30th Anniversary: Invasion of Grenada

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the Invasion of Grenada

Operation Urgent Fury, was a 1983 United States-led invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean island nation with a population of about 91,000 located 100 miles (160 km) north of Venezuela, that resulted in a U.S. victory within a matter of weeks. Triggered by a bloody military coup which had ousted a four-year revolutionary government, the invasion resulted in a restoration of constitutional government. Media outside the U.S. covered the invasion in a negative outlook despite the OAS request for intervention (on the request of the U.S. government), Soviet and Cuban presence on the island and the presence of American medical students at the True Blue Medical Facility.

There a long and excellent article at Small Wars Journal about How Grenada Changed How America Goes to War.
When you read about the planning leading up to Grenada, you'll be astounded that the US succeeded at all...

In this immediate period, the JCS passed out two parallel planning requests to two separate organizations with only inferred or non-existant guidance to jointly coordinate-Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and Atlantic Command (LantCom). JSOC because an actual invasion might include the new SOF elements and LantCom because Grenada fell into its geographical area of responsibility. Each began planning in isolation of the other and each planned for forces without regard for the other. In neither organization, until almost the point of execution, was the 82d Airborne or XVIII Airborne Corps engaged or mentioned.

The task each headquarters assumed was the capture of the Point Saline Airfield as well as likely nodes of government. The existence and safety of the students, primarily American citizens, at St Georges Medical University was initially not an issue.

Earlier, in 1979, the democratic government of Grenada was overthrown in a coup and replaced by a socialist dictatorship. On 14 October 1983, an internal power struggle resulted in the death of the original coup leader, Maurice Bishop and his replacement by his chief lieutenant Bernard Coard and his enforcer Gen Hudson Austin, both professed communists. Sir Paul Scoon, the UK Governor General, was placed under house arrest.

Despite this evolution, a US-based expatriate medical school, St Georges Medical University, continued to operate from several campus’s on the main island of Grenada. However, by the October coup, students and faculty became increasingly alarmed about the thuggish nature of local security elements. On 20 October, Hudson Austin announced a curfew for the students and the entire population, brought in additional guards and accused the school of spy activities. Numerous students called their friends and families and indicated their lives were in danger.

At this point, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States as well as the governments of Barbados and Jamaica asked the US to intervene. Three days later, 23 October, the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed with a large loss of life. The Joint Chiefs of Staff began intensive planning resulting in an execute order for the invasion of Grenada on 25 October 1983. This would be the first significant military action for the US since its departure from Vietnam in 1973. This order involved a Joint effort by both elements of Lantcom and JSOC together-a requirement not previously expressed. Lantcom would be in overall command-sort of-and include the Marines afloat who were headed to Beirut to relieve the just-bombed barracks elements. Lantcom would also have augmentations from the 82d Airborne Division and follow-on forces from XVIII Airborne Corps. This inclusion was unknown until approximately two weeks prior to execution.

In sum, though two headquarters were charged with essentially the same task, each worked with forces not known to the other and planned in isolation. Further, key elements of the final plan (82d Airborne) were not informed of their engagement until two weeks prior to execution. The chain of command was imprecise and no Joint communications system other than ad hoc was established. The mission to rescue and recover the medical school students was a last minute addition to the 82d task list.

What are your recollections of the invasion and aftermath? And has their ever been a worse earnest 'war' movie than Heartbreak Ridge?

By: Brant

US Involved in Weekend Raids in Africa

The Libyans are pissed off, and Secretary Kerry is telling them to get over it, after a pair of weekend raids capture an al Qaeda leader in Libya and go after an al Shabab planner in Somalia.

U.S. forces launched raids in Libya and Somalia on Saturday, two weeks after the deadly Islamist attack on a Nairobi shopping mall, capturing a top al Qaeda figure wanted for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. officials said.

