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<\/a>U.S. Special Operations Forces around the world, 2012-2013 (key below article) \u00a92014 TomDispatch \u00a9Google<\/p><\/div>\n
I started with a blank map that quickly turned into a global pincushion.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take long before every continent but Antarctica was bristling with markers indicating special operations forces\u2019 missions, deployments, and interactions with foreign military forces in 2012-2013.\u00a0 With that, the true size and scope of the U.S. military\u2019s secret military began to come into focus. \u00a0It was, to say the least, vast.<\/p>\n
A review of open source information reveals that in 2012 and 2013, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) were likely deployed to — or training, advising, or operating with the personnel of — more than 100 foreign countries.\u00a0 \u00a0And that\u2019s probably an undercount.\u00a0 In 2011, then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch<\/a> that Special Operations personnel were annually sent to 120 countries around the world. They were in, that is, about 60% of the nations on the planet.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re deployed in a number of locations,\u201d was as specific as Bockholt would ever get when I talked to him in the waning days of 2013. And when SOCOM did finally get back to me with an eleventh hour answer, the number offered made almost no sense.<\/p>\n Despite the lack of official cooperation, an analysis by TomDispatch reveals SOCOM to be a command on the make with an already sprawling reach. As Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven<\/a> put it in SOCOM 2020<\/em>, his blueprint for the future, it has ambitious aspirations to create \u201ca Global SOF network of like-minded interagency allies and partners.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, in that future now only six years off, it wants to be everywhere.<\/p>\n The Rise of the Military\u2019s Secret Military<\/strong><\/p>\n Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran (in which eight U.S. service members died), U.S. Special Operations Command was established in 1987.\u00a0 Made up of units from all the service branches, SOCOM is tasked with carrying out Washington\u2019s most specialized and secret missions, including assassinations<\/a>, counterterrorist raids, special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, psychological operations, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.<\/p>\n In the post-9\/11 era, the command has grown steadily.\u00a0 With about 33,000 personnel in 2001, it is reportedly<\/a> on track to reach 72,000 in 2014.\u00a0 (About half this number are called, in the jargon of the trade, \u201cbadged operators\u201d — SEALs, Rangers, Special Operations Aviators, Green Berets — while the rest are support personnel.)\u00a0 Funding for the command has also jumped exponentially as SOCOM\u2019s baseline budget tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.9 billion between 2001 and 2013.\u00a0 If you add in supplemental funding, it had actually <\/strong>more than <\/strong>quadrupled to $10.4 billion.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, personnel deployments abroad skyrocketed from 4,900 \u201cman-years\u201d — as the command puts it — in 2001 to 11,500 in 2013.\u00a0 About 11,000<\/a> special operators are now working abroad at any one time and on any given day they are in 70<\/a> to 80 countries, though the New York Times<\/em> reported that, according to statistics provided to them by SOCOM, during one week in March 2013 that number reached 92<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Global SOF Network<\/strong><\/p>\n Last year, Admiral McRaven, who previously headed the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC<\/a> — a clandestine sub-command that specializes in tracking and killing suspected terrorists — touted his vision for special ops globalization.\u00a0 In a statement to the House Armed Services Committee, he said:<\/p>\n \u201cUSSOCOM is enhancing its global network of SOF to support our interagency and international partners in order to gain expanded situational awareness of emerging threats and opportunities. The network enables small, persistent presence in critical locations, and facilitates engagement where necessary or appropriate…\u201d<\/p>\n In translation this means that SOCOM is weaving a complex web of alliances with government agencies at home and militaries abroad to ensure that it\u2019s at the center of every conceivable global hotspot and power center.\u00a0 In fact, Special Operations Command has turned the planet into a giant battlefield, divided into many discrete fronts: the self-explanatory SOCAFRICA; the sub-unified command of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East SOCCENT; the European contingent SOCEUR; SOCKOR, which is devoted strictly to Korea; SOCPAC, which covers the rest of the Asia-Pacific region; and SOCSOUTH, which conducts special ops missions in Central and South America and the Caribbean, as well as the globe-trotting JSOC.<\/p>\n Since 2002, SOCOM has also been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces, a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM.\u00a0 These include\u00a0Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, 500-600 personnel dedicated to supporting<\/a> counterterrorist operations by Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Abu Sayyaf.<\/p>\n A similar mouthful of an entity is the NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan\/Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan, which conducts operations, according to SOCOM, \u201cto enable the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF), and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) to provide the Afghan people a secure and stable environment and to prevent insurgent activities from threatening the authority and sovereignty of GIRoA.