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Spec ops raids into Pakistan halted

U.S. special operations forces have paused ground operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas, but military and civilian government officials differ over why the cross-border raids have been halted.

The issue of U.S. raids into the tribal areas was thrust into the international spotlight by a Sept. 3 raid in Angor Adda, in the South Waziristan tribal agency, by Navy SEALs working for a Joint Special Operations Command task force. (JSOC is the secretive military organization that oversees the military’s special mission units such as the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta and the Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru, also known as SEAL Team 6.)

“We have shown a willingness starting this year to pursue those kinds of missions,” said a Pentagon official. However, he said, after temporarily granting JSOC greater latitude to conduct cross-border missions, U.S. leaders had decided to again restrain the command, at least as far as raids using ground troops are concerned, to allow Pakistani forces to press home their attacks on militants in the tribal areas.

“We are now working with the Pakistanis to make sure that those type of ground-type insertions do not happen, at least for a period of time to give them an opportunity to do what they claim they are desiring to do,” the Pentagon official said, adding that this did not apply to air strikes launched from unmanned aerial vehicles at targets inside the tribal areas.

Although JSOC is the organization tasked, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, with finding and killing or capturing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sept. 3 raid was not aimed at “a huge type of target,” the Pentagon official said. “There were just consistent problems in that area that had come to a point where there was significant evidence that there was complicity on the part of the [Pakistani military’s] Frontier Corps and others in allowing repetitive raids and activities to go on. And there was a firm desire to, one, send a message, and two, also establish any intelligence audit that could be established that would be useful to respond to a frequent question that we get from the other side of the border, which is, ‘Well, show us and tell us where the problem is, then we’ll deal with it.’”

But a U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region said the military had underestimated the Pakistani response and was reconsidering its options.

The official’s comments were echoed by a field grade special operations officer with Afghanistan experience. The Sept. 3 raid “was an opportunity to see how the new Pakistani government reacted,” the officer said. “If they didn’t do anything, they were just kind of fairly passive, like [former Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf was … then we felt like, okay, we can slowly up the ante, we can do maybe some more of these ops. But the backlash that happened, and especially the backlash in the diplomatic channels, was pretty severe.”

The raid represented “a strategic miscalculation,” the U.S. government official said. “We did not fully appreciate the vehemence of the Pakistani response,” which included the Pakistan government’s implication that it was willing to cut the coalition’s supply lines through Pakistan. “I don’t think we really believed it was going to go to that level,” the government official said.

The military’s comments about the Sept. 3 raid sending a message represented a smokescreen, said the government official, who added that the mission “was meant to be the beginning of a campaign.” “We miscalculated, and now we’re trying to figure out how to walk the dog back. One way to do that is to say, ‘Oh well, we wanted to send a message; we’ve now sent that message, and so we’re going to not send it as much in the future, yet we’re still sort of leaving it on the table, because as we all know, we never admit to a mistake.’

“Once the Pakistanis started talking about closing down our supply routes, and actually demonstrated they could do it, once they started talking about shooting American helicopters, we obviously had to take seriously that maybe this [approach] was not going to be good enough,” the government official said. “We can’t sustain ourselves in Afghanistan without the Pakistani supply routes. At the end of the day, we had to not let our tactics get in the way of our strategy. … As much as it may be good to get some of these bad guys, we can’t do it at the expense of being able to sustain ourselves in Afghanistan, obviously.

“Senior uniformed people recognize that,” as do senior officials in the State Department and the intelligence agencies, the U.S. government official said. In the latter categories, the official said, “People are looking at this in terms of its propensity for destabilizing the situation in Pakistan and unifying all these disparate anti-this and anti-that elements into one anti-American element in Pakistan.”

“The raid got a lot more attention than they expected,” a Washington source in government said. “They do have to walk it back and go about it a different way, because obviously that didn’t work. … We can’t afford these backlashes every time a raid occurs.” However, the Washington source added, “I don’t think there’s been another strategic decision to back off.” Instead, JSOC would “go about it a different way.”

U.S. Central Command spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith declined to comment for this story.

Under questioning on Capitol Hill on Sept. 23, Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not deny that U.S. forces had made cross-border strikes.

“We will do what is necessary to protect our troops,” he said, acknowledging the Pentagon had been granted “authorities” for such action.

Into tribal areas

The Sept. 3 raid was not the first time JSOC forces have launched into the tribal areas. In the past, small JSOC elements have operated with the Pakistani Special Services Group in the tribal areas, and the special operations officer with Afghanistan experience said he was aware of “two or three” cross-border operations similar to the Angor Adda raid. “They have happened, but it was by no means a common occurrence,” he said.

However, said the government official closely involved with Afghanistan/Pakistan policy, JSOC “has been pushing hard for several years” to step up their raids into the tribal areas, said the U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. JSOC’s argument has been “Give us greater latitude, we’ve got to hit where their sanctuaries are,” the official said.

