Today in Manhunting History: December 13, 2003 -- The Capture of Saddam Hussein

[This is a repost of last year's commemoration of the anniversary of Saddam's apprehension.  With Zero Dark Thirty about to hit theaters, there has been A LOT of commentary on the Abbottabad raid and the hunt for Bin Laden that I will try to find time to post on in the next week].

At 10:50 AM, December 13, Colonel James Hickey – commander of 1st BCT 4ID – received a call notifying him that Task Force 121 had Muhammad Ibrahim al-Musslit in custody, and requesting he prepare a covering force for a seizure mission that night. After four hours of grueling interrogation, Muhammad Ibrahim had finally revealed two likely locations for Saddam: a house and a farm in the town of Ad Dawr, a Ba’athist stronghold about 15 kilometers southeast of Tikrit. Hickey, certain that this time they would capture Saddam, assembled a 600-plus strong force mounted in 25 M2/M3 Bradley fighting vehicles and 30 HMMWVs to support the two dozen special operators of Task Force 121. The mission was codenamed “Operation Red Dawn,” and the two objectives were labeled “Wolverine One” and “Wolverine Two.” These names were fortuitous if somewhat coincidental. The operations staff for the “Raider” Brigade was in the habit of naming each day’s operations after the movies they had watched the night before. Had they viewed “When Harry Met Sally” or “The Wedding Planner” the previous night, it is possible the names for the operation would have evoked less martial images than those inspired by the 1980s movie about teenage guerrillas resisting a Soviet invasion of the United States.

Saddam Hussein before the March-December 2003 strategic manhunt

At 6PM Hickey’s force moved out of the brigade base at Camp Raider, a former palace built on a bluff overlooking the Tigris south of Tikrit. The night was cold and crisp as the covering force moved out to an assembly area at an old granary north of Ad Dawr, while engineers secured the west bank of the Tigris several hundred meters away. The force then moved quietly into position to block any escape and reinforcement routes and stand ready to reinforce Task Force 121 in case of heavy resistance. At 8PM, the special operators – identifiable by their black uniforms and NVGs – fast-roped onto the objectives from hovering helicopters.

The beam of red-lensed Maglite flashlights and laser sights on rifles sweeping across the ground contrasted with the clear night sky over Ad Dawr. Task Force 121 searched the two objectives, but they appeared to be empty of any targets. The team leaders conferred and talked with Muhammad Ibrahim, who had been flown from Baghdad to Tikrit, and then brought to the farm by the special operations team. Al-Muslit suggested another nearby location, northwest of Wolverine Two, where a ramshackle shack stood. There was an animal stench in the air, mingled with the scent of some nearby fruit trees. The operators burst into the structure, which indeed had been an orange-picker’s hut, and seized two men. One was Saddam’s cook, the other was the cook’s brother and owner of the farm, Qies Niemic Jasim, a former bodyguard. The operators found two AK-47s and $750,000, but Saddam was not there.

U.S. forces appeared to have struck another “dry hole” in the search for Saddam.

Picture from On Point II, as available at GlobalSecurity.org.

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To the support and command elements following the operation’s progress via radio, the code words used suggested the operators were fruitlessly going back over the same ground, desperately searching for any signs leading to their quarry.

Then a call went over the command net: “We have Jackpot.”

The Joint Operations Center operations officer coordinating the mission asked for clarification, and an excited operator replied: “We’ve got Jackpot.”

A voice that had never been heard before on the Task Forces’ countless missions came on the radio. Admiral William McRaven, Task Force 121’s commander and a living legend within the Special Operations Forces community, asked: “Do you mean Big Jackpot?”

“Yes, we have Big Jackpot.”

Picture from On Point II, as available at GlobalSecurity.org

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Minutes earlier, Muhammad Ibrahim had yelled at Qies Niemic Jasim in Arabic to show the operators where Saddam was hiding. The Fat Man apparently knew the exact spot, but wanted to be able to say that it was Qies who had betrayed Saddam. Finally, he realized it was going to be up to him, and moved to an area a few meters away from where the U.S. forces were concentrated. He began kicking the ground until he had uncovered a length of rope. The operators noticed Muhammad Ibrahim’s activities, and dug up the rope to reveal a trapdoor. The door was opened to reveal the entrance shaft to a “spider hole,” about six feet deep.

A sergeant shone a flashlight down the shaft. I think there’s something down there, an operator said, as another took the pin out of his grenade.

Then someone shouted, “Movement! We have something coming up.”

The operators held their fire when they saw the upraised hands of a dirty, bearded man with unkempt gray hair, appear. Although armed with a 9mm Markarov pistol, he put up no resistance as the soldiers grabbed him and yanked him out of the hole. As he was deposited on the ground, what looked like a vagrant said in halting English: “I am Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq. I am willing to negotiate.”

“President Bush sends his regards,” the operators replied.


Task Force 121's interpreter, an exiled Iraqi-American named Samir,
posing with the captured tyrant just outside his spiderhole in Ad Dawr.

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At 8:26PM, December 13, the hunt for Saddam Hussein came to a successful conclusion. Saddam was captured on the same farm where he had taken refuge in 1959 when, as a young hit man for the Ba’ath party, he had been part of a failed assassination attempt on Iraqi President Abdul Kareem Qassem, an episode that served as the founding myth to the dictator’s legend. The Arab scholar Fouad Ajami observed, great evil

never quite lives up to our expectations. The image of Saddam Hussein in captivity was true to Arendt’s theme. The haggard, disoriented man at the bottom of the ‘spider hole’ was the very same man who had inflicted unspeakable sorrow on his people, and on the peoples of two neighboring lands. The discovery of the smallness of the men behind the most terrible of deeds is always an affront: if Eichmann was only a clerk, Saddam was only a thug.

In the end, the tyrant who had terrified millions and buried hundreds of thousands of his own citizens in mass graves; who had urged his countrymen to violently resist U.S. forces and bragged about going down in a blaze of glory and defiance was captured without a shot being fired.

#Kony 2013

My latest piece on the hunt for Lords Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony has been published in Foreign Affairs.

It was actually accepted a month ago, but publication was delayed due to Israeli operation in Gaza.  And I had actually submitted it to coincide with the one-year anniversary of President Obama's announcement of "Operation Observant Compass" on October 12, 2011. 

So even though in the article I write that "media coverage of the search has become nearly as hard to find as the fugitive himself," I was still surprised there was no major media coverage of the anniversary in the interval before FA got around to publishing my essay.