The Pentagon said senior al Qaeda figure Anas al Liby was seized in the raid in Libya, but a U.S. official said the raid on the Somali town of Barawe failed to capture or kill the intended target from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab movement.

Liby, believed to be 49, has been under U.S. indictment for his alleged role in the East Africa embassy bombings that killed 224 people.

By: Brant

Another French Casualty From Somalia Raid?

The Somali rebels claim that a second French commando died of wounds sustained in the raid.

A second French commando has died from wounds in Somalia after a failed attempt at the weekend to rescue a French agent held hostage by al Shabaab since 2009, the Somalian rebel group said on Monday.
The al-Qaeda linked group also maintained that the hostage, Denis Allex, who France says it believes was killed during the operation, was still alive.
The militants put up fierce resistance when French special forces went into southern Somalia by helicopter under the cover of darkness on Saturday to try to free Allex.
There was some confusion over the exact outcome of the mission, with the French government saying at one point that one commando had died and the other gone missing and later saying that both appeared to be dead.
"The second commando died from his bullet wounds. We shall display the bodies of the two Frenchmen," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, spokesman for al Shabaab's military operations, told Reuters by telephone.
Allex's fate would be decided later, he said.

By: Brant

Anniversary: Black Hawk Down

October 3-4, 1993 were the two days of the Battle of Mogadishu.

The Battle of Mogadishu (more commonly referred to as Black Hawk Down or, for Somalis, the Day of the Rangers (Somali: Maalintii Rangers) was part of Operation Gothic Serpent and was fought on October 3 and 4, 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of the United States, supported by UNOSOM II, and Somali militia fighters loyal to the self-proclaimed president-to-be Mohamed Farrah Aidid who had support from armed civilian fighters. A U.S. Army force in Mogadishu, consisting primarily of US Army Rangers from 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; B [Bravo] Company, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D), better known as "Delta Force"; and helicopters from 1st Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, attempted to seize two of Aidid's high-echelon lieutenants during a meeting in the city. Shortly after the assault began, Somali militia and armed civilian fighters managed to down two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters over the city. The subsequent rescue operation to secure and recover the crews of both helicopters drew the raid, intended to last no more than an hour, into an overnight standoff in the city. The battle resulted in approximately 20 deaths, 80 wounded, and 1 helicopter pilot captured amongst the raid party and rescue forces, including Pakistani and Malaysian troops. US sources estimate between 1,500 and 3,000 Somali casualties, including civilians; SNA forces claim only 315 casualties, with 812 wounded.

The crew of Super 6-4 a month before the Battle of Mogadishu. Winn Mahuron, Tommy Field, Bill Cleveland, Ray Frank and Mike Durant. (h/t Doctrine Man)

Want to replay the raid and try your own hand at the mission? Check out LNLP's Lock'n'Load: Day of Heroes, and refight Mogadishu on your own tabletop.

By: Brant

New Landpower Analysis Group Being Set Up

The Army and SOCOM are setting up a new "landpower" group at the Pentagon.

The Army and Special Operations Command are starting a new strategic land power cell. The brand-new initiative, known only to a small group of planners thus far, is the brainchild of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno and will take shape over the next few months. The group, which will also include the Marines, is designed to fuse the military's land cultures, from the conventional land power of "Big Army" to the people-oriented skills of Special Forces to technology and cyber efforts. Ultimately, the planning cell could include general officers from each of the major land components, Situation Report is told.

By creating a group focused on integrating those pieces, military strategists believe they can make more effective use of land power -- especially at a time when ground forces, after more than 10 years of war, are perceived to have fallen out of fashion in the hallways of the Pentagon. Ultimately, the effort could have implications for military doctrine, for the integration of conventional and specialized forces, and even for acquisition, according to an individual familiar with the nascent group.

The group's formation is bound to be controversial for the perception it will create at a time of a major budget crunch and the move to Asia - in effect, that the land forces are looking to lobby for more resources and influence But the individual familiar with the group pushes back on the notion that this is anything more than the ground forces taking a strategic approach to working better together.

