Afghanistan's Special Forces

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It's a special-forces entry like no other and guaranteed to spoil the element of surprise, but Afghanistan's new elite soldiers insist they will be no less effective in countering insurgents than controversial night raids by U.S. Forces.

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Man of War

Meadows family collection

Meadows writing to his family from Vietnam.

Since the death of Osama bin Laden,  journalists have with varying success attempted to piece together the details of the raid on his compound in Abbottabad. But the tale of the Navy SEALs' success actually begins on a cold desert runway in Iran some 30 years earlier, when a planned military rescue of the U.S. hostages held in Tehran ended in flames and ignominy. In the wake of the disaster, the U.S. military set about creating the task force—the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)—that infiltrated into Pakistan last May, killed the world's most wanted criminal, and returned with his body and no U.S. casualties.

JSOC, like most of our special-operations forces, is shrouded in secrecy. Episodes such as the Abbottabad raid or the events documented in "Black Hawk Down" get plenty of the attention, but there is very little public knowledge of how special-operations forces carry out their work or of the half-century effort to develop a joint doctrine of special-operations tactics and techniques. It is an important story, and few men loom as large in it as Maj. Richard J. Meadows.

Meadows (1931-95) enlisted in the Army at 15 with the help of a forged birth certificate. He fought in Korea as a preposterously young master sergeant and in 1953 volunteered for a new unit being raised for long-range penetration operations, the Special Forces. He would go on to be involved in some of the most audacious acts of the Vietnam War, including the revered 1972 Son Tay raid where 56 Special Forces soldiers sought to rescue prisoners of war held in Hanoi—it failed only because the POWs had been moved shortly before the mission kicked off. Like most such operations of the day, it was carried out not by a permanent command but by an ad hoc task force.

Yet for all the daring of events like the Son Tay raid, Meadows spent most of his career in the "schoolhouse." When he wasn't taking part in the months of preparation and rehearsals that precede the execution of a single special-operations raid (and the many that never went beyond the planning stage), he was training the next generation of "Green Berets" and Rangers.

The Quiet Professional

By Alan Hoe

Kentucky, 253 pages, $29.95

Meadows retired in 1977 but was instrumental in the establishment of Delta Force—intended to be the world's pre-eminent counterterror force—serving for two years as its first training adviser. Then, in an incredible denouement, despite having no training in clandestine operations, he lived under cover as an Irish businessman in Tehran and coordinated the attempted rescue of the U.S. hostages in Iran. (The story of his escape after the operation went awry is a case study in coolness under a different kind of fire.) Meadows went on to help train Latin American militaries before dying of leukemia in 1995.

One could almost tell the entire story of the development of America's special-operations forces through Meadows's life. Alan Hoe, a former British commando and close friend of Meadows, unfortunately misses this opportunity. He prefers relating stories of Meadows's exploits to examining his place in military history. He lets his sources fill page after page with unedited testimony. Describing the development of free-fall parachuting, for example, he simply reproduces a six-page first-person account written by a contemporary of Meadows.

Mr. Hoe also rarely provides the reader with the context for the stories he is narrating. He notes, for example, that John F. Kennedy's death was deeply mourned within the special-operations community. How many readers will know that Kennedy, prescient about the future character of warfare in the post-colonial era, was instrumental in founding the Navy SEAL teams and gave the Special Forces their iconic green berets?

"The Quiet Professional" includes a lot of detail on specific missions but few insights into how special-operations forces are employed strategically. The book shows how remarkable a man Meadows was—and how he popped up, Zelig-like, at every critical junction in the development of special-operations forces—but not what purpose such men serve in modern warfare. Peter Schoomaker, who rose from special-forces officer to Chief of Staff of the Army, called Meadows "the bravest man I have ever known." But bravery is not the reason Dick Meadows deserves a biography. There is a larger story to be written.

—Mr. Exum, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, led Army Rangers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12.2

A Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force in Africa. 11th MEU floating in the CENTCOM area of operations. 24th MEU soon to join them...Special Forces has at least a battalions worth of ODA's operating on the continent. Force Recon has come home to the MEU and SPMAGTF....Rangers are all over the place...including Africa. The USAF has C-130's flying all over the place and they also have a squadron of F-15E's in the area. And they've suddenly frozen the sat image out of Camp Lemonnier.

