A World of Winless War: US Special Ops Forces Deployed to 137 Nations in
2017
Monday, June 26, 2017
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch | Report
US Army pilots engage in a training exercise near Camp Buehring, Kuwait.
(Photo: Sgt. Harley Jelis / US Army)
The tabs on their shoulders read "Special Forces," "Ranger," "Airborne." And
soon their guidon -- the "colors" of Company B, 3rd Battalion of the US
Army's 7th Special Forces Group -- would be adorned with the "Bandera de
Guerra," a Colombian combat decoration.
"Today we commemorate sixteen years of a permanent fight against drugs in a
ceremony where all Colombians can recognize the special counternarcotic
brigade's hard work against drug trafficking," said Army Colonel Walther
Jimenez, the commander of the Colombian military's Special Anti-Drug
Brigade, last December. America's most elite troops, the Special Operations
forces (SOF), have worked with that Colombian unit since its creation in
December 2000. Since 2014, four teams of Special Forces soldiers have
intensely monitored the brigade. Now, they were being honored for it.
Part of a $10 billion counter-narcotics and counterterrorism program,
conceived in the 1990s, special ops efforts in Colombia are a much
ballyhooed American success story. A 2015 RAND Corporation study found that
the program "represents an enduring SOF partnership effort that managed to
help foster a relatively professional and capable special operations force."
And for a time, coca production in that country plummeted. Indeed, this was
the ultimate promise of America's "Plan Colombia" and efforts that followed
from it. "Over the longer haul, we can expect to see more effective drug
eradication and increased interdiction of illicit drug shipments," President
Bill Clinton predicted in January 2000.
Today, however, more than 460,000 acres of the Colombian countryside are
blanketed with coca plants, more than during the 1980s heyday of the
infamous cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. US cocaine overdose deaths are also
at a 10-year high and first-time cocaine use among young adults has spiked
61% since 2013. "Recent findings suggest that cocaine use may be reemerging
as a public health concern in the United States," wrote researchers from the
US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in a study
published in December 2016 -- just after the Green Berets attended that
ceremony in Colombia. Cocaine, the study's authors write, "may be making a
comeback."
Colombia is hardly an anomaly when it comes to US special ops deployments --
or the results that flow from them. For all their abilities, tactical
skills, training prowess, and battlefield accomplishments, the capacity of
US Special Operations forces to achieve decisive and enduring successes --
strategic victories that serve US national interests -- have proved to be
exceptionally limited, a reality laid bare from Afghanistan to Iraq, Yemen
to the Philippines.
The fault for this lies not with the troops themselves, but with a political
and military establishment that often appears bereft of strategic vision and
hasn't won a major war since the 1940s. Into this breach, elite US forces
are deployed again and again. While special ops commanders may raise
concerns about the tempo of operations and strains on the force, they have
failed to grapple with larger questions about the raison d'être of SOF,
while Washington's oversight establishment, notably the House and Senate
Armed Services Committees, have consistently failed to so much as ask hard
questions about the strategic utility of America's Special Operations
forces.
Special Ops at War
"We operate and fight in every corner of the world," boasts General Raymond
Thomas, the chief of US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM). "On a
daily basis, we sustain a deployed or forward stationed force of
approximately 8,000 across 80-plus countries. They are conducting the entire
range of SOF missions in both combat and non-combat situations." Those
numbers, however, only hint at the true size and scope of this global
special ops effort. Last year, America's most elite forces conducted
missions in 138 countries -- roughly 70% of the nations on the planet,
according to figures supplied to TomDispatch by US Special Operations
Command. Halfway through 2017, US commandos have already been deployed to an
astonishing 137 countries, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw.
Special Operations Command is tasked with carrying out 12 core missions,
ranging from counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare to hostage rescue
and countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Counterterrorism -- fighting what the command calls violent extremist
organizations (VEOs) -- may, however, be what America's elite forces have
become best known for in the post-9/11 era. "The threat posed by VEOs
remains the highest priority for USSOCOM in both focus and effort," says
Thomas.