"The Strategic Landpower initiative is intended to harness the lessons learned over the past decade of population-centric warfare, retain what worked, and then determine what that means for land forces going forward," the person told Situation Report. "Understanding the relationship between people, technology and the environment will improve our efforts to shape the environment in positive ways that prevent war, just as it should allow us to make lasting process in future conflicts if we have to fight."

By: Brant

SF Ops in Africa Focusing on Intel Work?

WaPo has a very revealing - and long - article about the expansion of special ops missions in Africa, and their focus on intel work.

About a dozen air bases have been established in Africa since 2007, according to a former senior U.S. commander involved in setting up the network. Most are small operations run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports.

The nature and extent of the missions, as well as many of the bases being used, have not been previously reported but are partially documented in public Defense Department contracts. The operations have intensified in recent months, part of a growing shadow war against al-Qaeda affiliates and other militant groups. The surveillance is overseen by U.S. Special Operations forces but relies heavily on private military contractors and support from African troops.

The surveillance underscores how Special Operations forces, which have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones. The lightly equipped commando units train foreign security forces and perform aid missions, but they also include teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects.

How do you see the future of US operations in Africa? Conventional missions? SF ops supporting FD? Quasi-wars and proxy wars against trans-national troublemakers? Zimbabwe continuing under the rule of Methuselah Robert Mugabe?

By: Brant

"Clarification" About SOF-Nork Remarks?

BG Tolley has "clarified" his statement about US/ROK SOF north of the border.

On Wednesday, Tolley offered his take.

“After further review of the reporting, I feel I was accurately quoted,” he said. “In my attempt to explain where technology could help us, I spoke in the present tense. I realize I wasn’t clear in how I presented my remarks.”

He insisted, however, that the United States has at no time sent special operations forces into North Korea.

Such cross-border operations into North Korea would be in violation of the 1953 armistice agreement that brought the Korean War to an end.

The existence of such operations would also jeopardize already strained and sensitive relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

By: Brant

US Troops On The Ground in North Korea?

The commander of SOF-Korea admits that we’ve sent troops into North Korea.

“At no time have SOF [Special Operations] forces been sent to the north to conduct special reconnaissance,” said the United States Forces Korea.

U.S. Army Gen. Neil Tolley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in South Korea, told an audience in Tampa that U.S. and South Korean forces have been sent into North Korea to spy on the communist country’s vast collection of underground tunnels and military installations.

The extraordinary admission, which went unreported by U.S. media, came on May 22 during the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference. Tolley said his command has identified 20 airfields and 180 munitions factories that are partially underground, along with thousands of subterranean artillery positions.

“The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our satellites,” Tolley added, according a report published Monday by The Diplomat, a Japan-based foreign affairs magazine.

“So we send ROK [Republic of Korea] soldiers and U.S. soldiers to the North to do special reconnaissance.”

Wow.

I do like this line from him:

The brigadier general appeared on a panel with his counterparts from the much larger African, European, Pacific and Southern commands. But the comparatively tiny region he oversees, he said, is nothing to sneeze at.

“We have only two countries and one time zone,” he explained, “but what we lack in size we make up for in kilotons of evil.”

So how do you incorporate this sort of recon into a game like Decision's DMZ or GMT's Next War: Korea?

UPDATE
The denials from USFK were swift and unequivocal.

A spokesman for US forces in South Korea subsequently dismissed the media report.
"Some reporting has taken great liberal licence with his comments and taken him completely out of context," Colonel Jonathan Withington, of the public affairs office of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.
"No US or ROK (Republic of Korea) forces have parachuted into North Korea," he said. "Though special reconnaissance is a core special operations force mission, at no time have SOF forces been sent to the north to conduct special reconnaissance.
"The use of tunnels in North Korea is well documented," he added. "Several of the known tunnels along the DMZ are visited by tourists every day."

