Increasing Power of Pentagon Special Operations Forces

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Shadow Warriors: Movin' On Up

Conn Hallinan

Published: Sunday 21 August 2011

“SOF forces have almost doubled in the past two decades, from some 37,000 to close to 60,000, and major increases are planned in the future.”

U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward

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For decades the U.S. mil­i­tary has waged clan­des­tine war on vir­tu­ally every con­ti­nent on the globe, but for the first time, high-rank­ing Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Forces (SOF) of­fi­cers are mov­ing out of the shad­ows and into the com­mand main­stream. Their emer­gence sug­gests the U.S. is em­bark­ing on a mil­i­tary sea change that will re­place mas­sive de­ploy­ments, like Iraq and Afghanistan, with stealthy night raids, se­cret as­sas­si­na­tions, and death-deal­ing drones. Its im­pli­ca­tions for civil­ian con­trol of for­eign pol­icy promises to be pro­found.

Early this month, Vice Adm. Robert Har­ward—a for­mer com­man­der of the SEALs, the Navy’s elite SOF that re­cently killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—was 

The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has been par­tic­u­larly en­am­ored of SOFs, and ac­cord­ing to re­porters Karen DeY­oung and Greg Jaffe of the Wash­ing­ton Post, is in the process of dou­bling the num­ber of coun­tries where such units are ac­tive from 60 to 120. U.S. Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand spokesman Col. Tim Nye told Nick Turse of that SOFs would soon be de­ployed in 60 per­cent of the world’s na­tions: “We do a lot of trav­el­ing.”

In­deed they do. U.S. Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand (SOC) ad­mits to hav­ing forces in vir­tu­ally every coun­try in the Mid­dle East, Cen­tral Asia, as well as many in Africa, South­east Asia, and Latin Amer­ica. But true to its pen­chant for se­crecy, SOC is re­luc­tant to dis­close every coun­try to which its forces are de­ployed. “We’re ob­vi­ously going to have some places where it’s not ad­van­ta­geous for us to list where we’re at,” Nye told Turse.

SOF forces have al­most dou­bled in the past two decades, from some 37,000 to close to 60,000, and major in­creases are planned in the fu­ture. Their bud­get has jumped from $2.3 bil­lion to $9.8 bil­lion over the last 10 years

These Spe­cial Forces in­clude the Navy’s SEALs, the Marines Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions teams, the Army’s Delta Force, the Air Force’s Blue Light and Air Com­man­dos, plus Rangers and Green Berets. There is also the CIA, which runs the clan­des­tine drone war in Pak­istan, Yemen, and So­ma­lia.

It is in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult to dis­tin­guish civil­ian from mil­i­tary op­er­a­tives. Leon Panetta, for­mer di­rec­tor of the CIA, is now De­fense Sec­re­tary, while Afghanistan com­man­der Gen. David Pe­traeus—an ex­pert on coun­terin­sur­gency and coun­tert­er­ror­ism op­er­a­tions—is tak­ing over the CIA. Both have worked closely with SOF units, par­tic­u­larly Pe­traeus, who vastly in­creased the num­ber of “night raids” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The raids are aimed at de­cap­i­tat­ing in­sur­gent lead­er­ship, but have caused wide­spread out­rage in both coun­tries.

The raids are based on in­tel­li­gence that many times comes from local war­lords try­ing to elim­i­nate their en­e­mies or com­pe­ti­tion. And, since the raids are car­ried out under a cloak of se­crecy, it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to in­ves­ti­gate them when things go wrong.

A re­cent CIA analy­sis of civil­ian ca­su­al­ties from the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s drone war in Pak­istan con­tends that at­tacks since May 2010 have killed more than 600 in­sur­gents and not a sin­gle civil­ian. But a re­port by the 

Those higher num­bers, ac­cord­ing to Den­nis C. Blair, re­tired ad­mi­ral and di­rec­tor of na­tional in­tel­li­gence from 2009 to 2010, “are widely be­lieved [in Pak­istan],” and he adds that “our re­liance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our sol­diers is bit­terly re­sented.”

Rather than re-ex­am­in­ing the pol­icy of night raids and the use of armed drones, how­ever, those tac­tics are being ex­panded to places like Yemen, So­ma­lia, and Libya. The ques­tion is, who’s next?

Latin Amer­ica is one can­di­date.

