Counterterrorism Archives - SOF News

Operation Nimrod – Iranian Embassy Siege in London

SOF News — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 05:00:00 +0000

The Iranian Embassy siege took place from April 30 to May 5, 1980. A group of six armed Arab men stormed the Iranian Embassy in London. They took 26 hostages – demanding safe passage out of the United Kingdom and the release of Arab prisoners held by the Iranian government in Khuzestan Province, Iran. On the sixth day the armed men killed a hostage and threw his body out of the embassy. Shortly afterward the elite Special Air Service conducted Operation Nimrod to rescue the remaining hostages.

Hostages. The hostages included embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who was guarding the embassy. The hostage takers demands were release of 91 Arab prisoners in Khuzestan Province, Iran and safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government did not accede to the demands and a standoff ensued. Negotiations resulted in the release of five hostages for some air time for the hostage takers on British television.

Hostage Takers. The Arabs who took the hostages were members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA). These were Iranian Arabs who wanted to establish an autonomous Arab state in the southern region of the Iranian province of Khuzestan (Google maps) on the border of southern Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The province was rich in oil. Some members of the hostage takers were politically active in Iran and had been subject to interrogations by the Iranian secret police – the SAVAK. The Arabs had arrived in Britain in March 1980 and while there acquired firearms, ammunition, and grenades – possibly provided by the Iraq embassy in London.

Rescue Force. The Special Air Service is a regiment of the British Army – part of the UK’s special forces. It was formed during the Second World War to conduct special operations and irregular warfare. After the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games in Germany and the many airline hijackings of the early 1970s, some western nations established or realigned special forces units to have a counter-terrorism capability. The SAS became the United Kingdom’s primary anti-hijacking and counter-terrorist unit. The raiding party of the SAS for Operation Nimrod numbered from 30 to 35 soldiers.

First Day. The hostage event took place at mid-day on April 30, 1980. Police responded immediately and within hours journalists and camera crews set up watch in front of the Embassy and began broadcasting live. The police were in charge of the overall response to the terrorist event and provided the negotiation team. Between the first day and the last day of the siege negotiations took place and some hostages were released. However, the hostage takers were becoming increasing frustrated – realizing their demands were not being met by the British authorities.

Sixth Day. On the sixth day of the siege, May 5, 1980, the Arabs killed a hostage and threw his body out of the embassy. The British government decided to attempt a rescue of the remaining hostages. The task was given to the Special Air Service (SAS). Members of the SAS rappelled from the roof of the embassy and entered the building through the windows. The raid lasted less than 20 minutes resulting in five of the six hostage takers killed and the rescue of the hostages; except one. A single hostage was killed during the rescue and two wounded. The one hostage taker who survived served 27 years in prison, was paroled in 2008, and lives in England. The raid took place in full view of journalists who were covering the event and it was broadcast in real time on live television.

Aftermath. Operation Nimrod brought the Special Air Service back into the public spotlight; enhancing its already stellar reputation. It also was a source of pride for Britain; as it occurred the same time that the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was held by Iranian revolutionary students and the failed U.S. rescue attempt – Operation Eagle Claw. The successful raid prompted many United Kingdom citizens to apply for the unit. The 22 SAS had multiple requests by other governments around the world for training its anti-terrorist forces. Members of the SAS were also requested by other nations for advise during hostage or terrorist events. The 22 SAS, as well as the 21 SAS and 23 SAS – two regiments from the volunteer Territorial Army, were safe from any force reductions and received increased funding as a result of the success of Operation Nimrod.

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References:

Iranian Embassy Siege – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Embassy_siege

Iranian Embassy Siege – National Army Museum
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/iranian-embassy-siege

Photo: The Iranian embassy in London, severely damaged by fire after the Iranian siege. Photo by Steve White, 2008. Creative Commons 2.0.

Afghanistan and U.S. ‘Over the Horizon’ Capability

John Friberg — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 13:37:37 +0000

A term that has seen an increased level of use is ‘Over the Horizon’. The Department of Defense and national security commentators have been using over the horizon (OTH) in two contexts when discussing Afghanistan. One is the ability to hit terrorist targets and threats inside Afghanistan from bases or assets outside of Afghanistan. The second is the ability to provide training, advise, assistance, and support to the Afghan security ministries and Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from outside Afghanistan.

OTH and Counterterrorism

The United States has the most professional counterterrorism capability in the world. The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has proven to be extremely effective in eliminating terrorist threats whenever it has targeted them. JSOCs achievements in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and around the world are well documented. It has evolved into a very proficient killing machine that can conduct offshore, over the horizon counterterrorism (CT) operations.

Temporary Base in Afghanistan. The ability to hit specific terrorist targets in Afghanistan is hindered by the lack of bases from which to operate from in Afghanistan. The huge air base at Bagram Air Field (BAF) has now been turned over to the Afghans. The only ‘known’ U.S. military presence is at the international airport in Kabul and perhaps at a location near to the U.S. embassy. In addition, the significant intelligence capability of the military and other intelligence agencies has been severely diminished. However, it is certainly plausible that a CT strike and support package could fly into the Kabul airport (with the permission of the Afghan government) and set up a temporary base long enough to hit a terrorist target in Afghanistan. In fact, an arrangement could be made that establishes a ‘warm base’ or ‘cold base’ at either Bagram or the Kabul airport. One ready for occupation that could quickly transition to a forward operation base for SOF units.

Base in Central Asia. There are a few neighboring countries that might host U.S. counterterrorist forces on a permanent or temporary basis. Iran and Pakistan are not among these countries. This could be an agreement for U.S. CT forces to deploy for the length of a mission. Or it could be the establishment of a small base manned by a minimal number of support staff to accommodate a CT force to come in, set up, and then conduct an operation. For a number of years the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan hosted U.S. military forces during the 20-year U.S. conflict in Afghanistan. In fact, this has been a topic of discussion among national security gurus. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hosted Uzbekistan Foreign Minister Kamilow and Tajikistan Foreign Minister Muhriddin in Washington, D.C on July 1, 2021. A discussion about permanent or temporary basing in one of those countries was likely on the meeting agenda. Of course, Russia continues to exert significant influence in the region so geopolitical concerns have to be taken into account.

Regional Bases and Assets. The U.S. has a number of air bases and facilities in the Middle East region that have a substantial number of fighter, bomber, surveillance, and tanker aircraft and drones that can hit targets in Afghanistan. In addition, these bases can support a CT ground force that can stage on a base in the Middle East and then strike a target in Afghanistan. The U.S. Air Force has long range bombers and the U.S. Navy maintains an almost constant presence in the region with an carrier strike group as well as naval vessels with cruise missile capability. The long flight times and overflight permissions are an important planning and execution factor for consideration.

OTH and Support to Afghanistan

The Resolute Support Mission (RSM) in Afghanistan has come to an end; although it hasn’t been declared as officially over. The RSM has been engaged in Security Force Assistance in Afghanistan through the Train, Advise, and Assist (TAA) mission for the past several years. The endeavor has been providing support to the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, and the Afghan security institutions. Thousands of advisors and trainers from the United States, NATO, and other partner nation countries have ‘cycled’ through tours of duty providing advice and training to the Afghan security forces. So there is a wealth of advisory experience that the international community can tap into within their respective militaries in the effort to support the ASI and ANDSF.

Leveraging Technology for Communication. Of course, this training and advising mission has to be done in an over the horizon effort now that the withdrawal is complete. In a technological world that now has the internet, video conferencing, email, cell phones, and other advanced methods of communication – providing support to the Afghan security forces is entirely possible from outside the country. The world is just now coming out of a year long struggle with COVID – an event that transformed the way we communicate and work. The use of Zoom and other online communication methods have become refined over the past year. This certainly is something that needs to be leveraged by the United States and others to assist Afghanistan. Is it ideal? No. But it is a tool in the toolbox.

Training. The ‘T’ part of the TAA mission that Resolute Support conducted in Afghanistan can, to a certain extent, be done from outside the country. Online instruction grew significantly over the past year providing learning opportunities at the elementary, high school, and university level. Large and small businesses conducted internal and for profit training over the internet using Zoom and other media. Of course, the U.S. and other nations have to actually do a little work to set up organizations to carry on this training. Certainly, with funding, people, and organizations earmarked for this event it can be done. Is it as good as person-to-person instruction? No, but it can be done.

There are a host of military schools and exercises that Afghan officers and NCOs can participate in that are located in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. One positive move is the coordination being done to host training for the Afghan SOF in Qatar. The instruction provided at Camp Commando (near Kabul) can be augmented with the training offered by US and international SOF in Qatar for the Afghan Commandos and other Afghan SOF units. This type of arrangement could be extended to conventional Afghan military personnel and units – something that will help train the ANDSF.

For several years NATO’s Joint Force Training Centre has conducted a two-week training course for NATO officers and NCOs scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan to work as mentors and advisors. This course could be continued to allow for a readily available pool of military professionals that can train and advise the Afghan security forces – except now it would be done remotely and by bringing Afghan counterparts out of Afghanistan for meetings and training. The Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) in Germany provided training for advisor teams preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. So the JMRC has some institutional knowledge on the topic, and with some work, an onsite course for Afghan military officers could be setup to offer training on a variety of military topics.

The International Military Education and Training (IMET) program can be leveraged to professionalize the Afghan military. At one time there was a counterinsurgency academy in Afghanistan that members of the Afghan military attended – staffed by Afghan and international military officers and NCOs. This could be reestablished in a Central Asian or Middle East country. The U.S. could bring back the AfPak Hands program to maintain continuity of U.S. trainers and advisors. So there are a lot of opportunities that could be utilized from existing or past training programs.

