The Rise of the Affiliates

In case you missed it, Mark Mazetti a good piece in yesterday's New York Times on the growing independce of al-Qa'ida's affiliates.  Money quote: "With their ranks thinned by a relentless barrage of drone strikes . . . Al Qaeda's operatives in Pakistan resemble a driver holding a steering wheel that is no longer attached to the car."

I think this observation, if true, goes right to the heart of the question of how much killing bin Laden mattered.  It suggests that bin Laden was active right up until the time of his death, but unlike David Ignatius' and others' interpretation, that his activity was largely confined to telling the person gripping the detached steering wheel which way to turn it rather than directing an organization with the same capacity it had on September 11, 2001.

Mission Unnecessary? (Part II)

Not according to SOCOM Commander Admiral William McRaven, who knows a thing or two about the deployment of Special Operations Forces.

Note: A good insight by Admiral McRaven buried towards the back of the New York Times article is that "Special Operations forces will be in more demand, rather than in less demand" as the United States withdraws significant numbers of conventional forces from Iraq and Afghanistan between now and 2014.

No Wonder They Can't Find Qaddafi!

If they are watching CNN, they are searching way, way, WAY too far to the East!

(For more efficient tracking of the rumors regarding the Qaddafis' whereabouts, see Foreign Policy.com's "All Points Bulletin," which is providing the latest news updates on the fugitive and his inner circle.) 

The Qaddafis Abroad?

The Algerian government has confirmed that members of Moammar Qaddafi's family have fled to Algeria, including his wife Safiya, his daughter Aisha, and two of his sons, Hannibal and Mohammed.  Interestingly, none of Qaddafi's strategically significant children (i.e. military commanders Khamis and Mutassim, or heir apparent Seif Islam) were among those crossing the border on Monday.

This follows unsubstantiated reports on Sunday that Qaddafi himself had arrived in Zimbabwe on "President" Robert Mugabe's private jet.  (Note: the link goes to a story in the Daily Mail with some pretty gruesome photos of an alleged massacre by Qaddafi-loyalist forces of 150 people . . . you have to scroll past a lot of charred corpses to get to the claims regarding Qaddafi's exile).

Atiyah Abd al-Rahman Killed

Of course, the big news just before we lost cable and internet on Saturday was the report that on Monday the 22nd a CIA drone killed Atiyah Abd-al Rahman, the Libyan who became al-Qa'ida's number two with bin Laden's death and Zawahiri's ascension to the top of the terror network. 

Those who read David Ignatius' piece on al-Qa'ida last week will recall that al-Rahman was bin Laden's primary conduit to the rest of the organization.  This raises the interesting question as to whether al-Rahman was targeted based upon information recovered during the SEALs' Abbottabad raid, or whether it was through the usual process that has allowed the United States to enjoy tremendous success in targeting al-Qa'ida's chief operational officers, who must remain active in order for the terror network to have any coherence. 

Ignatius, for his part, says that the Abbottabad cache provided little in the way of targeting information, but notes that because al-Rahman was a hub connecting the remaining senior leadership of al-Qa'ida in Pakistan, his death is particularly damaging to the network.  (CNN quotes a U.S. official as saying it is a "major blow" to the organization).

Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, now room temperature.

Some New Publications

At the end of last week I was asked to write pieces on the developing hunt for Colonel Moammar Qaddafi for the Guardian (UK) and Foreign Policy.com, and wasn't able to link to them before Hurricane Irene crashed our internet/cable in Northern Virginia.  (Whether this was due to the storm or the general unreliableness of Cox Cable, I'm not certain).

Anyways, from Friday/Saturday's Guardian, why bounties usually don't lead to success in strategic manhunts. 

And from the current Foreign Policy.com, what history suggests will be the keys for the NTC in finding Qaddafi.

Also, I've been asked to contribute some guest columns to a cool little military history website, Command Posts.com.  This weekend they published two pieces by me:
- First, they published an excerpt from Wanted Dead or Alive to mark the anniversary of Task Force Ranger arriving in Mogadishu (the subject of Saturday's "Today in Manhunting History").
- Additionally, they published an essay on why the death of 22 Navy SEALs earlier this month (or the 19 SOF killed in Operation Red Wing in June 2005) hasn't had the same strategic effect as the 18 SOF killed in October 1993 in Mogadishu.

UPDATE: I've gone ahead and republished the essays on their date of publication below.  Given that they were actually published on those dates, I assume this doesn't violate any sort of blogging code of ethics.

Me in Command Posts.com: The "Mogadishu Effect" and Risk Acceptance

Note: The CommandPosts.com's formatting makes this essay WAY cooler, so I suggest going to the link posted on Monday, August 29 to read it as well.

The “Mogadishu Effect” and Risk Acceptance

By: Benjamin Runkle Date: August 27 , 2011

On August 5, 22 members of SEAL Team Six were killed when their Chinook was shot down by a RPG in the Tangi Valley in Wardak Province. The loss of so many elite commandos from the same organization that barely three months earlier had successfully raided 130 miles into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden shocked the nation. But lost amidst the sense of tragedy was the dog that did not bark. For unlike a similar loss two decades ago, when 18 commandos were killed pursuing a hunted warlord, there were no calls for withdrawal from Afghanistan, illustrating a significant shift in U.S. policymakers’ risk acceptance.

August 27, 1993, six massive C-5B Galaxy jet transports arrived at Mogadishu airport. Stepping off these planes into the Somali capital’s intense humidity were the very sharp tip of the spear of American military might: 130 operators from Delta Force’s Squadron C; Bravo Company, 3-75^th Ranger Regiment; and 16 helicopters from 1^st Battalion, 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the legendary Night Stalkers. These elite warriors would be led by Major General William Garrison, America’s most accomplished commando, and the youngest man to hold the rank of Major General. What became known as Task Force Ranger had been deployed by President Bill Clinton for a single mission: to capture Somali warlord Muhammad Farah Aideed. Six weeks later, its operations were called to a sudden halt.

In the October 3–4 raid made famous by the book and movie Black Hawk Down, the American commandos raided into the heart of Aideed’s stronghold in broad daylight and seized 24 prisoners, including the two High Value Targets they sought. In the ensuing battle, they inflicted an estimated 500–1,000 casualties on Aideed’s militia, and in the mind of at least one Delta operator, Master Sergeant Paul Howe, they had “fought one of the most one-sided battles in American history.” The “Battle of the Black Sea” cost Aideed dearly in terms of manpower and arsenal, and many of his strongest clan allies began sending peace feelers, offering to dump Aideed to avoid further bloodshed.

But the perception of the operation in Washington, D.C., was different. The cost of the raid had been steep: 18 Americans dead, one missing, and 84 wounded. Western televisions displayed vivid images of dead and naked bodies of U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. President Clinton asked his staff “How could this happen?” and the outrage over U.S. casualties caused the Clinton administration to throw in the towel on Somalia. October 7, President Clinton announced the United States would withdraw all its troops from Somalia by March 31, 1994, and personally ordered CENTCOM commander General Joseph Hoar to halt further action by U.S. forces against Aideed. As the Deputy Commander of UN forces in Somalia, Major General Thomas Montgomery later testified, “We wound up . . . giving a victory to Aideed that Aideed did not win.”