“In the wake of the increased Taliban attacks we’ve seen over the last several months and the sense of frustration that we haven’t been more successful, their point of view has finally gained traction,” the government official said.

Two government sources identified the Taliban’s July 13 attack on a U.S. outpost in the Korengal valley as a turning point in the debate.

“Clearly we saw what happened in the Korengal valley as a watershed moment,” said the government official closely involved with policy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Together with the Taliban’s July 7 bombing of the Indian embassy and their Jan. 14 attack on the Serena hotel (both in Kabul city) and the June 13 escape of an estimated 900 inmates, including perhaps 400 Taliban from a Kandahar jail, the Korengal fight gave the impression that things were spinning out of control.

“Suddenly you have an American outpost — not Canadian or British or Dutch — that is almost overrun,” the official said.

Busier op tempo, more targets

The Sept. 3 raid into Pakistan is part of a heightened operational tempo for JSOC forces based in Afghanistan, several sources said. JSOC’s target list has expanded from the original “big three” of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar to a broader list that includes figures in the Taliban-allied network of Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami group (sometimes referred to as HiG by the U.S. military).

The U.S. government official involved with policy in the area described JSOC’s targets as fitting into two categories: the “big guys” with whom the U.S. has “unfinished business” and “those people that threaten us operationally and tactically on the ground right now.”

Several sources said the Sept. 3 raid appeared to have been aimed at the Haqqani network, along with some of its Uzbek allies.

“Because of the nature of those types of operations, there generally has to be — and in this case there was — an involvement of a foreign fighter element,” the Pentagon official said. “And the traditional ones in that area are the Uzbeks and the Chechens. Their interpenetration with Talibs in that area is the mixture that is most at play.”

JSOC is “targeting a range of actors, but one of the big ones is Haqqani,” said a civilian expert on Afghanistan, adding that targeting the Haqqani network represented “payback” for its alleged involvement in the Indian embassy bombing, the hotel attack in Kabul and an assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The U.S. government official closely involved with policy in the region agreed that U.S. forces were targeting Haqqani as “payback,” but also because the network — now mostly controlled by Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin — “is seen as … the low-hanging fruit,” because its bases in Waziristan are more easily accessible than the mountainous terrain of the Bajaur tribal agency where Hekmatyar’s fighters operate.

“None of the JSOC activity has been going on in the areas around the sanctuary for Mullah Omar’s Taliban,” which is located in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta, the civilian expert on Afghanistan said. “It’s all happening in the tribal areas… The target has not been the Omar Taliban.”

The government official closely involved with policy in the region agreed that the change in the rules of engagement that allowed JSOC to operate more freely across the border applied only to the tribal areas, and not to “Pakistan proper.”

As a result, he said “The cross-border activity, by virtue of where these target sets are located, favors actions against HiG and against the Haqqani network, and not against the Quetta Shura [of Mullah Omar].”

A senior military official said that the JSOC task force was using a similar approach along the border to that which served JSOC so well in Iraq: a combination of technical and human intelligence driving multiple missions per night, with each target quickly exploited for intelligence that then prompts further missions.

But the Taliban are not standing still, according to the government official involved with policy in the region. “Both sides have taken the gloves off and are going at it hard,” the official said.

The increased pace of operations has come with a significant cost: Three DevGru SEALs have died in Afghanistan in recent weeks: Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Harris, who drowned while crossing a river Aug. 30, and Senior Chief Petty Officer John Wayne Marcum and Chief Petty Officer (select) Jason Richard Freiwald, who both died Sept. 12 of injuries suffered in combat Sept. 11.

The two DevGru casualties who died Sept. 12 were killed “on the Afghan side of the border in one of those small, minor ambush-type things,” the Pentagon official said.

When JSOC forces cross the border into Pakistan, they do so only after receiving clearances from the highest levels of the U.S. government, sources said. However, exactly who has the authority to approve JSOC’s missions into Pakistan is shrouded in secrecy.

Asked at what level JSOC’s cross-border missions must be authorized, the Pentagon official said he knew the answer, but added, “I can’t talk to you about that, given the level of classification.” However, he said, the authority rested far above the JSOC task force commander in Afghanistan.

“It’s long been that way,” the Pentagon official said. “That’s not done in a cavalier [way] or without a very high level of authority. … Neither the aerial-type missions nor the ground-type missions, short of hot pursuit, which has some very finite restrictions on it, can take place without there being a high level of authority.”

The Washington source in government said the issue’s sensitivity was related to diplomacy. “There’s a very linear chain of command … but it can make things diplomatically stressful if these things are made public,” the source said.

“Even a missile strike requires the highest level of authority,” a special operations officer with Afghanistan experience said.

Asked who would have to sign off on a mission into Pakistan, he replied: “The president, no doubt in my mind. The president.”