Advising. One of the ‘As’ in the TAA mission is advising. The advisory mission began in the early years of the U.S. involvement in the Afghan conflict. It became a major effort in the 2011-2012 timeframe when the U.S. and other nations deployed hundreds of Security Force Advisory and Assistance Teams (SFAATs) to work at the kandak (army) and district (police) level all the way to the ministries. This effort lasted about two years until the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) transitioned to the Resolute Support Mission. With the transition the troop levels dropped significantly, which required a big reduction in the advisory teams. The SFAATs were pulled off the kandaks, districts, brigades, and provinces but remained at corps level. During this process Resolute Support continued the TAA mission but through innovative concepts such as the Expeditionary Advisory Package. Eventually, in the past few years, even some corps level advisory teams were removed with the TAA mission being conducted by email, cell phone, through the security ministries, and in conferences in the Kabul area.

Assisting. One of the most important aspects of the TAA mission was providing assistance. A very significant part of this assistance was helping the Afghans with their maintenance and logistical operations. This is most likely one of the weakest aspects of the security situation. The Afghan military is burdened with a vast amount of equipment – drones, aircraft, vehicles, computers, and more – that they do not have the expertise or capability to maintain and sustain. The effort to build and Afghan military to resemble the U.S. military was a huge mistake. For example, providing the Afghans with the UH-60 Blackhawk (a complex and expensive aircraft) instead of additional Mi-17s or Mi-35s was a disaster in the making. Now the U.S. has to rapidly put together a method of providing maintenance, logistical, and technical support to the ANDSF from outside the country. The U.S. will need to find a way to provide contract support by remote and virtual means. Of course, this is less effective than in-country contract workers maintaining vehicles and aircraft. Of course, continuing to fund the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) will be key to helping the ANDSF and ASIs.

RAA Operations. More recently – as demonstrated in Iraq and Syria – U.S. special operations forces as well as conventional forces have been using new technology and methods to offer train, advise, and assist support. This has been called remote advise and assist operations. SOF, and CF personnel, have developed persistent relationships with Afghan leadership. These relationships should be leveraged to continue an over the horizon advising capability. One way to maintain these personal relationships is to invite Afghan military leaders to one of the bases maintained by the U.S. in the Middle East. The working relationship can be continued remotely. This can be done – there just has to be some vision and a will to do it. Is it as effective as in-country advising efforts? Of course not. But it is one method of getting the job done.

Conclusion. Certainly the United States has the capability to conduct over the horizon counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan to hit targets that pose a threat to the the homeland. It won’t be as effective and responsive as operating from a base within Afghanistan; especially consider the loss of intelligence capability. But it can be done.

The advise and train mission can also be done. However, it appears that the political climate will offer a lot of lip service to this OTH training mission but the assets needed (money, people, organization, political will) is most likely lacking. Thus far – it is not apparent that much planning or preparation has occurred on conducting an OTH assistance mission for the Afghan military.

Even if the U.S. got its act together on conducting an effective OTH training mission – there is another significant factor to consider. After twenty years of the U.S. and the international community providing billions of dollars and thousands of military personnel to first fight the Taliban and then provide training and assistance – the Afghan government and military have not been able to defeat the Taliban. The likelihood of the Afghans defeating the Taliban now – even with US and international over the horizon assistance is bleak.

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Image: Map derived from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) map of Afghanistan.

Report – Counterterrorism in East, North and West Africa

SOF News — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 11:43:49 +0000

The Lead Inspector General quarterly report to the U.S. Congress on counterterrorism efforts in Africa has been published. The report details operations in North and West Africa against al Qaeda, ISIS affiliates, and other terrorist groups over the months of January, February, and March 2020.

A Late Publication of the Report. It would have been published in mid-May based on the quarterly schedule; however, there were some classification and operational security concerns of the original content. Of note: there is very little mention of U.S. special operations forces activity in the report. Congress also receives a classified version of this report.

BLUF: Violent extremist organization (VEO) activity “. . . appears to be outpacing, U.S., European, and African efforts to counter it.”

East Africa. The publication reports on the activities of al Shabaab in the Horn of Africa. It details the attack on Camp Simba, Kenya, increased airstrikes in Somali by the U.S., and the efforts of African Union and Somalian forces to degrade al Shabaab. It concludes that al Shabaab remains “. . . adaptive, resilient, and capable of attacking Western and partner interests in Somalia and East Africa.” Mention is made of the Danab Advanced Infantry Brigade – one of the more elite units in the Somali security forces.

West Africa. VEO attacks have increased in West Africa. The United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) continues to provide limited operational support to African, French, and other forces in the region. France is leading the international counterterrorism effort in that part of Africa. Task Force Takuba was recently deployed – consisting of NATO SOF units from several European countries.

North Africa. The U.S. presence in North Africa is small compared to its presence and activity in other regions of Africa. While VEOs have been relatively quiet the region is still a hotbed of military activity. Libya’s civil war continues – with involvement by a number of international actors from Europe and the Middle East intervening on each side of the conflict. Foreign mercenary forces introduced by Russia and Turkey have escalated the civil war. The classified version of this report most likely contains some interesting accounts of U.S. activity in North Africa.

COVID-19. The coronavirus disease pandemic has been a challenge to U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa. Advising to African forces by AFRICOM has been scaled back. The Department of State and USAID have sent many of its staff home to the United States. Two major multinational exercises scheduled to take place were cancelled due to COVID-19 – Exercise Phoenix Express and Exercise African Lion.

Numbers of U.S. Forces. There were approximately 5,100 U.S. military personnel and 1,000 contractors and DoD civilians in Africa during the 3-month period (Jan – Feb 2020). Most are based at Camp Lemonier in Djibiouti – the location of Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). Some personnel are serving in austere locations where the network of bases, supply chains, airlift, and medical evacuation is limited.

SFAB. Advisory teams from the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade were scheduled to deploy to various locations in Africa. However, the coronavirus pandemic has scaled back some of the SFAB’s activities. Congress has expressed concern about the safety of SFAB personnel, available resources, and infrastructure required to support the SFAB.

SOF. The report covers the annual exercise conducted by Special Operations Command Africa – Exercise Flintlock. This special operations exercise is focused on enhancing the ability of Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership nations to plan and execute advanced counter-VEO operations. Not much else is mentioned about U.S. special operations in the report.

Reduced Focus on Africa? The Department of Defense is currently reviewing the posture of U.S. forces in Africa. The intent is to align DoD resources with the objectives of the 2018 National Defense Strategy which shifts focus from counterterrorism threats to competition with Russia and China.

Summary. The VEOs across the northern part of Africa continue to operate and grow their networks. Efforts to defeat the VEOs have thus far been ineffective. Several new initiatives to counter the VEOs are being implemented and are mentioned in the report. Many U.S. allies and African partner nations are waiting on a U.S. decision about its future security commitments to the continent.

East Africa Counterterrorism Operation – North and West Africa Counterterrorism Operation, Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, July 17, 2020, 90 pages, PDF.
View report online.

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Photo: Image: From Lead IG report. Members of a Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) training Senegalese soldiers. U.S. Army photo.

JSOU Report: CT, SOF, Informal Governance in Burkina Faso

SOF News — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 11:48:24 +0000

A recent report published by the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) provides insights into the ways that special operations forces can assist indigenous governance structures to halt or reverse the growth of violent extremist organizations (VEOs).

The authors of the report argue that operating in the human domain requires a “. . . deep appreciation of local worldviews, modes and patterns of life, and organic institutional arrangements that make them viable”. SOF is adept at working with government leaders at the national and sub-national level; however, SOF – in many instances – is not knowledgeable about informal governance structures that can assist in the fight against VEOs.

The country faces several home-based and foreign-based terrorist groups to include Ansarul Islam, Islamic State of Iraq and ash-sham networks in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), al-Mulathamun Battalion, and the al-Qa’ida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). More than 500 militant attacks in the past four years have killed hundreds of people. Burkina Faso had over 500,000 internally displaced persons in 2019. Terrorist attacks have taken place in the country’s capital as well as in rural areas.

Burkina Faso has augmented the size of its special terrorism detachment – Groupement des Forces Anti-Terroristes (GFAT). It has also jointed the G5 Sahel Joint Force to fight terrorism and criminal trafficking groups with its regional neighbors (Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger). In addition, it participates in the annual Flintlock exercise conducted by Special Operations Command – Africa (SOCAfrica).

The authors use Burkina Faso as an example of how SOF can support a country in its counterterrorism fight against VEOs. Local political legitimacy can be enhanced – and the influence of VEOs diminished – by working with indigenous, informal governance structures.

Report Contents:

Chapter 1 – Governance Provides in Burkina Faso
Chapter 2 – Islamic VEOs in Burkina Faso
Chapter 3 – Governance Environment
Chapter 4 – Violence and Security in Burkina Faso
Conclusion
Survey Methodology
Acronyms and Endnotes

Informal Governance as a Force Multiplier in Counterterrorism: Evidence for Burkina Faso, by Margaret H. Ariotti and Kevin S. Fridy, JSOU Report 20-3, JSOU Press, July 2020, 110 pages, PDF.
https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=55754342

Image: Derived from photo on back cover of the JSOU report and CIA map of Burkina Faso.

No Such Thing as a Perfect Partner: The Challenges of “By, With, and Through”

SOF News — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 05:00:00 +0000

By Emily Knowles, PRISM Vol. 8, No. 4, June 2020.
The original article can be accessed here – PRISM or view the PDF.

In recent military campaigns against violent non-state actors, many states have reduced the risk to their own forces by conducting airstrikes or supporting allies rather than placing their own forces on the ground.¹ Small teams of special operation forces (SOF) and military advisers, as well as military training teams and intelligence support units, have supported host-nation security forces in doing the bulk of front-line fighting against groups like al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda. In some theaters, such as the campaign against the Islamic State, this has extended to include intensive air and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support. In other theaters, support may be limited to training and equipping local partners without conducting joint operations—like the support that the UK provides to Kenyan forces through the British Peace Support Team (Africa). This is a trend that the Oxford Research Group calls “remote warfare,”² although it goes by many other names, including “surrogate war,”³ “light-footprint,”⁴ “low-intensity war,”⁵ and “by, with, and through.”⁶

This article draws on field research conducted in Afghanistan (2017), Iraq (2017), Mali, (2018) and Kenya (2018) as well as a series of expert roundtables held in London between 2017–2019, and interviews held with militaries, diplomats, and civil society in Mali (2019) and Somalia (2016–2018). The purpose of the effort was to identify changes in military engagement following the drawdowns of large international military operations in Iraq (2011) and Afghanistan (2014) and to highlight the strategic implications of a shift towards remote warfare. This included considering the impact on mandates like the protection of civilians, transparency, and accountability, and long-term prospects for peace.

