Shameless Self-Promotion Post #4: Beantown Edition

Boston friends/family/fans, I will be making two appearances in Boston next week:

• On Monday the 17th, I'll be signing copies of "Wanted Dead or Alive" at the Harvard Coop (1400 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, from 5-6PM.
• On Tuesday the 18th, I'll be giving a talk/reading on the book at Boston University's International History Institute (B-13 725 Commonwealth Avenue) from 4-5:30PM, with a signing to follow immediately thereafter.

Hopefully I will see more than a few of you out there!

A New Manhunt!!!

This statement was released from the Department of State today:

The United States condemns the continued atrocities and abductions committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) across central Africa.  We remain committed to supporting our regional partners’ efforts to mitigate and eliminate the threat to civilians and regional stability posed by the LRA.  Since 2008, the United States has provided over $40 million in critical logistical support, equipment and training to enhance counter-LRA operations by regional militaries. We continue to join regional governments in calling on LRA fighters to peacefully disarm and return home.

With the consent of the Government of Uganda, and as notified to Congress, the United States has sent a small number of U.S. military advisors to the region to assist the forces that are pursuing the LRA and seeking to bring top commanders to justice.  These advisors will work with our regional partners and the African Union in the field to strengthen information-sharing, enhance coordination and planning, and improve the overall effectiveness of military operations and the protection of civilians.  These advisors will not engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.

This is one component of an ongoing, comprehensive U.S. strategy to address the LRA threat, in accordance with the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Act signed into law in 2011.  This strategy includes efforts to help increase the protection of civilians, encourage and facilitate defections of lower-level LRA fighters, and provide continued humanitarian relief.

In other words, this mission entails the deployment of U.S. forces to train/advise/assist indigenous forces for the specific mission of killing or capturing an individual, in this case Joseph Kony.  Think Che Guevara, but in Africa, and 100% less charismatic.  (Che was a monster from a moral perspective too, but at least didn't kidnap child soldiers, authorized mass rape, and routinely hack off limbs to intimidate the local civilian population.  Plus, he had great hair!)

Joseph Kony, officially "Wanted Dead or Alive"

* Note: For those who have read my book (or at least the author's bio on the dust jacket) and know what I do for a day job, this campaign falls under my official oversight duties.  Hence, from hereon in I probably won't be able to do much more than post news accounts relating to this manhunt without much comment.

Today in Manhunting History -- October 8, 1967: The Capture of Che Guevara*

At 0630, October 8, 1967, Second Lieutenant Carlos Perez of the U.S. Special Forces-trained Company A, 2^nd Bolivian Ranger Battalion reported up his chain that Pedro Pena, a local peasant, had watched 17 men skirt his farm to enter El Churo Canyon the previous evening.  2LT Perez radioed Captain Gary Prado Solomon, commander of Company B which had been pursuing a group of guerrillas led by Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara since September 26, who directed him to move two A Company platoons to the north end of El Churo Canyon while Prado moved with one rifle platoon, two 60mm mortars, and one machine gun on the high ground overlooking the south end of the small ravine.  The Rangers, with a total strength of 200 men, immediately began to close off the ends of the canyon.

El Churo Canyon, about 300 meters long, ran downhill northeast to southwest.  At the southern end it merged with La Tusca Canyon and fed into San Antonio Canyon.  The steep ravine, as much as 200 meters deep, was thickly vegetated, particularly along the canyon floor, becoming sparser near the top.  CPT Prado deployed a platoon up to the north end of La Tusca, and established his command post and a blocking position with his two mortars and machine gun at the southern confluence of the two canyons.  By 1230, Prado’s forces were in position and began to search the canyons.

Almost immediately there was contact at the north end of El Churo.  2LT Perez’ men came under fire when they entered the north end of El Churo, and two Rangers were killed in the initial volley.  The movement halted as the Rangers tried to maneuver to take the insurgents under fire.  They had cut off the guerrilla’s planned movement to the high ground from the north end of the canyon, but could not penetrate down the narrow ravine.  Prado radioed Sergeant Huanca in La Tusca and told him to rapidly clear that canyon and get to the two ravines’ confluence.  Before the Rangers arrived, Che tried to break out.

CPT Prado has positioned his crew-served weapons to overwatch the area where El Chura and La Tusca canyons converged.  When the guerrillas emerged to make a break for it, the Rangers opened up on them with the mortars and machine gun.  The guerrillas took casualties and fell back into El Churo. Che was wounded in the right calf and his carbine was destroyed. (Other accounts describe Che as "riddled with bullets" having been hit in the same leg multiple times and possibly through the right forearm).  A second break out attempt was repulsed as well. 