\u201d\u00a0 Last year, U.S.-allied Afghan President Ha\u00admid Karzai had a different assessment of the \u201cU.S. special force stationed in Wardak province,\u201d which he accused<\/a> of \u201charassing, annoying, torturing, and even murdering innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the latest statistics made available by ISAF, from October 2012 through March 2013, U.S. and allied forces were involved in 1,464 special operations in Afghanistan, including 167 with U.S. or coalition forces in the lead and 85 that were unilateral ISAF operations.\u00a0 U.S. Special Operations forces are also involved in everything from mentoring lightly armed local security forces under the Village Stability Operations initiative to the training of heavily armed and well-equipped elite Afghan forces — one of whose U.S.-trained officers defected<\/a> to the insurgency in the fall.<\/p>\n In addition to task forces, there are also Special Operations Command Forward (SOC FWD) elements which, according to the military, \u201cshape and coordinate special operations forces security cooperation and engagement in support of theater special operations command, geographic combatant command, and country team goals and objectives.\u201d\u00a0 These light footprint teams — including SOC FWD Pakistan, SOC FWD Yemen, and SOC FWD Lebanon — offer training and support to local elite troops in foreign hotspots.\u00a0 In Lebanon, for instance, this has meant counterterrorism training for Lebanese Special Ops forces, as well as assistance to the Lebanese Special Forces School to develop indigenous trainers to mentor other Lebanese military personnel.<\/p>\n Click here to see a larger version<\/a><\/b><\/em><\/p>\n Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) briefing slide by Col. Joe Osborne, showing SOC FWD elements<\/p><\/div>\n SOCOM\u2019s reach and global ambitions go further still.\u00a0 TomDispatch\u2019s analysis of McRaven\u2019s first two full years in command reveals a tremendous number of overseas operations.\u00a0 In places like Somalia<\/a> and Libya<\/a>, elite troops have carried out clandestine commando raids<\/a>.\u00a0 In others, they have used airpower<\/a> to hunt, target, and kill<\/a> suspected militants.\u00a0 Elsewhere, they have waged an information war using online propaganda<\/a>.\u00a0 And almost everywhere they have been at work building up and forging ever-tighter ties with foreign militaries through training missions and exercises.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of what we will do as we go forward in this force is build partner capacity,\u201d McRaven said<\/a> at the Ronald Reagan Library in November, noting that NATO partners as well as allies in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America \u00a0\u201care absolutely essential to how we\u2019re doing business.\u201d<\/p>\n In March 2013, for example, Navy SEALs conducted joint training exercises<\/a> with Indonesian frogmen.\u00a0 In April and May, U.S. Special Operations personnel joined members of the Malawi Defense Forces for Exercise Epic Guardian.\u00a0 Over three weeks, 1,000 troops engaged in marksmanship, small unit tactics, close quarters combat training, and other activities across three countries — Djibouti, Malawi, and the Seychelles.<\/p>\n In May, American special operators took part<\/a> in Spring Storm, the Estonian military\u2019s largest annual training exercise.\u00a0 That same month, members of the Peruvian and U.S. special operations forces engaged in joint training missions aimed at trading tactics and improving their ability to conduct joint operations.\u00a0 In July, Green Berets from the Army\u2019s 20th Special Forces Group spent several weeks in Trinidad and Tobago working with members of that tiny nation\u2019s Special Naval Unit and Special Forces Operation Detachment.\u00a0 That Joint Combined Exchange Training exercise, conducted as part of SOCSOUTH\u2019s Theater Security Cooperation program, saw the Americans and their local counterparts take part in pistol and rifle instruction and small unit tactical exercises.<\/p>\n In September, according<\/a> to media reports, U.S. Special Operations forces joined elite troops from the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Cambodia — as well as their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Russia for a US-Indonesian joint-funded coun\u00adterterrorism exercise held at a training center in Sentul, West Java.<\/p>\n Tactical training was, however, just part of the story.\u00a0 In March 2013, for example, experts from the Army\u2019s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School hosted a week-long working group with top planners from the Centro de Adiestramiento de las Fuerzas Especiales — Mexico\u2019s Special Warfare Center — to aid them in developing their own special forces doctrine.<\/p>\n In October, members of the Norwegian Special Operations Forces traveled to SOCOM’s state-of-the-art Wargame Center at its headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to refine crisis response procedures for hostage rescue operations.\u00a0 \u201cNORSOF and Norwegian civilian leadership regularly participate in national field training exercises focused on a scenario like this,\u201d said Norwegian Lieutenant Colonel Petter Hellesen. \u201cWhat was unique about this exercise was that we were able to gather so many of the Norwegian senior leadership and action officers, civilian and military, in one room with their U.S counterparts.\u201d<\/p>\n MacDill is, in fact, fast becoming a worldwide special ops hub, according<\/a> to a report by the Tampa Tribune<\/em>.\u00a0 This past fall, SOCOM quietly started up an International Special Operations Forces Coordination Center that provides long-term residencies for senior-level black ops liaisons from around the world.\u00a0 Already, representatives from 10 nations had joined the command with around 24 more slated to come on board in the next 12-18 months, per McRaven\u2019s global vision.