The withdrawal decision had an effect on U.S. foreign policy for the remainder of the Clinton administration. A week after the Mogadishu battle, the USS Harlan County withdrew from the Haitian harbor of Port-au-Prince due to an orchestrated riot by less than 200 hostile, lightly-armed demonstrators. The Clinton administration later declined to intervene to prevent repeated atrocities in Bosnia and a genocide in Rwanda due to its experience in the Aideed manhunt.

But the fear of another special operations failure would have more tragic repercussions toward the end of the Clinton administration. After the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded more than 5,000, the Clinton administration retaliated by targeting Osama bin Laden in an August 20 missile strike on the al-Qa’ida training camps at Zahwar Kili in Afghanistan. When “Operation Infinite Reach” failed to kill the Saudi mastermind of the attacks, the White House asked the Pentagon for detailed military plans to attack and arrest bin Laden. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, President Clinton thought the United States could “scare the shit out of al Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp. Some officers within the Special Operations Command (SOCOM)—including its commander, General Peter Schoomaker—were eager to go after bin Laden and al Qa’ida and hoped for action orders. One envisioned raid would involve some forty special operators inserted by air-refuelled helicopters launched from U.S. warships off Pakistan’s coast. Some planners on the Joint Staff believed that with accurate intelligence, a small, stealthy raid would be able to successfully seize bin Laden, and the CIA estimated a 95 percent chance of SOCOM forces capturing bin Laden if deployed.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, and CENTCOM Commander General Anthony Zinni opposed such an operation. As Richard Shultz concluded in a study conducted with the Pentagon, “The Mogadishu disaster spooked the Clinton administration as well as the brass.” After Mogadishu, one Pentagon officer explained, there was “reluctance to even discuss pro-active measures associated with countering the terrorist threat through SOF operations.” (The failed 1980 “Desert One” mission to rescue American hostages in Iran was also repeatedly cited as a catastrophic precedent for a raid to capture bin Laden). Shelton dismissed proposed SOF raids against bin Laden as “dumb-ass ideas, not militarily feasible,” and “something in a Tom Clancy novel” that ignored “the time-distance factors.” Consequently, when he and his aides briefed the White House, they reported that a “boots on the ground” operation involving American Special Forces or Army Rangers would require large numbers of troops – thousands – plus aircraft carriers, transport planes, and refueling tankers. This refusal to consider surgical special operations strikes in Afghanistan persisted despite the increasing volume of secret intelligence cables warning of active, yet unspecified, al-Qa’ida plans to attack U.S. targets.

After 9/11 the “Mogadishu Effect” lost its resonance with U.S. policymakers. The al-Qa’ida attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., demonstrated that, unlike Somali clan militias, the terrorist network could pose a strategic threat to the United States, particularly if the network obtained weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, U.S. policymakers became more risk acceptant in dealing with the threat posed by al-Qa’ida.

Thus, the May 1^st SEAL Team Six raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, bore many of the hallmarks of President Clinton’s vision of heliborne black ninjas, which as recently as October 2010 Micah Zenko derided as one of the “Ten Most Cockamamie Military Schemes” of the past fifty years in Foreign Policy. Yet rather than the thousands of troops envisioned by General Shelton, it was two modified Black Hawks carrying two dozen SEALs, with three Chinooks and a quick reaction force on standby, who planned on fast roping onto the target (before the first helicopter lost its lift capability) that killed bin Laden.

To be sure, the “Battle of the Black Sea” influenced the conduct of special operations raids from a tactical standpoint. July 22, 2003, twenty Delta operators and SEALs from Task Force 20 attempted to enter a house in Mosul, Iraq, with tall, Greek-style columns. Reinforcing them were some 200 soldiers from the 101^st Air Assault Division who had established support-by-fire positions on the south and northeast sides of the huge stone and concrete house, with additional troops in blocking positions on the road parallel to the house. The commandos tried to storm the house three times, but each time were repelled by small arms fire from the raid’s targets– Uday and Qusay Hussein. Although only four men defended the house – Uday, Qusay, a bodyguard, and Qusay’s son Mustafa – the commanders on the ground decided against laying siege to the house. Because of the house’s prepared fortifications, commanders feared it might also have an escape tunnel to nearby buildings, and that Uday and Qusay would escape. Moreover, the brothers had spent much of the firefight frantically calling for reinforcements. Consequently, a prolonged siege might have given insurgents time to assemble and surround the 200 troops surrounding the house, trapping U.S. forces in an ambush similar to Mogadishu. As it became increasingly clear that Uday and Qusay were not going to let themselves be taken alive, U.S. forces evacuated the residents from nearby houses and escalated their attack, eventually firing 18 HMMWV-mounted TOW wire-guided antitank missiles—enough to knock out a company of tanks—before the commandos finally took the objective.

But even if the “Battle of the Black Sea” continues to resonate on a tactical and operational level—reportedly influencing President Barack Obama’s deliberations on whether to authorize the Abbottabad raid—it is unlikely to retain much strategic influence. In addition to the altered risk calculus of the post-9/11 era, ten years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq have arguably left the American public more tolerant of casualties than it was twenty years ago, even with elite units such as Task Force Ranger. For example, five years before the SEAL Team Six tragedy earlier this month, 19 Navy SEALs and “Night Stalkers” were killed during a mission to kill or capture Taliban leader Ahmad Shah in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on June 28, 2005. However, despite the tragic loss of these elite warriors, neither operation prompted a reconsideration of U.S. operations in Afghanistan similar to the Clinton administration’s decision to pull the plug on U.S. intervention in Somalia.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 27, 1993: Task Force Ranger Arrives

On August 27, six massive C-5B Galaxy jet transports arrived at Mogadishu airport. The men that stepped off these planes comprised the “best of the best, the very sharp tip of the spear” of American military might. The Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) included 130 operators from Delta’s Squadron C; Bravo Company, 3-75th Ranger Regiment; and 16 helicopters from 1st Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), the legendary “Night Stalkers.” These elite warriors would be led by the JSOC deployable headquarters element under MG Garrison, “the picture of American military machismo” with a 9-mm Baretta strapped to his chest and a half-lit cigar perpetually jutting out of a corner of his mouth.

With orders to capture Aideed, Garrison divided “Operation Gothic Serpent” – as the mission was designated – into three phases. The first phase was the deployment of the Task Force and making it operational. Phase Two would concentrate exclusively on locating and capturing Aideed. If this objective appeared futile, then Garrison would initiate Phase Three, which would target the warlord’s command structure and force Aideed in to the open in order to control his forces.

Garrison believed the key to capturing Aideed was “current actionable intelligence” provided by human intelligence (HUMINT). Yet when Garrison checked the local intelligence trail upon arrival, there were no leads. The Intelligence Support Activity (Delta’s special intelligence cell) and the CIA had lost track of the warlord, who had not been seen since July. Moreover, within days of Task Force Ranger’s arrival, the top Somali CIA informant was mortally wounded in a game of Russian Roulette. The original plan had called for the spy – a minor warlord loosely affiliated with Aideed – to present the SNA chief with an elegant hand-carved cane with a homing beacon embedded in the head. The plan seemed foolproof, until Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight – commander of the 3-75th Ranger battalion and Task Force Ranger’s intelligence chief – burst into Garrison’s headquarters at the Mogadishu airport on their first day and exclaimed: “Main source shot in the head. He’s not dead yet, but we’re fucked!”

Garrison responded philosophically, quoting the opening lines of Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir: Man proposes and God disposes.


Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment in Somalia



Me in Foreign Policy.com: "How To Catch Qaddafi"

How to Catch Qaddafi

Why hunting down the madman of Tripoli is so difficult -- and how it might just be accomplished.