Joseph Kony: Still at large 13 months on . . .

The "Disposition Matrix"

Today the Washington Post starts a three-piece series on U.S counterterrorism policies and targeted killings with Greg Miller's piece on the "disposition matrix," the systematizing of tracking targeted individuals and the means of pursuing them, both kinetic and non-kinetic.

I'll withhold comment until I've seen the other two pieces in this series . . . well, except for two notes:
1) The premise of the piece, supported by the analysts and officials Miller interviewed, appears to validate my thesis about the growing importance of targeting individuals to U.S. national security; and
2) The "Disposition Matrix" has to rank up there with the greatest euphemisms of all time!

Photos of the SEALs Abbottabad Mockup

An interesting piece at The Atlantic displaying satellite photos of the mockup of Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound that was used by the SEALs to train for the May 1, 2011 raid that killed al-Qa'ida's leader.

The Abbottabad mockup under construction

Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in May 2011.

One of the more interesting details that "Mark Owen" reveals in No Easy Day is that although they had very good satellite imagery of the compound's exterior dimensions, he claims they had no idea of what the interior looked like despite earlier reporting that imaging had allowed the builders to recreate the compound down to the last detail.   

Today in Manhunting History: October 3, 1993 -- The Battle of Mogadishu

I already marked the anniversary of the operation that inspired "Black Hawk Down" here last year.

But CommandPosts.com -- an excellent site focusing on military history and special operations -- has republished two pieces I wrote for them on this subject in 2011: "Warlord's Revenge" and "The 'Mogadishu Effect' and Risk Acceptance."

[Note: For some reason blogger isn't letting me change the font color for links, so my apologies if they are hard to read.]

My latest piece on foreign policy in the Presidential election campaign has been published by my friends at ForeignPolicy.com's Shadow Government blog.  This was actually supposed to appear in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, but then the Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens overshadowed my relatively mild argument here.

(And yes, I'll get back to posting pure non-political/manhunting/War-on-Terror pieces more frequently once the side project I've been overwhelmed with the last few months is complete).

If Obama's foreign policy has been so successful, then why are we talking about Romney's advisors?

Prior to the terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the subsequent anti-U.S. demonstrations throughout the Muslim world, the conventional wisdom held that President Obama was unassailable on foreign policy during the election campaign. Yet rather than tout the administration's successes -- which have produced an edge in polls as to who the public trusts on foreign affairs -- the Obama campaign and its allies seem more eager to warn voters that Mitt Romney is planning to bring back George W. Bush's foreign policy than tout the president's "successes." "Of Romney's 24 special advisors on foreign policy, 17 served in the Bush-Cheney administration," wrote Adam Smith, the most senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee -- and that's "a frightening prospect." Similarly, during the Democratic convention, Senator John Kerry said: "[Romney] has all these [neoconservative] advisers who know all the wrong things about foreign policy. He would rely on them." Now, noted foreign policy scholar Maureen Dowd has written not one, but TWO columns decrying "neocon" influence over Romney's foreign policy.

This is an especially odd line of attack given that most of the Obama administration's foreign policy achievements are little more than extensions of Bush administration policies.
President Obama frequently boasts that he fulfilled his promise to "end the war" in Iraq. In reality, he merely adhered to the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement negotiated and signed by the Bush administration in 2008. What's more, as a senator Mr. Obama opposed the 2007 surge of U.S. forces that made this agreement possible. The Obama administration's only policy innovation on Iraq was last year's failure to broker a new strategic framework agreement with Iraq, a deal they had previously insisted was necessary and achievable.

Then there's the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. To be sure, the president deserves credit for launching the raid against the advice of so many of his advisors, including Vice President Joe Biden. But Mr. Obama fails to acknowledge that the intelligence chain that led to the Abbottabad raid began with detainee interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and CIA "black" sites that he vowed to close upon taking office.

What about drones? President Obama deserves credit for the successful "drone war" against al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, but the uptick in U.S. drone attacks there began in July 2008. The Obama administration's continuation of this policy is an acknowledgment -- unspoken, of course -- that the Bush administration was correct to treat the war on terror as an actual war rather than a global law-enforcement campaign.

On Iran, President Obama brags that "Iran is under greater pressure than ever before, "and "few thought that sanctions could have an immediate bite on the Iranian regime." Putting aside the fact that these sanctions were imposed upon the president by a 100-0 Senate vote, and that Obama's State Department has granted exemptions to all 20 of Iran's major oil-trading partners, this triumphalism ignores that the Bush administration worked for years to build multilateral support for sanctions (both at the United Nations and in national capitals). The Obama administration broke from this effort for two years, attempting instead to engage the Iranian leadership. When this outreach predictably failed, the Obama administration claimed that Tehran had proven itself irrevocably committed to its nuclear program -- precisely the conclusion the Bush administration had reached years earlier.

Yes, there's more to the Obama administration's foreign-policy case, but the other "achievements" are muddled ones. Even before the Benghazi attack, post-Qaddafi Libya was so insecure that the State Department issued a travel advisory warning U.S. citizens against "all but essential travel to Libya," and NATO's intervention in Libya raised the inconvenient question of why the administration intervened to alleviate a "medieval siege" on Benghazi but sits silently as tens of thousands of civilians are slaughtered in Syria.

In Afghanistan, the surge ordered by President Obama in December 2009 had the operational effect intended. But even in taking this step, the president undermined the policy by rejecting his military commander's request for 40,000 troops, declaring the surge would end according to a fixed timeline rather than conditions on the ground, and announcing the withdrawal of the last 20,000 surge forces before the Afghan fighting season ended (but before the November election). The Bush administration veterans advising Governor Romney surely know more about the importance of seeing a policy through to its fruition.

The Bush administration made many foreign policy mistakes during its eight years in office, most notably the conduct of the Iraq War after the fall of Baghdad. And Governor Romney still needs to provide details demonstrating why he would be a better steward of U.S. national security than President Obama. But the potential devolution of the Arab Spring into anti-U.S. violence demonstrates why both candidates owe the American people a serious discussion about foreign and defense policy. Hopefully in the election campaign's waning weeks the Democrats will offer much more than the ad hominen anti-Bush attacks they have provided to date.