Pure speculation on my part but something is happening. What? I just don't know but something juicy is brewing....Oh and I haven't even talked about the Brits, French, Italians and others. And the EU just approved strikes on pirate land bases.

Photo by Cpl. Jad Sleiman A force reconnaissance Marine goes over threat detection methods with a group of Ugandan soldiers, Feb. 28. Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 sent a small team of Marines into Uganda, Feb. 3, to train Ugandan forces for the fight against al-Shabaab in Somalia and the hunt for Joseph Kony and the Lord’s resistance army.

 Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12.2 stand on line with AK-47 assault rifles preparing to conduct a live fire exercise during foreign weapons familiarization training near Crawfordsville, Ark., Jan. 23, 2012. The Marines and sailors of SPMAGTF 12.2 are deploying to Africa to advise host nation militaries on various military tactics.  Photo by Lance Cpl. Adwin Esters

 

Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12.2 Marines receive a class from Instructor Phil Aldredge on the destructive effects of the 7.62x39mm round on various mediums during foreign weapons familiarization training near Crawfordsville, Ark., Jan. 23, 2012. The Marines and sailors of SPMAGTF 12.2 are deploying to Africa to advise host nation militaries on various military tactics.  Photo by Lance Cpl. Adwin Esters

Landing support specialist Sgt. Geoffrey Dubie, Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force12.2 watches over Cpl. Stefan Tunstall, a field radio operator, as he takes aim on his target during foreign weapons familiarization training near Crawfordsville, Ark., Jan. 23, 2012. The Marines and sailors of SPMAGTF 12.2 are deploying to Africa to advise host nation militaries on various military tactics.  Photo by Lance Cpl. Adwin Esters

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Inside a Special Forces Team in Afghanistan

The secret base-within-the-base was the first sign that I was about to see something special.

It was early February at a snow-encrusted NATO compound on the outskirts of Kabul. I’d come at the invitation of a U.S. Army sergeant assigned to Special Forces Task Force 10. After reading one of my recent dispatches from the front lines of the more than decade-old Afghanistan War, the sergeant had extended me a rare invitation to visit and report on one of Task Force 10′s “A Teams” working to train up Afghan security forces out in the provinces.

I’d eagerly accepted. I could count on one hand the number of times, that I knew of, that reporters had been welcomed inside the secretive Special Forces during wartime. Moreover, commandos including the Army’s Special Forces, Delta Force and Rangers and the Navy’s SEALs were expected to maintain a significant advisory and strike force in Afghanistan for years after the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of NATO’s conventional troops. More and more, Special Forces are the story.

The Special Forces are an army within the Army, with their own unique training, gear, tactics and attitudes. There would be special rules for my reporting, as well. The first evidence of this was the wall inside the wall surrounding the Kabul compound. The Special Forces often rely on “Big Army” to provide security and logistics. But commandos and regular soldiers rarely mix, so in Afghanistan the Special Forces build their own compounds inside the main NATO compounds. You need a secret combination to get inside. Since no one trusted me with the combo, I had to be escorted by the sergeant every time I came or went.

Stepping into the secret mini-base marked the beginning of the eventful week I spent with Special Forces in Kabul and in neighboring Laghman province. In scores of conversations with a dozen or so commandos — some on the record, most off — I learned some surprising (and some not-so-surprising) things about America’s most elite warriors. Some of my preconceived notions were dashed. Others, reinforced.

Commandos hate love hate the media

Since their founding in the 1960s, Special Forces have operated behind a veil of secrecy. Where the regular Army routinely works alongside reporters, commandos do so only under special circumstances. Back in 2009 I spent a full year negotiating with the North Carolina-based 3rd Special Forces Group in hopes of visiting them in Afghanistan. Ultimately, I was disappointed.

Unexpectedly, the Germany-based 10th Group sought me out for coverage three years later. Within days I was on the inside. Why? Because, I was told, some senior officer somewhere was angling for a promotion and figured some carefully-controlled exposure would do him some good. But before I could conduct interviews, I had to agree to a long list of conditions on top of the standard Army media-embed rules: I would not show commandos’ faces in photos or videos, nor print their real names. Only the Task Force 10 commander, Lt. Col. Isaac Peltier, agreed to have his name published — but still no photos.