BY BENJAMIN RUNKLE | AUGUST 26, 2011

History has a strange way of repeating itself, often more quickly than anticipated. Within hours of invading Panama in 1989, U.S. forces had decimated the Panamanian Defense Forces and were greeted as liberators by the long-suffering Panamanian people. Yet the failure to immediately capture Gen. Manuel Noriega, the thuggish, pock-marked Panamanian strongman, dominated perceptions of Operation Just Cause. At the first post-invasion news conference in Washington, reporters asked: "Could we really consider Just Cause successful as long as we did not have Noriega in custody?"

More than a decade later, coalition forces overwhelmed the Iraqi Army and seized Baghdad after a lightning three-week campaign in spring 2003. But the ostensible target of the invasion, dictator Saddam Hussein, disappeared. Despite the initial euphoria of liberation, ordinary Iraqis were plagued by a sense of growing unease and disbelief as graffiti praising Saddam began to emerge in Iraq's so-called Sunni Triangle, bearing messages such as "Saddam is still our leader" and "Saddam the hero will be back." While Noriega was apprehended within two weeks and the feared guerrilla campaign never developed, Saddam evaded coalition forces for eight months, during which time the Sunni insurgency that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly devastated Iraq coalesced.

Today, Libya's fate may similarly hinge on the apprehension of a deposed dictator. For even as forces loyal to the Western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) storm Tripoli and attempt to consolidate control, the shadow of missing strongman Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi looms large over the country's future. The head of the NTC's provisional government, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said Wednesday, Aug. 24,"The matter won't come to an end except when he's captured dead or alive" and "we fear mayhem and destruction from him because these are his values, upbringing, and practices." Or as a homemaker in Tripoli told the Wall Street Journal, "A part of me will always fear that he might come back, and until I see him in jail or hanging, that fear will remain."

In other words, capturing Qaddafi is critical to avoiding prolonged civil strife and achieving a strategically acceptable outcome in Libya. Recognizing this fact, the NTC announced a bounty of 2 million Libyan dinars -- approximately $1.35 million -- to anyone who captures the ousted leader and offered amnesty for past crimes to any member of the strongman's inner circle who either captures or kills him.
Given that deploying SEAL Team 6 is not an option, as Barack Obama's administration and Congress are united in their commitment to avoid the deployment of U.S. forces to Libya, what is the most likely way to capture Qaddafi? In my book Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to bin Laden, I recount the history of 11 previous strategic manhunts, examining which factors lead to success or failure in apprehending the targeted individual. I focus on six variables: the level of technology employed (both relative and absolute), troop strength, terrain, human intelligence, indigenous forces, and bilateral assistance.

I found four surprising conclusions. First, although U.S. forces almost always enjoy an edge in technology over their quarry, this advantage is never decisive. Second, troop strength is less important than the presence of reliable indigenous forces. Third, although terrain can influence individual campaigns, there is no single terrain type that predicts success or failure. Finally, more important than physical terrain is human terrain, or the ability to obtain intelligence tips from local populations or support from neighboring states to assist in the strategic manhunt.

Applied to Libya, these lessons suggest several courses of action necessary to apprehending Qaddafi.
First, Western support to the NTC forces will likely not be the decisive factor in the hunt. Although British Defense Secretary Liam Fox acknowledged Thursday that NATO was providing intelligence and reconnaissance assets to the rebels "to help them track down Colonel Qaddafi and other remnants of the regime," neither Saddam nor Osama bin Laden was located by drones, nor were their voices (nor that of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) ever captured via signals intercept. Although Fox refused to comment on a report in the Daily Telegraph that British special forces on the ground were involved in the hunt for Qaddafi, he confirmed there were "absolutely no plans" to commit British ground forces to Libya in the future. Some international force will likely be needed to help stabilize a post-conflict Libya, but such forces would likely be more effective training NTC forces that possess the requisite language skills and cultural expertise critical to obtaining the intelligence that will eventually lead to Qaddafi, much as U.S. Special Forces trained and U.S. intelligence agents assisted the Bolivian Rangers that hunted and killed Che Guevara.

Second, although there are significant variations in the terrain over which the search for Qaddafi could be conducted, geography will likely not be the decisive variable. Qaddafi could make himself a needle in a stack of needles by hiding somewhere among Tripoli's 2 million citizens, a strategy that worked for warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Mogadishu yet failed for Noriega in Panama City. Or Qaddafi could retreat into the sparsely populated southern deserts of Libya. But similarly desolate -- albeit mountainous -- terrain was not the decisive factor in hunting Geronimo (a success) or Pancho Villa (a failure) over almost the exact geography in northern Mexico.

Instead, what is critical is the human terrain in which Qaddafi will attempt to hide. Because Qaddafi, like Noriega and Saddam, spent much of his 42-year rule oppressing his own people, large areas of Libya are not viable as safe havens. Yet if he made it through the miles of tunnels reported to be under his Bab al-Aziziya compound to areas controlled by tribal loyalists, such as Sirte, or to the southern desert or even to the Abu Salim slums in southern Tripoli, he may be able to find a population willing to shelter him. History shows that if an individual is perceived as a hero or a "Robin Hood" (i.e. Villa in Mexico, Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua, Aidid in Somalia, or bin Laden in Afghanistan), protection offered by the local population can thwart almost any number of satellites and elite troops.

Thus, even as it consolidates control over Tripoli, the NTC should seek to cut off Qaddafi's possible avenues of escape to these areas, much as U.S. forces cut off Noriega's possible escape routes during the initial hours of Just Cause. The NTC is wisely encouraging regime members to betray Qaddafi before he is able to ensconce himself among those with stronger tribal loyalties, such as his own Qaddafa tribe. Noriega, Saddam, and Zarqawi were all eventually betrayed by somebody within their support network (though Noriega successfully arrived at the Vatican Embassy just before U.S. commandos could reach him).

Finally, if Qaddafi is able to reach sanctuary, financial incentives or excessive firepower will be unlikely to induce loyal tribesmen to surrender him. Excluding the obvious outlier of the 13-year search for bin Laden, successful manhunts on average last 18 months. Assuming it could take that long to find Qaddafi, the NTC must work quickly toward building a new state structure capable of incorporating these tribal groups and be patient as they seek to isolate him and his family and render them strategically obsolete.

Regardless of Qaddafi's fate -- whether he ends up like Benito Mussolini, strung up by his own people, or like Slobodan Milosevic, tried before the International Criminal Court -- the NTC and its international supporters face a daunting challenge in trying to rebuild Libya. Capturing the deposed strongman quickly would facilitate this effort by closing the book on his 42-year dictatorship. But if he remains at large, he will continue to be a rallying point of resistance for elements of Libyan society who feel excluded from the country's new political order, even if he is not able to retain operational control over any budding opposition forces. This would make an already difficult task harder and threaten to overwhelm a potential victory in Libya.

Me in the Guardian: "Gaddafi's Bounty Hunters Are Up Against History"

Gaddafi's bounty hunters are up against history

It's no surprise the Libyan rebels are offering a £1m cash reward for the capture of Gaddafi, but such moves are rarely successful

Muammar Gaddafi has a £1m bounty on his head. Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

"The matter won't come to an end, except when he's captured dead or alive," the head of Libya's national transitional council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, declared on Wednesday, referring to apparently deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi. During a press conference in the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, Jalil stressed: "We fear mayhem and destruction from him because these are his values, upbringing and practices." To expedite Gaddafi's apprehension, Jalil announced an association of Libyan businessmen had offered a reward of 2m Libyan dinars, or about £1m, to anybody who captures the strongman.