Today in Manhunting History: September 4, 1886 -- Geronimo's Final Surrender

Chiricahua Apache war captain Geronimo had evaded U.S. forces for 16 months since his escape from the San Carlos Reservation in May 1885

Captain Henry W. Lawton’s command had escorted Geronimo the remaining renegade Chiricahuas across the Mexican border, arriving at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona just before nightfall on September 2. The canyon was given its name from the still visible remains of 19 Mexicans ambushed and killed there by the Tombstone outlaw Curly Bill and his gang, who more than a century later would be immortalized as the Earp brothers’ antagonists in the film “Tombstone.” Despite this grisly legacy, the canyon actually presented a serene landscape as its stream wound lazily from the low Peloncillo Mountains down to the arid San Simon basin. Lawton and Geronimo found several commands of regular soldiers already there when they arrived, which triggered the Chiricahuas’ fear of treachery. Lawton sent another desperate message through the chain of command, and the next day the Acting Assistant Adjutant General of the Department, William Thompson, heliographed Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles (Commander of the Arizona Territory): “Lawton says the hostiles will surrender to you, but if he does not see you today he is afraid they will leave.”



Finally, after days of delay, Miles and his entourage arrived at Skeleton Canyon at 3PM on September 3. Geronimo immediately rode down from his campsite in the rocks overlooking the stream. He dismounted from his horse and approached the general.

The glade in Skeleton Canyon where Geronimo met Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles (Images via http://abell.as.arizona.edu/~hill/4x4/skeleton/skeleton.html)

Geronimo shook Miles’ hand. The interpreter said, “General Miles is your friend.”

Geronimo replied: “I never saw him, but I have been in need of friends. Why has he not been with me?”

The tension broke as everyone within earshot burst into laughter.

As the conference began in earnest, Miles told Geronimo: “Lay down your arms and come with me to Fort Bowie, and in five days you will see your families now in Florida, and no harm will be done to you.” Miles became frustrated with the laborious translation procedures that transformed English into Spanish into Apache and back again. He picked up some stones and drew a line in the dirt, and said “This represents the ocean.” He placed a stone near the line. “This represents the place where Chihuahua is with his band.” He then placed another stone a short distance from the first and said, “This represents you, Geronimo.” He picked up a third stone and put it near the second one. “This represents the Indians at Camp Apache. The President wants to take you and put you with Chihuahua.” He then picked up the stones representing the Apaches in Arizona and put them beside the one representing Chihuahua in Florida. “This is what the President wants to do, get all of you together.”

Miles indicated the stay in the East would be of indefinite duration, but that eventually the Apaches would be returned to Arizona. He concluded: “Tell them I have no more to say. I would like to talk generally with him, but we do not understand each other’s tongue.”

Geronimo turned to Gatewood and smiled. “Good,” he said in Apache, “you told the truth.” He shook Miles’ hand and said that no matter what the others did he was surrendering.

Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles, the vain, ambitious (and later controversial) officer who accepted Geronimo's formal surrender 126 years ago today.

The next morning a formal surrender ceremony was held. On September 5 Geronimo, Naiche, and other warriors were placed in Miles’ wagon and set out for Fort Bowie. Looking at the Chiricahua Mountains near the end of their journey, Geronimo said to Miles: “This is the fourth time I have surrendered.”

“And I think it is the last time,” Miles replied.

Four days later the prisoners were assembled on the parade ground at Fort Bowie and packed into heavily guarded wagons for the trip to the rail station. As they departed, the 4th Cavalry band played “Auld Lang Syne.” Geronimo was left to wonder why the soldiers jeered and laughed as they sang “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.”

The Geronimo Surrender site, on Highway 80 near Apache, Arizona, looking East toward Skeleton Canyon.

How Republicans Should Talk About Afghanistan

My latest op-ed, on Afghanistan, is appearing in tomorrow's Washington Times. 

This is my first explicitly partisan op-ed, although I think the Times' editors ramp it up with the headline they chose (as opposed to my preference in the post's title).  Some of the key analytical points were inevitably lost cutting the draft by 20% for publication, but I still think the argument holds up.

We'll see whether this unleashes any venom in the comments, although aside from my family, I don't know how many Administration supporters will be reading the Times' op-ed section tomorrow.

Golf in Afghanistan

When I was on active duty in Baghdad, we used to joke that with the clear skies, palm trees, and man-made lakes, the International Zone would make a great golf course in more peaceful days, which we would call "Tigris Woods."
Well, today AFP has a great little piece on Afghanistan's only golf course.  Apparently, security hasn't been a problem thus far as "Deminers cleared the course, but as an extra precaution Afzal set several thousand sheep roaming over it for five days -- they set off no mines and all survived."

McMasters on Afghanistan

One of the most impressive officers I've met in recent years is Major General H.R. McMasters.  I worked with him briefly while he was at U.S. Army TRADOC, and even more briefly when he headed the Task Force Shaffiyat in Afghanistan.  Fellow officers who had him as their tactical officer at West Point raved about him, and his book Dereliction of Duty is one of the rare books that becomes zeitgeisty in military literary circles that actually lives up to the hype.  He speaks with infectious enthusiasm on the driest of topics, from obscure Army doctrine debates to the origins of criminal patronage networks in Afghanistan.

This weekend the Wall Street Journal published a great interview by David Feith with MG H.R. McMasters on the war in Afghanistan.  "Our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors, working alongside Afghanistan, have shut down the vast majority of the physical space in which the enemy can operate," McMasters says.  "The question is, how do we consolidate those gains politically and psychologically."

McMasters goes on to argue that the fundamental reason the Taliban collapsed so quickly in 2001 was "that every Afghan was convinced of the inevitability of the Taliban's defeat."  Unfortunately, I think that although the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed last week (which MG McMasters says is "immensely important") is a positive step, its complete absence of specifics, especially with regards to the future funding of the Afghan National Security Forces, risks undermining the psychological gains intended to sway those Afghans still sitting on the fence between supporting the government or the Taliban.

As they say, the entire feature is worth perusing.

Three Takes on Bin Laden

As the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death recedes, the debate as to his role in al-Qa'ida a decade after 9/11 continues, stoked by the recent declassification of seventeen of the files removed by Navy SEALs from his compound in Abbottabad.  Three interesting analyses of these documents and what they mean to the War on Terror are provided by Bruce Hoffman in the Wall Street Journal, Patrick Cockburn in The Independent (UK), and Fawaz Gerges in The Daily Beast.

