Remote Sensing and GIS as Counterterrorism Tools in the Afghanistan War: Reality, Plus the Results of Media Hyperbole Jack Shroder University of Nebraska at Omaha

any applications of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) have been, and are being, used actively for counterterrorism in the ongoing confrontation between the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the coalitions led by the United States. The recent case study of such methodology applied to the Zhawar Kili area in the Pushtun tribal region by Richard Beck (Beck 2003) is an example of a necessary intersection of the geosciences (geography and geology) with essential intelligence communities. But Beck’s article also refers to public identification of the site of the initial bin Laden video from Al Jazeera on the basis of the supposed sedimentary rocks behind him. This actually requires discussion in order to set the record straight and differentiate truth from the disinformation of the time, as well as to explain the extensive media hyperbole and a few other factors in the original failed attempt to catch bin Laden in Afghanistan. The events surrounding the search for bin Laden actually occurred closer to the Tora Bora area of the western Spin Ghar (Safed Koh) Range than to the Zhawar Kili region to the south, but Beck was obviously correct in his general assessment that remote sensing and GIS are useful in counterterrorism efforts. The situation behind those events was explained in meetings for assessing the geographical dimensions of terrorism (Cutter, Richardson, and Wilbanks 2002), as well as at the AAG–ESRIsponsored ‘‘Mapping the News’’ conference at Georgetown University in the fall of 2002. Beck’s (2003) article makes it necessary to explain the unusual background behind these events, as well as to suggest some reasons why

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things played out as they did in the U.S.’s original failure to capture bin Laden. In my opinion, not all of this information can, or should, be freely publicized, and even though there are no official restrictions, I wish to be circumspect. Therefore, the following discussion and graphics will present only the background information to the initial hunt for bin Laden that differs from Beck’s presentation. Some of this background starts over three decades ago in 1972, when Christian Jung and I started the Afghanistan Studies Center (ASC) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNOmaha). Then, in the 1970s, while I was director of the National Atlas of Afghanistan in Kabul (Shroder 1975, 1978, 1980, 1983), as well as in the 1980s while a Fulbright Professor in Peshawar, Pakistan (Shroder 1983, 1989a–d; Shroder and Assifi 1987; Shroder et al. 1989), extensive travels in the region and a large-scale map collection from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) enabled me to observe a variety of rock types and landforms on both sides of the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. This background and familiarity with Afghanistan is part of the explanation of the events surrounding the identification of bin Laden’s whereabouts in the Spin Ghar (Safed Koh) Range in the eastern part of the country. The geology of this prominent mountain chain consists of high-grade, metamorphic, and igneous crystalline rocks that commonly form tor landforms where their weathered mantles are stripped away to leave rounded, bouldery bedrock exposures in places at lower altitudes. Furthermore, in this semiarid region, the sparse forest and savannah vegetation is limited to geographically diagnostic species such as Juniperus sp. and Quercus baloot

The Professional Geographer, 57(4) 2005, pages 592–597 r Copyright 2005 by Association of American Geographers. Initial submission, August 2003; revised submissions, March 2004 and November 2004; final acceptance, December 2004. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.

Remote Sensing and GIS as Counterterrorism Tools in the Afghanistan War (analogous to the pin˜on–juniper and scrub oak ecotones of the American West) with biogeographically restricted ranges that can provide location specificity. Sometime soon after 11 September 2001, when Osama bin Laden and his henchmen had their video shot in a nullah (ravine) in Afghanistan, the video camera was set up on a tripod. The camera was back far enough to take in the high walls, surface topography, and rock types of the area, but for all but the last few frames, the tight focus and restricted field of view showed only the deeply weathered rock and sediment directly behind the terrorists, as well as a probable shear ( fault) zone (Figure 1). Most of the media presentations of the time focused only on a tight close-up on the men, rather than on the full scene of Figure 1. As the taping was finishing, the video camera may have been still running when it was tipped upward to be taken off the tripod. This produced a few quick frames of

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the tor landforms on the horizon. The migmatitic gneisses of the tors were clearly visible (Figure 2), but because they went by so quickly, few recognized them, and most people focused on the apparent sediments directly behind bin Laden so clearly visible in the background (Beck 2003). When I first saw the video, I noticed the tors and shear zone that I thought I had seen before when traveling near there. With the geology maps of Afghanistan (Chmyriov and Mirzad 1972; Wittekindt and Weippert 1973) and the DOD topographic maps, I soon picked out the western part of the Spin Ghar Range as the most likely area of the video (Figure 3). In the course of conversation at the ASC, I thought little of mentioning this to my colleagues, because wherever the video had been made, the participants were not likely to be there afterwards, and no one doubted that bin Laden was indeed somewhere in Afghanistan, most likely to the east in the Pushtun tribal

Figure 1 Computer-enhanced video clip e-mailed to the author from the initial Al Jazeera broadcast of Osama bin Laden. The standard close-up of bin Laden and his henchmen presented in most media reports of the time focused only on the lower right where the superficial appearance is of sedimentary rocks. In fact, as an examination of the entire scene clearly shows, the four men are sitting in front of sheared crystalline rocks, which fact was not revealed to the media while the search for bin Laden had a chance of success.