It is not surprising that the Libyan rebels are using cash as a weapon against Gaddafi: bounties are inextricably linked with the history of strategic manhunts. On 3 May 1886, more than a century before a $25m reward was offered for information on al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden's whereabouts, the US House of Representatives introduced a joint resolution "authorising the President to offer a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars for the killing or capture of Geronimo", the Apache war captain whose escape from a reservation in Arizona in 1885 created mass hysteria in the American south-west, and who had eluded US cavalry hunting him in northern Mexico for almost a year.

The size of the bounty has even come to reflect either the prestige or threat represented by the targeted individual. After the fall of Baghdad, coalition officials announced a $25m reward for information either proving Saddam Hussein's demise or leading to his capture, as well as a $15m reward for each of his sons. In July 2004, the reward for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's capture was raised from $10m to $25m, signifying that he posed as great a threat to US interests as Bin Laden. Conversely, when Unosom II offered a $25,000 reward for the capture of Somali warlord Muhammad Farah Aideed in 1993, his Habr Gidr clansmen were insulted by the paltry sum and countered with a $1m reward for the capture of UN envoy Jonathan Howe, the then UN special representative for Somalia.

Yet despite their reoccurrence, bounties rarely produce decisive results in strategic manhunts. Congress's proposed reward for Geronimo had no effect on the successful conclusion of the manhunt, as his dwindling band tired of life on the run from the US cavalry's constant pursuit and willingly surrendered in September 1886. Saddam and Zarqawi were successfully targeted by intelligence gained from subordinates captured in special operations raids, not by Iraqi citizens seeking financial reward. Despite the hefty reward for Bin Laden, a senior US counterterrorist official told journalists that an al-Qaida operative betraying the Saudi mastermind would have been like "a Catholic giving up the pope". The intelligence trail that eventually led to Abbottabad began with detainee interrogations at Guantanamo and CIA "black" site prisons during which multiple al-Qaida operatives identified a courier by his nom de guerre rather than information directly related to Bin Laden or his Pakistani compound.

Bounties can even have a counterproductive effect on manhunts. After Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega's escape from US forces during the initial stages of Operation Just Cause in 1989, a $1m bounty for information leading to his capture was announced. Reports of Noriega sightings quickly flooded into the intelligence network, and analysts had significant difficulty trying to separate truth from falsehood.

The hunts for Noriega and Aideed offer arguably the most relevant precedents for the search for Gaddafi. In Mogadishu, America's most elite special operations forces could not penetrate Somalia's interwoven clans and tribes to gain intelligence on Aideed's whereabouts. Using an agent outside his own clan territory might render him suspect, and using an agent from within his own clan risked disinformation. Conversely, US forces specifically targeted loyal units of the Panamanian defence force at the outset of that invasion, and given that Noriega had spent the previous decade violently oppressing Panama's citizens, the pock-marked strongman had no other support network to fall back upon for sanctuary. Consequently, he barely reached the temporary safe haven of Panama City's Papal Nunciature before his chief bodyguard betrayed his location to US forces.

Which path will the hunt for Gaddafi follow? The key question is whether Gaddafi will be able to withdraw someplace where the local population is supportive. Did he make it through the miles of tunnels under his Bab al-Aziziya compound to areas controlled by tribal loyalists, such as Sirte. If so, a prolonged hunt may result. Conversely, in the comparatively cosmopolitan environment of Tripoli, it is unlikely that Gaddafi will be able to remain hidden for long as his overthrow appears increasingly inevitable and regime loyalists seek to save their own skins. Hence, the national transitional council's offer of amnesty for past crimes for any member of the strongman's inner circle who betrays him may be critical.

Either way, history suggests Libya's human terrain will likely prove more decisive in the hunt for Gaddafi than the prospect of a financial windfall.

Al-Qa'ida, Down But Not Out

. . . so sayeth David Ignatius, in an interesting piece in yesterday's Washington Post.  Ignatius is one of the 2-3 journalists most tapped into the U.S. intel community, and reports that U.S. officials say three themes emerge from their reading of Osama bin Laden's computer files:

1. "Bin Laden retained until his death a passion to launch a significant attack against the United States."
2. "Bin Laden was a hands-on chief executive, with a role in operations planning and personnel decisions, rather than the detached senior leader that U.S. analysts had hypothesized."
3. "Bin Laden was suffering badly from drone attacks on al-Qaeda's base in the tribal areas of Pakistan."

Number one elicits a "well duh" response, as nobody thinks bin Laden was the type to start thinking about a second career in retirement.  "You know, I think it is time to leave the destruction of the Crusaders and Zionists to the younger generation . . . I'd really like to start painting, or maybe macrame."

The last two points are important, however.  There is clearly an important debate to be had about how much control bin Laden exerted over al-Qa'ida a decade after 9/11, since this has implications for: a) both how effective the various counterterrorist policies of the past decade have been; and b) how the terror network will operate with his demise. 

Taking the second point first, although I think Ignatius overstates Zawahiri's isolation (which actually sounds a lot like the role of American vice-presidents), he definitely comes down on the side of those who see bin Laden as still being heavily involved in al-Qa'ida's operations, which suggests his death will significantly weaken the organization. 

But I think the first question is one that is too often overlooked, as the important question may not be how involved he was  in al-Qa'ida operations on May 1, 2011, but rather whether bin Laden was as effective on May 1, 2011, as he was on May 1, 2001.  After all, like any organization al-Qa'ida apparently had a succession plan, and will continue to operate with Zawahiri sliding more or less effectively into bin Laden's central role.  Consequently, the key to our security (and the reason we invaded and remain in Afghanistan) is to disrupt al-Qa'ida's ability to conduct offensive operations against U.S. strategic interests.  From all the evidence available, bin Laden was still plotting attacks, but almost none of them came to fruition in the decade after 9/11.  Even those that were successfully executed were nowhere near the scale of the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks, or of the scale that was imagined in that black day's wake. 

If so, it could be argued that killing bin Laden was not critical to al-Qa'ida's demise, as he had already been rendered strategically ineffective.  Ignatius' third observation, the effectiveness of the "Drone War" in Pakistan, goes a signifciant way towards explaining this strategic success.

None of this is to say the world isn't a better place with the Saudi at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, but rather that we should be careful about placing too much emphasis on a single event in the broader struggle against al-Qa'ida and its affiliates.

Earthquakes in Manhunting History

Okay, assuming everybody has recovered from yesterday's excitement, being of a one-track mind lately (no, not that track, thank you), yesterday's earth-shaking events reminded me of an incident that occurred towards the end of the Marines' pursuit of Augusto Sandino.

At 10:19AM on March 31, 1931, six weeks after Secretary of State Henry Stimson announced the withdrawal of all Marine units from Nicaragua by June 1, 1931, the earth opened up beneath Managua.  In two minutes a dozen tremors devastated the capitol, reducing a three-by-five-mile area to stones and ashes, including the American legation, which crumbled to its foundation. Only about a dozen buildings remained intact, and of the city’s population of 35,000, about 10 percent were injured, and nearly 2,000 were killed.  The casualties would have been dramatically higher, but most of Managua's residents had gone to the mountains or the seashore for the Holy Week.