One of the things that surfaced quickly throughout the research was that remote warfare is not a specific approach to military operations in the same way that counter-terrorism,⁷ counter-insurgency,⁸ or peace support operations⁹ are, nor are these activities guided by an overarching “remote warfare” or “by, with, and through” strategy.¹⁰ While militaries might have specific units dedicated to some of these tasks—such as the American Security Force Assistance Brigades¹¹ or the British Specialised Infantry Group¹²—many other elements of training, advising, and assisting or conducting expeditionary warfare alongside local units are carried out by a range of regular, elite, and special forces. Air support increasingly falls to drone pilots as well as more traditional forms of air power,¹³ while intelligence sharing and targeting support can be provided by many different agencies. Remote warfare is therefore less of an approach and more of a spectrum of support relationships between international militaries and their partners.¹⁴

Similarly, there is no one driver of the trend but rather a few key factors that have increased the incentives for engaging in this way. Part of the picture involves the way in which technological innovation—particularly the rise in drone technology—has enabled western states to replace the need for boots on the ground in some theaters.¹⁵ When coupled with air superiority in these same environments, which has historically been used to avoid the deployment of ground troops, it is clear that technology is creating opportunities for modern militaries to substitute out intelligence and strike capabilities that might once have put troops in the line of fire.¹⁶ The U.S. drones program is perhaps the most high-profile example, but others include the UK’s strike against the Islamic State propagandist and British citizen Reyaad Khan, who was killed in Syria in August 2015,¹⁷ or the June 2019 U.S. cyber attacks against Iranian military computers that were aimed at disabling the systems that control missile and rocket launchers.¹⁸

Another driver is the perceived security threat of safe havens and the related weakness of local partners in the regions where terrorist groups tend to thrive. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, then-British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, predicted the emergence of a “future in which unspeakable acts of evil are committed against us, coordinated from failed states in distant parts of the world.” ¹⁹ The strategic imperative of denying terrorist groups safe haven in fragile or failed states has been a pivotal part of the military and political rationale linking U.S. and allied military action against violent non-state groups back to core national security concerns of preventing further attacks on their soil. ²⁰ As then-commander of the NATO Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan General John Nicholson said in his February 2017 evidence to the U.S. Senate, “Our mission was to ensure that Afghanistan would never again be a safe haven for al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups to attack America or our allies and partners. That mission has been successful for 15 years, but it is not over.”²¹

Other drivers are more case-specific. For example, in a conference organized by the Peace Research Institute Oslo in December 2018 on small-state provision of security force assistance (SFA), many of the conversations focused on how states could ensure that they were good allies and partners for major military powers.²² Providing troops to coalition missions such as NATO Resolute Support in Afghanistan or the air campaign against the Islamic State are a few examples where participants spoke of signaling their support to the U.S., while many interviewees in Mali cited showing support to the French as a component of why they were contributing to the EU Training Mission.²³ In the UK’s 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), the government committed to “focus on areas of comparative national advantage valued by key allies, especially the United States, such as our intelligence capabilities and highly capable elite forces.”²⁴ This was echoed in the 2015 SDSR which stated, “our special relationship with the US remains essential to our national security. It is founded on shared values, and our exceptionally close defence, diplomatic, security and intelligence cooperation.”²⁵

Following large-scale military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, some countries have also experienced increases in legislative scrutiny of military operations and shifting attitudes towards the costs in both blood and treasure of military engagement. In the UK for example, because remote warfare can offer the government military options that don’t require recourse to Parliament under the War Powers Convention, it makes it an attractive option for risk-averse governments that fear losing a vote.²⁶ The government’s failure to gain parliamentary authorization for the principle of military action in Syria on August 29, 2013 has compounded this fear. While research suggests that it is far from clear that the 2013 Syria vote was a marker of parliamentary pacifism,²⁷ the acceleration of today’s information age has certainly opened up military activities to greater debate and raised the risks for governments hoping to carry out discreet operations.²⁸ Low popular support for, or awareness of, enduring NATO commitments in Afghanistan was one of the factors that interviewees in Kabul cited for frustration on the ground, while extreme political risk aversion was cited as leading to very low appetites for accepting casualties on the NATO side.²⁹

Photo: Instructors from the European Union Training Mission in Somalia (EUTM) take Somali National Army (SNA) soldiers through training drills at Jazeera Training Camp in Mogadishu. AMISOM (Ryamond Baguma, 25 March 2015)

No Such Thing as a Perfect Partner

International Burden Sharing

It would be wrong to suggest that the template for working by, with, and through local partners is a new phenomenon. Wars have been fought alongside and integrated with allies and partners since antiquity.³⁰ The arming and supporting of rival factions reached fever pitch in the Cold War, when proxy wars enabled great powers to clash indirectly and—crucially—below the threshold for nuclear retaliation. However, contemporary operations have moved on from these past templates of waging war, not least in terms of international parties’ restricted reach and influence over the forces they fight alongside, who are partners rather than merely proxies.

In addition, military operations now include a growing number of actors; both local and regional partner forces, international organizations like NATO, and coalitions of local, community, or sub-state allies like the Peshmerga or Syrian Democratic Forces. In these “coalitions of the willing,” where the mission determines the coalition rather than the other way around, ³¹ partnerships can be fluid, ambiguous, and complex. These ad-hoc coalitions do not possess any international legal personality, nor are they recognized as legal persons within the states’ domestic legal systems, unlike more traditional alliance structures such as the UN or NATO.³² They also challenge the way that militaries are set up to run operations, with multiple red-card holders who can opt their national forces out of particular activities, multiple sets of rules of engagement, and varying risk appetites.³³

However, it is far from clear that the current approach to sharing the burden of operations across coalition partners is working. In Kabul in March 2017, only the American contingent had expeditionary rules of engagement that allowed them to accompany the troops that they were training.³⁴ Stringent restrictions on troop movements had a huge effect on the ability of troops to get out and build relationships with the people that they were meant to be supporting. One described how going to the Afghan MOD—which is down the road from Resolute Support Headquarters (HQ)—would require them to be accompanied by armored cars and given cover. Even walking to the U.S. Embassy, which is opposite Resolute Support HQ, would have required top armor and escort.³⁵ Interviewers were told that 25 percent of advisors could not currently advise because they did not have force protection.³⁶

It also appeared that the act of pledging troops was more important to some contributing countries than the question of what they would be doing when they got there. Indeed, some countries had not fully honored their pledges, with only around 12,000 of the 15,000 NATO places that had been promised actually filled in March 2017.³⁷ The change from earlier points in the mission seemed stark. Interviewees talked about how staff who had been out in Afghanistan before the drawdown and were then deployed back as part of Resolute Support asked why no one was speaking to their old contacts. The conclusion seemed to be that the current contingent had not been able to build those relationships because they could not get meaningful access to their local partners.³⁸

This appears to be a problem shared by other western troops. While interviewing recent returnees from the British training mission to AMISOM in Somalia, it was clear that troops were very aware that if anyone had got shot the mission could have been ended as a result. However, this led to a dilemma on the ground for those that wanted to have a meaningful effect and saw that they would not be able to do so on their current permissions. Some recounted how they had operated outside of their authorities in order to do their jobs—obviously a high risk considering the potential implications had anything gone wrong.³⁹ In a recent article for the British military outlet the Wavell Room, a soldier described how only two British personnel routinely went out into Mogadishu, and that these were the Chief J3 and J4 advisors for the European Union (EU) Training Mission.⁴⁰ While signaling support for allies is not necessarily a bad reason to join a coalition, if everybody is signaling rather than meaningfully engaging in a mission then chances of success seem slim.

Lead nations can also introduce dynamics into coalition partnerships that prove problematic for their allies. Negative public perceptions of the U.S. drones program in countries like the UK and Germany have led to huge political sensitivities around providing intelligence support or access to national facilities.⁴¹ For example, U.S. Col Patrick Ryder told the Guardian that the U.S. and the UK had consulted each other regarding the targeting of Junaid Hussain, a British computer hacker, adding “both governments will continue to coordinate efforts to eliminate violent extremist organisations.”⁴² Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the British Army’s chief legal adviser in Iraq in 2003, said the confirmation of a British link to Junaid Hussain’s death raised “disturbing questions.”⁴³ This is particularly true when you consider the fact that, while the UK has admitted involvement in this successful strike against Junaid, it has kept very quiet about whether or not it was similarly involved in the first strike attempt which missed its target, instead killing three civilians.⁴⁴

In March 2019 a German court ruled that Germany was not doing enough to ensure that the U.S. was respecting international law in its use of Ramstein military base to conduct drone strikes. The German airbase provides the U.S. with a satellite relay station and personnel, which was enough for the court to declare that Germany played a “central role” in the strikes and therefore had an obligation to protect the lives of the Yemenis who brought the case after their relatives were killed.⁴⁵ In September 2017, a week-long protest against the U.S. drones program drew over 5,000 people to Ramstein.⁴⁶ While the German government often maintained that it had “no knowledge” of U.S. operations taking place at the base,⁴⁷ their assumption that the U.S. has not violated German or international law was found by the court to be based on an “inadequate investigation of facts.”⁴⁸

Risk Reduction or Risk Transfer?

