No Easy Day

Title: No Easy Day – The Only First-hand Account of the Navy SEAL Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden

Author: Mark Owen with Kevin Maurer

Publisher: Michael Joseph, 2012 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-718-17752-2

Pages: 299

The twin attacks on World Trade Center in New York was one of the moments people anywhere in the world is not going to forget for a long time to come. Whether you were a resident of Japan, India, Egypt or Brazil, you’d still be remembering the exact place and setting you were in, when the news broke on TV. It too days for the world to finally sink in the truth that Osama Bin Laden, as Islamic terrorist holed up in Afghanistan could carry out an attack on such a humongous scale against the most powerful nation on earth. A massive manhunt ensued the likes of which were not witnessed before. Years passed and most of the world mocked at the Americans for their failure to apprehend their greatest fugitive and came to the conclusion that he’ll never be caught. But the people who made it their mission to track Osama continued their silent work until they stood vindicated on the early morning of May 2, 2011 when Laden was killed in a Navy SEAL operation at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His dead body was carried off by the assaulters and given a silent, but religious burial at sea.

This is the story of that operation. The author, Mark Owen is a nom de guerre of the commando who participated in the mission and a team leader of one of the groups which went inside Laden’s compound, overpowering the inhabitants. He saw Bin Laden’s body, took photographs of it and cleared the rooms. For security reasons, his as well as his team mates’ names are changed. The real author, Kevin Maurer, is a writer who has covered special operations forces for many years. He was often embedded with troops in many parts of the world.

Navy SEAL is the U.S. Navy’s Sea, Air, Land team, which is a special operations force. Equipped with the most modern and lethal weapons and surveillance technology, a SEAL is more than a man in terms of the fire power at his disposal. He can see at night – with night vision goggles, his guns are sleek, silent, accurate and fast, his vest is light and bullet-proof, his radio communicates with his team members on the ground and with the command centre through a satellite link. Equally or more dangerous is the mission for which he is called for. He enters the hideouts of militants - most of them bent upon doing a suicide mission – and destroys the targets. Owen describes the gruelling training regime which a SEAL has to undergo to be a part of the elite force. Whenever they are not on actual duty, they’d be training somewhere else, simulating extreme conditions of atmosphere where they might be called upon to operate one day. Owen himself was deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia before he was assigned to the team targeting Osama Bin Laden.

Osama was the son of a Saudi billionaire. Born as the seventh child on the tenth wife of a father who’d go on to have a total of fifty children. Attracted to religious orthodoxy from a very early age, Laden moved to Afghanistan to fight the Russian occupation, sometimes aided by U.S. weapons. After the Soviets withdrew, the restless Laden turned against his own allies and orchestrated the bombings against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Exiled to Sudan as a result of American pressure on the Saudis, he founded Al Qaeda. The new organisation planned and executed a number of attacks on American targets, the assault on U.S.S. Cole in Yemen being one of them. Laden found asylum back in Afghanistan under the Taliban who wholeheartedly welcomed their one-time colleague. Bin Laden attained ever lasting notoriety by masterminding the attacks on World Trade Center in New York and Pentagon in Washington. A total of 3000 people of many nationalities perished in the attacks which shook the whole world to its core. It had never witnessed such a horrendous strike before, of crashing in hijacked aircraft on to targets. U.S. stung into action immediately and toppled the Taliban regime a few months later. Laden was on the run from 2001 onwards and a relentless manhunt went on in search of him until the CIA zeroed in on him to Abbottabad in Pakistan.

The CIA had many false starts in tracing the master terrorist. He was reportedly sighted at various places, facilitating a large scale operation in Tora Bora caves in 2007. The real turning point came when they identified the brother of Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was Laden’s courier. Cut off from the outside world in his compound which didn’t have telephone or Internet connections, al-Kuwaiti was his right-hand man. The CIA traced his phone call to his family when he said that he had been doing the job he did earlier, confirming the sleuths’ suspicions. The suspected compound was continually watched by drones, satellites and other means. The layout of the area was utterly familiarized by the SEALS by re-creating the structure in the attack team’s training facility before they went in for the kill. The curious thing we note in the book is the lack of preparation on Bin Laden’s part to fight the commandos. Even though he had fifteen minutes in which to prepare a weapon or suicide vest, Laden was unarmed when the assualters rushed in. Owen remarks that the man who advocated thousands to court death in Jihad (the sacred religious wars) was unwilling to risk his own life when the time came.

Though the description of previous missions is flamboyant which is to be expected from a soldier, he could’ve done away with descriptions that reeked of disrespect to their victims or targets. Commandos who take bras from households they raided, only to hang it on to projecting attachments on their team mates’ gear appear revulsive to the readers, however hilarious it might have seemed to the proponents. Also the description of taking out Laden’s body from the truck to the ground after they reached their base in Jalalabad is in bad taste. Owen states that his body ‘flopped like dead fish to the ground’ (p.265). The book is mainly an item of propaganda, even with all protestations of the difficulties in getting it whetted by the security system. It conveys the idea of invincibility of the special forces.

The book is easily readable and is endowed with good colour plates on the training missions in Afghanistan and other parts of the world. Also, detailed schematics of Laden’s compound and the methods of commandos to get inside provide amply for leisurely reading.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star