A Special Operations task force’s recent capture of Saddam Hussein was just the sort of mission Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his war planners envision when they think about the future of the military.
Under Rumsfeld, the Special Operations Command, located in Tampa, has taken on a prominent new combat role in Afghanistan and Iraq. Special Operations teams are active in the ongoing, low-intensity conflicts and manhunts of both regions, where military officers and analysts say the small, secretive units have pulled off some stunning successes.
The command also is getting generous resources to do its job–its 2004 budget is $4.6 billion, a 35 percent increase over the previous year. About $2 billion will be used to expand the size of the command to 49,000 active and reserve members, an increase of 5,000 troops.
But the move toward expanding the force carries with it special concerns for military leaders and policymakers alike.
Rumsfeld’s vision for a transformed military, some analysts say, relies too heavily on the ability of Special Forces units, possibly calling on them when more conventional forces should be deployed.
The latest phase of the war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan has turned the force into a large man-hunting operation. And while that can be effective, some say it also can take Special Operations units away from the more subtle use of intelligence and stealth that they are trained to employ.
“A lot of it is more like police work,” a former top CIA official said. “It’s active military work, rather than the use of intelligence. You want to make sure that you’re not building a force that is just running over the hill and shooting.”
The secretive nature of the Special Operations teams’ work also means that failures and problems can be concealed from broader scrutiny and correction, even within the military.
On Dec. 13, elite troops from the Special Operations Command, organized under the moniker Task Force 121, searched the farmhouse where Hussein had taken refuge, found the lid to the “spider hole” where he was hiding and extracted the bedraggled former Iraqi leader. The capture also netted $750,000 in cash and documents that U.S. officers say list the names of some anti-American insurgents operating in Iraq. Elements of the 4th Infantry Division also participated in the capture.
But Task Force 121 actually is the second version of a Special Operations effort organized to hunt down Hussein and his closest allies. An earlier unit, Task Force 20, failed to find Hussein, though Special Operations troops did take part in the lengthy July shootout in Mosul that ended in the deaths of Hussein’s two powerful sons, Udai and Qusai.
The increased reliance on Special Operations teams has invited questions about the cost of their activities, and just how that money is accounted for. The Defense Department’s inspector general is examining the movement of about $25 million from the department into the Special Operations Command budget, suspicious that defense officials were using the secretive command’s accounts to “park” money that could be used later.
And an April audit by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, criticized the command’s oversight of a Navy SEAL mini-submarine project, which it said would cost $2 billion for six subs, a price far beyond original estimates of $80 million per ship.
A separate GAO audit in September concluded that 92 percent of Special Operations troops do not have adequate foreign-language training.
Though present in one form or another since World War II, the role of Special Operations was limited during the 1991 Persian Gulf war and throughout the 1990s.
Today’s force is made up of Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and Air Force special mission units. Task Force 121 in Iraq also includes CIA paramilitary troops, many of whom are former Special Operations soldiers.
Supporting role evolves
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Special Operations teams had a supporting role, a group of elite forces drawn from each service to facilitate the activities of the conventional military. The command has seven primary areas of responsibility, including “direct action” in hostile territory, unconventional or guerrilla warfare, training foreign troops and counterterrorism.
Successes often are kept secret, but critics are quick to note failures, such as Operation Eagle Claw, the disastrous April 1980 effort to free more than 50 American hostages held by Iranian revolutionaries. Eight Americans died when fire engulfed an American C-130 aircraft and a U.S. helicopter in Iran’s Great Salt Desert.
Over the past decade, military leaders have been reluctant to commit the force.
“We were pouring billions of dollars into them and using them very seldom for serious operational work,” said Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Whenever the suggestion was made that they should be used for a particular project, it was often slow-rolled by the Pentagon. It was a matter of great frustration to civilian officials.”
Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and the decision by President Bush to move quickly against Al Qaeda training camps and the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan.
“Sept. 11 triggered it,” said Robert Andrews, former principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and low-intensity conflict. “The Special Operations forces were an overnight success that took 50 years to happen.”
In Afghanistan, Special Operations teams that had been training forces in nearby Uzbekistan crossed the border, linked up with the Northern Alliance, a collection of forces opposed to the governing Taliban, and marched on the capital, Kabul. Within just 38 days they marched into the city.
Rumsfeld takes notice
That success brought the command a new part to play in the war on terrorism, and the swift endorsement of Rumsfeld and his planners.
In Iraq, nearly 5,000 Special Operations forces moved into the remote western and northern parts of the country before the war. Especially in the north, where Turkey had prevented the use of its bases and roads to move the Army’s 4th Infantry Division into Iraq, the Special Operations units proved effective when teamed up with Kurdish pesh merga fighters.
Iraq has put Special Operations on a new level within the military. While conducting manhunts, the forces also are pursuing intelligence on local anti-American forces, working in almost every area considered active by the military.
But the intensity of the fighting in Iraq has a potential downside for the command’s other missions.
Currently, Special Operations teams are operating in a number of foreign locales, including Djibouti, Kenya and along the Afghan border with Pakistan.
With searches on for Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda operatives, there is a chance that Special Operations will be used increasingly to find, capture or kill targets, dropping other responsibilities, such as working with foreign troops or reconnaissance.
“They’re just using them more, and not being timid about throwing them into the fray,” said retired Brig. Gen. David Grange, a Special Forces veteran who is vice president of the McCormick Tribune Foundation in Chicago.
“They’re being used more with conventional forces than they have been in the past, and it’s almost seamless, ” he said.
For Special Operations veterans, that is not a problem. The Iraq and Afghanistan missions, they say, demand units such as the ones they have long promoted. Those conflicts, and the changing nature of modern warfare, have made Special Operations essential.
“Task Force 121 were actually the ones who pulled Saddam out of the hole,” said Andrews, the former Pentagon official. “They can’t be denied a role anymore.”