The March 2018 British Army Field Manual Tactics for Stability Operations Part 5: Military Support to Capacity Building notes that one of the advantages of using capacity building as part of combat operations is that it allows UK forces to overcome “the problems of achieving sufficient mass” when British troops cannot be deployed in combat roles.⁴⁹ However, while there may only be a “‘light footprint” of western troops involved in operations, the commitment required from local troops remains considerable. Attrition rates for local military partners have been extremely high in contemporary campaigns. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) does not release official statistics, but the death toll for its troops is estimated at over 4,000.⁵⁰ Since 2013, the UN mission in Mali has lost over 200 troops,⁵¹ while the Nigerian army is reportedly burying its own troops at night to conceal the toll of its fight against Islamist groups in the northeast.⁵² Attrition rates among Afghan forces have been consistently sky-high, with 6,700 deaths in just one year.⁵³ While remote warfare may seem low risk from the perspective of Western capitals, local troops are still paying heavily in these campaigns.

Photo: Devastation after the Battle for Mosul, July 9, 2017 (H. Mourdock)

Working “by, with, and through” can also transfer greater risks onto local populations. Many local militaries and armed groups are less equipped to mitigate civilian harm than their international counterparts. For example, senior British military personnel have recounted how Iraqi forces had been deeply traumatized by the experiences of 2014 and in many cases were reluctant to advance without heavier levels of international air support than might otherwise have been used in densely populated urban terrain. The consequences of this can be seen clearly in western Mosul, the final Islamic State stronghold in the city, where around 15 neighborhoods have been completely destroyed. These districts previously housed around 230,000 residents, leaving large numbers of internally displaced people who will not be able to return in the short- to mid-term.⁵⁴ The UN estimates that eight out of 10 buildings damaged in Mosul were residential buildings, with 8,475 houses destroyed—more than 5,500 of which were in west Mosul’s Old City.⁵⁵

Military coalitions can also be a “race to the bottom” when it comes to opening operations up to scrutiny.⁵⁶ The only member of the international anti-Islamic State coalition to consistently concede civilian casualties from its air campaign was the U.S., with other partners hesitant to distinguish their own strikes from those of the coalition as a whole.⁵⁷ Empowering local armed groups can also have negative long-term consequences for civilians when those forces are corrupt, abusive, or sectarian. A depressing 23 percent of the violent incidents against civilians recorded over the past 12 years was perpetrated by state forces rather than militia or rebel groups.⁵⁸ In some instances, building the capacity of predatory armed forces feeds a cycle of violence and conflict that contributes to the “forever wars” that define the contemporary international security environment.

For example, local security forces like the Afghan Local Police (ALP) were intended to address the growing problems of insurgency and lack of Afghan National Army legitimacy in the areas where the Taliban were drawing their support. However, reports of abuses against the local communities that they were meant to be protecting were also widespread. A survey of U.S. Special Operations Forces teams mentoring ALP units in 2011 found that 20 percent reported ALP colleagues were guilty of undefined “physical abuse/violence;” a further 12 percent reported bribe-taking. Between one-fifth and one-sixth reported that ALP indulged in salary fraud and theft. A smaller number witnessed rape, drug trafficking, drug abuse, and the selling or renting of ALP weapons and vehicles. Complaints of extortion and illegal taxation are commonplace. Some reports have even described ALP commanders selling the lives of their men: one allegedly accepted bribes equal to $500 per head to murder subordinates and killed six before capture. ALP in Faryab province were accused of raping, looting, and keeping a torture chamber with snakes at the bottom of a dry well.⁵⁹

In 2016/17 the UK spent £0.8 million delivering international humanitarian law (IHL) and preventing sexual violence modules through the EU Training Mission in Mali, with a further £0.87 million allocated for broader military and civilian support (with a focus on infantry, medical, and IHL) for 2018/19.⁶⁰ These master’s-degree level programs were optimistically delivered with the aim of professionalizing a force with limited education levels that has been linked to numerous violations including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrests.⁶¹ The Malian armed forces and the broader Malian government have also been accused of ethnic bias. In central Mali, Bambara and Dogon ethnic armed groups have recently been acquiring heavy, war-grade weaponry—some of which presumed to be coming from the armed forces—that has increased the lethality of localized disputes.⁶²

In July 2017, Amnesty International released a report documenting the cases of 101 individuals accused of supporting Boko Haram—often without evidence—who were held incommunicado and allegedly tortured by Cameroonian security forces, including the elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR).⁶³ Created in 2001, the BIR is a special operations unit about 4,500 strong that has received security force assistance (SFA) from France, Israel, and the United States.⁶⁴ The BIR and other Cameroonian security institutions received IHL instruction as part of their technical training from the United States.⁶⁵ However, this has proven inadequate when it comes to altering heavy-handed approaches to countering terrorism and the politicization of the armed forces.

This is not to suggest that international partners should always cut assistance if their local partners prove to be corrupt or abusive. You can argue that increasing assistance and international presence in some of these environments would allow international partners to better scrutinize and influence behavior. However, there are also obligations that bind states to refrain from providing assistance that might cause or facilitate grave breaches of international humanitarian law.⁶⁶ Balancing the two is a dilemma, particularly if you subscribe to the view that donor states tend to overestimate the control they will have over their partners in the first place.⁶⁷

Taking A Peacebuilding Approach to Working with Local Partners

International military partners consistently misdiagnose poor behavior as stemming from a lack of training or capability.⁶⁸ There is a related assumption that improving the tactical proficiency of partner forces will address these concerns. While this logic may work in some places, a focus on military effectiveness as a criterion for partnership, or as a metric for success, creates its own dilemmas. This was captured by Frances Z. Brown and Mara Karlin:

“…the fact that it uses military criteria to choose a partner for a relationship that often evolves into a political one. If, as Clausewitz famously wrote, “war is a mere continuation of politics by other means,” the by-with-through model inverts this dictum, subordinating politics to … choices on the battlefield.”⁶⁹

For example, as soon as the Taliban government fell in 2001, armed groups within Afghanistan began competing for positions and influence. The international community came under immediate pressure to improve security and create the conditions for a transfer of power to a new Afghan administration. However, even as early as 2003, analysts were warning that, “Between September 2001 and June 2002 certain choices were made by national and international decisionmakers that have had long-lasting repercussions for the political process in Afghanistan.” ⁷⁰

In particular, the perceived capture of the process by powerful warlords who were then able to secure a place in the interim administration was seen as extremely damaging. Rather than pushing for a peace agreement in the sense of having a pact between warring parties, the Bonn process was geared at forging an agreement between leaders of four anti-Taliban groups that had been particularly instrumental to the international coalition that toppled the Taliban government.⁷¹ As early as 2002, experts were warning that “the Ministry of Defence [has become] a major obstacle to Demobilisation, Disarmament, and Reintegration (DDR) and the creation of the Afghan National Army (ANA).” ⁷²

Adopting a “winners take all” approach to engaging with local partners can exacerbate fragmentation on the ground in post-conflict societies. In many fragile contexts, governance and control is wielded through loose alliances between powerbrokers such as local strongmen, warlords, and militias.⁷³ These opaque and sometimes precarious relationships can dictate the development of political coalitions and lead to the intense politicization of armed groups, including the state armed forces. In weak states, the relative military might of different armed groups is one of the most crucial levers of power. In this context, foreign assistance can be an unintentional “kingmaker” as it strengthens parts of a fragmented system that may not serve the population or the stability of the state as a whole.⁷⁴ This creates incentives for elites to subvert assistance for their own purposes, while simultaneously engaging in corrupt or predatory behaviors that feed the instability that donors may be trying to address.⁷⁵

In other places, improving the tactical proficiency of units can create “islands of excellence” where small groups of elite forces are both willing and capable of protecting civilians,⁷⁶ but fail to deliver positive outcomes over the long-term. Efforts cannot be sustained unless the defense and security sector writ large also shares this ethos, and the political conditions on the ground support compatible values.⁷⁷ For example, one of the great international hopes from long-term international engagement in Iraq was the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS)—a multi-ethnic elite unit that showed some promise as a template for the broader security forces.⁷⁸ The CTS were largely considered to be a professional, sustainable force by the time international trainers left in 2011.

However, even in the early days after the international withdrawal it was clear that being the exception to the rule of low Iraqi National Army capacity had its downsides. Tasking began to come directly from the Prime Minister’s office, mostly for activities not suited to an elite counter-terrorism unit like securing voting centers, guarding convoys, and manning checkpoints. Experienced officers began to be replaced by people with connections to the Prime Minister, and the promotions system began to revert to a system based on loyalty rather than competence.⁷⁹ They were also removed from the Ministry of Defense chain of command to sit under its own ministry, but were not allocated money from the Iraqi defense budget.⁸⁰ Pouring money into specific units while the rest of the sector remains dysfunctional can contribute to the creation of “Fabergé egg” armies that are expensive to build but easy for insurgents to crack because the military as a whole lacks cohesion.⁸¹ Rethinking this technical approach to remote warfare that prioritizes improving the tactical effectiveness of local troops on the frontlines is essential if the long-term outlook for peace is to improve.