Everything went swimmingly until near the end. I’m told the Army hated — hated — a story I wrote after my embed, on the cultural cluelessness of some U.S. troops. The commandos dropped tentative plans to host me again this spring. It seems my days on the Special Forces beat began and ended with Task Force 10. Oh well. I had a good run.

Special Forces are scrawny nerds

Well, maybe not scrawny, exactly. But the Army commandos are not the hulked-out, ‘roid-enraged beasts that some seem to think they are. “People think we’re kicking down doors with our hair on fire,” one A Team weapons sergeant told me with a grin.

The reality is that Special Forces are primarily selected for their independence, leadership, language skills, overall intelligence and, most surprisingly, their cultural tolerance. Army commandos devote most of their time to training and advising foreign security forces in austere environments. It’s a task that requires the mindset of a high school teacher and the patience, calm and resourcefulness of a solitary backpacker hiking some remote, foreign land.

To that end, Special Forces tend to have the lean, wiry physical build of a long-distance hiker. “We’re the kinds of guys you can strap a 100-pound rucksack on and tell them to walk up that mountain and just keep going,” a Task Force 10 officer told me.

Gear? What gear?

The U.S. military is by far the world’s most technologically sophisticated. And some elite troops are even better-equipped than regular American forces. The SEAL raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last year boasted satellite surveillance, a secret stealth drone and a previously-unknown model of radar-evading helicopter, for example. But the commandos assisting foreign armies are surprisingly low-tech, even impoverished.

The A Team in Laghman usually rode around in standard Army vehicles. For routine transportation between bases they had to wait in line for a helicopter just like everybody else. They ate in the dining facility of a co-located National Guard brigade and even counted on that brigade to protect their encampment. “It’s important we have good a relationship with the big, conventional Army force because they provide resources we need, from a Quick-Reaction Force to medevac to the dining facility we eat in,” Peltier said.

The only special equipment in evidence during my commando embed were a few military-grade ATVs, like the one pictured above. Which, granted, are pretty sweet.

Commandos ain’t killers

“Have I killed people?” one Special Forces sergeant asked rhetorically. He nodded. “But I’ll be happy if I never have to do it again.”

Most Army commandos spend their time training foreign troops. But there are commando detachments whose job is to conduct high-risk raids and, yes, kill people. Lots of people. Usually very dangerous or very important ones.

But in today’s complex insurgencies, you can’t kill your way to victory — and the Special Forces know that. “We killed high-value individual number one,” one commando officer pointed out, referring of course to Bin Laden. “And what the fuck changed?”

Which is why Special Forces are so focused on the training and advisory missions. The Laghman A Team’s biggest victory recently was the arrest, prosecution and conviction of a major weapons smuggler. Pulling off that high-profile mission required careful planning, extensive training of Afghan police, deft intervention in the Afghan legal process and lots of patience. What it did not require was any killing.

The beards really are a big deal

The thing you notice first about Special Forces in the field is their awesome, mountain-man-style beards, the most obvious facet of what they call their “relaxed grooming standards.”

The beards in part reflect the notorious independence of Special Forces teams — independence that can border on defiance at times. “I am given the autonomy to attack [a] problem as I see fit,” a commando officer told me. Looking, talking and thinking like the regular Army is not a priority.

But there’s a practical reason for the beards. The Special Forces team in Laghman works closely with an Afghan special police unit, more closely than regular Army units usually work with their own Afghan counterparts. Building friendships with the Afghan cops, respecting their culture so the Afghans give respect in return, is critical to the Special Forces mission. In the eyes of many Afghans, only manly men can be leaders. And all manly men have beards. Thus leadership starts with facial fair.

Plus, the beards look awesome.

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US, ROK Navy SEALs Train to Counteract Threats

JINHAE, Korea – Two days before a weather front sopped the southern tip of the peninsula, Navy SEALs from both the U.S. and the Republic of Korea teamed up to conduct visit, board, search and seizure drills on a Korean Navy ship in Jinhae Harbor.