"Special Operations Forces are the main effort, or major supporting effort
for US VEO-focused operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia,
Libya, across the Sahel of Africa, the Philippines, and Central/South
America -- essentially, everywhere Al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are to be found..."
More special operators are deployed to the Middle East than to any other
region. Significant numbers of them are advising Iraqi government forces and
Iraqi Kurdish soldiers as well as Kurdish YPG (Popular Protection Unit)
fighters and various ethnic Arab forces in Syria, according to Linda
Robinson, a senior international policy analyst with the RAND Corporation
who spent seven weeks in Iraq, Syria, and neighboring countries earlier this
year.
During a visit to Qayyarah, Iraq -- a staging area for the campaign to free
Mosul, formerly Iraq's second largest city, from the control of Islamic
State fighters -- Robinson "saw a recently installed US military medical
unit and its ICU set up in tents on the base." In a type of mission seldom
reported on, special ops surgeons, nurses, and other specialists put their
skills to work on far-flung battlefields not only to save American lives,
but to prop up allied proxy forces that have limited medical capabilities.
For example, an Air Force Special Operations Surgical Team recently spent
eight weeks deployed at an undisclosed location in the Iraq-Syria theater,
treating 750 war-injured patients. Operating out of an abandoned one-story
home within earshot of a battlefield, the specially trained airmen worked
through a total of 19 mass casualty incidents and more than 400 individual
gunshot or blast injuries.
When not saving lives in Iraq and Syria, elite US forces are frequently
involved in efforts to take them. "US SOF are... being thrust into a new
role of coordinating fire support," wrote Robinson. "This fire support is
even more important to the Syrian Democratic Forces, a far more lightly
armed irregular force which constitutes the major ground force fighting ISIS
in Syria." In fact, a video shot earlier this year, analyzed by The
Washington Post, shows special operators "acting as an observation element
for what appears to be US airstrikes carried out by A-10 ground attack
aircraft" to support Syrian Democratic Forces fighting for the town of
Shadadi.
Africa now ranks second when it comes to the deployment of special operators
thanks to the exponential growth in missions there in recent years. Just 3%
of US commandos deployed overseas were sent to Africa in 2010. Now that
number stands at more than 17%, according to SOCOM data. Last year, US
Special Operations forces were deployed to 32 African nations, about 60% of
the countries on the continent. As I recently reported at VICE News, at any
given time, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other special operators are now
conducting nearly 100 missions across 20 African countries.
In May, for instance, Navy SEALs were engaged in an "advise and assist
operation" alongside members of Somalia's army and came under attack. SEAL
Kyle Milliken was killed and two other US personnel were injured during a
firefight that also, according to AFRICOM spokesperson Robyn Mack, left
three al-Shabaab militants dead. US forces are also deployed in Libya to
gather intelligence in order to carry out strikes of opportunity against
Islamic State forces there. While operations in Central Africa against the
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal militia that has terrorized the
region for decades, wound down recently, a US commando reportedly killed a
member of the LRA as recently as April.
Spring Training
What General Thomas calls "building partner nations' capacity" forms the
backbone of the global activities of his command. Day in, day out, America's
most elite troops carry out such training missions to sharpen their skills
and those of their allies and of proxy forces across the planet.
This January, for example, Green Berets and Japanese paratroopers carried
out airborne training near Chiba, Japan. February saw Green Berets at Sanaa
Training Center in northwest Syria advising recruits for the Manbij Military
Council, a female fighting force of Kurds, Arabs, Christians, Turkmen, and
Yazidis. In March, snowmobiling Green Berets joined local forces for
cold-weather military drills in Lapland, Finland. That same month, special
operators and more than 3,000 troops from Canada, the Czech Republic,
Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia,
Macedonia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom took part in
tactical training in Germany.