One potential solution has its roots in the increasing focus on the importance of local ownership. In theory working by, with, and through local forces should lay the foundations for locally owned, locally responsive, and culturally attuned approaches to security. The UK’s Building Stability Overseas Strategy emphasizes the need for conflict-sensitive international engagement abroad, advising that;

“the starting point needs to be … analysing and understanding the situation to ensure that work designed to build stability does not unintentionally make things worse. The chances of success are greatest when the international community gets behind a political settlement that lays the foundations for tackling the causes of conflict in a country.”⁸²

In new stabilization guidance issued in 2019, the British government highlights the fact that “externally-backed peace processes and agreements that are significantly misaligned or out of sync with the underlying distribution of power and resources are likely to fail.”⁸³ The U.S. government’s 2018 Stabilization Assistance Review notes that “our national experience over the past two decades has taught us that it is not enough to win the battle; we must help our local partners secure the peace.”⁸⁴ One blueprint would be to approach assistance as a form of peacebuilding for fragmented security sectors, with assistance geared towards improving relationships between the many formal and informal groups that are often providing security in these environments, as well as between the security sector and the civilians that it is there to serve.⁸⁵

This means working with a wider range of groups based on their provision of legitimate, accountable security to the population as a whole. This also means letting go of or deprioritizing more traditional criteria like military effectiveness. Different communities will have different needs and different experiences of insecurity in a rapidly changing conflict or post-conflict environment. It is important to capture these concerns when deciding on the right course of action. For example, groups that are seen as corrupt and abusive in some areas can be seen as a lifeline in others:

“I know that people in Kabul are talking about cancelling the ALP, but you don’t understand”, said a provincial governor, gesturing at the barbed wire along his compound’s perimeter. “Without those guys, the Taliban will climb over that wall and cut my head off.”⁸⁶

The dynamics of legitimate and effective security provision will vary both across communities and across time. This is also the case for the dynamics of fear, and perceptions of risk associated with the courses of action chosen by policymakers. Both require frequent consultation and re-evaluation to make sure that policies adapt to changing circumstances. The international community must be careful to avoid quick assumptions about the extent to which local groups will use their knowledge and links with the community to solve problems and reduce support for violent actors. Just because groups are local, they should not be assumed to be a proxy for local legitimacy. This is where community consultation and detailed mapping become essential to avoid violent competition between different groups vying for assistance. Rather than allowing international actors to set the criteria for group inclusion, this should be a locally led process that is driven by community responses to the question of; who do you support to provide your security and why?

This means adopting a new vision for delivering military assistance in fragile states where success is evaluated against the long-term impact of programs on prospects for peace and security. Peacebuilding metrics could include; the ethnic diversity of course attendance, attendance rates for marginalized ethnicities or genders, hierarchies (informal and formal) between soldiers who attend courses, and the strength of positive and negative interactions between attendees. Efforts to maximize the exposure to each other of units or services who might have poor or problematic relations should be boosted and rewarded, rather than measuring basic attendance figures, or recall of tactical skills and concepts.

This may mean accepting a form of assistance that integrates leaders from the government and security forces but would also include informal actors who hold local legitimacy in providing security. While this creates a messier picture, what is lost in efficiency may be gained in sustainability. Compacts between elite groups and donors are fragile and open to abuse by groups seeking to entrench their own power rather than tackle instability. Fictionalizing a state apparatus and then refusing to deal outside of it only serves to mask the deep divisions that remain. These agreements often fail to address issues around representation in the security sector, or behavior that prioritizes the protection of some groups over the population as a whole. Using assistance to create opportunities for broad community engagement and wider relationship-building within fragmented security sectors is an approach that is anchored in local realities, starting where actors are, not where third parties want them to be.

Conclusion

Taking a peacebuilding approach to working with local militaries and armed groups means using assistance to fragmented security sectors to increase cooperation between various formal and informal elites in a weak state. This approach places less emphasis on developing conventional military power and more emphasis on facilitating and improving relations between the different factions within the security sector and between the security sector and the civilian population.⁸⁷ If international providers help local partners perform better at military tasks without ensuring that the forces have local legitimacy and strong accountability, progress is likely to be fleeting and could actually exacerbate civilian harm and the underlying drivers of violent conflict.

These negative outcomes are not inevitable. In theory, working by, with, and through local forces should lay the foundations for locally owned, locally responsive and culturally attuned approaches to security. Local, national, and regional armed groups have the potential to provide crucial support to peace processes and they bear ultimate responsibility for protecting local populations. Finding a way to support the emergence of legitimate, accountable, and effective local, national, and regional security forces is an essential part of setting the conditions for lasting peace.

However, this cannot happen without policies that account for the fact that these same partners have the potential to be major spoilers or perpetrators of harm. Rather than developing strong procedures to manage these risks and dilemmas, the tendency in western capitals is currently to approach partner operations as a low-cost, low-risk form of war. Debates within western militaries tend to ignore the transfer of risk onto partner forces and local civilians, and local partners and NGOs are often excluded from the international policy debate. Fixing this means doing more than trying to improve the way that international militaries work with local partners. It means adjusting the vision for what success would really mean.

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Notes

¹ “Remote War: Military, Legal and Political Issues,” Oxford Research Group, accessed March 14, 2019, https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/pages/category/remote-war-military-legal-and-political-issues; “Conceptual Series: Defining Remote Warfare,” Oxford Research Group, accessed June 26, 2019, .

² “Conceptual Series.”

³ Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli, Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century (Georgetown University Press, 2019), .

⁴ “‘Light Footprint’ Operations Keep US Troops in the Dark,” Defense One, accessed June 26, 2019, ; Brad Stapleton, “The Problem with the Light Footprint: Shifting Tactics in Lieu of Strategy,” Cato Institute, June 7, 2016, .

⁵ Roger Carey, “Low-Intensity Warfare and Limited War,” in International Security in the Modern World, ed. Roger Carey and Trevor C. Salmon (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1996), 133–51, .

⁶ “Civilians and ‘By, With, and Through’ | Center for Strategic and International Studies,” accessed June 26, 2019, .

⁷ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and of Staff, “Counterterrorism,” October 24, 2014, .

⁸ Chairman of the Joint and Chiefs of Staff, “Counterinsurgency,” April 25, 2018, ; North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Allied Joint Doctrine for Counter-Insurgency (COIN),” accessed August 20, 2019, .

⁹ North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Allied Joint Doctrine for the Military Contribution to Peace Support,” December 2014, .

¹⁰ Emily Knowles and Abigail Watson, “Remote Warfare: Lessons Learned from Contemporary Theatres,” Oxford Research Group, June 27, 2018, .

¹¹ Congressional Research Service, “Army Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs),” October 24, 2018, .

¹² “Specialised Infantry Group,” accessed August 20, 2019, .

¹³ “Drones and the Future of Aerial Combined Arms,” War on the Rocks, May 12, 2016, ; “The French Turn to Armed Drones,” War on the Rocks, September 22, 2017, ; “Rise of the Drones | Rudolph Herzog,” Lapham’s Quarterly, accessed August 27, 2019, .

¹⁴ Knowles and Watson, “Remote Warfare,” 2–3.

¹⁵ Thomas Bolland and Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen, “‘No Boots on the Ground’: The Effectiveness of US Drones against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” Defense & Security Analysis 34, no. 2 (April 3, 2018): 127–43, ; “Planning for a U.S. Military Recessional From Africa,” Council on Foreign Relations, accessed August 20, 2019, .

¹⁶ Dr Sebastian Ritchie, “The RAF, Small Wars and Insurgencies in the Middle East, 1919-1939” (Air Historical Branch, 2011); Group Captain John Alexander, “The End of Air Power History and the Last Airman? Air Power, Liberal Democracy and the British Way of War,” in Air Power Review, vol. 14, 2, 2011.

¹⁷ Shiv Malik et al., “Ruhul Amin and Reyaad Khan: The Footballer and the Boy Who Wanted to Be First Asian PM,” The Guardian, September 7, 2015, sec. World news, .

¹⁸ Zak Doffman, “U.S. Attacks Iran With Cyber Not Missiles — A Game Changer, Not A Backtrack,” Forbes, accessed August 27, 2019, ; “US ‘launched Cyberattacks on Iran Weapons’ after Drone Downing,” accessed August 27, 2019, .

¹⁹ Harry Verhoeven, “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Failed States: Somalia, State Collapse and the Global War on Terror,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 3, no. 3 (November 1, 2009): 405–25, .

²⁰ Anthony Dworkin, “Europe’s New Counter-Terror Wars” European Council on Foreign Relations, 2016, ; Brian Michael Jenkins, “Disrupting Terrorist Safe Havens,” RAND, August 18, 2014, . \\uc0\\u8221{} Time, June 4, 2017, http://time.com/4804640/london-attack-theresa-may-speech-transcript-full/.”,”plainCitation”:”Anthony Dworkin, Europe’s New Counter-Terror Wars (ECFR, 2016

²¹ John Nicholson, “Testimony on the Situation in Afghanistan,” § Senate Commitee on Armed Services (2017), .

²² SFAssist project hosted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway, 5–7 December 2018.

²³ Author interviews, Koulikoro Training Camp, September 2018

²⁴ HMG, “Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review” (HM Government, 2010), 12, .

²⁵ HMG, “National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015: A Secure and Prosperous United Kingdom” (HM Government, November 2015), para. 2.12, .

²⁶ Emily Knowles, “We Need to Talk about Yemen,” Remote Control Project (blog), December 9, 2016, ; Emily Knowles, “Briefing: We Need Greater Transparency on UK Military Operations in Libya” (London: Remote Control, May 2016), ; Emily Knowles, “Britain’s Culture of No Comment,” Remote Control Project (blog), July 4, 2016, ; Emily Knowles, “What British War on Terror?,” Remote Control Project (blog), October 26, 2016, ; Emily Knowles and Abigail Watson, “All Quiet On The ISIS Front : British Secret Warfare In The Information Age,” Remote Warfare Programme (blog), March 31, 2017, ; Liam Walpole, “Mind the Gap: Parliament in the Age of Remote Warfare,” Remote Warfare Programme, October 2017, .

²⁷ Abigail Watson, “Pacifism or Pragmatism? The 2013 Parliamentary Vote on Military Action in Syria,” Remote Warfare Programme (blog), May 29, 2018, .

²⁸ Knowles and Watson, “All Quiet On The ISIS Front.”

²⁹ Author interviews, NATO RS, March 2017.

³⁰ Cordula Droege and David Tuck, “Fighting Together: Obligations and Opportunities in Partnered Warfare,” Humanitarian Law & Policy, March 28, 2017, .

³¹ Matteo Tondini, “Coalitions of the Willing,” in The Practice of Shared Responsibility in International Law, ed. Andre Nollkaemper and Ilias Plakokefalos (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 703.

³² Tondini, 713.