Hoffman argues that the released documents provide a corrective to the "extravagant and incorrect claims about the weakness of al Qaeda and the irrelevance of its founding leader."  Instead, he argues that "the picture that emerges from the seized Arabic-language documents is of a leader involved in both al Qaeda's day-to-day operations and long-term strategy," and that bin Laden "remained both determined and able to communicate his wishes to al Qaeda's growing stable of associates."  Okay, but any crazy derelict on a DC street corner is "determined and able to communicate his wishes" to passers-by, the question is whether anybody is actually listening.  Hoffman himself admits that the al-Qa'ida affiliates were "unresponsive," but rather cavalierly dismisses this as "a problem familiar to any manager coping with rapid expansion." 

Hoffman does make an interesting point when he cites an August 27, 2010 communique in which bin Laden expresses concern for the safety of his followers in Pakistan not because of potential military action, but because of the massive flooding that summer.  Hoffman concludes that "this assertion alone speaks volumes about how comfortable he and his minions found their refuge there."  Hmm . . . . maybe.  But there are dozens of other reports of al-Qa'ida leaders urging their fighters to seek other sanctuaries in Yemen, Somalia, or even Iran because of the drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas, not to mention the arrest of numerous al-Qa'ida senior leaders in Pakistan (i.e. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad).  Hoffman could be right in this interpretation, but given that only seventeen out of thousands of documents have been released, how do we know that this one is in any way a representative sample, a fact that Hoffman himself bemoans later in calling for a full release of the Abbottabad files?

In other words, Hoffman tends to undermine his own assertions quite a bit here.

Patrick Cockburn takes an almost diametrically opposed interpretation as Hoffman, writing:

Immediately after the killing, administration officials portrayed Bin Laden as a spider at the centre of a conspiratorial web, the well-hidden but operationally active commander in chief of al-Qa'ida.  They later retreated from these claims that were obviously at odds with his demonstrably limited contacts with the world outside his compound in Abbottabad.

He concludes that "a striking feature of these letters is that there is no evidence that their recipients made any effort to carry out their leader's instructions," and proceeds to weave a fascinating tale of how bin Laden was marginalized by al-Qa'ida after 2003, when the terror network's leaders "decided to keep the Saudi as a titular leader but quietly remove him from all operational control."

Cockburn's account and analysis certainly seem intuitively plausible.  My only caveat is that his main source for the scoop (via the investigative website Truthout) is a retired Pakistani general.  Again, it is plausible that Shaukat Qadir is correct in his details about bin Laden's isolation, but this assertion comes just after Cockburn's caution that we can't take anything Pakistan's ISI says at face value.  (Yes Qadir is retired, but the narrative that everything the Obama administration has said about Abbottabad is a lie veers to close to conspiracy theory for my tastes).

Finally, Fawaz Gerges argues that "even more than the killing of bin Laden, the Arab uprisings . . . have not only shaken the very foundation of the regional authoritarian order but unraveled the standard terrorism narrative."  Whereas al-Qa'ida's leadership decries democracy, preaching that only violent terrorism will bring about political change, "The millions of Arabs who took to the streets openly have shown that politics matters and that peaceful protests are more effective at delivering change.  The ballot box and parliamentarianism, not the sword and the caliphate, are their rallying cry, an utter rejection of what al Qaeda stands for." 

I think Gerges is right, broadly speaking, that al-Qa'ida's "core ideology is intrinsically incompatible with the universal aspirations of the Arabs."  Yet whereas the instability created by Arab Spring will not lead to al-Qa'ida taking over countries in the Middle East, I think Gerges understates the near-term risks of the Arab autocracies' security apparatuses crumbling, thereby creating space for local Salafist terrorist groups to operate.  Additionally, I think he is too quick to dismiss the Khomeini analogy.  The Iranian Revolution is much closer to the historical norm of a first wave being surpassed by more zealous ideologues in later stages.  Consequently, if the newly elected, moderately Islamic parties are unable to resolve the deep systemic problems that helped to trigger the Arab Spring in the first place, there is a significant danger that the frustrated populations will be susceptible to more extremist voices.

The Most Dangerous Man in the World?

In appearances publicizing my book, I've said several times that if the United States could successfully target any individual in the world, it would not be the Ayman al-Zawahiri, but rather Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the deadly genius behind AQAP's "underwear" and printer-cartridge bombs, and the suspected designer of the device recently smuggled out of Yemen by a U.S. double-agent.  Yesterday The Washington Post had an excellent profile on al-Asiri, whom the reporters describe as representing "the CIA's worst fears."

Although I recommend the entire article, there were three key takeaways I found particularly interesting:
- There is a debate as to how al-Asiri, a 30-year-old chemistry major, learned to make such sophisticated bombs.  One expert says he was taught by a Pakistani bombmaker linked to al-Qa'ida, while Bruce Riedel says "He seems to be largely self-educated."  The latter is especially dangerous, as it suggests the threat of lone-wolfs learning to make sophisticated devices via manuals and other resources on the Internet is viable.
- Even if al-Asiri is unique in his learning capacity and ingenuity, analysts say al-Asiri "is training the next generation of bombmakers in the event he is killed."  The possibility of al-Asiri creating a "starfish network" of sophisticated bombmakers is truly frightening, and underscores the need to kill him as quickly as possible.
- Al-Asiri's first significant bomb utilized 100 grams of PETN, "a white, powdery explosive that was virtually undetectable" and was targeted at Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.  The bomber selected to conduct the suicide mission was Abdullah al-Asiri, Ibrahim Hassan's brother.  In other words, al-Asiri is one cold-hearted bastard.

Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri: The single most important target in the War on Terror.

Meanwhile, in Yemen . . .

As if to illustrate my point that Osama bin Laden's death, or even the potential decimation of al-Qa'ida Core doesn't mean the end of Salafist terrorism, yesterday it was announced that the CIA foiled an airplane bomb plot by AQAP timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Abbottabad raid.

On its own merits, this would be good news.  But early reports of how they foiled the plot make this especially interesting, specifically the Los Angeles Times report that the CIA infiltrated AQAP with an operative who was able to escape to Saudi Arabia with a non-metallic explosive device that was a refined version of the "underwear bomb" used in the failed Christmas Day 2009 AQAP attack.

Successful infiltrations into al-Qa'ida and its affiliates has been exceedingly rare, much less getting close enough to access AQAP's cutting-edge devices.  I can't wait for Hollywood to produce a film version of this operation!

Meanwhile, in Guatanamo . . .

I don't pretend to be a legal expert, so won't expound at length on the beginning of the military tribunal trying Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other 9/11 conspirators.  (I found today's Wall Street Journal editorial on the trial to be fairly persuasive, however).

