I am reading the book, “Three Cups Of Tea” – an account of Greg Mortenson’s efforts to build schools in rural Pakistan villages for girls to get an education. Towards the end of the book, after he had been going there regularly for over eight years building these schools, 9/11 happened and he was taking a flight home.
Here is a part of the book regarding that leg of the flight home, from Peshwar to Riyadh:
“Steady turbulence announced they had left the land and were over the waters of the Arabian Sea. Across the aisle, Mortenson saw a bearded man in a black turban staring out the window through a high powered pair of binoculars. When the lights of ships at sea appeard below them, he spoke animatedly to the turbaned man in the seat next to him. And pulling a satellite phone out of the pocket of his shalwar kamiz, this man rushed to the bathroom, presumably to place a call.
‘Down there in the dark,” Mortenson says, ‘was the most technologically sophisticated navy strike force in the world, launching fighters and cruise missiles into Afghanistan. I didn’t have much sympathy for the Taliban, and I didn’t have any for Al Qaeda, but I had to admit that what they were doing was brilliant. Without satellites, without an air force, with even their primitive radar knocked out, they were ingenious enough to use plain old commercial flights to keep track of the Fifth Fleet’s position. I realized that if we were counting on our military technology alone to win the war on terror, we had a lot of lessons to learn.”
I’m not sure how he can justify the last sentence. Did he think they would have difficulty tracking an entire fleet? On top of that, it would be rather difficult to know when it was moving and to where if you were at the mercy of a commercial flight. Not to mention the # of people and amount of time needed to make such a strategy effective.
That being said, I agree that that is rather interesting. I think I would have been a bit on the worried side had I witnessed that.
I have a really hard time buying the story. Even if it is true, so what? It isn’t like the Taliban is capable of targeting a carrier strike group if it isn’t in port.
Even if they wanted to do something, it would probably be several hours before they could plan an operation, over which time a strike group could travel 100 miles or more, meaning that there is an area of 31,000 square miles in which the strike group could be. Which is why I have a hard time seeing why the bad guys would invest so much time, expense, and manpower to a futile and prolonged reconnaissance mission.