The golden age of covert operations
Deep at night, they slipped aboard the V-22 Osprey convertiplane. Having landed in one of the most remote corners of one of the most unstable countries on the planet, they penetrated into the village, and immediately found themselves in the epicenter of the fight for life and death. For the second time in two weeks, the US Navy fur seal elite attempted to rescue American photojournalist Luke Somers. And the second time they failed.
On December 6, 2014, approximately 36 heavily armed, elite American commandos, guided by satellite intelligence data, drones and high-tech listening devices, equipped with night vision devices and covered by elite Yemeni units, came into close combat with six al-Qaeda fighters in the Arabian Peninsula. When it was all over, Somers was dead, and so was Pierre Corky, a South African teacher who was to be released the next day. It is reported from the field that eight civilians were also killed at the hands of "commandos". Most of the militants have disappeared.
Depending on the point of view, this bloody episode was either the shameful end of the year during which the US Special Operations Forces (SOF) were deployed in practically record numbers, or a bad omen of the beginning of a new year in which not surpassed, similar results.
During the fiscal year ending 30 on September 2014, the US Special Operations Forces deployed to 133 countries - almost 70% of the states on the planet - as stated by Lt. Col. Robert Bochholt, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) . Deployment completed a three-year period, during which select units of the country operated in more than 150 different countries around the world, carrying out missions from murders or seizures in night raids to training maneuvers. And this year the record could be beaten. Just a day before the ill-fated raid that cost Luke Somers life - and only 2015 days passed in the 66 fiscal year - under the heel of the most elite American force units were already 105 states, which is approximately 80% of the entire 2014 year.
Despite its impressive scale and scale, most Americans do not know about this secret global war on most of the planet. Unlike the December fiasco in Yemen, the vast majority of operations of special forces remain completely hidden from prying eyes, hidden from internal oversight and corrosive press. In fact, in addition to the moderate amount of information disclosed by very selectively by the military media, official leaks from the White House, “sea lions” that have something to sell, and several biased journalists reporting spicy details, most of what the American special forces are doing subject to serious study, which only increases the likelihood of unintended consequences and catastrophic results.
Golden age
“The team is just at the height of glory. And in fact, this is the “golden age” of the special forces. ”
These are the words of Army General Joseph Hotel the Third, a West Point graduate and ranger, and last August the alleged commander of SOCOM.
His rhetoric may be stilted, but not hyperbolic. From September 11 to US 2001 forces, special forces have grown in every sense, in numbers, on budget, to their influence in Washington and in the place of popular imagination. For example, the team has more than doubled its composition, from 33 000 to 2001 to almost 70 000, including a jump to 8 000 during three years of service of the recently retired SOCOM head Admiral William McRaven.
These numbers, impressive in themselves, do not give a complete picture of the expansion and global growth of America’s most elite forces over the years. In this regard, a summary of the structure of an ever-expanding spetsnaz team packed with reductions is in order. The list can be quite impressive, but there is no other way to fully imagine the scale.
The lion's share of SOCOM troops is rangers, green berets and other army units, followed by the commandos of the Air Force, seals, teams of professionals in special warfare techniques and support personnel fleet, as well as a small contingent of marines. But you will only feel the full scale when you think about the full scope of the “sub-combined teams” over which these special forces are distributed: requiring no explanation by SOCAFRICA; SOCEUR, a European contingent, SOCKOR, which deals only with Korea, SOCPAC, in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, SOCSOUTH, conducting missions in Central America, South America and the Caribbean, SOCCENT is a division of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Middle East, SOCNORTH, engaged in "internal defense" and leaping around the world JSOC or the Joint Special Operations Command - a secret unit (formerly headed by McRaven and now Votel), composed of representatives of each branch of the service, including pestilence FIR seals, special tactical Air Force pilots and Army units detachment "Delta", which specializes in tracking down and killing suspected terrorists.
