This incident took place in Mogadishu in October 1993, and generated much press and a bestselling book. Its notoriety has tended to overshadow the genuine successes of American and UN operations in that benighted country. In the early 1990s, many Somalis were starving, and anarchy is too kind a word to describe the chaos. The country was divided among warring tribal factions; many of these were ruled by warlord-thugs, most were engaged in “civil wars” with the others, and some were fundamentalist Muslims, hostile to the United States.
Mending Somalia—like mending Afghanistan—will not be a quick fix.
Nevertheless, during the period from 1992 to 1995, SOF made a positive difference there. They conducted reconnaissance and surveillance operations (SOF elements drove more than 26,000 miles); assisted with humanitarian relief (bringing an end to starvation); conducted combat operations; for a time tamed many of the warring factions; and protected American forces (capturing hundreds of weapons and destroying thousands of pounds of ordnance). PSYOPs troops hired and trained thirty Somalis as a nucleus for radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. They put out a newspaper, Rajo—“Truth”—set up a radio station, and distributed millions of leaflets. Civil Affairs troops helped coordinate overall UN and NCO humanitarian efforts, and were involved in great and small projects—from rebuilding the Mogadishu water supply system to setting up playgrounds in the city in order to give children something better to do than throwing rocks at military vehicles.
HAITI In 1990, after hundreds of years of corruption and oppression, Haiti—always in a bad way—seemed about to lurch at last into the twentieth century. In their first free election, the Haitian people selected a civilian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The new freedom did not last long. In September 1991, the legitimate government was thrown out by a military government, headed by General Raoul Cedras. After diplomatic efforts and a UN-mandated embargo failed to force the Cedras clique to step down, and with thousands of Haitians fleeing the impoverished country in rickety, leaky boats (many perished at sea), a U.S. invasion was planned—Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY, modeled on Operation JUST CAUSE (Panama).
As in Panama, the XVIII Airborne Corps would run the operation, with extensive support from Army, Air Force, and Navy SOF. Special operators would take down key governmental sites, followed by linkup with conventional forces. Special Forces teams would then fan out and secure the countryside.
In September 1994, former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and retired General Colin Powell negotiated a last-minute deal with Cedras that aborted the invasion. Cedras stepped down in favor of Aristide, and the U.S. forces were quickly reconfigured for peaceful entry. The invasion metamorphosed into a large-scale humanitarian mission.
Lieutenant General Henry Shelton, the XVIII Airborne Corps commander, used conventional forces (most of the from the 10th Mountain Division) to secure Port-au-Prince, the capital. To secure the rest of the country, he called on Brigadier General Dick Potter to form an SF task force (called Joint Task Force Raleigh). A-Detachments fanned out into the villages and countryside, and became the only source of law and order until the Haitian civilian government could move in and take over.
The PSYOPs campaign used leaflets, radio broadcasts, and airborne loudspeakers to send the message that cooperating with American forces and staying out of bloody conflicts with the remnants of the illegal regime would be the quickest route to a restoration of democracy. Civil Affairs troops made a start on restoring Haiti’s long-wasted civilian infrastructure. For example, in an operation they called LIGHT SWITCH, they brought electricity back to Jeremie, Cap Haiticn, and other northern cities and towns—places that hadn’t had electricity in years.
THE BALKANS In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia fractured into rival independent states, each striving to attain some dream of ethnic-religious purity—Eastern Orthodox, Muslim, or Roman Catholic. An impossible dream—the different ethnic groups were scattered pretty much all over the map. Tragedy followed, when the ethnic factions tried to bring about ethnic purity by force—and acted out age-old hatreds in the process. Thousands of people were driven from homes their people had lived in for centuries—or worse, they were massacred.
From 1992, the UN and NATO sent forces to the region in order to impose peace, but it took a coordinated bombing of Serb targets (Operation DELIBERATE FORCE—August to September 1995) to bring about a cease-fire among the warring factions. This in turn led to the Dayton Peace Accords of November 1995 and the Paris Peace Agreement of December 1995. The peace agreements were to be implemented by Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR (December 1995 to December 1996).
SOF had an important mission in support of JOINT ENDEAVOR—primarily to interact with foreign military forces, as they had done in DESERT STORM and Somalia. But other missions included personnel recovery (such as downed pilots) and fire support.
For their primary mission, Special Operations Command on the scene sent out Liaison Coordination Elements (LCEs) to both NATO and—far more important—to non-NATO battalion or brigade commanders within each area of operations. The LCEs made certain that the intent of information and instructions passed on to the battalion or brigade commander was understood.
LCEs conducted daily patrols with their assigned units, maintained communications, assessed the attitudes of the local populace and the various warring factions, provided accurate information about violent incidents, and made general reconnaissance. Since they had their own vehicles, they were not tied to the transport of their assigned units.
Civil Affairs coordinated reconstruction of the civil infrastructure and organized relief—a big job; there were better than five hundred UN, government, and nongovernment organizations to harmonize. Civil Affairs units helped in several ways: coordinating the repatriation of refugees; restoring public transportation, utilities, public health, and commerce; and organizing elections and setting up new national and local governments.
