Club Tora Bora

Sunday Times:

FANCY following in the footsteps of the world’s most wanted terrorist as he evades capture by the most powerful army on earth? Soon tourists will have their chance as the Tora Bora caves where Osama Bin Laden slipped through the grasp of American forces are to be turned into a holiday resort.

“Tora Bora is already a world-famous name but we want it to be known for tourism, not terrorism,” said Gul Agha Sherzai, governor of the eastern Afghanistan province of Nangahar where the caves are situated.

The black-bearded governor, a former warlord turned construction mogul, has drawn up plans for a £5.3m hotel development overlooking the caves. He intends to build restaurants and pave the dirt road leading to the mountains from Jalalabad, a bone-jarring three-hour drive.

“I don’t just want one Tora Bora hotel,” he said, gnawing bones from mutton soup that he had prepared himself. “I want three or four. Long before anyone had heard of Osama, Tora Bora was known as a picnic spot and now it can be both.”

An hour’s walk from where the road runs out, across scree-covered mountains and along the bed of a stream, is the hillside the Al-Qaeda leader had turned into his fortified bunker.

...

Far from a labyrinth of tunnels, there are just three small entrances. One has been destroyed and the other two do not extend far. Any jihadi manuals or plans for nuclear or chemical weapons have disappeared: US forces checked the area carefully. By an old Soviet tank on a hill, a guard shows off the remains of a wall that he claims was Bin Laden’s swimming pool.

“Actually it was his library,” said Haji Zaheer, one of the three local commanders charged with capturing him. “All we found were some old potatoes. It looked like they had been running short of supplies.” If the ruins are disappointing, the location is stunning. Smugglers with heavily laden donkeys wander the gorges through jagged mountains.

...

There is more. I think I will pass on looking at bin Laden's hole in the ground. I am reminded of a conversation between Lt. Gen. Rifle DeLong and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld during the seige of Tora Bora. The excerpt is from DeLong's book Inside Centcom.

"Jesus Christ, can't you get them (Special Forces troops) moving any faster?" Rumsfeld said to me one morning. "Hell, I've been up in that altitude skiing before. And I'm sixty-nine years old."

"Mr. Secretary, let's put this in perspective," I said. "They're each carrying 130 pounds on their backs. They are climbing straight uphill, on a wall of ice. They are getting shot at as they go. They're moving as fast as they can--and there are no ski lifts."

He laughed.

"Okay," he said. "Point made."

The article did not say whether ski lifts were planned for Club Tora Bora. Personally, I am not going until they are operating.