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Figure 2 An e-mail sent to the author of Migmatitic tor landforms shown in the last frames of the bin Laden video by Al Jazeera. These landforms of crystalline rock are rounded by subsurface chemical weathering, and when exposed by stripping of the weathered mantle, can present reasonably unique landform configurations such as this one.

areas. Shortly thereafter, as various media people were asking questions around the ASC, a colleague chanced to mention that I knew the approximate location of the video. One reporter asked about the location. Not realizing the implications, I replied. The next day, the media blitz began in earnest. My photograph and allegations appeared worldwide, which appar-

ently caught Beck’s (2003) attention. I had not revealed the tor landforms or the shear zone and instead focused on the apparent sedimentary rocks, which I noted, misleadingly, were most likely in Paktia or Paktika Provinces in southern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan. Shortly thereafter, in fact, several of the national intelligence agencies contacted me. They

Figure 3 Part of the geology map by Wittekindt and Weippert (1973) of eastern Afghanistan. The Precambrian metamorphic rocks of the western Spin Ghar range occur on the right-hand middle of the map, directly above the white unmapped area of the Kurram Agency zone in Pakistan. The Spin Ghar rocks terminate in the prominent north-south fault zone marked with the black line that may be related to the shear zone behind Osama bin Laden in the Al Jazeera video clip.

Remote Sensing and GIS as Counterterrorism Tools in the Afghanistan War advised me on how to behave with the media and instructed me to remove a number of items from our Web site that could be of use to the terrorists and to be careful about not revealing too much publicly while they attempted to zero in on bin Laden’s whereabouts. A number of us with experience in Afghanistan worked out the most probable location of bin Laden in the western Spin Ghar Range, and we discussed the wide variety of caves and bunkers possible in the region. We presented ideas for cave detection (Hall 2001) and constructed a classification of the caves and bunkers (Figure 4) for use by the U.S. military. Transmission of this cave information out to the field was apparently not straightforward, however, perhaps because of the speed with which events were unfolding, or possibly because of military lethargy and the tendency of the intelligence services to maintain excessive secrecy. Shortly after the media onslaught, my e-mail traffic increased, with death threats from supporters of Al Qaeda. I also received strong criticisms from those who thought that information should be suppressed so as not to enable the escape of bin Laden. What the critics did not know, however, was that the public exposure of this [dis]information established a focal point for e-mail from bounty hunters. The U.S. gov-

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ernment analysts with whom I worked and I already knew some location details from news reporters who had interviewed bin Laden in Afghanistan in the past; this knowledge enabled cross-checking for veracity. We had our greatest success when photographs arrived of bin Laden’s house on the southwest side of the Spin Ghar, as well as pictures of his engineered bunkers (Figures 5 and 6). The concrete- and iron-reinforced double doors of the bunkers excavated in crystalline rock had been previously observed so we knew that the information was authentic, and the unusual vegetation behind the house was further biogeographic information that helped pinpoint the location. The names of the areas provided by bounty hunters were located in the Gazetteer of Afghanistan, as well as on the DOD maps; this information then was provided to the intelligence services, as was Beck’s (2003). In addition to the photographs, e-mail traffic from the bounty hunters also reported the movement of the Al Qaeda leadership close to the south side of the Spin Ghar in Paktia and also near Tora Bora on the north side of the range in Nangrahar Province. Osama bin Laden was reported to move there mostly at night, but always close to the Pakistani border, near the Kurram Agency of Pakistan. Sources also

Figure 4 Matrix classification of caves and bunkers of Afghanistan prepared for U.S. military.

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Figure 5 E-mail transmitted photograph of a house reported to belong to Osama bin Laden. Note diagnostic vegetation on slope in background, as well as apparent crystalline rocks.

reported that those areas offered the best caves and easiest defense and kept open the options of crossing into Pakistan. In December 2001, the name ‘‘Tora Bora’’ first emerged in media reports about the fighting by U.S.-led coalition troops who moved into the Spin Ghar region in pursuit of bin Laden. By this time, however, the full flow of information within the U.S. government and the military was apparently not going as well as many had hoped, as those leading the assault lacked adequate information about the caves and bunkers, or even about the most likely behavior of the always mercurial Afghan troops from the Northern Alliance and others who apparently let bin Laden slip out of the Tora Bora area and over the undefended border into Pakistan. This was not surprising to those cultural geographers

knowledgeable of the region (e.g., Nigel Allan), but many Americans seemed shocked at what appeared to be the embarrassing consequences of incompetence. Nevertheless, the attention of Beck (2003) and a number of others was now turned fully onto the Pushtun tribal areas along both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the result that the battles around the caves and bunkers of the Zhawar Kili region and elsewhere were quite effective, even though bin Laden and cronies were not captured. Beck (2003) is to be commended for making his information available to the U.S. government, even though sending such information commonly seems to disappear into the black hole of the intelligence services, rarely to emerge where it is most needed.

Figure 6 E-mail transmitted photograph of double-doored, engineered bunkers excavated into crystalline rocks and reported to have been constructed by bin Laden. Note poured concrete and steel in the left-hand door.

Remote Sensing and GIS as Counterterrorism Tools in the Afghanistan War Indeed, we who choose to map and mingle with the highly diverse and most hospitable people of such places as Afghanistan and Pakistan (Halvorson 2003) know that we take certain physical risks. Nonetheless, without maintaining expertise in the more traditional regional studies of geography, or in all the many kinds of mapping that we geoscientists produce, the ability of the U.S. to ultimately to prevail in its ‘‘war on terrorism’’ is in serious doubt (Flint 2003; Shroder 2003). Beck’s (2003) contribution, although initially based on my disinformation concerning the actual location of the initial bin Laden video, is an example of skilled interpretation that must be undertaken to maintain geoscientific excellence. In sum, Beck (2003) was not correct that bin Laden was in or near the Zhawar Kili cave complex, but his overall notion was obviously correct that remote sensing and GIS were useful as counterterrorism tools in the Afghanistan war.’

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JACK SHRODER is the Regents Professor of the Department of Geography and Geology, as well as a Research Fellow in the Afghanistan Studies Center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE 68182-0199. E-mail: [email protected]. His thirty years of research and publication on resources and landform evolution in Afghanistan and Pakistan continue unabated.