The Marines and Guardia immediately sprung into action to rescue Nicaraguans trapped in the rubble and fight the fires threatening to engulf the city. Because the municipal hospital had collapsed, the injured were taken to the Marine field hospital on the Campo de Marte where Marine field kitchens fed the city until U.S. and Central American Red Cross personnel relieved them of duty. By April 4, Marine aviators had flown 92 relief and evacuation missions, carrying 21,196 pounds of supplies to the beleaguered city.

Conversely, Sandino -- who for years had portrayed himself as a patriotic liberator of the Nicaraguan people -- demonstrated no compassion for his dead countrymen. The earthquake, he declared, “clearly demonstrates to the doubters that divine gestures are guiding our actions in Nicaragua.” While the world’s attention was focused upon the tragedy in Managua, the Sandinistas launched an offensive in eastern Nicaragua, targeting the Standard Fruit Company’s holdings. A dozen of the company’s employees were killed, including eight Americans who were captured and beheaded, as were two British subjects mistaken for Yankees.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 23, 1993: Major General Garrison Arrives

August 23, 1993, was an overcast day when the plane touched down at Mogadishu Airport. Yet when the U.S. Army officers stepped off the chartered Boeing 737, they were greeted by a blast of intense humidity. The air was filled with the suffocating stench of burning garbage, rotting ocean waste, and the sweat of the more than one million souls who dwelled in the Somali capital. Decrepit Soviet transport aircraft left from the 1960s sat rusting on the tarmac. Sloping upward beyond the airport’s perimeter, the officers could see Mogadishu devastated “like Stalingrad after the battle.” The city’s streets were cratered and strewn with debris, its buildings were either bullet-ridden or collapsed.

Among the officers disembarking was a tall, muscular lieutenant colonel (LTC) with a gray crew cut wearing desert fatigues. To the casual observer, he was just another replacement officer for the U.S. Forces Somalia staff. Yet in reality, Major General (MG) William F. Garrison was America’s most accomplished commando. A veteran Green Beret with two tours in Vietnam – including participation in the Phoenix program – Garrison had run covert operations all over the world for 25 years, including a four-year stint as commander of the Delta Force.  He was the youngest man in U.S. Army history to hold the ranks of Colonel, Brigadier General, and Major General.  Now leading the Joint Special Operations Command, Garrison was travelling incognito in hopes of surprising the man he had been sent half way around the world to capture: the Somali warlord General Mohammed Farrah Aideed.

Major General William Garrison*

*(Note: It is surprisingly difficult to find good pictures of Major General Garrison in uniform, so much so that I was tempted to post a photo of Sam Sheppard portraying Garrison in "Black Hawk Down," just because he looked the part so well.  But this is the inevitable result of Garrison spending the overwhelming majority of his career in covert ops, I suppose).

Today in Manhunting History -- August 22, 1993: The Deployment of Task Force Ranger

On August 19 and 22, IEDs implanted by Muhammed Farah Aideed's Somali National Alliance wounded 10 more soldiers.  This time Jonathan Howe’s pleas finally won out, and while vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, President Clinton agreed to deploy what would become known as “Task Force Ranger.”

Al Qa'ida in the Sinai Pensinsula?

Bruce Reidel has an interesting (and frightening) article in today's Daily Beast on the possible emergence of "Al Qa'ida in the Sinai Peninsula."  Reidel is correct to note that al-Qa'ida is "not about to take over the Sinai, and the group's Shura Council may never give its formal sanction to the network operating in the peninsula," but that "Even a relatively small number of terrorists hiding in the remote mountains of the central Sinai would be a dangerous threat to the stability of the region." 

He goes on to list a number of potential threats (i.e. to the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline, to tourists at Sharm al-Sheikh, to U.S. and other peacekeepers), but I think the major risk is that these jihadists will somehow provoke an Israeli-Egyptian clash of arms, similar to last Thursday's, but on a much larger scale.  The value of the Camp David Accords is that by securing Israel's western flank, it made a region-wide conflagration nearly impossible.  Post-Mubarak, this cold peace is not guaranteed, and it doesn't take a leap of imagination to realize how damaging a new round of Arab-Israeli wars would be to the Western economies that are already likely to be facing a period of instability for the near future.

This is an unlikely scenario, to be sure, as Egypt has strong incentives to target any al-Qa'ida affiliate within its borders, and should be able to develop a modus vivendi with Israel to counter this threat.  (For example, the Lebanese Armed Forces, impotent as they are against Hezbollah, are effective at targeting al-Qa'ida activities in Palestinian refugee camps in that country).  But the potential downsides of this development are still enough to give one pause.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 20, 1998: Operation Infinite Reach

  Within days of the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the CIA received a report that senior leaders of terrorist groups linked to Osama bin Laden had been summoned to a meeting on August 20 at the Zawhar Kili camp complex in eastern Afghanistan. The intelligence indicated that bin Laden himself would be present. George Tenet called this information “a godsend. . . . We were accustomed to getting intelligence about where bin Laden had been. This was a rarity: intelligence predicting where he was going to be.” The principals quickly reached a consensus on attacking the gathering, with the objective of killing bin Laden.

On August 20, 1998, two old classmates from the Combined and General Staff College reunited for dinner in Islamabad, Pakistan. Both officers had come a long way since graduating from Fort Leavenworth: the guest, Air Force General Joseph Ralston, was now Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second highest ranking officer in the U.S. military. His host, General Jehangir Karamat, had risen to become the Pakistani Army’s Chief of Staff. They reminisced over a dinner of chicken tikka, and as the meal was winding down, General Ralston looked at his watch. At approximately 9:50PM, as he prepared to leave, Ralston said, By the way, General Karamat, at this moment missiles are coming over your airspace. He assured his host that they were U.S. cruise missiles en route to targets in Afghanistan rather than an Indian attack against Pakistan’s nuclear sites. Karamat was visibly unhappy, but understood Ralston’s need for discretion.

The two classmates shook hands. Ralston thanked Karamat for his hospitality, and departed for the Islamabad airport.

General Joseph Ralston, the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was chosen to inform the Pakistanis of the missile strike against Bin Laden.

As Ralston and Karamat dined, five Navy destroyers lined up in the Arabian Sea and began spinning Tomahawk cruise missiles in their launch tubes. At about 10PM local time, 75 missiles, each costing about $750,000, slammed into Zawhar Kili’s rock gorges. The secret attack, code-named Operation Infinite Reach, killed at least 21 Pakistani jihadist volunteers, and wounded dozens more.

Half-a-world away, on Martha’s Vineyard, a solemn Bill Clinton announced the military strikes to the media assembled there. Clinton quickly flew back to the White House, where he addressed the nation from the Oval Office. “Our target was terror,” Clinton explained,

our mission was clear – to strike at the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Laden. . . . They have made the United States their adversary precisely because of what we stand for and what we stand against. . . . And so this morning, based on the unanimous recommendation of my national security team, I ordered our armed forces to take action to counter an imminent threat from the bin Laden network.

Ironically, many of these same themes – “war on a noun,” the idea that al Qaeda hated us for our values, and the doctrine of pre-emption – would be ridiculed when adopted by President Bush three years later.

The next day a radio broadcast emanated from somewhere in Afghanistan. “By the grace of Allah,” bin Laden’s voice announced, “I am alive!”* Although al Qaeda’s camps suffered extensive damage, bin Laden himself was unscathed.