By: Brant

US Assistance in Africa Searching for Kony

They were actually sent before the video meme took off, but US Special Forces are helping track Joseph Kony around central Africa.

Obo was the first place in the Central African Republic that Kony's Lord's Resistance Army attacked in 2008; today, it's one of four forward operating locations where U.S. special forces have paired up with local troops and Ugandan soldiers to seek out Kony, who is believed likely to be hiding out in the rugged terrain northwest of the town. For seven years he has been wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity after his forces cut a wide and bloody swath across several central African nations with rapes, abductions and killings.
Part of the LRA's success in eluding government forces has been its ability to slip back and forth over the porous borders of the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Congo. But since late last year, U.S. forces have been providing intelligence, looking at patterns of movement, and setting up better communications to link the countries' forces together so that they can better track the guerrilla force.
Sent by President Barack Obama at the end of 2011, the 100 U.S. soldiers are split up about 15 to 30 per base, bringing in American technology and experience to assist local forces.

View Larger Map

By: Brant

What Comes Next in Afghanistan?

The inevitable shift to elite forces operating under the radar?

The United States’ plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.

The plan, if approved by President Obama, would amount to the most significant evolution in the military campaign since Mr. Obama sent in 32,000 more troops to wage an intensive and costly counterinsurgency effort.

Under the emerging plan, American conventional forces, focused on policing large parts of Afghanistan, will be the first to leave, while thousands of American Special Operations forces remain, making up an increasing percentage of the troops on the ground; their number may even grow.

The evolving strategy is far different from the withdrawal plan for Iraq, where almost all American forces, conventional or otherwise, have left. Iraq has devolved into sectarian violence ever since the withdrawal in December, which threatens to undo the political and security gains there.

By: Brant

US Raid in Somalia Rescues 2 Hostages

A night time raid in Somalia has successfully freed 2 hostages.

U.S. Special Forces troops flew into Somalia on a nighttime helicopter raid early Wednesday, freed an American and a Danish hostage and killed nine of the kidnappers in a mission that President Barack Obama said he personally authorized.
The Danish Refugee Council confirmed that the two aid workers, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, were freed and "are on their way to be reunited with their families."
The raiders came in very quickly, catching the guards as they were sleeping after having chewed the narcotic leaf qat for much of the evening, a pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told The Associated Press by phone. Hussein said he was not present at the site but had spoken with other pirates who were, and that they told him nine pirates had been killed in the raid and three were missing.
A second pirate who gave his name as Ahmed Hashi said two helicopters attacked at about 2 a.m. about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Somali town of Adado where the hostages were being held.

Woot!

UPDATE:
Here's Secretary Panetta's statement on the raid.

Last night U.S. Special Operations Forces conducted, by order of the President of the United States, a successful mission in Somalia to rescue two individuals taken hostage on October 25, 2011. Ms. Jessica Buchanan, an American citizen employed by the Danish Demining Group, and her Danish colleague, Mr. Poul Thisted, were kidnapped at gunpoint by criminal suspects near Galcayo, Somalia.

Ms. Buchanan and Mr. Thisted have been transported to a safe location where we will evaluate their health and make arrangements for them to return home.

This successful hostage rescue, undertaken in a hostile environment, is a testament to the superb skills of courageous service members who risked their lives to save others. I applaud their efforts, and I am pleased that Ms. Buchanan and Mr. Thisted were not harmed during the operation. This mission demonstrates our military's commitment to the safety of our fellow citizens wherever they may be around the world.

I am grateful to report that there was no loss of life or injuries to our personnel.

I express my deepest gratitude to all the military and civilian men and women who supported this operation. This was a team effort and required close coordination, especially between the Department of Defense and our colleagues in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are heroes and continue to inspire all of us by their bravery and service to our nation.