Do not think that this is all. As a result of MacRaven's desire to create an "Integrated Global Global Network of Allies and Partners of SOF", Special Operations Command liaison officers or SOLO are now included in the 14 US embassies for assistance and advice from special forces of various allied states. Already operating in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Poland, Peru, Turkey and the United Kingdom, the SOLO program is ready, according to Votel, to expand to 2019 countries by 40. The command, in particular the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), established close ties with the CIA, the FBI and the NSA, among others.
Shadow operations
The global scope of Special Operations Command reaches even greater limits, with smaller, faster elements secretly operating from bases in the United States and to remote parts of Southeast Asia, from outposts in the Middle East to ascetic camps in Africa. With 2002, SOCOM acquired the right to create its own joint special forces, this prerogative is usually limited and belongs to large military organizations like CENTCOM. Take, for example, JSOTF-P (Joint Special Forces - Philippines), which at the peak included about 600 US representatives to support the counter-terrorist operations of the Philippine allies against rebel groups like Abu Sayyaf. After more than a decade of hostilities of this group, its numbers have decreased, but it continues to be active, and the violence in the region remains virtually unchanged.
The folding of the special forces was announced in June 2014. “JSOTF-P will be deactivated and operations called OEF-P (Operation Sustainable Liberty-Philippines) will end in the 2015 fiscal year,” said Hotel to the Armed Services Committee. “A small part of the US military personnel acting as part of the PACOM (US Pacific Command) Strengthening Command will continue to improve the capabilities of the PSF (Philippine Special Forces) to conduct their counter-terrorist missions ...” however, a few months later, JSOTF-P remained in the same condition and worked. “JSOTF-P is still operating, although the number of staff has been reduced,” spokesman Kari McEven told WarIsBoring news reporter Joseph Trivithika.
The other unit, the SOJTF-B Task Force for Special Operations, remained in the shadow for many years, until the Pentagon first mentioned it at the beginning of 2014. His role, according to Bockholt’s SOCOM representative, is to “train and equip US employees preparing for deployment in Afghanistan to support the Special Operations Force - Afghanistan (SOJTF-A)”. This unit, in turn, has been carrying out secret or “illegal” operations for more than a decade, “in order to prevent insurgent activities from threatening the authorities and sovereignty” of the Afghan government. Which meant night raids and kill / capture missions — often in concert with elite Afghan forces — that led to the death of an unknown number of militants and civilians. In response to popular outrage at raids, Afghan President Hamid Karzai almost completely banned them in 2013.
The US special operations forces were to switch to a supporting role in 2014, allowing the Afghan forces to assume responsibility. “We're trying to let them run the show,” said Colonel Patrick Robertson of the Afghan Special Forces, USAToday. But, according to LaDona Davies, the spokeswoman for the special forces, the American special forces were still conducting operations last year. They declined to say exactly how many missions were conducted by the Americans, and even how many “commandos” participated in the operations, although the Afghan special forces reportedly conducted monthly 2014 to 150 missions.
“I cannot discuss the number of operations that were performed,” said TomDispatch Major Loren Beymer of SOJTF-A. However, the Afghans are currently conducting 96% special operations, and we continue to train, advise and help our partners ensure the success of the operations. ”
And do not think that this list of special forces ends, SOJTF-A includes five groups of special forces advisers, "aimed at mentoring and advising our partners from the Afghan Special Security Forces," according to Votel. “In order to ensure that our partners from the ASCB continue to fight our enemies, the US Special Forces must be able to continue consulting at the tactical level after 2014 with selected units in certain areas,” he told the Senate Armed Forces Committee. In fact, last November, Karzai’s successor, Ashraf Ghani, quietly lifted the ban on night raids, again opening the door to missions with American advisers in 2015.
