"Tora Bora Reconsidered" in Joint Forces Quarterly

My article, "Tora Bora Reconsidered: Lessons from 125 Years of Strategic Manhunts" in the forthcoming (July 2013) issue of Joint Forces Quarterly has been posted online. (The journal itself comes out next week). As the abstract notes:

The allegation that Osama bin Laden was not apprehended in timely fashion because of insufficient troops deployed to Tora Bora is belied by the experience of a dozen strategic manhunts involving deployment of U.S. forces dating back to 1885-86. In fact, the need for surprise often means smaller forces are the ideal. Moreover, the human terrain is a bigger factor than the physical terrain. The views of the native population shape three variables that largely determine the success of strategic manhunts: human intelligence, help from indigenous forces, and whether the object of the hunt can find sanctuary by crossing a border. These factors were against U.S. forces in December 2001. The key would have been stronger links with Pashtun resources.

I actually submitted this back in November 2011, and assumed it had been rejected until the editors contacted me this February saying it had been accepted but was still under security review. What appears in JFQ is the redacted version, as DOD decided they couldn't release some details that Langley had already cleared for publication in Gary Berntsen and George Tenet's memoirs. Then again, if the AP is correct, apparently members of the Obama administration have had a problem keeping details of the hunt for bin Laden secret, at least when it came to Hollywood directors/writers. 

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.