By: Brant

Covert UK Ops on the Ground in Libya

Mark Urban (no known relation to Keith) has a great article about the UK's covert actions on the ground during the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

The first significant involvement of British forces inside Libya was a rescue mission mounted just a couple of weeks after the rising against Gaddafi broke out. On 3 March, Royal Air Force C130 aircraft were sent to a desert airstrip at Zilla in the south of the country to rescue expatriate oil workers. Many had been threatened by gunmen and bandits.

This airlift of 150 foreigners, including about 20 Britons, to Valletta airport in Malta went smoothly, despite one of the aircraft being hit by ground fire soon after taking off.

Accompanying the flights were about two dozen men from C Squadron of the Special Boat Service (SBS), who helped secure the landing zone. It was a short-term and discreet intervention that saved the workers from risk of abduction or murder, and caused little debate in Whitehall.

OK, so not bad. But after another debacle (read the article - amazing these guys dorked up that bad) the straightjacket went on the ROE.

When half a dozen British officers arrived at a seaside hotel in Benghazi at the beginning of April, they were unarmed and their role was strictly limited. They had been told to help the NTC set up a nascent defence ministry, located in a commandeered factory on the outskirts of the city.

The first and most basic task of the advisory team was to get the various bands of Libyan fighters roaring around in armed pick-up trucks under some sort of central co-ordination. As reporters had discovered, most of these men had little idea of what they were doing, and soon panicked if they thought Col Gaddafi's forces were attacking or outflanking them.

There were a number of legal issues preventing them giving more help. Some Whitehall lawyers argued that any type of presence on the ground was problematic. Legal doubts were raised about arming the NTC or targeting Col Gaddafi.

Once the air operation was put on a proper Nato footing, these issues became even more vexed, insiders say, with the alliance saying it would not accept men on the ground "directing air strikes" in a way that some newspapers, even in late spring, were speculating was already happening.

The British government's desire to achieve the overthrow of Gaddafi while accommodating the legal sensitivities registered by various Whitehall departments led to some frustration among those who were meant to make the policy work.

This is the kind of news story you can see growing into a complete book, and an interesting one at that.

By: Brant

USAction! Ramp Exit

U.S. Navy SEALs exit a C-130 Hercules aircraft during a training exercise near Fort Pickett, Va., Dec. 8, 2011. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Anthony Michael Harding

By: Brant

GI Jane, er... What's "Jane" in Spanish...?

Mexico' Navy has their first female in their special forces.

Mexico's navy says the first woman has joined the ranks of its special forces.
The unidentified woman graduated from special forces training along with 12 men.
The navy is giving no other details and doesn't say in its Friday announcement if women had previously been barred from joining its special forces units, or whether none had applied.
The navy's special forces have taken an increasing role in the Mexican government's fight against drug traffickers, but the navy hasn't specified what duties the woman will be performing.

So what's the "Mexican Navy Special Forces"? Here's what Wikipedia knows about the "Fuerzas Especiales".

By: Brant

Back on the Ground in Somalia

The incomparable Sean Naylor (with whom I had the good fortune to trade some correspondence back in the '90s) has an excellent series of articles in the Army Times that cover US operations in Somalia since 9/11. It's a long article, but it really is fantastic, and I'm betting Sean expands it into a book in the near future.

However, in 2006, an opportunity to gain greater access to Somalia presented itself when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in an effort to oust the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group (sometimes referred to as the Council of Islamic Courts) that had seized power in Mogadishu from the Transitional Federal Government. Ethiopia, which had fought two previous wars with Somalia, first sent forces across the border in July to prop up the TFG, which had moved to Baidoa, about 160 miles northwest of Mogadishu. But in late December, a far larger Ethiopian force invaded with the intent of driving the ICU from power.