 

Sailing in calm seas and flying in clear skies, the ROK Navy and U.S. Army provided support with the ROK Navy AOE-59, Hwachun – a refueling vessel – and U.S. MH-47 Chinook helicopters piloted and crewed by soldiers of the 4th Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

The SEALs, from Naval Special Warfare Group 1 out of Coronado, Calif., and the Korean Naval Special Brigade, began the evolution by performing fast-rope drills at a helicopter pad resting on top of a hill overlooking the harbor at Jinhae Naval Base. 

Fast-roping is a technique for descent from a helicopter by sliding down a thick-woven rope. It is the preferred method of rapid troop delivery from a helicopter platform.

“If we do it right, we can get 15 guys onto the ship in 30 seconds or less,” said “Mike,” a U.S. Navy SEAL, who wished to remain anonymous. “It’s all about speed and maintaining your distance between you and your buddy below you.”

Typically a 10-foot gap between troops is the norm when fast-roping, he added. 

After the SEALs honed their skills on land, it was onto the primary drill in the harbor the following two days. By the light of day and in the black of night using night-vision goggles, teams of SEALs fast-roped onto the aft deck of the Hwachum and scattered in their respective squads to search the ships many rooms and quarters for mock “pirates” who were hiding down below the deck and on the bridge. 

“When people think of pirates, they tend to think of Hollywood movies and Captain Hook – the stereotypical image of pirates in the 16 and 1700s – but the threat is very much still around, not so much off our (U.S.) shores, but definitely over here and especially off the coast of Somalia in the Arabian Sea,” said Chris, another U.S. SEAL, who also wished to remain anonymous. “But this type of training combats piracy and other forms of high-seas threats like drug runners and, of course, if North Korea ever tries to take a South Korean naval vessel.”

Events like the VBSS demonstrate the successful interoperability between the U.S. and ROK Special Forces and the continued coordination and cooperation between the two allies said a Lt. (senior grade) platoon leader from ROK SEAL Team 3. 

“It’s critical to share tactics like this to make sure we’re on the same page and I hope to have similar training like this in the future,” he said. 

NSWG 1 Commander Van Wennen, who was participating in his second Foal Eagle, couldn’t agree more.

“The VBSS has been the primary focus of the last two exercises,” he said. “We teach and learn from them – really a two-way street. We’ve had a long relationship with the ROK Naval Special Warfare community and we hope to sustain that relationship for a long time to come.”

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NATO Special Forces Led Takeover Of Tripoli

Italy's L'Espresso daily publication wrote that NATO's special forces played the key role in taking Tripoli, the capital of Libya. A participant of the operation shared his impressions with the publication. According to the author of the article, the man, whose story the newspaper published, was struggling with the [eventual] butchers of Muammar Gaddafi, foreign snipers and killers who had come to Libya from all over the world. According to him, all of them came to Tripoli to make money by aiming their guns at rebellious people.

The man, who introduced himself as a member of the Italian special forces, said that the secret weapon had been aimed against inexperienced rebels for months. "Those snipers stopped the first groups of the rebels, who entered the Libyan capital," the man said.

The author of the article admitted that bombs and missiles were useless against them. The residents of Tripoli did not struggle with them to avoid massacre in return. "There was only one way to remove them - to challenge them to a duel: a shooter vs. a shooter. This is exactly what NATO did. They gathered the best snipers of the alliance under the conditions of extreme secrecy and brought them to Libya to get rid of the regime there. It was their weapons that contributed most to the fall of the dictatorship. It was they who opened the road for the rebellion. There were Italian servicemen among them too," the article said.

L'Espresso published the story told by Ale, a serviceman of the special forces of the Italian navy, who supposedly took part in the taking of Tripoli. According to the author of the article, Ale and his partners were working in the south-east of Tripoli. The men were equipped with Ar 15 guns with silencers of the new generation and state-of-the-art sniper rifles for high-precision gunfire for a distance of up to a thousand meters. Their equipment also included comfortable shoes and clothing: body armor with extra protection on the chest, cartridges, containers for water, medications and medical equipment neatly packed in the uniforms, etc.

