Today in Manhunting History -- June 9, 1993: Admiral Howe Requests Delta Force

Although 23 nations contributed troops to UNOSOM II, its decision makers remained primarily American. The Clinton administration, which inherited the Somalia operation in January, insisted that retired Admiral Jonathan Howe be named to head UNOSOM II as the Secretary General's special representative. Howe had served as Deputy National Security Advisor at the end of the Bush administration. He was a slender man who always wore a Columbia-blue UN baseball cap over his graying, close-cropped hair and white short-sleeved shirt that revealed a pale complexion that not even seven months in the Somali sun could color in the slightest. "Polite and articulate," Howe directed UNOSOM II to engage in aggressive action to force the Somali militias to disarm and seemed particularly focused on marginalizing Mohammed Farah Aideed.

After the June 5 massacre of the Pakistanis the head of UNOSOM II, Howe declared Aideed “a menace to public safety” and a “killer.”  President Bill Clinton and his advisors agreed with Howe that the ambush demanded a strong response lest UNOSOM II lose all credibility.

On June 9, Howe requested a team of 50 Delta Force operators to snatch Aideed.  (This was ironic, given that when Howe was a deputy to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Crowe, he had vigorously opposed proposals for a similar operation against Manuel Noriega).  UNOSOM II’s Commander, Turkish Lieutenant General Cervik Bir, and its Deputy Commander, U.S. Army Major General Thomas Montgomery, both supported the request, and Howe advised the Clinton administration that the probability of U.S. special operations forces capturing Aideed at 90 percent.  (A CENTCOM intelligence assessment team traveled to Mogadishu in June 1993 and reported the capture of Aideed was “viable and feasible.”  In private, however, team members described the task as “extremely ugly . . . with numerous potential points of failure.”) 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell resisted Powell’s request, and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin rejected the idea.  Even if Aideed could be found, Aspin thought an already skeptical public would consider Delta’s deployment to be a dangerous escalation.  Consequently, for the time being, Howe would have to try to catch Aideed with the conventional forces already in place. 



Retired Admiral Jonathan Howe, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Somalia. Note this picture was taken in April 1993, before Howe began targeting Muhamad Farah Aideed, and is in the southern city of Baidoa rather than Aideed's stronghold in Mogadishu. 





Today in Manhunting History -- June 5, 1993: Welcome to Hell

 

Operation Restore Hope, initiated in December 1992, had been an indisputable success. The protection provided by Unified Task Force (UNITAF), under the command of U.S. Marine Lieutenant General Robert Johnston, to humanitarian relief operations enabled Somalia to survive the worst of the famine that had already killed nearly half a million people. Consequently, on March 26, 1993, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 814, calling for the replacement of UNITAF with a UN peacekeeping force with the expanded mission of “peace enforcement” in which warlords could be compelled to disarm.

 

The most powerful of the Somalia warlords, Mohamed Farah Aideed, recognized that the UN’s plan would weaken his military power and political base, and thus began a vicious, no-holds-barred propaganda campaign on Radio Mogadishu. “Radio Aideed,” as it was known, accused the UN of “imperialist designs” and “colonization” and called upon Somalis to defend their sovereignty. Shootings and rock-throwing confrontations increased around Mogadishu, and UNOSOM II began taking casualties. A CIA assessment around this time deemed Aideed “a threat to peace,” and UNOSOM II’s commander, Turkish Lieutenant General Cervik Bir, decided he had seen enough and decided to respond.

On June 4, UNOSOM II notified Aideed’s interior minister, Abdi Hassan Awale, that various SNA weapons sites were to be inspected the next morning. “This is unacceptable,” Awale replied to the messenger. “This means war.”

The next day, after inspecting the arms cache co-located with Aideed’s radio station, a company-sized Pakistani force was ambushed while returning to their battalion’s camp at Mogadishu’s sports stadium. Another Pakistani unit protecting a food distribution center was slaughtered after one soldier, trying to calm a growing mob, was pulled into the crowd and dismembered. Twenty-four Pakistanis were killed in the attacks, and another 56 were wounded. Ten of the dead were castrated and their eyes gouged out, while others were disemboweled and skinned.

When the Quick Reaction Force from the U.S. 10th Mountain Division advanced to cover the Pakistani retreat, they saw nearby ruins with fresh graffiti declaring: “WELCOME TO HELL.”

Much Ado About Nothing

Yesterday President Obama delivered his much anticipated policy address on U.S. counterterrorism policy at the National Defense University.

Although it was anticipated it would mark a significant turning point in the War on Terror and, particularly in "The Drone War," but I think the title of Bloomberg's editorial this morning hit the nail on the head: "Obama's Drone Changes Change Very Little"

Put aside the questions of Guantanamo and indefinite detention, in which the President once again stressed he is really, really committed to closing the prison facility, and that he means it this time. (This sounds eerily like my pledges to mow the lawn in late summer. "Yes, honey, I know I said I would mow it last week, and the week before, but I promise I'll get to it tomorrow . . . after the baseball game, probably" Meanwhile, we've lost our toddler somewhere in the high grass out by the tool shed in the backyard.).