But one tidbit from this MSNBC report jumped out at me:

Human rights groups and defense lawyers say the secrecy of Guantanamo and the military tribunals will make it impossible for the defense. They argued the U.S. kept the case out of civilian court to prevent disclosure of the treatment of prisoners like Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

Really, weren't the issues of waterboarding and the conditions at Guantanamo (which are generally viewed as a model for military detention, but consistently decried by al-Qa'ida for propaganda purposes) disclosed a hundred times over during the Bush administration? 

I think it is safe to say the defense will do everything in its power to ensure the trial is a fiasco (i.e. requesting that female prosecutors wear hijabs so as not to offend the defendants) as a strategy to obscure the magnitude of the crimes committed on 9/11 and planned beyond that date.

Senior AQAP Leader Killed

The Long War Journal, citing statements by the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, D.C., and al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, reported that Fahd al Quso (a.k.a. Abu Huthayfa) was killed in a drone strike in Yemen yesterday.  Quso was wanted by the FBI for involvement in the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, and has also been identified as one of the AQAP operatives involved in the unsuccessful "Underwear Bomber" attack on Christmas Day, 2009.

As I alluded to in my Weekly Standard piece below, the center-of-gravity in the war against al-Qa'ida may be gradually shifting from Afghanistan/Pakistan to other theaters as U.S. forces successfully attrit the terror network's core leadership there.  Thus, the cumulative effect of attacks such as that which apparently killed Quso will likely be more strategically consequential than bin Laden's death. 

This is particularly true in Yemen, where earlier today AQAP overran a Yemeni military base, killing 32 soldiers.  Once upon a time, such a tactical setback would have been relatively inconsequential to U.S. national security.  Unfortunately, given that AQAP has demonstrated its ability to attack the U.S. homeland, we are likely looking at another prolonged campaign.

Fahd al Quso, involuntarily retired from the War on Terror, May 6, 2012.

I'm Back . . . and in The Weekly Standard

I'm back from my computer crash imposed hiatus that prevented me from blogging in April. (Although as a wise sage I know once said, "Every now and then everybody needs to go hermit for a while.")

Below is my latest publication, which appears in this week's Weekly Standard, assessing what we know about the strategic significance of killing Osama bin Laden a year after the SEALs' raid in Abbottabad.

Much more material to follow in the days to come as I not only return to blogging, but intend to expand the blog's focus somewhat to include other topics of unconventional warfare beyond strategic manhunts.

The Bin Laden Raid, a Year Later

Al Qaeda is down but not out.

Benjamin Runkle

May 14, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 33

Even before the celebrations a year ago had ended, terrorism experts were debating the strategic significance of Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs. Some argued that bin Laden would prove irreplaceable to al Qaeda; others claimed he had been in hiding so long he was operationally and strategically irrelevant to the war on terror. Of course, it was too soon to know for sure.

At a year’s remove from the Abbottabad raid, it is possible to make some initial judgments about bin Laden’s operational role in al Qaeda, the prospects for the strategic defeat of the terrorist network, and the implications of the raid for the broader struggle against jihadist terrorism.

Leaked reports of the files seized at the compound (significant portions of the cache remain highly classified) suggest that a decade after 9/11 bin Laden remained better connected to his deputies and allies than previously imagined. He was corresponding with Ayman al Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and Lashkar e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed, among others. Bin Laden was kept informed of the operational plans for the major al Qaeda plots of the past decade, including the 7/7 London subway attack (2005) and the failed plot to bomb the New York City subway system (2009). Then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen concluded that bin Laden “was very active in terms of leading” and “very active in terms of operations.”

Or was he? Although bin Laden was aware of these plots, no clear evidence has been released that he directed the planning; he may simply have been kept informed. Nor is it clear that anyone heeded his calls for attacks on U.S. railroads and the assassination of President Obama and General David Petraeus. David Ignatius has described bin Laden as a “lion in winter,” and one U.S. official quoted in a McClatchy report last June called him “the cranky old uncle that people weren’t listening to.” In the end, bin Laden’s operational importance to al Qaeda may lie in the eye of the beholder.

From the history of manhunts, we know that destroying the fugitive’s support network is as important strategically as killing or capturing the individual himself in cases where the network could carry on the struggle without him. To its credit, the Obama administration has successfully targeted other key al Qaeda leaders. In the past year, U.S. drone strikes have killed Atiyah Abd-al Rahman (the new number two), Ilyas Kashmiri (arguably its most effective operational leader), and Anwar al-Awlaki (its most dangerous propagandist). The success of the “drone war” in Pakistan’s tribal areas—which by some accounts has killed 75 percent of al Qaeda’s senior leadership—has impeded the network’s ability to communicate and hence plan and execute attacks against the United States. As a result, various administration officials have claimed we are on the verge of defeating al Qaeda.

Even if we are successful in severely degrading bin Laden’s organization, however, al Qaeda writ large is far from finished. The most dangerous plots on American soil—the “underwear bomber” (2009) and the failed Times Square bombing (2010)—were initiated by al Qaeda affiliates and allies, whose operations have not abated since Abbottabad. Michael Leiter, then director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testified before Congress in February 2011—just three months before Abbottabad—that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula posed “probably the most significant risk to the U.S. homeland.”

Moreover, the ultimate effect of the Arab Spring on al Qaeda remains uncertain. While the overthrow of Arab autocrats through popular uprisings rather than violent jihad undermines a key tenet of bin Laden’s ideology, it also may weaken the security apparatuses that for years suppressed many terrorist cells throughout the Middle East. There are already signs of al Qaeda-affiliated resurgences in Libya and Yemen, with the Assad regime’s murderous suppression of antigovernment demonstrations creating still other opportunities for jihadists.

Although it is unclear whether a loose constellation of affiliates will pose the same strategic threat to America as the centrally controlled network that initiated the African embassy bombings (1998), the attack on the USS Cole (2000), and the 9/11 attacks (2001), it is evident the demise of bin Laden and the attrition of Al Qaeda Central have not eliminated Salafist terrorism.

In the end, Osama bin Laden’s death was indisputably a boost for U.S. morale in the war on terror and a triumph of justice over evil. President Obama deserves credit for launching the raid, even if it is disconcerting that so many of his handpicked advisers opposed it. But regardless of how much the president’s reelection campaign may trumpet that successful operation over the next six months, the drone strikes against al Qaeda’s broader network and the leaders of affiliated terror groups will likely prove more significant. It is President Obama’s decision to treat the war on terror as an actual war rather than reverting to a pre-9/11 law enforcement mentality—that is, his continuation of the policy initiated by the Bush administration—that may prove strategically decisive.

