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
M 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 method-
ology 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 sedimen-
tary 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 me-
dia 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 sit-
uation behind those events was explained in
meetings for assessing the geographical dimen-
sions of terrorism (Cutter, Richardson, and
Wilbanks 2002), as well as at the AAG–ESRI-
sponsored ‘‘Mapping the News’’ conference at
Georgetown University in the fall of 2002.
Beck’s (2003) article makes it necessary to ex-
plain the unusual background behind these
events, as well as to suggest some reasons why
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.
things played out as they did in the U.S.’s orig-
inal 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 graph-
ics will present only the background informa-
tion 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 (UN-
Omaha). Then, in the 1970s, while I was direc-
tor 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 iden-
tification 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, meta-
morphic, 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 vegeta-
tion is limited to geographically diagnostic
species such as Juniperus sp. and Quercus baloot
 Remote Sensing and GIS as Counterterrorism Tools in the Afghanistan War
(analogous to the piñon–juniper and scrub oak
ecotones of the American West) with biogeo-
graphically 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 Afghan-
istan, 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 prob-
able 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 finish-
ing, the video camera may have been still run-
ning when it was tipped upward to be taken off
the tripod. This produced a few quick frames of
593
the tor landforms on the horizon. The mig-
matitic 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.
594 Volume 57, Number 4, November 2005

Figure 2 An e-mail sent to the

author of Migmatitic tor land-
forms shown in the last frames
of the bin Laden video by Al
Jazeera. These landforms of crys-
talline rock are rounded by sub-
surface chemical weathering,
and when exposed by stripping
of the weathered mantle, can
present reasonably unique land-
form configurations such as
this one.

areas. Shortly thereafter, as various media peo-
ple 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 na-
tional intelligence agencies contacted me. They

Figure 3 Part of the geology map by Wittekindt and Weippert (1973) of eastern Afghanistan. The Pre-
cambrian 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 ex-
perience 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 re-
gion. 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 infor-
mation 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 sup-
porters of Al Qaeda. I also received strong crit-
icisms 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-
Figure 4 Matrix classification of caves and bunkers of Afghanistan prepared for U.S. military.
595
ernment analysts with whom I worked and I al-
ready 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 Lad-
en’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 previ-
ously observed so we knew that the information
was authentic, and the unusual vegetation be-
hind the house was further biogeographic in-
formation that helped pinpoint the location.
The names of the areas provided by bounty
hunters were located in the Gazetteer of Af-
ghanistan, as well as on the DOD maps; this
information then was provided to the intelli-
gence 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
596 Volume 57, Number 4, November 2005
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 fight-
ing 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 ade-
quate 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
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.
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 else-
where were quite effective, even though bin
Laden and cronies were not captured. Beck
(2003) is to be commended for making his in-
formation available to the U.S. government,
even though sending such information com-
monly 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, en-
gineered 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 Paki-
stan (Halvorson 2003) know that we take certain
physical risks. Nonetheless, without maintain-
ing 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) contribu-
tion, although initially based on my disinfor-
mation concerning the actual location of the
initial bin Laden video, is an example of skilled
interpretation that must be undertaken to main-
tain 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 re-
mote sensing and GIS were useful as counter-
terrorism 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: jshroder@mail.unomaha.edu.
His thirty years of research and publication on re-
sources and landform evolution in Afghanistan and
Pakistan continue unabated.