Despite speculation that Ethiopia invaded at the U.S.’s behest, cables from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa released by WikiLeaks indicate Ethiopia felt forced to act by circumstances in Somalia. “The GOE [government of Ethiopia] feels ever more compelled to intervene in southern Somalia to counter what it sees as the growing threat of an extremist Islamic regime in Mogadishu that is cooperating with Eritrea and other foreign elements to undermine Ethiopian stability and territorial integrity,” said U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto in a Dec. 6, 2006, cable. The same cable accurately predicted Ethiopia would invade in late December and that the incursion might “prove more difficult for Ethiopia than many now imagine.”

The cables make clear that the U.S. expected Ethiopia to invade. Nonetheless, a senior military official said events caught Joint Special Operations Command, which controls the military’s elite special ops forces, unprepared.

“The military wasn’t prepared to take any advantage of it,” the official said. “We should have been leaning forward to capitalize on this, and we did nothing.”

JSOC scrambled to take advantage by sending in small teams with Ethiopian special operations forces.

“Less than a dozen” JSOC operators went in, drawn from a mix of units, the intelligence official said. The largest number came from Naval Special Warfare Development Group, sometimes known as SEAL Team 6. The Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron also provided personnel. The numbers were kept small “because we didn’t need that much,” the official said.

But even the secret deployment of such small numbers of JSOC personnel into Somalia created angst in Washington’s policymaking circles.

“It was very uncomfortable,” the intelligence official said.

By: Brant

SEAL Team Six and Bin Laden Raid - A Better Story

Following on the footsteps of the widely-disavowed book about the OBL raid, there's a new SEAL Team Six book out there.

Don Mann (with Ralph Pezzullo) has released Inside SEAL Team Six: My Life and Missions with America's Elite Warriors, and apparently had several pieces of it redacted by different government agencies.

Note: not disavowed (as in: this is so far off-base it's laughable) but redacted (as in: we don't want people to know about this). Here's Don Mann discussing it on Morning Joe today.


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By: Brant

Sneaking Around HOA, Looking for Terr's

Back to Somalia? And with great effect and no media coverage.

Starting in 2003, small teams of U.S. operatives would clamber aboard a civilian turboprop plane at a Nairobi, Kenya, airfield to embark on one of the most dangerous missions conducted by U.S. personnel in Somalia since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The teams combined CIA case officers and “shooters” from a secretive special operations unit sometimes called Task Force Orange, said an intelligence source with long experience in the Horn of Africa. “There were always at least two CIA case officers, and there were always at least two shooters,” the source said. “Everybody was armed.”

Those first secret missions were all about gathering human intelligence — “collecting information, validating information,” said the source. But they soon expanded to include working with warlords to hunt al-Qaida members, tapping cellphones, purchasing anti-aircraft missiles and, ultimately, developing a deeper understanding of al-Qaida’s East African franchise and how it fit into the wider al-Qaida network.

The Mogadishu missions became one of the most successful U.S. intelligence operations in the Horn.

By: Brant

SOCOM Speaks Out About SEAL Book

When the SpecOps community breaks their silence to disavow your book, you gotta know you're waaaaay off base.

The U.S. military is denouncing a former Navy SEAL's book that claims to describe the "real" version of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
"It's just not true," U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Tim Nye said. "It's not how it happened."
Laden with conspiracy theories and attacks on the Obama White House, Chuck Pfarrer's "SEAL Target Geronimo" claims an alternative version of the raid in which the SEAL team shot bin Laden within 90 seconds of arriving at the Pakistan compound where the al-Qaida mastermind was holed up.
Pfarrer claims the White House issued a fictional and damaging account of the raid that made the SEALs looks inept. He says President Barack Obama's speedy acknowledgement of the raid was a craven political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered on the raid useless.
Pfarrer's account broke into Amazon's top 20 book sales list last week, and Pfarrer has appeared on Fox News, CNN and in other venues to promote it.
"I have truth on my side," Pfarrer said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I spoke to the guys on the ground and in the secondary bird," he said, referring to the aircraft full of a second SEAL team that was there to rescue the first if it came under attack so far inside Pakistan's borders.
"This is a fabrication," Nye countered, issuing an on-the-record denial on behalf of Navy SEAL Adm. Bill McRaven, who took command of all special operations this summer.
In his previous role, McRaven executed the raid in May as head of the military's elite Joint Special Operations Command. Nye said McRaven was concerned the book would lead Americans to doubt the administration's version of events. He also disputed Pfarrer's portrayal of friction between the CIA and the military special operations forces who carried out the raid.
"We have never come forward and gone after an author and say that is a lie," Nye said. "That tells you how far off the mark we believe this book is."