A re­cent 

The United States has a long and sor­did his­tory of sup­port­ing Latin Amer­i­can coups—at times en­gi­neer­ing them—and many in the re­gion are tense over the re­cent re-es­tab­lish­ment of the U.S. Fourth Fleet. The lat­ter, a Cold War ar­ti­fact, will pa­trol 30 coun­tries in the re­gion. Given the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion’s sup­port for the post-2009 coup gov­ern­ment in Hon­duras, its on­go­ing hos­til­ity to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and now the Wik­iLeak rev­e­la­tions about Bo­livia, the idea of ap­point­ing a “shadow war­rior” the num­ber-two leader in South Com­mand is likely to con­cern gov­ern­ments in the re­gion.

SOFs have be­come al­most a par­al­lel mil­i­tary. In 2002, Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions were given the right to cre­ate their own task forces, sep­a­rate from mil­i­tary for­ma­tions like Cen­tral and South­ern Com­mand. In 2011 they got the okay to con­trol their bud­gets, train­ing, and equip­ment, in­de­pen­dent of the de­part­ments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. If one reaches for an his­tor­i­cal anal­ogy, the Prae­to­rian Guard of Rome’s em­per­ors comes to mind.

There is a cult-like qual­ity about SOFs that the media and Hol­ly­wood have done much to nur­ture: Spe­cial Forces are tough, in­de­pen­dent, com­pe­tent, and vir­tu­ally in­de­struc­tible. The gushy  mag­a­zine story about SEAL Team Six, “Get­ting Bin Laden,” is a case in point. Ac­cord­ing to New York Times colum­nist Mau­reen Dowd, the story will be adapted into a made-for-TV movie and re­leased just be­fore the 2012 elec­tions.

There is a telling mo­ment in that story that cap­tures the com­bi­na­tion of bravado and ar­ro­gance that per­me­ates SOF units. An uniden­ti­fied “se­nior De­fense De­part­ment of­fi­cial” told au­thor Nicholas Schmi­dle that the bin Laden mis­sion was just “one of al­most two thou­sand mis­sions that have been con­ducted over the last cou­ple of years, night after night.” And then adds that these raids were rou­tine, no big thing, “like mow­ing the lawn.”

But war is never like “mow­ing the lawn,” as 38 Amer­i­can and Afghan SOFs found out the night of Au­gust 6 when their U.S. CH-47 “Chi­nook” he­li­copter flew into a care­fully laid am­bush just south of the Afghan cap­i­tal of Kabul.

“It was a trap that was set by a Tal­iban com­man­der,” a “se­nior Afghan gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial” told . Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, the Tal­iban com­man­der, Qari Tahir, put out a phony story that a Tal­iban meet­ing was tak­ing place. When Army Rangers went in to at­tack the “meet­ing,” they found the Tal­iban dug in and wait­ing. Within min­utes the Rangers were pinned down and forced to send for help.

The Tal­iban had spent sev­eral years prac­tic­ing for just such an event in the Ko­ren­gal Val­ley that bor­ders Pak­istan. Ac­cord­ing to a 2009 Wash­ing­ton Post

“The Tal­iban knew which route the he­li­copter would take,” said the Afghan of­fi­cial, be­cause “that is the only route, so they took po­si­tion on ei­ther side of the val­ley on moun­tains and as the he­li­copter ap­proached, they at­tacked it with rock­ets.” 

As soon as the chop­per was down, the Tal­iban broke off the at­tack and van­ished. Ac­cord­ing to the United States, many of those Tal­iban were later killed in a bomb­ing raid, but be­liev­ing what the mil­i­tary says these days about Afghanistan is a pro­found leap of faith.

SOFs are not in­vul­ner­a­ble, nor are they a so­lu­tion to the dan­ger­ous world we live in. And the qual­i­ties that make them ef­fec­tive—stealth and se­crecy—are in fun­da­men­tal con­flict with a civil­ian-con­trolled armed forces, one of the cor­ner­stones of our democ­racy.

As Adm. Eric Olson, for­mer head of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, re­cently said at the Aspen In­sti­tute’s Se­cu­rity Forum, hav­ing Spe­cial Forces in 120 coun­tries “de­pends on our abil­ity to not talk about it,” and what the mil­i­tary most wanted was “to get back into the shad­ows.”

Which is pre­cisely the prob­lemp://www.nationofchange.org/shadow-warriors-movin-1313944113