³³ Paul A. L. Ducheine, Michael N. Schmitt, and Frans P. B. Osinga, Targeting: The Challenges of Modern Warfare (Springer, 2015), 254; Katja Lindskov Jacobsen and Rune Saugmann, “Optimizing Coalition Air Warfare: The Emergence and Ethical Dilemmas of Red Card Holder Teams,” Global Policy 0, no. 0, accessed August 27, 2019, ; M. C. Zwanenburg, Accountability Of Peace Support Operations (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005), 48; Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg and Volker Epping, International Humanitarian Law Facing New Challenges: Symposium in Honour of KNUT IPSEN (Springer Science & Business Media, 2007), 43.

³⁴ Author interviews, NATO RS, March 2017.

³⁵ Author interviews, NATO RS, March 2017.

³⁶ Author interviews, NATO RS, March 2017.

³⁷ Author interviews, NATO RS, March 2017

³⁸ Author interviews, NATO RS, March 2017.

³⁹ Author telephone interviews, Somalia, October 2016

⁴⁰ Ric Cole, “The Rebirth of ‘Frontier Soldiering’?,” The Wavell Room (blog), August 15, 2019, .

⁴¹ Louisa Brooke-Holland, “Research Briefings – Overview of Military Drones Used by the UK Armed Forces” (House of Commons, October 8, 2015), .

⁴² Alice Ross and Spencer Ackerman, “Former Navy Chief Expresses Concern over UK Role in Syria Drone Strikes,” The Guardian, September 10, 2015, sec. UK news, .

⁴³ Ross and Ackerman.

⁴⁴ Spencer Ackerman and Alice Ross, “Airstrike Targeting British Hacker Working for Isis Killed Three Civilians Instead, US Admits,” The Guardian, January 29, 2016, sec. US news, .

⁴⁵ “German Court Hands Partial Victory to Critics of U.S. Drone Deaths…,” Reuters, March 19, 2019, ; “Statement on UK Assistance to Partners Following Ground-Breaking German Court Ruling – All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones,” accessed August 27, 2019, ; “US Drone Attacks via Ramstein – ECCHR,” accessed August 27, 2019, .

⁴⁶ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com), “Ramstein Air Base Anti-Drone Protests: The Germans Taking on the US Military | DW | 09.09.2017,” DW.COM, accessed August 27, 2019, .

⁴⁷ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com), “Drones and Diplomacy: US Ramstein Air Base Stirs Controversy in Germany | DW | 14.03.2019,” DW.COM, accessed August 27, 2019, .\\uc0\\u8221{} DW.COM, accessed August 27, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/drones-and-diplomacy-us-ramstein-air-base-stirs-controversy-in-germany/a-47926300.”,”plainCitation”:”Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com

⁴⁸ “German Court Says Potentially Illegal Drone Strikes Aided by Ramstein, despite USAF Denials,” Stars and Stripes, accessed August 27, 2019, .

⁴⁹ “Tactics for Stability Operations Part 5: Military Support to Capacity Building,” Army Field Manual, March 2018, paras. 2–13, .

⁵⁰ “The True Cost of the World’s Most Dangerous Peace Mission,” The East African, accessed August 27, 2019, .

⁵¹ “Fatalities,” United Nations Peacekeeping, accessed August 27, 2019, .

⁵² Joe Parkinson | Photographs by Jonathan Torgovnik for The Wall Street Journal, “Nigeria Buries Soldiers at Night in Secret Cemetery,” Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2019, sec. World, .

⁵³ Tony Walker, “We Should Not Commit Combat Troops to the Afghanistan Conflict – Here’s Why,” The Conversation, accessed June 8, 2017, .

⁵⁴ “Recovery in Iraq’s War-Battered Mosul Is a ‘tale of Two Cities,’ UN Country Coordinator Says,” UN News, August 8, 2017, .

⁵⁵ Lucy Rodgers, Nassos Stylianou, and Daniel Dunford, “What’s Left of Mosul?,” BBC News, accessed February 27, 2018, .

⁵⁶ “The Sum Of All Parts: Reducing Civilian Harm in Multinational Coalition Operations,” Center for Civilians in Conflict (blog), accessed August 27, 2019, .

⁵⁷ Airwars, “Limited Accountability: A Transparency Audit of the Anti-ISIL Coalition,” Remote Warfare Programme, December 2016, .

⁵⁸ Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), “ACLED Data Export,” ACLED Data, 13 April 2019, , accessed 22 April 2019. This figure is based on ACLED data from Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia for violent incidents against civilians recorded since 1997 by state forces, militia forces and rebel groups. Out of 57,982 recorded events, 13,195 of them were attributed to state forces.

⁵⁹ International Crisis Group, “The Future of the Afghan Local Police,” June 2015, 8, .

⁶⁰ Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF),
‘Sahel Support to Multilaterals: Annual Review’, HM Government, 2018, , accessed 2 April 2019; CSSF, ‘Sahel Defence and Security’, HM Government, 2019, , accessed 2 April 2019.

⁶¹ Human Rights Watch, ‘Mali: Unchecked Abuses in Military Operations’, 8 September 2017, , accessed 15 June 2019; France 24, ‘Twenty-Five Bodies Found in Central Mali After Army Sweep’, 18 June 2018, , accessed 19 June 2019; Afua Hirsch, ‘Mali’s Army Suspected of Abuses and Unlawful Killings as War Rages’, The Observer, 19 January 2013.

⁶² Human Rights Watch, ‘”We Used to be Brothers”: Self-Defense Group Abuses in Central Mali’, 7 December 2018; Anna Pujol-Mazzini, ‘How Mali is Pursuing Justice for a War That Never Really Ended’, World Politics Review, 29 January 2019.

⁶³ Amnesty International, ‘Cameroon’s Secret Torture Chambers: Human Rights Violations and War Crimes in the Fight Against Boko Haram’, 2017, , accessed 10 April 2019.

⁶⁴ BBC News, ‘Burning Cameroon: Images You’re not Meant to See’, 25 June 2018.

⁶⁵ Voice of Africa, ‘Cameroon: Armed Forces – BIR Commando Training Centre Graduates 1,850’, 26 December 2017, , accessed 14 June 2019; United States Army Africa, ‘Human Rights and Law Training’, 13 May 2019, , accessed 2 July 2019; Carla Babb, ‘US Keeps Training Cameroon Troops but Urges Accountability in Criminal Probe’, Voice of America, 27 September 2018, , accessed 14 June 2019.

⁶⁶ Emily Knowles and Abigail Watson, “Lawful But Awful? Legal and Political Challenges of Remote Warfare and Working with Partners” (Remote Warfare Programme, May 2018), .

⁶⁷ Stephen Biddle, “Building Security Forces & Stabilizing Nations: The Problem of Agency,” Daedalus 146, no. 4 (October 2017): 126–38, .many now see “small-footprint” security force assistance (SFA

⁶⁸ Emily Knowles and Jahara Matisek, “Western Security Force Assistance in Weak States,” The RUSI Journal 164, no. 3 (April 16, 2019): 10–21, .

⁶⁹ Mara Karlin and Frances Brown, “Friends With Benefits,” Foreign Affairs, May 8, 2018, .

⁷⁰ Rama Mani, “Ending Impunity and Building Justice in Afghanistan” (Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, December 2003), 1.

⁷¹ Emily Winterbotham, “The State of Transitional Justice in Afghanistan” (AREU, April 2010), 6.

⁷² Mani, “Ending Impunity and Building Justice in Afghanistan,” 2.

⁷³ William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999); Joel S Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

⁷⁴ Knowles and Matisek, “Western Security Force Assistance in Weak States.”

⁷⁵ Jahara Matisek and William Reno, ‘Getting American Security Force Assistance Right: Political Context Matters’, Joint Force Quarterly (No. 92, 1st Quarter, 2019), pp. 65–73.

⁷⁶ Knowles and Matisek, “Western Security Force Assistance in Weak States”; Knowles and Watson, “Remote Warfare.”

⁷⁷ “The Roots of Restraint in War,” Publication, International Committee of the Red Cross, June 6, 2018, .

⁷⁸ Knowles and Watson, ‘Remote Warfare’, p. 14.

⁷⁹ David M. Witty, “The Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service | Brookings Institution,” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001, 28, .

⁸⁰ Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Department of Defense Budget FY2018,” May 2017, 6, .

⁸¹ Jahara Matisek, ‘The Crisis of American Military Assistance: Strategic Dithering and “Fabergé Egg” Armies’, Defense & Security Analysis (Vol. 34, No. 3, 2018), pp. 267–290.

⁸² HMG, “Building Stability Overseas Strategy” (HM Government, 2014), ; DFID, FCO, and MOD, “Building Stability Overseas Strategy” (HM Government, July 2011), .

⁸³ Stabilisation Unit, “The UK Government’s Approach to Stabilisation: A Guide for Policy Makers and Practitioners,” March 2019, .

⁸⁴ US Department of State, “Framework for Maximizing the Effectiveness of U.S. Government Efforts to Stabilize Conflict-Affected Areas,” Stabilization Assistance Review, 2018, .

⁸⁵ Knowles and Matisek, “Western Security Force Assistance in Weak States.”

⁸⁶ The International Crisis Group. “The Future of the Afghan Local Police,” June 2015, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/future-afghan-local-police.

⁸⁷ Lisa Schirch, Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Planning: A Strategic Participatory Systems-Based Handbook on Human Security (Boulder, CO: Kumarian Press, 2013).

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Download PDF, 15 pages.

The author, Emily Knowles, is an Associate Fellow at the Oxford Research Group.

Top Photo: Air Force air advisors assigned to the 409th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron brief the Niger Armed Forces (FAN) before training exercises in Agadez, Niger, July 10, 2019. The FAN learned how to efficiently and safely clear a building. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Devin Boyer)

This article was first published in PRISM Vol. 8, No. 4, June 11, 2020 by the National Defense University Press. Re-posted by SOF News with the permission of the PRISM editorial staff. View the original article here.