PSYOPs got out factual information through print and broadcast media, and conducted a mine-awareness campaign, aimed mostly at children.
Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR gave way to further stabilization efforts (Operations JOINT GUARD and JOINT FORCE—December 1996 through 1999). Most SOF personnel were involved with PSYOPs and Civil Affairs specialists.
In March 1999, NATO initiated Operation ALLIED FORCE to bring an end to Serbia’s violent ethnic-cleansing campaign against ethnic Albanians (primarily Muslim) in Kosovo. The nineteen-nation NATO coalition heavily bombed Serbia for seventy-eight days, at the end of which the Serbian President, Milosevic, threw in the towel and agreed to stop the ethnic cleansing. By then, the better part of a million refugees had been forced out of Kosovo.
During ALLIED FORCE, Civil Affairs units coordinated large-scale humanitarian relief with other U.S. agencies and international relief organizations. SOF aircraft airlifted food and supplies. PSYOPs EC-130E Commando Solo aircraft broadcast Serb-language radio and TV programs to inform the people of their government’s genocidal policies and to warn them against committing war crimes in support of those policies.
SOF Combat Search and Rescue MH-53 Pave Low and MH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters rescued two U.S. pilots (one from an F-117, the other from an F-16) downed in Serbia. These two missions each took less than a minute on the ground.
During the follow-up Operation JOINT GUARDIAN, SOF liaison teams initiated street patrols throughout their operational area in Kosovo. In the process, they arranged meetings between local Albanians and Serbs, to defuse ethnic violence, searched for illegal weapons caches, and helped war crimes investigators find massacre sites. Though SOF teams did not end violence, they managed to establish rapport with both ethnic factions, and their on-the-scene eyeball reports gave the leadership a clear view of local conditions.
HUMANITARIAN DEMINING OPERATIONS In 1988, millions of mines left over from the Soviet invasion remained in Afghanistan, stopping millions of refugees from returning to their homes. Troops from the 5th SFG deployed to Pakistan to wo
rk with UN personnel and Afghan refugees to find a way to remove this tragic legacy safely. The results became a prototype for other SOF and UN humanitarian demining programs.
It was not an easy job. There was then no effective Afghan government, and there was a multitude of organizations to coordinate. The SOF troops had to more or less invent the program on the spot, and then sell it to everyone else involved. The fractious and suspicious Afghan tribes and factions did not make things easier. Special Forces had to use their political even more than their technical skills.
Practically, SOF training programs taught millions of Afghans how to identify, avoid, report, or destroy mines—and how to set up training programs they could run themselves. When SOF troops left Afghanistan in 1991, the Afghans were able to manage demining without further outside help.
Other SOF demining training programs were later set up in Cambodia, Laos, the former Yugoslavia, Central America, and elsewhere—with PSYOPs and Civil Affairs units playing a large part in making local people aware of the danger from land mines, as well as showing them how to clear them.
AFRICAN CRISIS RESPONSE INITIATIVE After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and unrest the following year in its neighbor Burundi that pointed to a similar outcome, the U.S. Defense Department worked out a plan to deal with the situation—and others like it—based on training battalion-sized units from free and democratic African states to conduct peacekeeping operations within the continent. This plan matured into the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), which the State Department launched in the fall of 1996.
Though military assets from the United States and its allies were used in the ACRI program, Special Forces troops soon found themselves at its heart.
The 3rd SFG, under EUCOM’s command and control, developed an instruction program and sent teams to work the training. SF planners developed common peacekeeping tactics, techniques, and procedures. Training the African battalions in common doctrine and standards allowed the multinational forces to work effectively together.
The 3rd SFG-designed ACRI training came in two phases: First there was an intensive sixty-day training for individuals, platoons, companies, leaders, and staff. This was followed by exercises to practice what they had learned.
At the end of 1999, SF teams had trained ACRI troops in Malawi, Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Benin, and the Ivory Coast.
NEOs SOF troops also took part in a number of noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs)—usually Embassy personnel in danger during revolutions or civil wars.
In April 1996, SEALs and SF troops provided security for the American Embassy in Liberia during the evacuation of Americans and third-country nationals. Using Air Force SOF MI I-53J—and later Army MII-47D—helicopters, 436 Americans and nearly 1,700 foreign nationals were safely flown out of the country.
SOF also took part in NEOs in Sierra Leone, Congo, and Liberia (again).
PEACEKEEPING AND TRAINING SOF troops continue to be deployed in many countries in peacekeeping and/or training roles. Examples include many African nations, Kuwait, Venezuela, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, and Macedonia.
And then, in September 2001, a new mission came to SOF....
XV
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
Carl Stiner: Tom Clancy and I began this story with an account of a terrorist assault on an ocean liner more than fifteen years ago. We are ending it in the aftermath of another terrorist attack—the September 11, 2001, assault on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. A score of fanatics commandeered ordinary civilian machines—fuel-laden ailiners—and turned them into weapons of destruction. The differences between the two events are striking.
Both involved careful planning and wanton disregard of human life, but the greatest distinction is in the scale—not only in the sheer magnitude of the devastation, loss of lile, and horror, but also in the obvious size and skill of the organization that let loose such savagery. In the past, you needed governments for that. But apparently no longer.