However, fewer US special forces will be available for tactical missions. According to the then counter-, and now - Vice-Admiral Sean Paybis, SOCOM Deputy Commander, about half of the "fur seals" deployed in Afghanistan will be removed and moved by the end of the month to support "a turn to Asia or work in the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Guinea, or in the Persian Gulf. " Yet Colonel Christopher Riga, the commander of the 7 Special Forces Group, whose soldiers last year served alongside the Special Forces United - Afghanistan near Kandahar, swore to the soldiers.
“Fighting is still going on in Afghanistan and it will continue,” he said at the awards ceremony at the end of last year. “We will continue to kill the enemies until we are ordered to leave.”
Add to these forces offensive special operations forces (SOC FWD), small groups that, according to the military, “build and coordinate operations to ensure the safety of special operations forces and support the special operations teams in the field, geographic combat teams and targets and task teams in the country. " SOCOM is evasive and does not confirm the existence of SOC FWD, even though there is sufficient official evidence on this subject, and thus it does not confirm the number of teams currently deployed around the world. But those that are already known are gathered at their favorite sites for illegal operations, including SOC FWD-Pakistan, SOC FWD-Yemen, and SOC FWD-Lebanon, as well as SOC FWD-East Africa, SOC FWD-Central Africa, and SOC FWD-West Africa.
Africa, in fact, has become the prime location for the shadow secret missions of American special forces. “This separate unit has done an impressive job. Even in Europe, even in Africa in various unforeseen circumstances, you all contribute in a very meaningful way, ”General Votel told members of the 352 special operations group based in England last fall.
Air Force commandos are hardly alone in their actions on that continent. In recent years, for example, "fur seals" have completed a successful mission to free hostages in Somalia and a kidnapping raid that went awry. In Libya, early in the morning, the Delta commando successfully captured an al-Qaeda rebel during the raid, and the fur seals seized an oil tanker with cargo from Libya, which the weak, American-backed government already considered stolen. In addition, the fur seals conducted a failed evacuation mission in South Sudan, in which they were injured, and the aircraft on which they flew was shot down by small arms weapons. At the same time, the elite rapid reaction force, known as the 10 Navy Special Forces (NSWU-10), was deployed in such “strategically important countries” as Uganda, Somalia and Nigeria.
Secret efforts to prepare special operations in Libya collapsed when rebel forces or "terrorists" twice attacked their camp, guarded by the Libyan military, and captured a huge number of high-tech American equipment, hundreds of weapons - including Glock pistols and automatic rifles М4 - as well as night vision devices and specialized lasers, which can be seen only with such equipment. As a result, the mission was interrupted, and the camp was abandoned. He was reportedly subsequently captured by the rebels.
In February last year, elite troops went to Nigeria for a three-week military training, which was part of the Flintlock 2014 exercise, the annual training of counter-terrorist special operations forces, which are collected by units of the host state, Canada, Chad, France, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Senegal, United Kingdom and Burkina Faso. A few months later, an officer from Burkina Faso, who received counter-terrorist training in the United States under the SOCOM Special Operations University program in 2012, seized power in a coup. However, special operations forces did not lose courage. At the end of last year, for example, under the SOC FWD-West Africa program, members of the 5 battalion of the 19 battalion special forces together with the elite troops of Morocco conducted exercises at a base near Marrakesh.
World of possibilities
Deployment in African countries, however, was only part of the rapid growth of the overseas achievements of the special operations command. In the last days of the Bush presidency under the then head of SOCOM, Eric Olson, special operations forces were reportedly deployed in 60 countries around the world. By 2010, this number reached 75, according to Karen De Young and Greg Jeff of the Washington Post. At 2011, SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that their number would reach 120 by the end of the year. Under the command of Admiral MacRaven in 2013, then still Major Robert Bockholt told TomDispatch that their number had grown to 134. Under the command of MacRaven and Votel in 2014, according to Bockholt, the total number dropped slightly to 133. The current Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, however, noted that under MacRaven's command - from August 2011-th to August 2014-th - special forces were stationed in more than 150 countries. “In fact, SOCOM and all US troops are involved more intensively than ever before - in more places and in more different operations,” he said in a speech in August 2014 of the year.