JSOU Report – SOF-led Counterterrorism Efforts (March 2020)

John Friberg — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 13:51:07 +0000

The Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) has released a new publication entitled Re-Evaluating Special Operations Forces-Led Counterterrorism Efforts. The 20-page report by Barnett S. Koven ” . . . posits that kinetic counterterrorism (CT) actions undertaken by the state to kill, capture, or otherwise disrupt terrorist groups are ineffective in isolation.”

The report on SOF-led CT efforts argues that while kinetic actions may work in the immediate term, they have little long-term effect on the ability of terrorist groups to operate. Dr. Koven’s research suggests that successful counterterrorism approaches require sequenced kinetic and non-kinetic approaches.

Barnett Koven is an adjunct faculty member of the Joint Special Operations University. He is also a researcher at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START).

Counterterrorism is one of the 12 core U.S. Special Operations Command activities. Currently, according to the author, the US government has a preference for kinetic responses to terrorism. Koven believes that rigorous evaluations of the effectiveness of kinetic approaches to CT are lacking.

His paper provides an evaluation of U.S. SOF CT efforts. The first section provides a review of current studies on CT, the second introduces the research hypotheses, and the third on methodology. The results are then presented and discussed in the fourth section and the conclusion is within the fifth and last section.

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Re-Evaluating Special Operations Forces-Led Counterterrorism Efforts, by Barnett S. Koven, Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), Occasional Paper, March 2020.
https://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=53631174

Head Shots, Body Shots, or Lead with an Influence Strategy

SOF News — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 05:00:00 +0000

Head Shots or Body Shots? This is a Question that
Should Defend Influence Strategy, Not Lead It.

By Ajit Maan.

In an insightful recent article “Counterterrorism Targeting – Head Shots or Body Shots?” Thomas G. Pledger advocates augmenting the kill/capture counter-terrorism model with network targeting. I don’t have any problem with that as long as the question follows (defends, protects, and backs up) influence targeting of the non-kinetic variety.

While “capture when you can” is an intelligence requirement, “kill” is less advantageous. Retribution, as Pledger notes, has got us into considerable trouble.

The kill/capture model is problematic and has even been counter-productive. These operations not only have failed to eliminate al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, they have resulted in the proliferation of violent extremism by directly feeding into the narratives that support it.

The younger leaders who have filled their ranks of those targeted individuals are more extreme, more aggressive, more lethal, and less likely to compromise diplomatically. Network targeting has been effective in slowing down adversarial operations by a few days in some cases, but their organizations are designed to take those sorts of losses.

It is past time to reconsider our own militarized narrative. The story we tell ourselves is predicated upon the belief that the U.S. is conducting a “war on terror.” Even contextualizing the conflicts as ideological is understood in militarized terms. A militarized understanding of the battlefield naturally leads to military force – capabilities to defeat the enemy. But this narrative is faulty and the weapons being used to combat extremism are ineffective because the nature of the conflict has been misidentified.

We need to counter extremism with methods and tools that shape environments and affect behaviors. Military action is only one of these tools. It should be placed behind others. Most importantly, we need to lead with a comprehensive strategic narrative that speaks to the identity of its audience.

Our adversaries understand this concept, have embraced it, and have incorporated strategic narratives across their operations. AQAP, ISIS, the Taliban al-Qaeda, and many other jihadi groups effectively disseminate their brand and reinforce their ideologies through broad information operations to control the strategic narrative.

An imperative is that ours should encompass the adversary’s narrative. This is not a counter-narrative. It is not a rebuttal. A strategic narrative will not be successful if it is limited to the narrative terrain established by extremists and should not be focused on responding to their messages. What I am suggesting involves re-narrating the events of the opposition’s narrative and co-opting their meaning. In other words, we must tell our own narrative in a way that re-frames the opposition’s and offers a bigger, better, smarter alternative of understanding, identifying and acting.

Responding to terrorist messaging has already resulted in what were predictable problems: 1) We have no footing upon which to win ideological or religious debates. 2) Losing those debates has resulted in further loss of credibility. 3) Responding elevates and legitimates the adversarial narrative. 4) Responding is a defensive position. We should not put ourselves in a defensive position. Rather, we need to position ourselves offensively, to get out ahead of their narrative, encompass it, and swallow it up.

Further, an effective strategic message must target, and be delivered to, the population not the terrorists. In an unconventional warfare campaign the key terrain is the human terrain. That is where we either win or loose. We need better messages that connect to our TA’s core identity narrative, through which both hard and soft power will be understood.

Our narrative must demonstrate how extremists are using the population as a proxy force and how they don’t, in fact, share common identities, interests, or objectives with the audiences they are trying to control. Our message should focus on the damage terrorists have done to the target population and how their actions provoke responses that will negatively affect that population. That message will resonate with the target audience because it is consistent with their immediate experience.

Developing a coherent strategic narrative is the best weapon to stem recruitment and combat extremism. It is a national security imperative. Questions about how best to enforce the strategy should come after we have a strategy.

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“Counterterrorism Targeting – Head Shots or Body Shots”, SOF News, by Thomas Pledger, April 2, 2020.
http://www.sof.news/terrorism/ct-targeting/

Ajit Maan, Ph.D. is CEO of the award winning think-and-do-tank Narrative Strategies, Professor of Politics and Global Security at Arizona State University, Affiliate Faculty at the Center for Narrative Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, Faculty at the Center for the Future of War, Member of the Brain Trust of the Weaponized Narrative Initiative, and author of seven books including Counter-Terrorism: Narrative Strategies, Narrative Warfare, and Plato’s Fear.

Counterterrorism Targeting – Head shots or Body Shots?

SOF News — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 12:21:18 +0000

By Thomas G. Pledger.

Current United States counterterrorism strategy concentrates on retribution over network targeting. These different lines of effort, retribution and network targeting, compete for limited resources on an ever-expanding battlefield. Not only do these lines of effort compete for resources from each other, but they also compete for resources from all other military operations globally.

Retribution is the direct targeting of a group’s senior leaders for a kill or capture mission. Retribution operations are often seen as the delivery of justice for attacks against civilians. Retribution satisfies the emotional desire to directly target those who inspired and directed violent attacks (i.e., Osama bin Laden) and the American public’s desire for a personal response.

Network targeting, however, is the daily grind of defeating the logistics and communications networks that violent extremist organizations build in order to enable and conduct operations. Targeting these networks can be conducted via direct military operations, and / or the use of interagency, or partner nation assets. Understanding the effects retribution or network targeting have on a violent extremist organization long-term capability is crucial to understanding which type of operations should receive the priority of limited resources.

Over the past 30 years, multiple countries have conducted retribution operations around the world. Most notably, the US mission against Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Other recent US operations include Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (AQ-I, 2006) and Abu Ayyub Al-Masri (Daesh, 2010). Israel and other countries have conducted retribution operations against violent extremist organizations around the world. A shortlist of high valued individuals targeted by Israel includes: Khalil al-Wazir (PLO, 1988), Fathi Shaqaqi (PIJ, 1995), Ahmed Ismail Yassin (Hamas, 2004) and Ahmed Jabari (Hamas, 2012). Even while suffering successful retribution operations, Hamas’s operational reach and capability have increased. Equally, Daesh continued to spread after the targeting of Zarqawi and Masri and went onto create a safe haven in Iraq and Syria.

During major combat operations, conventional forces target logistics and communication networks in an effort to prevent, delay, and limit effective adversary military actions. Destroying these nodes breaks the links, which allow communication and movement of supplies to opposition military forces. Looking at the historic aspects of attacking an adversary’s logistic networks, multiple effective examples stand out, using both lethal and non-lethal effects. The shock and awe of the first Gulf War against the Iraqi Army was the ultimate recent example of network targeting. Thirty-nine days of airstrikes, against networks, enabled a 100-hour ground campaign.

Similarly, targeting the networks of violent extremist organizations has proven effective at limiting violent extremist organization operations. Operation Christmas and Operation Rivers of Light are examples of non-lethal operations against a violent extremist organization. Conducted in 2010 and 2011 against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (FARC), specifically FARC transportation networks. Operation Christmas and Operation Rivers of Light effectively removed over 500 guerrillas from the battlefield without firing a shot, including a FARC Commander, a key bomb-maker, and a large cache of weapons. Driving the FARC to the negotiation table in 2012.

The key then becomes finding which Nodes to attack, individuals, physical locations, infrastructure, or some other target or combination thereof. Much research has been conducted on social network analysis and link analysis. Research coming from the University of Maryland illustrated the effectiveness of nodal network targeting to decrease the lethality of violent extremist organizations. This research has shown statistically that retribution operations can create more aggressive or effective violent extremist organizations. In contrast, operations against mid to upper level “staff” will reduce the effectiveness of these same violent extremist organizations. [1] Moving beyond this research, the removal of these mid-level staff by capture operations provides an additional information source for future operations against all levels of the violent extremist organization.

Network targeting is not meant to replace the retribution targeting of high valued individuals. Targeting of the facilitation networks is designed to augment high valued individual targeting by placing indirect pressure on the high valued individuals and reducing the ability of both centralized and decentralized violent extremist organizations to conduct effective operations. Reducing or stopping the number and frequency of violent actions is the goal of any counterterrorism policy.

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[1] Spezzano, Francesca, V. S. Subrahmanian, and Aaron Mannes. “Reshaping Terrorist Networks.” Communications of the ACM 57, no. 8 (2014): 60-69. Accessed February 20, 2019. doi:10.1145/2632661.2632664

Photo: AMQ-9 Reaper armed with GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided munitions and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles flies a combat mission over southern Afghanistan. (USAF photo / Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt).

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Thomas G. Pledger is an Army Infantry Officer currently serving at the Army National Guard Directorate in Washington, DC. Tom has deployed to multiple combat zones supporting both the Conventional and Special Operations Forces. Tom holds a Master in Public Service and Administration from the Bush School of Public Administration at Texas A&M University and a Master of Humanities in Organizational Dynamics, Group Think, and Communication from Tiffin University, and three Graduate Certificates from Texas A&M University in Intelligence, Counterterrorism, and Military Policy and Defense Affairs. Tom has been a guest lecturer at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. Tom’s current academic and professional research is focused on a holistic approach to counter-facilitation/network, stability operations, and unconventional warfare.