Basically, the President pledged three innovations to our current policy of targeted killings. First, targets will be limited to those who "pose a continuing, imminent threat to Americans" and are deemed too difficult to capture alive. The first part of that formulation depends upon an extremely malleable definition (i.e. Is somebody planning an attack an imminent threat, or only people actually assembling a bomb for transport? What about somebody who only handles bank transfers for an extremist organization? Is somebody planning their first attack a "continuing threat," which in the case of suicide bombers like 2010's Underwear Bomber, they tend to only get one chance?) while the second formulation is also completely subjective (i.e. There was a significant divide in the late 1990s between policymakers, the CIA, and senior military leaders as to whether the capture of Osama bin Laden was feasible).

In other words, this guidance can still be interpreted however the President chooses depending upon the circumstances, and hence really isn't much guidance at all.  (However, it does appear to end so-called "signature strikes" that target individuals without their identities being definitively established, but rather because of a pattern of suspicious behavior. But the inherently covert nature of such strikes means there will likely never be any way to verify whether or not the President has been living up to his own guidance here either).

Second, Obama declared "Beyond the Afghan theater, we only target Al Qaeda and its associated forces," which is a change from the previous formulation in his 2009 address that we were at war "with Al Qaeda and its affiliates." This semantic change is significant, in that there is a hard definition of "affiliate" when it comes to al-Qa'ida, specifically a group or individual who has sworn loyalty to bin Laden (or now, Ayman al-Zawahiri). Yet at the same time again, "associate" is much more elastic, and could theoretically be applied to any extremist that believes in Salafist jihad whether or not they have received any support or training from al-Qa'ida core.

Again, while this sounds like a limitation on drone strikes, in reality it is completely a matter of interpretation at the discretion of the President.

Finally, and most disconcerting, is the President's pledge that within the aforementioned parameters, the United States will only use drone strikes where there is "near certainty" of no civilian casualties. As former Air Force JAG (and current Duke University law professor) Charlie Dunlap notes in Politico: "That risks inviting terrorists to surround themselves with civilians and could have unintended and counterproductive consequences." 

When I heard this, I was immediately reminded of the President's 2009 speech announcing the "Afghan Surge," in which he coupled the announcement of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan with the pledge that the Surge would only last for 18 months. Both times he placed a caveat on his announcement in order to try to sound reasonable, but which in reality drastically undercut the effectiveness of his strategy. Now theoretically every terrorist from Benghazi to Waziristan knows all he has to do is to walk around with an infant in a baby bjorn and he's safe from U.S. air strikes! You think I'm kidding, but this is exactly what Fatah and Hamas leaders did -- granted, without actual bjorns -- when they figured out the Israeli restrictions on civilian casualties in targeted killings.

Again, for whatever criticisms I may have of this Administration's other policies, I've always given President Obama full credit for his counterterrorism policies, which despite his campaign rhetoric have been an acknowledgement that the Bush administration was generally correct to treat the War on Terror as a war, rather than as a law enforcement exercise. But even when making this case yesterday, the speech was an exercise in vacuous rhetoric.

Once again he said that after he came into office "we unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with Congress." As Max Boot points out in Commentary, "Umm, actually all of that happened in Bush's second term."

The rest of the speech was such a combination of empty platitudes and vague promises that only a hyperpartisan could call "an excellent speech" with anything close to a straight face. Jen Rubin's analysis in the Washington Post yesterday comes closer to the mark.  Although to be sure, the President deserves incredibly high marks for his composure when heckled by the odious Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. Every politician who gives speeches should have one or two prepared responses for such an occasion, and this will likely go down as the best non-teleprompter remark of his Presidency.

Anyhow, I'll have more to say on some of his other formulations a bit later. I hope everybody has a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend, and takes a moment in between trips to the grill and/or cooler to remember our fallen heroes.

More on Drones . . . and Foreign Targeted Killings

Anticipating today's carrier launch of the U.S. Navy's X-47B stealth drone in Sunday's New York Times, Richard Parker warns of the impending arms race between U.S. drones and Chinese aircraft carriers/standoff weapons systems/drones in the Pacific and recommends . . . .

Okay, he admits that "by themselves, naval rivalries do not start wars," so the drones are not really the source of the problem. What is really the problem, apparently, is that China and the United States are not allies, and that if "the slender reed" of economics that binds us together should snap, then look out!