And when you can't get basic, verifiable facts right, as pointed out later in the article (Al-Zawarhi was killed by an F16 strike, not a UAV), then how is anyone supposed to believe the things they can't fact-check behind you?

By: Brant

Looking Back to the Future for Afghanistan

With the inevitable draw-down of line forces in Afghanistan, the war there is going to turn (back) to the Special Ops and intel communities.

When Afghan troops take the lead in 2014, "the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism," said National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in remarks in Washington in mid-September. That will be augmented by teams that will continue to train Afghan forces, added White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.
The White House insists this does not mean abandoning the strategy of counterinsurgency, in which large numbers of troops are needed to keep the population safe. It simply means replacing the surge of 33,000 U.S. troops, as it withdraws over the next year, with newly trained Afghan ones, according to senior White House Afghan war adviser Doug Lute
It also means U.S. special operators and CIA officers will be there for the next turn in the campaign. That's when Afghans will either prove themselves able to withstand a promised Taliban resurgence, or find themselves overwhelmed by seasoned Taliban fighters. U.S. officials liken it to a parent letting go of a child's wobbly bike, but with lives hanging in the balance.
"We're moving toward an increased special operations role," together with U.S. intelligence, Mulholland said, "whether it's counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency."

By: Brant

The View From the Ground in Afghanistan

As Jon Compton notes elsewhere, "winning" is the wrong term when applied to every-shifting conditions. But "winning" is what the US population wants, and at least one Afghanistan veteran says it's not out of reach.

I am an Army Special Forces officer by trade, and spent the past year leading a small team of Dari- and Pashto-speaking Americans whose mission was to embed with Afghan Army units. We went weeks wearing Afghan uniforms and sleeping at tiny outposts, eating local food and staying up late speaking with Afghan soldiers in their own languages. While I can’t pretend to know the intricacies of Afghan-Pakistani politics (nor can most “experts” on the evening news), I can describe the truth on the ground.

The southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand were ground zero for the 2010 Afghan surge and the area where we devoted the full weight of our resources and resolve. The headlines hide deeper trends in places where the Taliban until recently enjoyed uncontested rule. Riding around with Afghan soldiers from dozens of different units, we heard one message everywhere: “Last year we couldn’t even move out of the front gate without being shot or blown up. Now we control as far as you can see.”

And the civilian population is starting to stir in these newly reclaimed districts. In little-known places like Arghandab, Panjwai and Nad Ali, Afghans are moving back into their long-abandoned homes. Weekly tribal shuras — like town hall meetings — are beginning to flourish in areas where not even a handful of elders would attend a year ago, for fear of being assassinated. The Taliban are not standing idly by. Pushed out of many of their strongholds, they have shifted tactics, focusing on high-profile attacks on softer (usually civilian) targets. But we fail to see the subtleties at home.

In May, after one such attack in Kandahar, I joined some Afghan officers watching the local news coverage, expecting looped footage of explosions and chaos. We were all surprised to see four small children, their faces blurred, in an impromptu news conference. They recounted how the Taliban had given them candy and persuaded them to don suicide bomber vests by promising that they wouldn’t die and that their impoverished families would be provided for.

Regardless of their political views, all Afghans regard children as off limits. That night, watching the children tell how they were recruited, the Afghan captain at my side, a tough Pashtun named Mahmoud, shrugged and said in Dari, “They’re getting desperate.”

h/t Blackcloud 6

By: Brant