A satellite image of Zawhar Kili

*The CIA later reported to Clinton that it had received information that bin Laden had been at Zawhar Kili, but had left several hours before the strikes.  Yet according to al Qaeda sources, bin Laden was hundreds of miles away when the U.S. cruise missiles struck his camps.  According to his bodyguard Abu Jandal, bin Laden and his bodyguards were driving through Vardak province en route to Zawhar Kili when they stopped at a crossroads.  “Where do you think, my friends, we should go?” bin Laden asked.  “Khost or Kabul?”  Abu Jandal and the others said they would rather go to Kabul where they could visit friends.  “With G-d’s help, let us go to Kabul,” bin Laden decreed.

      In reality, Abu Jandal’s account is likely a cover story to protect al Qaeda’s allies in Pakistan’s intelligence service, whom other al Qaeda sources say warned bin Laden about the imminent attack.  There are at least three ways the Pakistanis could have known an attack was coming.  180 American diplomats were withdrawn from Islamabad, and all foreigners were evacuated from Kabul in the days before the attack.  Additionally, the Pakistani navy in the northern Arabian Sea likely noticed the U.S. naval activity prior to the attack and reported it back to the ISI.

---

For Drone Lovers . . .

. . . Two relevant pieces.

First, on Tuesday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta rejected calls to scale back the campaign of drone strikes against al-Qa'ida and other terrorist targets in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Second, in today's Wall Street Journal Sadanand Dhume aruges that the case for drone strikes in Pakistan is stronger than ever.

Both Panetta's remarks and Dhume's op-ed are responses to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's claims regarding civilian casualties in U.S. drone strikes.  Although Obama counter-terrorism czar John Brennan's claim that drones hadn't caused "a single collateral death" since last August is likely risible, the BIJ's numbers should be taken with a major grain of salt given that they rely entirely on sources who have an incentive to fabricate or exaggerate casualty figures.

On Zawahiri

Former CIA officer and terrorism expert Bruce Riedel has a piece in today's Daily Beast outlining Ayman al-Zawahiri's first 100 days as head of al-Qa'ida, noting the significant increase in propaganda output through As Sahab and the shift in al-Qa'ida's messaging to try and capitalize on the violent repression of the Arab Spring demonstrations.

Also, by way of background, see Fouad Ajami's Wall Street Journal essay on al-Zawahiri in June, which outlines the Egyptian's significance as a strategic thinker and his limits as a jihadist leader.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 14, 1998: The First Slam Dunk

On Friday, August 14, 1998, a week after the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, CIA Director George Tenet delivered to the NSC the CIA’s formal judgment that Osama bin Laden was responsible. Tenet began his presentation of the CIA and FBI’s investigation by stating: “This one is a slam dunk, Mr. President,” a phrase he would infamously repeat nearly five years later to a different president. Although the embassy attacks clearly constituted an act of war against sovereign U.S. territory, there was no serious discussion of a broad U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan.

Within days of the attacks the CIA received a report that senior leaders of terrorist groups linked to bin Laden had been summoned to a meeting on August 20 at the Zawhar Kili camp complex roughly seven miles south of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The intelligence indicated that bin Laden himself would be present. Tenet called this information “a godsend. . . . We were accustomed to getting intelligence about where bin Laden had been. This was a rarity: intelligence predicting where he was going to be.” The principals quickly reached a consensus on attacking the gathering, with the objective of killing Osama bin Laden.

Former CIA Director George Tenet

Today in Manhunting History -- August 13, 1898: The "Battle" of Manilla

As cooperation between U.S. forces and Emilio Aguinaldo's forces broke down during the summer of 1898, the siege of Manila became two separate campaigns, with both Americans and Filipinos conducting their own operations while ostensibly cooperating. Three times Aguinaldo presented the Spanish Governor General terms for surrender. Each time, however, Governor Jaudenes refused, desperately clinging to the hope of reinforcements from the mother country. On August 9, Dewey and Merrittt requested the surrender of the Manila garrison as well, but were refused as a matter of honor. However, the Spanish recognized the futility of their position. Cut off from reinforcements, starving, threatened by the guns of Dewey’s fleet, and surrounded by approximately 35,000 combined hostile forces, the Spanish had no chance of victory. The question quickly evolved from how the Spanish could win to how they could appear gallant in defeat while simultaneously preventing atrocities if the Filipino insurgents broke into the city. The Spanish commander resolved this impasse by agreeing to surrender after token resistance if the Americans would keep the Filipinos out. Consequently, after a sham battle that contained enough gunfire and casualties to satisfy both Spanish and American honor, the Spanish commander surrendered his sword to General Merritt on August 13.

Unaware of the understanding between the Spanish and the Americans, Filipino forces joined in the attack and captured several Manila suburbs. The Americans turned them back, and several brief skirmishes erupted. Filipino soldiers angrily hovered at the edge of the front line, angry that the United States. had denied them the prize they had fought for over two years to obtain. As darkness fell over the city, angry Filipinos periodically fired shots into the U.S. lines and threatened to attack. The explosive situation was defused only by a tropical storm that raged most of the night and made the roads in and out of the capital impassable. Aguinaldo’s forces retreated to the Spanish outer defense network, reversing its direction so that the Filipinos had the Americans trapped inside the city. U.S. forces established outposts 200 yards inside the old line of Spanish blockhouses, with the space in between the armies quickly becoming a no-man’s-land where any trespasser could easily be shot. In effect, a second siege of Manila had begun, putting Aguinaldo and the United States on a collision course.

Mission Unnecessary?

Yochi Dreazen has an interesting piece in the National Journal questioning whether SEAL Team 6 should ever have been deployed on the mission last week that led to the fatal helicopter shootdown.  Dreazen notes that on Wednesday the military said the SEALs were not dispatched to rescue the Rangers, as originally reported, but rather to pursue a local Taliban commander.  He then quotes a former SEAL commander who questions whether it was worth risking so many SEALs (SEAL Team 6 only has a total of 300 operators) for such a low-level target.

I can not offer a judgment on the wisdom of this decision, not having been there to assess the tactical/operational situation, nor being as experienced as the commanders who decided to deploy the SEALs.

However, this episode is somewhat reminiscent of the second-guessing that emerged in the wake of the Paitilla Airfield disaster during the hunt for Manuel Noriega. On December 20, 1989, four members of SEAL Team Four were killed and eight wounded when they were caught in the open on the airfield's tarmac while trying to cut off one of Noriega's avenues of escape by destroying his personal Lear jet. Some special forces leaders reportedly questioned the use of SEALs for the Paitilla mission during the early stages of Just Cause planning, with some attributing the assignment to SEAL Team 4 to bureaucratic politics within the military community. Although LTG Carl Stiner (overall planner of the Panama invasion) and U.S. Special Operations Command (USASOC) Commander General James Lindsay claimed the Paitilla mission was a suitable one for SEALs, in his memoirs, Colin Powell (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the invasion) reflected: “We made the mistake of assigning the SEALs, however tough and brave, to a mission more appropriate to the infantry.” In the end, exhaustive after-action reviews by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and USASOC determined that the SEALs had simply made a critical tactical error by standing up on the open tarmac.

Shameless Self-Promotion Post #2

Two more recent interviews I did have hit cyberspace:

First, the International Spy Museum has posted the podcast I did with them on "The Aftermath of bin Laden's Death: The Lessons of Strategic Manhunting."  The interviewer is Mark Stout, one of the museum's historians, and he was incredibly well-prepared and asked some great questions that really got to the heart of the book in 25 minutes.