In the waters off Kuwait, special operators joined elite forces from the
Gulf Cooperation Council nations in conducting drills simulating a rapid
response to the hijacking of an oil tanker. In April, special ops troops
traveled to Serbia to train alongside a local special anti-terrorist unit.
In May, members of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Iraq carried
out training exercises with Iraqi special operations forces near Baghdad.
That same month, 7,200 military personnel, including US Air Force Special
Tactics airmen, Italian special operations forces, members of host nation
Jordan's Special Task Force, and troops from more than a dozen other nations
took part in Exercise Eager Lion, practicing everything from assaulting
compounds to cyber-defense. For their part, a group of SEALs conducted dive
training alongside Greek special operations forces in Souda Bay, Greece,
while others joined NATO troops in Germany as part of Exercise Saber
Junction 17 for training in land operations, including mock "behind enemy
lines missions" in a "simulated European village."
#Winning
"We have been at the forefront of national security operations for the past
three decades, to include continuous combat over the past 15-and-a-half
years," SOCOM's Thomas told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on
Emerging Threats and Capabilities last month. "This historic period has been
the backdrop for some of our greatest successes, as well as the source of
our greatest challenge, which is the sustained readiness of this magnificent
force." Yet, for all their magnificence and all those successes, for all the
celebratory ceremonies they've attended, the wars, interventions, and other
actions for which they've served as the tip of the American spear have
largely foundered, floundered, or failed.
After their initial tactical successes in Afghanistan in the wake of the
9/11 attacks, America's elite operators became victims of Washington's
failure to declare victory and go home. As a result, for the last 15 years,
US commandos have been raiding homes, calling in air strikes, training local
forces, and waging a relentless battle against a growing list of terror
groups in that country. For all their efforts, as well as those of their
conventional military brethren and local Afghan allies, the war is now,
according to the top US commander in the Middle East, a "stalemate." That's
a polite way of saying what a recent report to Congress by the Special
Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found: districts that are
contested or under "insurgent control or influence" have risen from an
already remarkable 28% in 2015 to 40%.
The war in Afghanistan began with efforts to capture or kill al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden. Having failed in this post-9/11 mission, America's elite
forces spun their wheels for the next decade when it came to his fate.
Finally, in 2011, Navy SEALs cornered him in his long-time home in Pakistan
and gunned him down. Ever since, special operators who carried out the
mission and Washington power-players (not to mention Hollywood) have been
touting this single tactical success.
In an Esquire interview, Robert O'Neill, the SEAL who put two bullets in bin
Laden's head, confessed that he joined the Navy due to frustration over an
early crush, a puppy-love pique. "That's the reason al-Qaeda has been
decimated," he joked, "because she broke my fucking heart." But al-Qaeda was
not decimated -- far from it according to Ali Soufan, a former FBI special
agent and the author of Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to
the Rise of the Islamic State. As he recently observed, "Whereas on 9/11
al-Qaeda had a few hundred members, almost all of them based in a single
country, today it enjoys multiple safe havens across the world." In fact, he
points out, the terror group has gained strength since bin Laden's death.
Year after year, US special operators find themselves fighting new waves of
militants across multiple continents, including entire terror groups that
didn't exist on 9/11. All US forces killed in Afghanistan in 2017 have
reportedly died battling an Islamic State franchise, which began operations
there just two years ago.
The US invasion of Iraq, to take another example, led to the meteoric rise
of an al-Qaeda affiliate which, in turn, led the military's secretive Joint
Special Operations Command (JSOC) -- the elite of America's special ops
elite -- to create a veritable manhunting machine designed to kill its
leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and take down the organization. As with bin
Laden, special operators finally did find and eliminate Zarqawi, battering
his organization in the process, but it was never wiped out. Left behind
were battle-hardened elements that later formed the Islamic State and did
what al-Qaeda never could: take and hold huge swaths of territory in two
nations. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch grew into a separate force of
more than 20,000.