"When Ale and his men arrived at the front, they took perfect positions. They could control the whole square from the height that they had taken. The snipers had to be removed before daybreak. Ale's men had already detected two enemy snipers with the help of electronic devices. Ale determined the target and said that he was ready. The enemies were quiet. They would take several shots before changing positions. That was a lethal mistake for them to make. The night was drawing to its end. It was time to move to another bunker of Gaddafi's supporters to open the door for the revolution wider."

Stories like these make one think about the real participation of NATO troops in the Libyan war. According to official information from the alliance, NATO conducted bombings, restricted arms shipments, and assisted in training the forces who were struggling against Gaddafi's troops.

There is also unofficial information which was exposed by the British media. According to British publications, Britain, for instance, went far beyond the framework set by the UN. The country supposedly participated in at least restricted operations in which it suffered considerable losses.

The above-mentioned article in the Italian newspaper also said that Ale was a member of the special team in which there was also a French legionary, a Briton from SAS and two US marines. All of them were veterans, whose skills were far better than those of Gaddafi's mercenaries.

According to the author, the use of those snipers became a critical element like a nuclear bomb in 1945, which changed the course of the conflict.

NATO sources said that there were as many as 4,000 US marines deployed near the Libyan shores during the operation. White House officials say that those marines did not take part in the Libyan "revolution." Was it really so?

It is worthy of note that there were reports saying that Gaddafi's soldiers downed helicopters with NATO commandos on board. It was also reported that the Libyan army had captured European mercenaries during the standoff.

The West uses professionals against unwanted regimes. However, the above-mentioned stories also mean that the West is ready to use its pros against other regimes as well - in Syria, Iran, etc. Foreign special services reportedly continue to sound out the possibilities for the Libyan scenario to repeat in Syria. There are also reports saying that mysterious snipers attack demonstrators and policemen to provoke armed clashes. Will Teheran and Damascus be able to set anything against mercenaries and commandos who are capable of changing the course of any conflict?

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Special forces, Afghan troops to pick up slack of departing US troops

U.S. and Afghan special forces, largely backed up by Afghan army units, will pick up the slack of American soldiers preparing to leave the country this summer, according to the top U.S. commander in the country. 

Roughly 23,000 American soldiers are set to rotate back to the United States this summer. Those troops represent what is left of the 33,000 surge forces President Obama flooded into Afghanistan in late 2009.

Once complete, American commanders will have roughly 68,000 U.S. boots on the ground in Afghanistan. 

The White House plans to pull all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and hand control over to the Afghans in 2014. 

American and Afghan special operations units will help spearhead a massive push into insurgent-controlled areas in eastern Afghanistan this spring, near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) chief Gen. John Allen said on Monday. 

Afghan "Kandak" commando units will team up with their U.S. counterparts to carry out village stability operations and "focused task force" missions in areas in and around eastern Afghanistan, Allen said. 

Those units will be supported primarily by elements from the 201st and 203rd Afghan Army Corps, along with the remaining contingent of U.S. troops in country. 

Some on Capitol Hill, most notably Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have dismissed the notion that a surge of special-operations forces focusing on counterterrorism can make up for a U.S. military drawdown. 

"It didn't work in Iraq and it won't work in Afghanistan," he told reporters on March 12. 

As Afghan and coalition forces push eastward, ISAF commanders will also look to maintain their foothold in southern Afghanistan. 

The administration's 2009 surge strategy focused on wresting Kandahar and the surrounding Helmand province in southern Afghanistan from Taliban control.

While U.S. and NATO forces have been able to quell much of the Taliban's activity in the south, insurgents tied to the Haqqani terror network in the east remain one of the deadliest threats to coalition troops. 

With American forces drawing down in the country, Haqqani leaders "sense ... now is their opportunity" to take back Kabul from coalition forces, according to Allen. 

That said, the upcoming eastern offensive "will spend a good amount of time" geared toward dismantling the network and its affiliates, he said. 

Maintaining control of southern Afghanistan while going after the Haqqani network in the east will largely depend on the role of Afghan forces in those missions. 

When asked if the Afghan military would be up to the task, Allen said both the commando and regular army units were progressing as planned.

U.S. military planners are also focusing their efforts on coalition-led military adviser units, to see if that progress can be accelerated.

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