Today in Manhunting History -- March 28, 1886: Geronimo Reneges

After the March 27 conference, General Crook left the Apaches under Lieutenant Maus’s supervision so he could hurry back to Fort Bowie to wire Sheridan the good news. His diary entry for March 28 reads: “Left camp early in the morning for San Bernardino. Met Geronimo and [Naiche] and other Chiricahuas coming from the San Bernardino direction quite drunk.”

Crook should have taken this as a sign of trouble, but in an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment, continued riding north for the border.

Depressed about their surrender and apprehensive regarding their impending exile, Geronimo, Naiche, and most of their band got drunk off of mescal purchased from Godfrey Tribolet, a trader contracted to sell beef to the Army. From the army camp two ravines away, Crook’s soldiers heard gunshots through the night. In the morning, Kaytennae reported that Naiche was so drunk he could not stand, and Bourke found Geronimo and four other warriors riding aimlessly – five men on a pair of mules – “all drunk as lords.” In their state of intoxication, the Apaches were only able to march a few miles toward the border on the 28th.

That night, in a cold, drizzly rain, the Chiricahuas drank again. This time not only did Tribolet sell them mescal, he filled their heads with horror stories of how they would be murdered as soon as they crossed the border. The Apaches argued amongst themselves, and when almost everyone else had fallen asleep, Geronimo, Naiche, 19 warriors, and 19 women and children quietly slipped away into the night.

Maus did not realize they had fled until the next morning. He immediately set out with his mounted scouts to catch Geronimo, whose band had only taken two horses with them. They followed Geronimo’s trail for 60 miles through “the most impassable mountains,” finding only one horse that had been stabbed to death en route. The old warrior used his usual tricks, changing direction abruptly when his trail vanished on solid rock. With little food, the fugitives ran and walked 60 miles without stopping. At last, his horses worn out and his rations dwindling, Maus gave up the chase and departed for Fort Bowie with Chihuahua and the 77 Apaches who had refused to join the new outbreak.

Geronimo and Naiche on horseback at Canon de los Embudos, prior to their surrender, drinking binge, and reneging.

Today in Manhunting History -- March 27, 1886: Geronimo's "Surrender"

Following the battles at The Devil's Backbone, General Crook could do nothing but await the passage of “two moons.” Finally, on March 16 Lieutenant Maus – who was encamped near the border – reported that four Chiricahua warriors had visited him and told him Geronimo and the renegades were ready to meet Crook at Canon de los Embudos, a short distance across the border in Mexico. Crook departed immediately. As agreed, he was escorted only by his aide Captain John G. Bourke, seven men who could serve as interpreters, and the newly reformed Kaytennae, recently released from Alcatraz.

When they arrived at Canon de los Embudos, they found Geronimo had set up his rancheria “in a lava bed, on top of a small conical hill surrounded by steep ravines, not five hundred yards in direct line from Maus, but having between the two positions two or three steep and rugged gulches which served as scarps and counter-scarps.” Bourke marveled that “A full brigade could not drive out that little garrison,” and Crook noted that Geronimo had selected such an impregnable defensive position “that a thousand men could not have surrounded them with any possibility of catching them.”

On March 25 Geronimo, Chihuahua, Naiche, and a few other Chiricahua approached the American camp. The rest of the warriors cautiously fanned out around them, watching for any sign of treachery. After Crook finished his lunch, they met under a stand of large cottonwood and sycamore trees, on the bank of a stream just west of the largest funnel. Geronimo sat across from Crook, wearing a simple shirt, vest, and breechcloth, with a bandanna about his head. Twenty-four warriors sat just beyond the inner circle. Crook observed that Geronimo and his men “were in superb physical condition, armed to the teeth, with all the ammunition they could carry.”

Crook opened the conference, tersely asking: “What have you to say? I have come all the way down from Bowie.” Geronimo responded by stating a long list of grievances to explain why he left the reservation. Crook had decided to assume a hard line in the negotiations, and listened quietly. His face betrayed no clue about his thoughts, and throughout Geronimo’s hour-long speech he stared at the ground, refusing to even look at the old warrior.

Crook’s intransigence was having its intended effect. Bourke observed that as Geronimo spoke, “perspiration, in great beads, rolled down his temples and over his hands; and he clutched from time to time at a buckskin thong which he held tightly in one hand.” The general and the warrior went over the same topics repeatedly, neither willing to yield, when finally Crook delivered his ultimatum: “You must make up your own mind whether you will stay out on the warpath or surrender unconditionally. If you stay out, I’ll keep after you and kill the last one, if it takes fifty years.”

In a sense, Crook was bluffing, as he knew Geronimo could escape into the mountains again at any time, and that the Americans would have to pay a high price to catch him by force. Thus he moderated his terms, shifting from unconditional surrender to confinement in the East with their families for two years, followed by a return to the reservation.

C.S. Fly's iconic photo of the Canon de los Embudos conference. 
Geronimo is seated, third from the left; General Crook is seated second from the right.

Crook and Geronimo agreed to adjourn for two days so the Apaches could debate the American offer amongst themselves. Upon returning to his tent, Crook summoned Alchise – another son of Cochise – and Kaytennae to him. Alchise was Crook’s staunch friend and supporter, and Kaytannae’s incarceration and tour of San Francisco had converted him to a pro-American outlook. No formal session was held the next day, but Crook sent these two men into Geronimo’s camp to stir dissent among the renegades and to influence them to thoughts of surrender if possible.

Crook’s gambit appeared to have paid off when on the morning of the 27th he received word from Chihuahua that he was willing to surrender his own band, regardless of what Geronimo did. But Crook wanted to bring in all the Chiricahuas, and recognized that Chihuahua’s submission could be used to demoralize Geronimo. At last, in the afternoon the conference continued. Sensing a change in mood, Geronimo kept to himself, sitting with another warrior under a mulberry tree, blackening his face with pounded galena while the others once again convened under the sycamores.

Chihuahua, whose speech to Lieutenant Davis ten months ago harkened the beginning of the outbreak, surrendered by declaring: “If you don’t let me go back to the Reservation, I would like you to send my family with me wherever you send me.”

Naiche followed: “What Chihuahua says I say. I surrender just the same as he did. . . . I throw myself at your feet. You now order and I obey. What you tell me to do I do.”