In Yemen, after more than a decade of low-profile special ops engagement,
that country teeters on the brink of collapse in the face of a US-backed
Saudi war there. Continued US special ops missions in that country, recently
on the rise, have seemingly done nothing to alter the situation. Similarly,
in Somalia in the Horn of Africa, America's elite forces remain embroiled in
an endless war against militants.
In 2011, President Obama launched Operation Observant Compass, sending
Special Operations forces to aid Central African proxies in an effort to
capture or kill Joseph Kony and decimate his murderous Lord's Resistance
Army (LRA), then estimated to number 150 to 300 armed fighters. After the
better part of a decade and nearly $800 million spent, 150 US commandos were
withdrawn this spring and US officials attended a ceremony to commemorate
the end of the mission. Kony was, however, never captured or killed and the
LRA is now estimated to number about 150 to 250 fighters, essentially the
same size as when the operation began.
This string of futility extends to Asia as well. "US Special Forces have
been providing support and assistance in the southern Philippines for many
years, at the request of several different Filipino administrations," Emma
Nagy, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Manilla, pointed out earlier this
month. Indeed, a decade-plus-long special ops effort there has been hailed
as a major success. Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines, wrote RAND
analyst Linda Robinson late last year in the Pentagon journal Prism, "was
aimed at enabling the Philippine security forces to combat transnational
terrorist groups in the restive southern region of Mindanao."
A 2016 RAND report co-authored by Robinson concluded that "the activities of
the US SOF enabled the Philippine government to substantially reduce the
transnational terrorist threat in the southern Philippines." This May,
however, Islamist militants overran Marawi City, a major urban center on
Mindanao. They have been holding on to parts of it for weeks despite a
determined assault by Filipino troops backed by US Special Operations
forces. In the process, large swaths of the city have been reduced to
rubble.
Running on Empty
America's elite forces, General Thomas told members of Congress last month,
"are fully committed to winning the current and future fights." In reality,
though, from war to war, intervention to intervention, from the Anti-Drug
Brigade ceremony in Florencia, Colombia, to the end-of-the-Kony-hunt
observance in Obo in the Central African Republic, there is remarkably
little evidence that even enduring efforts by Special Operations forces
result in strategic victories or improved national security outcomes. And
yet, despite such boots-on-the-ground realities, America's special ops
forces and their missions only grow.
"We are... grateful for the support of Congress for the required resourcing
that, in turn, has produced a SOCOM which is relevant to all the current and
enduring threats facing the nation," Thomas told the Senate Armed Services
Committee in May. Resourcing has, indeed, been readily available. SOCOM's
annual budget has jumped from $3 billion in 2001 to more than $10 billion
today. Oversight, however, has been seriously lacking. Not a single member
of the House or Senate Armed Services Committees has questioned why, after
more than 15 years of constant warfare, winning the "current fight" has
proven so elusive. None of them has suggested that "support" from Congress
ought to be reconsidered in the face of setbacks from Afghanistan to Iraq,
Colombia to Central Africa, Yemen to the southern Philippines.
In the waning days of George W. Bush's administration, Special Operations
forces were reportedly deployed to about 60 nations around the world. By
2011, under President Barack Obama, that number had swelled to 120. During
this first half-year of the Trump administration, US commandos have already
been sent to 137 countries, with elite troops now enmeshed in conflicts from
Africa to Asia. "Most SOF units are employed to their sustainable limit,"
Thomas told members of the House Armed Services Committee last month. In
fact, current and former members of the command have, for some time, been
sounding the alarm about the level of strain on the force.
These deployment levels and a lack of meaningful strategic results from them
have not, however, led Washington to raise fundamental questions about the
ways the US employs its elite forces, much less about SOCOM's raison d'être.
"We are a command at war and will remain so for the foreseeable future,"
SOCOM's Thomas explained to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Not one
member asked why or to what end.
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Nick Turse
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation
Institute. An award-winning investigative journalist, he has written for The
New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Nation, and is a contributing
writer for The Intercept. His latest book is Next Time They'll Come to Count
the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website is NickTurse.com.
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