Second, Small Wars Journal has published an interview I did with one of their editors, Mike Few.  Mike really pushed me by asking some PhD level questions on the subject of strategic manhunts and irregular warfare that I hadn't considered, so the interview was an interesting challenge.  Hopefully SWJ's audience doesn't tear into me too badly in the comments. 

(Incidentally, Mike wrote that Wanted Dead or Alive "is the best book on manhunting that I have read combining detailed research into a fast-paced story that reads like a novel of similar genre."  This is probably the highest compliment the book has received thus far).

More on Friday's Tragedy . . .

Reuters offers perhaps the most comprehensive account thus far of the CH-47 shoot down that killed 38 personnel, including 22 members of SEAL Team Six.  The conclusion of military officials: it was a lucky shot with a RPG that brought the Chinook down, not a coordinated ambush or the use of more advanced surface-to-air missiles such as a Stinger.

Meanwhile, ISAF has announced that the target of Friday's capture/kill raid -- Taliban cell leader Mullah Mohibullah -- and the fighter who fired the RPG were killed Tuesday by an F-16 strike after being tracked to a position in Chak District, Wardak Province.  This is certainly good news, albeit small consolation given the number of lives lost on Friday.

"A False Sense of National Security"

I think Max Boot hits the nail on the head in his LA Times column Sunday, when he warns that in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death we may be "lulled into a false sense of complacency that will allow Al Qaeda and other radical groups to stage a resurgence."

Echoing points I have made before regarding the need to distinguish between "al-Qa'ida Core" and the broader network of al-Qa'ida affiliates who adhere to "bin Ladenism," Boot writes:

 U.S. government officials are probably premature when they rush to proclaim, as the Washington Post reported, that Al Qaeda is "on the brink of collapse." Such predictions have been made many times before, and each time have been disproved by this terrorist group with its alarming ability to regenerate itself. It does not take much in the way of resources to carry out a terrorist strike (the Sept. 11 operation cost an estimated $500,000), so Al Qaeda does not need much infrastructure to pose a threat. Moreover, Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist organization we have to worry about.

Other Islamist extremists are capable of planning attacks with scant direction or assistance from Al Qaeda Central. These organizations range from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in Iraq to the Haqqani network, the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hezbollah, Kataib Hezbollah and Hamas. None of these groups have pulled off anything on the scale of Sept. 11, thank goodness, but several of them have undoubtedly killed far more people — and dominated far more territory — than Bin Laden ever did.

Boot later correctly concludes that "by focusing too much on Al Qaeda and its charismatic founder -- now resting at the bottom of the Arabian Sea -- we risk not devoting sufficient resources or attention to these other threats, which are less publicized but ultimately may be just as dangerous."

Well said.

I do have one small quibble with Boot, however.  At the end of his essay, Boot says "the hype over Saddam Hussein being pulled out of his spider hole . . . created a mind-set of triumphalism embodied in the famous "Mission Accomplished" banner displayed behind Bush when he welcomed the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln home from the Persian Gulf."  Besides distorting the timeline badly (the infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech preceded Saddam's capture by more than six months, he mischaracterizes President Bush's reaction to Saddam's capture.  Whereas General Ricardo Sanchez optimistically declared: “I expect that the detention of Saddam Hussein will be regarded as the beginning of reconciliation for the people of Iraq and as a sign of Iraq’s rebirth,” in his address marking Saddam’s capture, President Bush congratulated U.S. forces, but warned: “The capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq.  We still face terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in Iraq.”  Having been burned badly more than once by sounding too optimistic regarding Iraq, Bush was extremely careful not to appear triumphalist following Saddam's capture.

But again, this is a small complaint given how cogent the rest of Boot's analysis is.

On Deterrence and Counterterrorism

On Saturday, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker argue in The New York Times that "Cold war deterrence theory . . . has in the decade since 9/11 been updated and expanded to offer new and effective methods to help keep stateless terrorists cells at bay."  Although they concede the new strategy includes military raids and drone strikes, they say "it also includes network-disrupting tactics to deter the terror enablers who would not want to sacrifice their own lives to jihad."

The problem with this argument, adapted from their upcoming book, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, is that it stretches the definition of "deterrence" into meaninglessness.  Classical deterrence can be briefly defined as threatening that if your adversary does X, you will do Y, which will incur greater negative costs for said adversary than the benefits gained by doing X, so consequently they don't do X.  (i.e. We told the Soviets that if they moved against West Berlin, we would initiate a nuclear war, the costs of which would far outweigh the benefits of gaining West Berlin.)  As an example of this, Schmitt and Sanger cite a program from 2009-2010 in which the U.S. military threatened the hawala bankers in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, that if they continue to allow militants to bank with them, their "families will suffer a drop in well-being."  Technically speaking, this could be construed as deterrence.

However, they offer little evidence to suggest this tactic has been applied more broadly beyond Afghanistan.  Can this effort really be effective in regions where the U.S. does not have a significant military presence (i.e. in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan) capable of credibly threatening the bankers?  Is there anything senior al-Qa'ida leaders (i.e. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Saif al-Adel, etc) value enough that would cause them to forgo attacks on American interests?  Can a foot soldier in the jihad against America be deterred?  It is certainly possible that such a threat and program exists, and if it is classified and successful I'd rather Schmitt and Sanger not discuss it.  But given that The New York Times has not had a problem with exposing classified programs in the past, and the broadness of Schmitt and Sanger's claim, it is surprising they don't offer at least another specific anecdote.

In fact, Schmitt and Sanger specifically cite "a classified tactic used multiple times across the Middle East" as their other example of the new strategy.  (Thanks, guys, I'm sure it wasn't classified for a reason or anything).  In this case, they cite programs to hack into the cellphones of terrorist leaders and spread disinformation throughout the network.  While ingenious and effective, this is not deterrence, but rather disruption.  U.S. military and intelligence officials aren't threatening an action, but actually doing something.

My suspicion is that the authors are so eager to discredit the Bush administration's initial post-9/11 approach(imperfect as it was) -- which assumed al-Qa'ida couldn't be deterred -- that they are eager to wrap every successful counterterror program of the past decade under the rubric of deterrence.  This reaches comical proportions towards the end of the article, when they define counterterrorism deterrence as identifying "vulnerable parts of an enemy's chain of command, operational cells and support network, and take steps that would put them at risk to alter their behavior in your favor."  This definition is reasonable in and of itself, but they then go on to write "The Navy commando raid that killed Bin Laden on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was a culmination of the new thinking."

Huh?!?

Well, I guess the SEALs certainly altered bin Laden's behavior in the United States' favor.  But the Abbottabad raid, to include the intelligence trail that led to the operation, has much more in common with the capture and kill missions I chronicle in "Wanted Dead or Alive" and that Schmitt and Shanker decry in their piece's first paragraph.