Special Operations Forces Site Exploitation Course (SOFSE)

SOF News — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000

The Special Operations Forces Site Exploitation Courses (SOFSE) provide students the ability to exploit sensitive-site materials and detainees. The United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS) has two SOFSE courses that are held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Each is three weeks long and is conducted several times a year.

The Army defines “site exploitation” as the “. . . synchronized and integrated application of scientific and technological capabilities and enablers to answer informational requirements, facilitate subsequent operations, and support host-nation rule of law.” (ATP 3-90.15). Training courses conducted by SOF and conventional forces ensure that service members are knowledgeable about site exploitation procedures and processes. This ensures that information collected and persons found on-site are methodically assessed and transported to the appropriate facility – such as a technical exploitation facility or military police detainee collection point.

SOF units can conduct exploitation at the site utilizing a ‘reach back capability’ that will allow it to rapidly prosecute subsequent targets. JSOC is one SOF unit that conducts intelligence driven operations against ISIS and other jihadist movements. Its “Expeditionary Targeting Force” utilizes ‘identity intelligence‘ (I2) to conduct its missions. In addition, U.S. SOF is also conducting instruction for foreign SOF in site exploitation. For instance U.S. SOF is providing courses of instruction that include tactical site exploitation for the National Mission Unit (NMU) and select Province Special Units (PSU) in Afghanistan.

Some of the different categories of information to include biometric data (retina scan, fingerprints, etc.), cell phone data (CELLEX), electronic media (MEDEX), digital exploitation (DOMEX), and documents (DOCEX). The Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has designated the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (parent unit of USAJFKSWCS) as the lead SOF component for sensitive site exploitation. (page 2-2, ADP 3–05, July 2019).

SOFSE OAC

Photo: A student in the SOFSE OAC fingerprints a captured enemy role player during training at Ft Bragg, NC. (Photo by K. Kassens, Oct 17, 2019).

The SOF Site Exploitation Operator Advance Course (SOFSE OAC) provides students the knowledge necessary to work on a site exploitation team. This includes team organization, responsibilities, planning, and interagency collaboration. The students in the course are trained in organizing, planning, and conducting forensic and biometric collection, document examination, media exploitation, improved explosive device exploitation, tactical questioning and detainee-handling procedures.

SOFSE TEC

Photo: Students in the Special Operations Forces Site Exploitation – Technical Exploitation Course, use a laser to photograph a document during fingerprint training. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens, October 22, 2019)

The SOF Site Exploitation, Technical Exploitation Course (SOFSE TEC) graduates will learn how to operate within a SOFSE facility. The students in the course are trained in advanced battlefield forensics, on-site identification, capturing, and transfering latent prints, document digitization and employment of ballistic imaging devices.

NATO SOF SSE Courses

Photo: A computer, cell phones, propaganda flyers, and images of an IED belt are some of the simulated evidence found during a site exploitation as U.S. and allied special forces search a compound for the NATO Special Operations Forces Campus Technical Exploitation Operator Controller Course on Chievres Air Base, Beligium. (U.S. Army photo by Visual Information Specialist Pierre-Etienne Courtejoie, Oct 29, 2015).

NATO SOF has several courses within the sensitive site exploitation field. These courses are held at the NATO SOF Campus in Belgium. The NATO SOF Technical Exploitation Operations (TEO) Course instructs students in the collection and exploitation of materials during a compressed operation. The NATO Digital Media Exploitation Course concentrates on the retrieval and examination of data stored on computers and other digital storage devices. The NATO SOF Cellular Exploitation Course concentrates on the retrieval and examination of data from mobile devices and the fusion of this data into intelligence reports.

During the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) the art and science of site exploitation has grown leaps and bounds. This has proved to add to the effectiveness of specialized SOF units conducting high value individual (HVI) operations (F3EAD) as well as enhancing the rule of law through warrant-based arrests. Courses of instruction such as SOFSE OAC, SOFSE TEC, and others (NATO SOF) enhance the capabilities of SOF units.

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References:

ATP 3-90.15, Site Exploitation, July 2015
https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/atp3_90x15.pdf

NATO, Technical Exploitation in the Gray Zone: Empowering NATO SOF for Strategic Effect, by Chace A. Falgout, Utica College, May 2019.
https://www.academia.edu/39335310/TECHNICAL_EXPLOITATION_IN_THE_GRAY_ZONE_EMPOWERING_NATO_SOF_FOR_STRATEGIC_EFFECT

Video – Site Exploitation, 2010. A ten-minute long video describing the work of a U.S. Marine Corps Site Exploitation. The video describes the fictional story of how an SE team conducts exploitation in Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCd7440W0tg

Top Photo: A student at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in the SOF Site Exploitation Operator Advanced Course photographs a cell phone during training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. (U.S. Army photo by K. Kassens, October 22, 2019)

Invincible Sentry 20 – Uzbekistan

SOF News — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000

U.S. Central Command conducted Invincible Sentry 20, a bilateral exercise hosted by the government of Uzbekistan in military training facilities within the Tashkent region from February 24 to March 2, 2020.

Invincible Sentry 20 was a crisis response rehearsal designed to evaluate the command and control operations between U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), component command staffs (including SOCCENT), other U.S. Government agencies, and the host nation. It was also designed to build readiness and interoperability between U.S. and Uzbekistan forces in case the need arises for a combined response to regional crises or contingencies.

U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) served as the command and control element for all U.S. Special Operations participating in the exercise. U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) worked closely with the Uzbekistan National Guard and other Uzbek security forces to train on critical tasks and realistic scenarios that provided an opportunity to pursue ways to better address common threats to regional security.

The exercise allowed for both American and Uzbek participants to improve operational agility when confronted with unfamiliar challenges. Each day of the exercise, U.S. and Uzbekistan forces rehearsed, executed and learned from each other as they went through various tactical maneuver scenarios.

The partnership opportunity served as another repetition for SOCCENT to apply capabilities and achieve validation to continue to provide SOF operational planning and support throughout the region. In addition, the exercise helps the U.S. to maintain a strong working relationship with Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan Independence. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Central Asian country gained its independence. The U.S. was one of the first nations to recognize the country. After 9/11 the U.S. used a base called Karshi-Khanabad Airbase or K2 in southern Uzbekistan to launch air strikes and Special Forces teams into northern Afghanistan. The U.S. base was maintained until 2005 when relations between the two countries deteriorated because of Uzbek government human rights violations and an alleged massacre of protesters in May 2005.

Improved Diplomatic Relations. The U.S. and Uzbekistan have common interests and there has been an improvement in relations since 2018. There is a desire to prevent the movement of foreign terrorist fighters and narcotic traffickers. Uzbekistan shares a border with Afghanistan and can play a role in stabilizing the security environment. There is hope that Uzbekistan can play a big role in reintegrating Afghanistan into the Central Asian sphere.

“Our military cooperation with Uzbekistan is based on mutual respect and common interests. Training programs and joint response exercises such as Invincible Sentry show the depth and breadth of our security partnership with Uzbekistan.”
U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Daniel Rosenblum

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Uzbekistan in February 2020 while touring the Central Asian states. He carried a message to the ex-Soviet Republics – “Beware of China”. He warned Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian countries to be wary of Chinese investment and influence. However Uzbekistan and its neighbors rely on China for much of their foreign trade and investment – so the U.S. will likely see some ‘gentle resistance’ to the message about China.

U.S and Uzbek Military Relationship. The relationship between the U.S. and Uzbek military has been growing over the past few years. The Uzbek Minister of Defense visited SECDEF Mark Esper in July 2019. The minister also visited several U.S. military sites across the country. The U.S. SECDEF was scheduled to visit Uzbekistan in March 2020 but his visit was cancelled due to the coronavirus events.

In August 2019 six Uzbek soldiers visited the Black Rapids Training Site in Alaska exchanging techniques on mountain operations. In September 2019 a number of visits were conducted by Uzbek military officers to explore collaboration on officer training and military research. In addition there have been visits to Uzbekistan by U.S. military members from the aviation and medical community.

SPP, Mississippi, and Uzbekistan. The State Partnership Program links the National Guard of the individual U.S. states with the militaries of other countries. Mississippi and Uzbekistan began their partnership in 2012. Over the past several years they have conducted a number of joint military events. Uzbek special forces participated in a SOF exercise in Mississippi in January 2019. In December 2019 members of the Uzbek Special Operations Battalion visited Camp Shelby, Mississippi taking part in the annual “Best Warrior” competition. The MS NG has plans to post a full-time officer in the Office of Military Cooperation (OMC) in the US Embassy in Tashkent.

The U.S. has an interest in the development of stronger diplomatic and military ties with Uzbekistan. The never-ending fight against terrorism, the situation in Afghanistan, and the great power competition with Russia and China places Uzbekistan in a key geographic position. Once the coronavirus threat has subsided it is expected that the U.S. and Uzbek will continue to conduct staff visits to each other’s countries, conduct joint exercises, and expand mil to mil relationships.

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References:

Parts of this article derived from story published on DVIDS on March 17, 2020 entitled “U.S. and Uzbek National Guard together in Central Asia”.

“Rethinking Uzbekistan: A Military View”, by Major Daniel O’Connor, U.S. Army, Military Review, Army University Press, March – April 2020.

United States Strategy for Central Asia: 2019-2025, Department of State, 2020. This 6-page document is posted on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Uzbekistan.

Photo: A U.S. special operator teaches a member of the Uzbekistan National Guard how to detonate a flash bang grenade while performing tactical movement procedures during exercise Invincible Sentry 20 in the Tashkent region of Uzbekistan. Photo by Staff Sergeant Steven Colvin, U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), February 25, 2020.