And he was not joking. Only two months have passed since 2015 of the fiscal year, and the number of countries where US special operations forces are deployed has already reached 105 - according to Bockholt.
SOCOM declined to comment on the nature of the missions, or the benefits of action in so many countries. The command did not even name the country where the US special forces had been deployed over the past three years. A glance at some of the operations, exercises and actions that were highlighted, however, paints a picture of the global variation of command in the constant shaking up of alliances in every corner of the planet.
In January and February, for example, the 7 Special Forces Airborne Group and the 160 Special Forces Aviation Regiment conducted a monthly combined force-sharing exercise (JCET) with units of Trinidad and Tobago, and the 353 special forces joined to the Royal Thai Air Force for Teak Torch exercises in Idon, Thailand. In February and March, the “green berets” from the 20 special forces group prepared together with the elite troops of the Dominican Republic, as part of JCET.
In March, units of the Special Operations Command of the Navy and the 1 naval special forces group participated in maneuvers abroad aboard the Capens missile cruiser, as part of the Multi-Sail 2014, an annual exercise designed to support “security and stability in the Indo-Asian Pacific. " In the same month, the elite soldiers of the army, Navy, Air Force and Marines took part in the exercise, codenamed Fused Response, together with the Belize military. “Exercises such as these build mutual understanding and ties between the US and Belize forces,” said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Geber Toro from the Command Special Operations South.
In April, the 7 soldiers of the special forces group joined the Honduran Airborne Forces to practice parachuting at the Soto Kano Honduras Air Force Base. The soldiers of this unit, serving in the expeditionary corps in Afghanistan, also carried out covert operations in the southern part of the country in the spring of 2014. In June, 19 members of the special-purpose airborne group conducted combined-arms exercises in Albania, and specialists from the Delta squad participated in a mission that ensured the release of Sergeant Bowie Bergdahl in Afghanistan. In the same month, the Delta commando helped kidnap Ahmed Abu Hattal, the alleged "instigator" of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, in Libya, when four Americans were killed, and the Green Berets were deployed in Iraq as advisers to combat "Islamic state".
In June and July, 26 people from the 522 special operations support squadron conducted a 28-mile four-week mission on five continents, visiting Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Japan, among other things, to escort three "single-engine aircraft (US Army Special Operations Command (AFSOC) to your destination in the Pacific Responsibility Zone. ”In July, US special forces left for Tolemaida, Colombia, along with elite units from more 16 countries to participate in the annual Fuerzas exercise Comando - in such disciplines as fighting snipers, shooting and overcoming the obstacle course.
In August, soldiers from the 20 airborne group of special forces conducted joint exercises with elite units of Suriname. “We have made great progress together over the month. If we ever have to act together in the future, we know that we have partners and friends on whom we can rely, ”said the senior officer of this unit. In Iraq, that month, the green berets flew out to explore the Sinjar mountain as part of efforts to protect ethnic Yezidi from the IS rebels, and the commandos of the Delta squad raided the oil refinery in northern Syria in an attempt to save the American journalist James Foley and others hostages held by the same group. That mission turned into a fiasco, and Foley was soon brutally murdered.
In September, around 1200, American special forces and support personnel joined the elite troops of the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Finland, Great Britain, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Slovenia at the Jackal Stone exercises, where everything was practiced - from fighting to premises and sniping tactics to using small landing craft and rescue hostages. In September and October, the 3 battalion of the 75 battalion of the airborne reconnaissance and sabotage regiment was transferred to South Korea to work on the tactics of small units in trenching and knocking out bunkers. In October, the Air Force commando conducted operations that imitated the release of hostages in the Stanford training area near Tetford, in England. At the same time, in the international waters south of Cyprus, fur seals beat off a tanker with oil loaded in the rebel-held port in Libya. In November, a US commando raided Yemen to free eight foreign hostages. The following month, the Seals conducted a bloody operation that killed two hostages, including Luke Somers, and eight civilians. And all this, of course, only some of the missions that managed to get into news or somehow became known.