Schmitt and Shanker are likely correct that in the long run American can not win the War on Terror strictly by capturing its way to victory.  (Donald Rumsfeld himself suggested this back in October 2003).  And I very much look forward to reading their book.  But this article comes off as a transparent to stretch an interesting and novel idea ("we can deter terrorists") way beyond the evidence to support it.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 8, 1993: Enter the IEDs

In response to the UNOSOM II attacks on Mohammed Farah Aideed, his Somali National Alliance escalated the violence against the international peacekeepers. On August 8, four American military policemen were killed when their Humvee was destroyed by a remotely detonated antitank mine similar to the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that became ubiquitous in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later. Again, Jonathan Howe asked for a strike team to snatch Aideed. Although Howe had stridently opposed a similar operation against Noriega during the Reagan administration, his obsession led one aide of Defense Secretary Les Aspin to observe Howe had “adopted Aideed as his Great White Whale,” and Howe’s nickname in Washington became “Jonathan Ahab.” Again, CENTCOM commander General Joseph Hoar did not endorse Howe’s request for Delta Force, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell also expressed reservations regarding the aggressive pursuit of the SNA.

The remains of the Humvee destroyed by the Somali mine, which killed Sgt. Ronald N. Richerson, Sgt. Christopher K. Hilgert, Spec. Keith D. Pearson, and Spec. Mark E. Gutting.

The MSNBC Interview . . .

In case you missed it, here is a link to my interview last Friday on MSNBC's "The Dylan Ratigan Show."  I think it went fairly well, and fortunately, I did not have to participate in the panel on the debt ceiling.  (Ironically, the last song on my car radio as I arrived at the train station Friday morning was Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," which I took as a positive omen).

Today in Manhunting History -- August 7, 1998: The African Embassy Bombings

  On August 7, President Bill Clinton was awakened at 5:35 AM by a phone call from his National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, who informed him of the near-simultaneous bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attack in Nairobi killed 12 Americans and 201 others, almost all Kenyan staff at the embassy. The death toll would have been even worse but for the courageous actions of the security guards who denied the terrorists access to the embassy’s garage. As it was, nearly 5,000 Kenyans were injured as the blast demolished the secretarial college next to the embassy. Four minutes later, a second bomb exploded outside the embassy in Dar es Salaam, killing eleven people and injuring eighty-five. The blast was so powerful that the body of the suicide bomber driving the van was split in half, his torso still clutching the steering wheel in both hands as it hit the embassy building.

The determination was quickly made that al-Qa'ida was behind the attacks, which led to the official beginning of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Today in Manhunting History -- August 7, 1885: "Geronimo!!!"

On August 7, Major Wirt Davis’ 4th U.S. Cavalry Apache scouts attacked Geronimo’s camp west of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. The renegades were caught by surprise, and the warriors were forced to jump over a steep bluff in order to avoid capture. Although Geronimo personally escaped, he lost 13 horses and mules – along with saddles, blankets, and dried meat – in the attack. More devastatingly for the old warrior, two of his wives and five children from his family were among the Chiricahuas captured.

This small tactical success had little strategic impact on the Geronimo Campaign, but is possibly the origin of U.S. World War II paratroopers screaming “Geronimo!” as they leaped from airplanes.

Horrible News

I just returned from my trip to New York, and was greeted with the terrible news that 22 members of SEAL Team Six were among the 31 U.S. servicemen killed when their Chinook was shot down by a RPG in the Tangi Valley in Wardak Province just west of Kabul.

More details will emerge of course.  But for now, our prayers and condolences go out to the families and survivors of those heroes killed.

Schmidle Muddle?

C. Christine Fair questions the authenticity of the New Yorker article on the SEALs Abbottabad raid by Nicholas Schmidle I linked to on Monday.

I think the writing/editing of the story is misleading in some ways I didn't notice at first, as there are a few passages which clearly imply he had interviewed the SEALs themselves, which he apparently didn't.  As Paul Farhi notes in yesterday's Washington Post:

The SEALs, he writes of the raid’s climactic moment, “instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft,” the mission’s name for bin Laden, implying that the SEALs themselves had conveyed this impression to him.
He also writes that the raiders “were further jostled by the awareness that they were possibly minutes away from ending the costliest manhunt in American history; as a result, some of their recollections — on which this account is based — may be imprecise and, thus, subject to dispute.”
Except that the account was based not on their recollections but on the recollections of people who spoke to the SEALs.

 But I think Fair overreaches in her conclusion about the implication of this lapse.  First, given the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the Muslim world, I don't think any account, no matter how well-sourced or footnoted will dispel all unresolved questions about the Abbottabad raid.  When Fair says "Mr. Schmidle's is the first (and so far only) account of the drama," she apparently is forgetting the multiple conflicting accounts offered by the White House in the week after the raid, as well as Kim Dozier's comprehensive piece on the raid.

Second, I think it is a major leap to say that any inaccuracies in the story will undermine the effectiveness of U.S. Cyber Command.  (Schmidle's father is Marine Lt. Gen. Robert E. Schmidle, Jr., deputy commander of CyberCom).  The story Schmidle outlines conforms largely to the previous accounts of the raid that have been published, albeit with much greater detail and dramatic flourish.  But there is nothing so earth-shattering in his account, in my opinion, to make it appear to be propaganda or disinformation.  Again, those who are predisposed to believe CyberCom is part of some vast U.S.-imperial conspiracy do not need a loosely sourced essay in the New Yorker to lead them to this conclusion.

Fair may have something of a point regarding how Schmidle has the shooter saying "For God and For Country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo" may be perceived in the Muslim world.  This is new information compared to previous accounts (which I cite in Wanted Dead or Alive) which could alter some perceptions.  But again, I think that having U.S. black helicopters invade a suburb 130 miles into Pakistan would likely, in and of itself, be enough to fuel concerns about U.S. imperialism.  Really, would Muslims be less offended had the SEAL shooter had yelled Allahu Akbar ("God is Great!") before shooting an unarmed bin Laden?  (Seriously, if anybody knows the answer to this I'd really be interested in hearing your thoughts).

None of this is to say that The New Yorker shouldn't have edited the piece more carefully, or at least explicitly noted somewhere that none of the SEALs were interviewed for the article.  As evidenced by the excerpts Farhi notes, the result is misleading at best.  However, I think the policy conclusions that Fair (who is undoubtedly a leading scholar on Pakistan) go too far in placing sole attribution for Pakistani or Muslim paranoia on American actions.

Media Alert: Friday, August 5

I will be on "The Dylan Ratigan Show" on MSNBC tomorrow afternoon (Friday the 5th).  Given that I'm going to be on a panel with a writer from The Nation, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress, and a novelist/essayist who covers Hip Hop for Rolling Stone (and claims conservatives opposed to the rapper Common being invited to the White House so they could prevent President Obama from receiving credit for killing bin Laden)*, I doubt my book or counter-terrorism will be the primary topic of conversation.

But given the lineup I've outlined above, I think it should be high entertainment value regardless!

*Actually, conspiracy theories aside, Toure sounds like one of the coolest people on the planet.  I will not try to appear to be anything but the hopeless square that I am when we are on together.

Release Day!!!

"Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to bin Laden" was finally released today!!!  (Finally, because I first conceived the idea for this book in 2003, put it off endlessly until some combination of inspiration, desperation, and lubrication -- in the form of a bottle of Portuguese wine shared with a friend who gave me the necessary kick in the ass to move forward with the project -- led me to finally start writing in November 2008). 

In case you have not already, now is the time to order early and often!  You can order from either:
Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Wanted-Dead-Alive-Manhunts-Geronimo/dp/0230104851/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1
Barnes and Noble - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wanted-dead-or-alive-benjamin-runkle/1100667325; or
IndieBound - http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780230104853

I'll celebrate with family tonight, and return to the killing and capturing tomorrow.  Until then, enjoy the funny from The Onion, which is eerily perceptive in its satire of the War on Terror