It’s far too soon after these acts to predict possible long-term consequences, and we won’t presume to attempt it. However, several implications are worth exploring, even at this early date.
Terrorism has been with us for a long time, and it will stay with us as long as men find cause to rage against an establishment they view as oppressive. Terrorist tactics were bad enough before, when they blew up shops and buses, hijacked planes, held people hostage. But now we arc under attack by men who wreak havoc on a scale earlier terrorists could only dream about. We no longer just face single individuals with a gripe, or small groups bent on changing a political system. These new terrorists are bent on purging civilization of all those who do not share their beliefs.
The new terrorists have created an organizational web of cells operating in many different countries, but outside of any country’s laws—cells that can be called upon to wage war on a scale much larger and more complex than ever before. What they have become, in fact, is their own virtual—or shadow—government, powerful enough to intimidate and strike fear into many actual governments. They are directly supported—financially, militarily, or otherwise—by sympathetic “legitimate” governments, and receive support from sympathetic wealthy individuals or organizations.
Islam is one of the world’s great faiths, one that brings great riches to all the world’s human community. Most of these new terrorists proclaim their total and undying faith in Islam, yet they justify their actions by their own interpretation of their religion. Their Islam is not the true Islam. In effect, they have hijacked their own religion.
On September 11, without warning, they committed the most barbaric act ever carried out against the United States, one specifically designed to kill as many innocent people as possible. The most powerful nation in the world could do nothing but watch. All our military might stood passive.
Such scenes and our feelings of helplessness will remain etched in our minds forever.
Their objective was to cause us to lose trust in one another and in our government’s ability to protect its citizens, to cause us to imprison ourselves. We won’t do that. But if we’re smart, this will serve as a wake-up call.
For years, many of us have been concerned about our vulnerability to terrorism. To us, this attack was no surprise—though the form it took was. In fact, it could have been even worse—and maybe someday it will be.
We have all had many questions in the attack’s aftermath:
“Why is the United States a target?”
“How did such an attack happen here?”
“Will there be more attacks?”
Let us begin to answer them.
WHY IS THE UNITED STATES A TARGET?
Most nations and people respect the United States. Our freedoms, and the help we have given to oppressed and impoverished people, have made us a beacon and a model for much of the rest of the world. But not for everyone. Certain groups hate us so deeply that they dream of violently destroying us.
Their hatreds come from several sources: religious differences; a culture they see as promiscuous and sinful; our foreign policies, particularly our support of Israel (an especially large grievance among Shiites); the U.S. support of Iraq during the four-year Iraq-Iran war; our support for the Christian-dominated government of Lebanon in the early to mid-eighties; the Gulf War and its aftermath, the embargo of Iraq, which has harmed many innocent Arabs; and the continued presence of our troops on the sacred territory of Saudi Arabia. All of these perceptions, and many more, combine to make the United States a magnet for attacks by extremist groups.
The terrorist war against the United States probably began as far back as November 4, 1979, when militant Iranian students took over the American Embassy in Tehran and held sixty-sixAmericans hostage for 444 days. This event turned into a major political crisis for the United States, but far more important, it served as a catalyst for other states to sponsor terrorist organizations that could be used to pursue their own political objecti
ves.
Thus the 1980s were dominated by terrorist attacks against U.S. interests abroad, carried out by state-supported fundamentalist extremist groups. Terrorism quickly became a calculated, formalized, and cheap means of warfare. Attacks increased in frequency and complexity, and suicide attacks (self-induced martyrdom) grew more and more common.
Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared a holy war against the United States. His objectives were to drive the United States out of the Middle East (particularly Lebanon) and to spread his Islamic revolution throughout the area.
Syria’s president Hafiz Assad, a secular leader of a Muslim state, hoped to use terrorism to attain one of his chief foreign policy goals—to gain dominance over Lebanon as a strategic buffer against Israel.
In April 1983, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed and sixty-three people were killed, among them the CIA station chief and all but two of his staff, neutralizing the U.S. intelligence apparatus in that part of the world. Six months later, in October 1983, the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut was bombed, killing 241 U.S. Marines. Shortly thereafter, all peacekeeping forces were withdrawn from Lebanon. Khomeini and Assad had each achieved major objectives.
The United States was not prepared to deal with this form of warfare, and acts of hostage-taking, hijacking, and bombings against U.S. interests increased. In 1986, Libya’s Muamar Qaddafi joined the fray by launching a campaign in Europe against U.S. targets.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union changed all this for the worse. Until then, the Soviets had considerable leverage over states and organizations that sponsored terrorism, and were reluctant to sanction acts that could draw them into a confrontation with the United States. The end of the Soviet Union opened up a Pandora’s box, and turned former puppet states and organizations loose to pursue their own interests, most of which were hostile to those of the United States. To make matters even worse, many Soviet scientists and technicians who had been involved in developing or producing weapons of mass destruction were now without jobs. Many were sucked up by renegade states and put to work developing advanced capabilities that could be used for attacks against the United States.