Wherever they want to go
For the heads of America’s illegal operations, the globe is as unstable as it is interconnected. “I guarantee you that what is happening in Latin America affects what is happening in West Africa, and this affects what is happening in southern Europe, which in turn affects what is happening in Southeast Asia,” said MacRaven at the annual meeting of directors supervision and military personnel. What is the solution to interconnected instability? More missions in more countries — in more than three quarters of the countries of the world — in fact, during McRaven's tenure. And it seems that the stage has been prepared for an even greater expansion of geography in the coming years. “We want to be everywhere,” said Votel at that meeting. And in 2015-m its divisions are already at the ready.
“Our country has more hope for SOF,” he told staff in England last fall. “We are called to perform the most difficult missions in extremely difficult conditions.”
The content and location of most of these “most difficult missions,” however, remain unknown to the Americans. And Hotel is not actually interested in shedding light on them. “Sorry, no,” was the response of SOCOM to TomDispatch’s request for an interview with the head of special operations regarding current and future missions. In fact, the command refused to give any employee the opportunity to participate in discussions about what is being done in the name of America and for taxpayer dollars. Internally guess why.
Hotel now settled on top of one of the main successes of the military after the events of 9 / 11, defamed in wars without victory, the consequences of interventions, rampant criminal activity, repeated leaks about unpleasant secrets, and all sorts of shocking scandals. A skillful combination of bravado and secrecy, prepared leaks, clever marketing and public relations, experienced cultivation of the mysteriousness of "supermen" (a bit of excruciating weakness to boot), and extremely popular, professional contract killings, and the Special Operations Forces became the favorites of American pop culture, and the command - the constant winner of budget fights in Washington.
This is simply amazing when you consider what is happening in reality: in Africa, the weapons and training of the rebels and the training of the coup leader, in Iraq, America’s elite forces are involved in torture, the destruction of houses and the killing and wounding of innocent people story, with constant reports of the death of civilians, and in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia for the most part - the same thing. And this is only if you dig a little misses in special operations.
In 2001, before the US secret operations forces began a massive secret war on all fronts against terrorism, there was a Command of Special Operations Forces that held 33 000 fighters and some elite fighters under the Joint Special Operations Command around 1 800. Then there were 23 terrorist groups - from Hamas to the Irish Republican Army - according to the State Department, among these groups was al-Qaida, which was estimated to be from 200 to 1000 people. Initially, the group was based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although small cells operated in various countries, including Germany and the United States.
After more than a decade of secret wars, mass surveillance, countless night raids, detentions and murders, not to mention the billions and billions of dollars spent, the results speak for themselves. The number of SOCOM more than doubled, and secretive JSOC should be the same as SOCOM in 2001. Since September last year, 36 new terrorist groups have emerged, including numerous affiliates, branches, and al-Qaida allies. Today, these groups still operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan — in the second, 11 is now associated with al-Qaida organizations, in the first five - as in Mali, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia, Lebanon, Yemen, and others. One branch was spawned by the American invasion of Iraq, nursed in the American prison camp and now known as the “Islamic State”, it controls a large region of Iraq and neighboring Syria, it is a proto-caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, which jihadists could only dream of in 2001. Only this one group is estimated to be 30 000 people and managed to capture a large territory, including the second largest city of Iraq, despite the fact that JSOC tirelessly struck at it, since its inception under the care of JSOC.
“We need to synchronize the deployment of SOF around the world,” said Votel. “We need everyone to synchronize, coordinate and prepare at all levels.”
It is omitted that synchronization is the American people, who are constantly kept in the dark about what employees of special units of America are doing and where they do it, not to mention reliable results and unintended consequences of what they have done. But if the story suggests something, the disguise of illegal operations will help ensure that the “golden age” of the US Special Operations Forces Command continues.
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