Finally, Geronimo rose to speak. “Two or three words are enough,” he said. “I have little to say. I surrender myself to you.” He paused to shake hands with Crook, then continued. “We are all comrades, all one family, all one band. What the others say I say also. I give myself up to you. Do with me what you please. I surrender. Once I moved about like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.”

The Man Behind the Drone War

Editor's Note: My apologies for the extremely light posting of late.  I've been hit by the perfect storm of a major crisis in my day job, and the apparent death of my home computer.  Hopefully at least one of the two will be resolved in the near future to allow for the resumption of more regular postings.

In the meantime, over the weekend The Washington Post published an interesting account of "Roger," the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) and architect of the Drone War.  Among the more interesting pieces of information (which are naturally limited given the sensitivity of the subject) is that while posted abroad, "Roger" fell in love with a Muslim woman and converted to Islam in order to marry her. 

Ah, the crazy things we do for love . . . although it apparently hasn't inhibited him from blowing al-Qa'ida operatives and other militants to smithereens at an impressive rate.

Biden's Diminishing Confidence in Abbottabad

I try strenuously to avoid political issues here, but Vice President Joseph Biden told a whopper about the Abbottabad raid at a New Jersey fundraiser last night that bears noting. 

According to The Huffington Post, the Vice President declared:

You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.

This provokes head-scratching on two levels.  First, with all due respect to the SEAL and SOCOM planners who actually developed the plan for the raid, I think that the 1970 Son Tay raid to rescue POWs in North Vietnam, the 1950 Inchon landing, Operation Overlord/D-Day, to name a few, were equally audacious, perhaps even greater given the consequences of failure.

Second, this is part of a pattern I expect we'll see repeatedly over the course of the election year as Administration officials consistently understate the probability of bin Laden's presence at Abbottabad.  According to Eric Schmidle's report in the New Yorker:

[CIA Director Leon] Panetta convened more than a dozen senior C.I.A. officials and analysts for a final preparatory meeting. Panetta asked the participants, one by one, to declare how confident they were that bin Laden was inside the Abbottabad compound. The counterterrorism official told me that the percentages “ranged from forty per cent to ninety or ninety-five per cent.” [Emphasis added]

Similarly, in "The Man Who Hunted Osama bin Laden," the Associated Press reported: "Panetta held regular meetings on the hunt, often concluding with an around-the-table poll: How sure are you that this is bin Laden?  John was always bullish, rating his confidence as high as 80 percent." [Emphasis added]

Finally, in September a White House insider told Newsweek that some intelligence officers "thought that it was high as 80 or 90 percent."  That insider?  President Obama.

Again, the President deserves full credit for ordering the Abbottabad raid, but I don't think there is anybody who doesn't believe that President Bush would have ordered the raid under similar circumstances.  (Whether Clinton would have or not is a more interesting question, although I think ultimately he would have given the green light had he been President post-9/11).  I also think it is unseemly for Administration officials to try to inflate the fortitude it took to authorize the operation for political purposes.

Today in Manhunting History -- March 19, 2003: The Dora Farms Mission

After months of steady military buildup in the Persian Gulf region and Sisyphean diplomacy at the United Nations, on March 17, 2003, President George W. Bush announced that Saddam could avoid war under one condition: if he and his sons left Iraq within 48 hours. Speaking from the White House following a meeting abroad with allied leaders, Bush declared: “The decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end,” and that if Saddam and his sons did not accept this final offer, their refusal “will result in military conflict.” The intricately planned military timetable for “D-Day” – which involved commando raids, the beginning of the “Shock and Awe” air strikes, and the ground invasion led by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Army’s V Corps – was synchronized with the expiration of President Bush’s deadline.

The next day on March 18, however, a CIA source learned of a possible meeting that night at Dora Farms, an estate owned by Saddam’s wife southeast of Baghdad on the bank of the Tigris River. Although it was unclear who would be present, indications were that Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay, and perhaps the entire family, might be planning a meeting there to discuss what to do if the Coalition invaded. “At that point,” CIA Director George Tenet recalled, “we ordered U.S. overhead reconnaissance to examine the site closely. What we saw was a large contingent of security vehicles, precisely the kinds that would typically precede and accompany Saddam’s movements, hidden under trees at the farm.” Sometime after 12:30 PM (8:30PM Baghdad time) the CIA’s source on the scene reported Uday and Qusay were definitely at the farm, that he had actually seen Saddam, and that the dictator would be returning to spend the night with his sons sometime between 3-3:30 AM Baghdad time. Tenet told the President’s war cabinet: “It’s as good as it gets. I can’t give you 100 percent assurance, but this is as good as it gets.”

Given CENTCOM’s elaborate plan of attack, attempting to strike Dora Farms posed a significant risk. If Saddam was not present, the United States would be telegraphing that a major air and ground attack was forthcoming, thereby forfeiting strategic surprise. Yet when President Bush met with his war cabinet that afternoon, all of Bush’s advisors recommended the strike, with Secretary of State Colin Powell saying: “If we’ve got a chance to decapitate them, it’s worth it.” 

The latest information indicated that while at Dora Farms Saddam would be staying in a manzul, an Arabic word that could be translated either as “place of refuge” or “basement/bunker.” If there were a bunker at Dora Farms, cruise missiles would not be able to take it out. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Meyers called CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks on a secure phone. Could a stealth fighter be loaded with EGBU-27 bunker busting bombs in time for the attack? 

“Absolutely not,” Franks replied. “We don’t have the F-117 ready to go.” Franks checked further, however, and learned that the Air Force been following the intelligence and had prepared the planes at Al Udeid airbase in Qatar. Franks sent word to the White House that an attack would indeed be possible.

There was one important tactical problem, however. To execute the mission the F-117s would have to fly into the heart of Iraq’s air defenses, which surrounded the capital with surface-to-air missile sites and antiaircraft artillery. Although F-117s are virtually invisible to radar and ground observers while flying at night at high altitude, in daylight they become relatively slow, defenseless targets. According to the weather and light data, first twilight – when aircraft become visible from the ground – would be at 5:39 AM. 

General Meyers called again, asking how long the President had to make a final decision on the attack. “Tom, I need your drop-dead, no-shit decision time.”

In order to get the planes in and out of Iraqi airspace before dawn, Franks said, “Time on target must be no later than 0530 Iraq time, Dick, with takeoff from Al Udeid no later than 0330. . . . I need the President’s decision by 0315, so the jets can start engines and taxi.”

It was already 2:27 AM.

Time passed slowly in CENTCOM’s headquarters. At 2:59 AM Franks received word that the aircraft were armed, and the pilots were briefed and sitting on the runway in their planes.

