraft could ferry his officers out of Kunduz. Bush and Vice President Cheney agreed, but the operation was top secret, with most cabinet members kept in the dark.
On November 15, 2001, NA [Northern Alliance] commanders outside Kunduz reported that Pakistani aircraft were flying into the city at night to airlift the Pakistanis.
….When the Kunduz garrison finally surrendered to the Northern Alliance on November 24, large numbers of people were missing. Only 3,300 Taliban came out, compared to the 5,000 to 7,000 believed to be there…
In fact, they were taking Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders too, as investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported and Rashid confirmed with his own reporting.
The “Great Escape,” as one Pakistani retired army officer dubbed it, would have enormous implications on the subsequent US-led war on terrorism. It is believed that more foreign terrorists escaped from Kunduz than made their escape later from Tora Bora.
