For their primary mission, Special Operations Command on the scene sent out Liaison Coordination Elements (LCEs) to both NATO and — far more important — to non-NATO battalion or brigade commanders within each area of operations. The LCEs made certain that the intent of information and instructions passed on to the battalion or brigade commander was understood.
LCEs conducted daily patrols with their assigned units, maintained communications, assessed the attitudes of the local populace and the various warring factions, provided accurate information about violent incidents, and made general reconnaissance. Since they had their own vehicles, they were not tied to the transport of their assigned units.
Civil Affairs coordinated reconstruction of the civil infrastructure and organized relief — a big job; there were better than five hundred UN, government, and nongovernment organizations to harmonize. Civil Affairs units helped in several ways: coordinating the repatriation of refugees; restoring public transportation, utilities, public health, and commerce; and organizing elections and setting up new national and local governments.
PSYOPs got out factual information through print and broadcast media, and conducted a mine-awareness campaign, aimed mostly at children.
Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR gave way to further stabilization efforts (Operations JOINT GUARD and JOINT FORCE — December 1996 through 1999). Most SOF personnel were involved with PSYOPs and Civil Affairs specialists.
In March 1999, NATO initiated Operation ALLIED FORCE to bring an end to Serbia's violent ethnic-cleansing campaign against ethnic Albanians (primarily Muslim) in Kosovo. The nineteen-nation NATO coalition heavily bombed Serbia for seventy-eight days, at the end of which the Serbian President, Milosevic, threw in the towel and agreed to stop the ethnic cleansing. By then, the better part of a million refugees had been forced out of Kosovo.
During ALLIED FORCE, Civil Affairs units coordinated large-scale humanitarian relief with other U.S. agencies and international relief organizations. SOF aircraft airlifted food and supplies. PSYOPs EC-130E Commando Solo aircraft broadcast Serb-language radio and TV programs to inform the people of their government's genocidal policies and to warn them against committing war crimes in support of those policies.
SOF Combat Search and Rescue MH-53 Pave Low and MH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters rescued two U.S. pilots (one from an F-117, the other from an F-16) downed in Serbia. These two missions each took less than a minute on the ground.
During the follow-up Operation JOINT GUARDIAN, SOF liaison teams initiated street patrols throughout their operational area in Kosovo. In the process, they arranged meetings between local Albanians and Serbs, to defuse ethnic violence, searched for illegal weapons caches, and helped war crimes investigators find massacre sites. Though SOF teams did not end violence, they managed to establish rapport with both ethnic factions, and their on-the-scene eyeball reports gave the leadership a clear view of local conditions.
HUMANITARIAN DEMINING OPERATIONS
In 1988, millions of mines left over from the Soviet invasion remained in Afghanistan, stopping millions of refugees from returning to their homes. Troops from the 5th SFG deployed to Pakistan to work with UN personnel and Afghan refugees to find a way to remove this tragic legacy safely. The results became a prototype for other SOF and UN humanitarian demining programs.
It was not an easy job. There was then no effective Afghan government, and there was a multitude of organizations to coordinate. The SOF troops had to more or less invent the program on the spot, and then sell it to everyone else involved. The fractious and suspicious Afghan tribes and factions did not make things easier. Special Forces had to use their political even more than their technical skills.
Practically, SOF training programs taught millions of Afghans how to identify, avoid, report, or destroy mines — and how to set up training programs they could run themselves. When SOF troops left Afghanistan in 1991, the Afghans were able to manage demining without further outside help.
Other SOF demining training programs were later set up in Cambodia, Laos, the former Yugoslavia, Central America, and elsewhere — with PSYOPs and Civil Affairs units playing a large part in making local people aware of the danger from land mines, as well as showing them how to clear them.
AFRICAN CRISIS RESPONSE INITIATIVE
After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and unrest the following year in its neighbor Burundi that pointed to a similar outcome, the U.S. Defense Department worked out a plan to deal with the situation — and others like it — based on training battalion-sized units from free and democratic African states to conduct peacekeeping operations within the continent. This plan matured into the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), which the State Department launched in the fall of 1996.
Though military assets from the United States and its allies were used in the ACRI program, Special Forces troops soon found themselves at its heart.
The 3rd SFG, under EUCOM's command and control, developed an instruction program and sent teams to work the training. SF planners developed common peacekeeping tactics, techniques, and procedures. Training the African battalions in common doctrine and standards allowed the multinational forces to work effectively together.
The 3rd SFG-designed ACRI training came in two phases: First there was an intensive sixty-day training for individuals, platoons, companies, leaders, and staff. This was followed by exercises to practice what they had learned.
At the end of 1999, SF teams had trained ACRI troops in Malawi, Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Benin, and the Ivory Coast.
NEOs SOF troops also took part in a number of noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs) — usually Embassy personnel in danger during revolutions or civil wars.
In April 1996, SEALs and SF troops provided security for the American Embassy in Liberia during the evacuation of Americans and third-country nationals. Using Air Force SOF MI I-53J — and later Army MII-47D — helicopters, 436 Americans and nearly 1,700 foreign nationals were safely flown out of the country.
SOF also took part in NEOs in Sierra Leone, Congo, and Liberia (again).
PEACEKEEPING AND TRAINING
SOF troops continue to be deployed in many countries in peacekeeping and/or training roles. Examples include many African nations, Kuwait, Venezuela, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, and Macedonia.
And then, in September 2001, a new mission came to SOF….
XV
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
Carl Stiner: Tom Clancy and I began this story with an account of a terrorist assault on an ocean liner more than fifteen years ago. We are ending it in the aftermath of another terrorist attack — the September 11, 2001, assault on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. A score of fanatics commandeered ordinary civilian machines — fuel-laden ailiners — and turned them into weapons of destruction. The differences between the two events are striking.
Both involved careful planning and wanton disregard of human life, but the greatest distinction is in the scale — not only in the sheer magnitude of the devastation, loss of lile, and horror, but also in the obvious size and skill of the organization that let loose such savagery. In the past, you needed governments for that. But apparently no longer.
It's far too soon after these acts to predict possible long-term consequences, and we won't presume to attempt it. However, several implications are worth exploring, even at this early date.