Of course, this would be true whether or not the United States possesses drones. But does Parker really mean to suggest that the Pacific region would be more stable, and that would we be more secure, if we allowed China to develop advanced weapons systems without developing countermeasures such as drones? Isn't it just as likely that increased drone capabilities might as a deterrent to potential aggression much in the same way that nuclear weapons did in the Cold War?

The X-47B "Unmanned Combat Air System" (a.k.a. stealth drone) aboard the USS Truman.

Also, last week in Foreign Policy Micah Zenko outlined countries in which the United States has "outsourced" targeted killing campaigns to allied indigenous forces, and argues that "the United States should ultimately be accountable" if they do something wrong with the intelligence, training, or weapons provided. Okay . . . but how, and who? If a force trained by our Special Forces and provided intelligence on a village by say, an enlisted intelligence analyst, that is believed to be hosting an al-Qa'ida leadership meeting, and then the foreign troops subsequently execute a kill/capture mission in a village utilizing poor fire discipline, killing innocent civilians, who would Zenko court martial? On a policymaking level, Congress can obviously end authorization/funding for any "Building Partnership Capacity" initiative that goes awry, but will the end of U.S. involvement end the underlying conflict or exasperate it? Do these allied forces perform better in terms of observing human rights/minimizing collateral damage when they are being trained/supervised by U.S. troops or when left to their own devices? (Actually, this would be a good paper topic for any budding academics, if a definitive study of the subject does not already exist . . . )

Don't get me wrong. The United States clearly should not support militaries or tribal forces that systematically abuse human rights in the course of operations, and American policymakers/officers/analysts certainly should not turn a blind eye to any mistakes/infractions they see. But while it is easy to run around yelling "Accountability! Accountability! Accountability!" it is much more difficult to delineate where responsibility for such misdeeds actually lies, and how you would . . . er, hold people accountable.

Moreover, beyond this proposition's vagueness, it has a potentially deadly deterrent effect on future BPC missions. What military commander would voluntarily lead such a mission, or deploy his personnel knowing he could end up imprisoned for the misdeeds of an indigenous platoon he has little tactical or operational control over? Similarly, what administration would provide lethal aid/intelligence to an ally knowing they could be impeached or prosecuted if the operations resulted in collateral damage (something even our highly trained forces can not avoid completely).

Although civilian casaulties are always a tragedy we seek to avoid, the deterrent effect created by the absolutist stance Zenko implies would leave putative allies (and their civilian populations) at a formidable disadvantage to adversaries who have no respect for non-combatant immunity, thereby actually creating the potential for more of the abuses Zenko condemns.

Other Nations' Manhunts

Posting about the Israeli pursuit of Imad Mughniyeh the other day reminded me of a question I was asked a couple of times while doing publicity for Wanted Dead or Alive, specifically whether other nations undertook strategic manhunts and whether the lessons learned from U.S. campaigns were applicable. Although I could refer to the British pursuits of Muhammad `Abd Allāh al-Hasan (a.k.a. the "Mad Mullah") in the 1900s-1910s in Somalia and the Faqir of Ipi in Waziristan in the 1930s and 1940s (both of which ended in failure), and I talked somewhat out my posterior at last year's Tucson Festival of Books about the Israeli hunt for Adolph Eichmann from 1948-1960 (when he was captured in Argentina and literally kidnapped back to Israel for trial), I suggested there were few modern cases against which to compare my findings.

Well, the "n" is definitely getting larger, as indicated by two recent articles on the Chinese hunt in Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar for Naw Kham, a drug lord who killed 13 Chinese seamen on the Mekong River and a Reuters update on the Iraqi Security Forces hunt for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the highest ranking member of Saddam Hussein's regime still on the loose a decade after the fall of Baghdad. (He was the King of Clubs on the "Iraqi Most Wanted Playing Cards.")

Both pieces reinforce the importance of human terrain. U.S.-Iraqi forces were unable to lay a hand upon al-Douri while he was out of the country (presumably in Syria), and now Iraqi forces are apparently having trouble finding him in Sunni tribal areas at a time of high partisan tensions in Iraq. Conversely, the Chinese were able to obtain reliable allies -- Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand -- in the Golden Triangle in which Naw Kham operated (even if this was done with some diplomatic strong arming), and developed their own network of informants that allowed them to gradually tighten the noose on the drug lord until they were able to apprehend him.

Is the hunt for the last senior Ba'athist in Iraq heating up again?

The Hunt for Imad Mughniyeh

An interesting long read in the current issue of Foreign Policy by Mark Perry, investigating the hunt for Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mughniyeh. For those unfamiliar with Mughniyeh's C.V., he is believed to have been responsible for:

• The October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine and French barracks in Beirute (241 Americans, 58 French KIA);
• The 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 (which included the murder of U.S. Navy sailor Robert Stethem);
• Dozens of kidnapping and murders of Western hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s (including the torture and murder of William Buckley, the CIA's Beirut station chief, and Marine COL Rick Higgins, who was part of a UN peacekeeping mission);
• The March 1992 attack on Israel's embassy and the 1994 synagogue bombing in Buenos Aires.