Since the tight confines of the canyon and close proximity of friendly forces precluded the use of close air support, Sergeant Huanca’s platoon was ordered into El Churo from the south in order to drive the guerrillas against the two platoons of A Company atop the ravine.  Huanca attacked Che’s main body with hand grenades, killing two insurgents.  This forced the guerrillas to fall back and allowed the Rangers to enter the canyon. 

Che had no other choice but to try to escape up and out of the canyon. With another comrade he began climbing, but two Rangers manning an observation post near Prado’s CP observed their movement.  They held their fire until the guerrillas climbed up the ravine, and then when they were ten feet away, stood up and took them prisoner, less than 15 meters from the Ranger command post.  When Prado asked them to identify themselves, the Argentine doctor replied, “I am Che Guevara.”

Che Guevara as a prisoner of the U.S.-trained 2nd Ranger Battalion in Bolivia.

* Che Guevara was one of two cases (Pablo Escobar being the other) I researched but was not able to include as full chapters in Wanted Dead or Alive due to space restrictions. This account is largely drawn from Kenneth Finlayson, "The 2nd Ranger Battalion and the Capture of Che Guevara," in Veritas: Journal of Army Special Operations History, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2008.  

Today in Manhunting History -- October 7, 1967: Che's Last Diary Entry

The last entry in Che Guevara's diary was recorded exactly eleven months since the inauguration of the guerrilla movement in Bolivia that he (and Fidel Castro) had hoped would spark a continent-wide Communist revolution. For nearly two weeks Che and his dwindling band of 22 insurgents have been pursued by the Bolivian Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion, which had been trained by a 16-man team from the 8th U.S. Special Forces Group under the command of Major Ralph "Pappy" Shelton.

On October 7, the guerrillas ran into an old woman herding goats. They asked her if there were soldiers in the area but were unable to get any reliable information. Scared that she will report them, they paid her 50 pesos to keep quiet. In Che's diary he noted that he had "little hope" that she will do so.

Major Ralph "Pappy" Shelton, the leader of the Green Beret team that trained the Bolivian Rangers pursuing Che Guevara.

This Can't Be Good . . .

Noah Shachtman of Wired's Danger Room blog reports that a computer virus has infected the U.S. Predator and Reaper drone fleets.  Apparently this hasn't affected their ability to fly missions remotely from Nevada, but the virus has resisted all attempts to permanently scrub it from the network.  The key quote comes at the end of the story: “It’s getting a lot of attention,” an officer at Creech Air Force Base says. “But no one’s panicking. Yet.” 

Today in Manhunting History -- October 7, 2001: Operation Enduring Freedom Begins

In the wake of the September 11th attacks, the Bush administration realized that in order to get to Osama bin Laden the United States and its allies would have to fight through the Taliban, who had rejected numerous entreaties to turn the Saudi over to U.S. custody or to administer justice themselves.  On October 7, the U.S. air campaign against al-Qa'ida and the Taliban began as bombers, strike aircraft, and cruise missiles pounded targets.  By the end of November, F-14s, F-16s, F/A-18s, B-52s, and B-1Bs had dropped approximately ten thousand bombs in Afghanistan.

Reuters: "Secret Panel Can Put Americans on 'Kill List'"

Normally I'd suggest stories such as this one from Reuters are largely hyperbole, but the headline really does get to the core of the dilemma.  Some thoughts:

1. The problem here really is that there is no apparent oversight or clear criteria for when an American citizen rises to the level of threat that they can be killed extra-judicially by either military or covert assets.
2. I don't think the Anwar al-Awlaki killing, although extra-judicial, constitutes "murder." As Walter Russell Mead notes in my previous posting, al-Awlaki knew what he was getting into and certainly wouldn't have considered being targeted by drones an excessive response to his treasonous activity.  I think the "conservative" position Reuters cites is generally fair: the Justice Department should release to the appropriate Congressional oversight committees the legal memos that went into the decision, not so they can conduct backseat driving/sniping, but rather so that a record is established and can be debated as to what the criteria should be.
3. The article suggests al-Awlaki was targeted because his role in AQAP had gone "from inspirational to operational."  I'll go one further, and suggest that serving as a propaganda agent for a foreign organization in a declared state of war with the United States (and committed to targeting American civilians as al-Qa'ida is) should be justification for lethal targeting, as the ideological/inspirational component of terrorist networks is often just as important as the tactical/operational role.  (Hence I would have no problem with Adam Gadahn being targeted). However, this has to be codified in policy at some level so that there is a clear threshold for permissible targeting. 

Failing such a clear threshold, reliance on "secret panels" dealing with each case on an ad hoc basis in the future carries too great a risk for potential abuse.