Finally, at 3:12 AM, the phone rang. “The mission is a go, Tom,” General Meyers said. “Please execute.”

At 3:38 Qatari time, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Toomey and Major Mark Hoehn were airborne, flying north towards Baghdad in a race with the dawn. An hour later, 45 Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAMs) were fired from surface vessels and submarines in the North Arabian Gulf. Each TLAM carried a 1,000-pound warhead, and once launched was impossible to recall. 

The campaign to kill Saddam Hussein was under way.

As Toomey and Hoehn neared Baghdad, the GPS on one of Toomey’s bombs went dead. The EGBU-27’s had never been used in combat, and had only arrived in Qatar the day before the mission. So Toomey, a combat veteran and the squadron’s director of operations, literally pulled out the instruction manual, rebooted the computerized guidance system, and hoped for the best. As Toomey and Hoehn approached Dora Farms along oval flight paths from the east and west, the sun was almost above the horizon. Clouds shielded them from ground observation, but also hid the target complex. At the last moment, however, the pilots found a break in the clouds that gave them six seconds to visually identify the targets and drop the bombs at 5:36 AM Baghdad time.

Although Toomey and Hoehn could not know if they had gotten Saddam, reconnaissance photos showed all four bombs hit their target squarely. When the first intelligence reports from the scene started coming in, the CIA’s source reported that someone who looked to be Saddam was pulled from the rubble, looking blue and receiving oxygen. He had been put on a stretcher and loaded into the back of an ambulance, which did not move for half an hour before leaving the complex. Around 4:30 AM Tenet called the White House Situation Room and told the duty officer: “Tell the President we got the son of a bitch!”

Several hours later, however, Saddam appeared on Iraqi television. He was wearing an army uniform, a beret, and glasses. For seven minutes he read from a notepad, denouncing the American attack. It was not clear to U.S. analysts whether the address was live or taped, whether it was Saddam or a body double.

The remains of Saddam's alleged bunker at Dora Farms.

Today in Manhunting History -- March 10, 1916: Wilson Orders the Villa Manhunt

The Columbus raid was not the first time the Mexican Revolution had spilled over the border. During the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the pace of violence along the Mexican-U.S. border increased dramatically. A series of raids, marked by theft, robbery, kidnapping, and murder in the lower Rio Grande valley began in the summer of 1915. In September alone, attacks occurred on Brownsville, Red House Ferry, Progresso Post Office, and Las Paladas. In October a passenger train was wrecked by bandits, killing several people, north of Brownsville. During the two-and-a-half month siege of Naco, Sonora, at least 54 Americans in neighboring Naco, Arizona were killed or wounded by stray fire from Mexican forces. As one Army officer noted, the frontier was in “a state of constant apprehension and turmoil because of the frequent and sudden incursions into American territory and depredations and murders on American soil by Mexican bandits.”

Despite his violent depredations as part of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa’s flamboyance and reputation for helping the poor made him a popular figure with the American press and the public, and even the staid New York Times referred to Villa as “the Robin Hood of Mexico.” Villa’s popularity extended to U.S. policymakers in the Wilson administration. General Hugh Scott, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, had commanded the Southern Department for five years and was close friends with the revolutionary. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan gave Villa credit for “valuable services” in “restoring order in Sonora,” adding: “Your patient labors in this matter are greatly appreciated by the State Department and the President.” President Woodrow Wilson himself declared that Villa was “not so bad as he had been painted,” and that amidst the turmoil of the Revolution, “Villa was perhaps the safest man to tie to.”

Shortly after overthrowing the Huerta regime, however, in mid-1914 Villa broke off relations with the political leader of the revolution, Venustiano Carranza, and soon the former allies were fighting against one another. In 1915 Carranza’s military commander, General Alvaro Obregon, defeated Villa in four major battles. By the fall of 1915 the Wilson administration understood Villa’s power was waning, and on October 19 officially recognized the Carranza government. Yet Villa continued fighting and on November 1 attacked Carrancista forces at the border town of Agua Prieta. The United States allowed the Carrancistas to rush reinforcements via rail through U.S. territory, and supplied the electricity that allowed searchlights to illuminate the Villistas during the battle. By the end of 1915, only a few hundred followers remained from Villa’s army that had once numbered between 30-50,000 men.
Villa blamed the Wilson administration for his defeat at Agua Prieta which, with American recognition of the Carranza government, led him to swear revenge on the United States. Villa and his remaining men, mostly his elite guard of Dorados, started a campaign of harassment of both Carrancistas and Americans. On January 10, 1916, Villa’s forces stopped a train of the Mexican North Western Railway Company near Santa Ysabel, Chihuahua. They dragged 17 American miners off the train, and amid cries of “Viva Villa,” they stripped and shot the Americans in cold blood. News of the massacre “set off violent agitation in Congress,” and a “wild anger and excitement greater than any since the sinking of the Lusitania surged through part of the American people.”
Because an Associated Press correspondent was staying in the Columbus Hotel during the March 9 attack, President Wilson learned of the raid only three hours after Villa had recrossed the border into Mexico. Wilson immediately summoned his private secretary and personal friend, Joseph P. Tumulty, and told him to convene a Cabinet meeting early the next morning.

Despite the calls for retaliation after Santa Ysabel, the Wilson administration insisted it was an internal matter for Carranza to deal with. Yet after the Columbus attack the clamor for intervention was irresistible, and even U.S. officials who had been close to Villa recognized the threat he posed. Wilson now regarded Villa as little more than a bandit who threatened the security of the southwestern United States. The American consul in Torreon wrote to General Scott: “This is a different man than we knew. All the brutality of his nature has come to the front, and he should be killed like a dog.” Scott’s successor as Commander of the Southern Department, Major General Frederick Funston, delivered his assessment to the War Department the day after the Columbus raid: “Unless Villa is relentlessly pursued and his forces scattered he will continue raids. As troops of the Mexican Government are accomplishing nothing and as he can make his preparations undisturbed, he can strike at any point on the border.”

On March 10 Wilson’s cabinet unanimously agreed to use military force against Villa lest Congress adopt a resolution calling for armed intervention and forcing the President’s hand. Yet Wilson adamantly told Tumulty: “There won’t be any war with Mexico if I can prevent it.” To guard against this danger, the President announced: “An adequate force be sent at once in pursuit of Villa with the single object of capturing him and putting a stop to his forays.”

President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition to launch its manhunt for Pancho Villa on this day in 1916