Veteran CIA officer Milton Bearden summarized Mughniyeh's career, saying: "Both bin Laden and Mughniyeh were pathological killers. But there was always a nagging amateurishness about bin Laden -- his wildly hyped background, his bogus claims . . . Bin Laden cowered and hid. Mughniyeh spent his life giving us the finger."

Mughniyeh was killed on February 12, 2008, by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria. To this date, nobody knows for sure who killed him. Suffice it to say the man had a lot of enemies, although Perry implies it was likely the Mossad with Syrian assistance as precursor to Israeli-Syrian peace talks. (In February, Canada's National Post published an account by Erol Araf that explicitly credits the Mossad, which he claims was able to locate Mughniyeh through a combination of old East German Stasi files, hacking into a Syrian official's computer, and local agents in Lebanon. This account is certainly plausible, but given that Araf credits Mughniyeh with involvement in the clearly established al-Qa'ida attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, it should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt).

The iconic image of a then-23-year old Mughniyeh during the standoff during the 1985 TWA Flight 847 hijacking. 

An undated picture of an older Mughniyeh.

Although Perry leaves definitive attribution for his killing unclear, his account demonstrates the critical importance of third-country assistance in strategic manhunts. During the 30-year manhunt, despite a $5 million American bounty on his head, Mugniyeh was able to move freely between Tehran, Damascus, and Beirut, each of which offered a sympathetic local population and government willing to shelter him. His closest scrape with American pursuers came in late 1995 when he boarded a flight to Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis refuse an American request to apprehend him, instead denying the plane authorization to land. Again, if Perry's account is accurate, then the lack of bilateral assistance prevented his apprehension for three decades, and if the Syrian complicity-angle is true (which Hezbollah appears to believe), this reversal explains his ultimate demise as well.

But as they say, read the whole thing for yourself.

Droning On . . .

A bevy of recent articles about various aspects of drones worth noting:

• In Defense News, former Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs Bruce Lemkin argues that "the current discussion of so-called 'drones' and their employment [is] highly politicized, perversely, skewed and often grossly misinformed."  Broadly summarized, Lemkin argues that their is no strategic or operational difference between drone strikes and a campaign of air strikes by manned aircraft, only a technological difference that actually makes drones more tactically efficient. Thus, critiques of the moral virtue and strategic utility (i.e. do the strikes kill more terrorists than they create) of drones are only valid if one is willing to make the same argument against a conventional air campaign. (And personally, I think Lemkin misses a key point by noting that, theoretically, the increased "linger time" that UAVs permit allows for greater discrimination in targeting, and hence less collateral damage in the form of non-combatant casualties than air or missile strikes).

• One sign of the effectiveness of the Drone War is the desperation of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban to counter it. Consequently,  Reuters and the National Journal report that a new English-language, jihadi magazine set up by militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan called "Azan" has appealed to Muslims around the world to come up with technology to hack into or manipulate drones. "The Ummah is not short of brilliant minds," the magazine writes. "Any opinions, thoughts, ideas and practical implementations to defeat this drone technology must be communicated to us as early as possible because these would aid the Ummah greatly in its war against the Crusader-Zionist enemy."

Since "Azan" doesn't exactly have a mailing address or a home office that one can go to to pick up a check, winning entrants will have to accept their reward on credit -- specifically, fifty "companions" in the afterlife. While it is tempting to joke about this, crowd-sourcing military problems has proven effective in the past (i.e. U.S. company grade officers did this to disseminate COIN knowledge in Iraq and Afghanistan), and the U.S. military has long been concerned about the possibility of somebody remotely hacking drones and other delivery systems. Just last month at the Hack in the Box Conference in Amsterdam (great name, btw) a German computer security consultant claimed, and demonstrated, that he could hack into an airplane's control system using standard Android applications. (Of course, the FAA and other aviation experts immediately poured cold water on Hugo Teso's claims, but this is not to say that somebody could not find a workaround someday).



Chinese ANS-207 Drones on parade in 2009: Photo by Vincent Thian



• Another sign of the Drone War's effectiveness is the number of countries seeking to obtain military UAV capabilities. As per Steve Coll's concern that I discussed last week, Defense News reports: "Chinese UAV Development Slowly Outpacing West," and the Associated Press warns "China Emerging as a New Force in Drone Warfare." This reporting confirms an earlier piece in Foreign Policy on the global proliferation of UAVs (with the AP piece arguably ripping off P.W. Singer's opening). Yet the phenomena Singer describes isn't really new. I remember participating in an Army wargame in 2010 in which it was assumed that the notional adversary would have an advanced UAV capability by the time period the scenario covered, roughly 2020.