<\/p>\n In the coming years, more and more interactions between U.S. elite forces and their foreign counterparts will undoubtedly take place in Florida, but most will likely still occur — as they do today — overseas.\u00a0 TomDispatch\u2019s analysis of official government documents and news releases as well as press reports indicates that U.S. Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed to or involved with the militaries of 106 nations around the world during 2012-2013.<\/p>\n For years, the command has claimed that divulging the names of these countries would upset foreign allies and endanger U.S. personnel.\u00a0 SOCOM\u2019s Bockholt insisted to me that merely offering the total number would do the same.\u00a0 \u201cYou understand that there is information about our military\u2026 that is contradictory to reporting,\u201d he told me.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s certain things we can\u2019t release to the public for the safety of our service members both at home and abroad. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure why you\u2019d be interested in reporting that.\u201d<\/p>\n In response, I asked how a mere number could jeopardize the lives of Special Ops personnel, and he responded, \u201cWhen you work with the partners we work with in the different countries, each country is very particular.\u201d\u00a0 He refused to elaborate further on what this meant or how it pertained to a simple count of countries.\u00a0 Why SOCOM eventually offered me a number, given these supposed dangers, was never explained.<\/p>\n Bringing the War Home<\/strong><\/p>\n This year, Special Operations Command has plans to make major inroads into yet another country — the United States.\u00a0 The establishment of SOCNORTH in 2014, according to the command, is intended to help \u201cdefend North America by outpacing all threats, maintaining faith with our people, and supporting them in their times of greatest need.\u201d\u00a0 Under the auspices of U.S. Northern Command, SOCNORTH will have responsibility for the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and portions of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n While Congressional pushback<\/a> has thus far thwarted<\/a> Admiral McRaven\u2019s efforts to create a SOCOM satellite headquarters for the more than 300 special operators working in Washington, D.C. (at the cost of $10 million annually), the command has nonetheless stationed support teams and liaisons all over the capital in a bid to embed itself ever more deeply inside the Beltway.\u00a0 \u201cI have folks in every agency here in Washington, D.C. — from the CIA, to the FBI, to the National Security Agency, to the National Geospatial Agency, to the Defense Intelligence Agency,\u201d McRaven said<\/a> during a panel discussion at Washington\u2019s Wilson Center in 2013.\u00a0 Referring to the acronyms of the many agencies with which SOCOM has forged ties, McRaven continued: \u201cIf there are three letters, and in some cases four, I have a person there. And they have had a reciprocal agreement with us. I have somebody in my headquarters at Tampa.\u201d\u00a0 Speaking at Ronald Reagan Library in November, he put the number of agencies where SOCOM is currently embedded<\/a> at 38.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the importance of interagency collaboration, USSOCOM is placing greater emphasis on its presence in the National Capital Region to better support coordination and decision making with interagency partners.\u00a0 Thus, USSOCOM began to consolidate its presence in the NCR [National Capitol Region] <\/strong>in early 2012,\u201d McRaven told the House Armed Services Committee last year.<\/p>\n One unsung SOCOM partner is U.S. AID<\/a>, the government agency devoted to providing civilian foreign aid to countries around the world whose mandate includes the protection of human rights, the prevention of armed conflicts, the provision of humanitarian assistance, and the fostering of \u201cgood will abroad.\u201d\u00a0 At a July 2013 conference<\/a>, Beth Cole, the director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at U.S. AID, explained just how her agency was now quietly aiding the military\u2019s secret military.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Yemen, for example, our mission director has SVTCs [secure video teleconferences] with SOCOM personnel on a regular basis now. That didn\u2019t occur two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago,\u201d Cole said, according to a transcript of the event. \u00a0But that was only the start.\u00a0 \u201cMy office at U.S. AID supports SOF pre-deployment training in preparation for missions throughout the globe… I\u2019m proud that my office and U.S. AID have been providing training support to several hundred Army, Navy, and Marine Special Operations personnel who have been regularly deploying to Afghanistan, and we will continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Cole noted that, in Afghanistan, U.S. AID personnel were sometimes working hand-in-hand on the Village Stability Operation initiative with Special Ops forces. \u00a0In certain areas, she said, \u201cwe can dual-hat some of our field program officers as LNOs [liaison officers] in those Joint Special Operations task forces and be able to execute the development work that we need to do alongside of the Special Operations Forces.\u201d\u00a0 She even suggested taking a close look at whether this melding of her civilian agency and special ops might prove to be a model for operations elsewhere in the world.<\/p>\n Cole also mentioned that her office would be training \u201ca senior person\u201d working for McRaven, the man about to \u201chead the SOF element Lebanon\u201d — possibly a reference to the shadowy SOC FWD Lebanon. \u00a0U.S. AID would, she said, serve as a facilitator in that country, making \u201csure that he has those relationships that he needs to be able to deal with what is a very, very, very serious problem for our government and for the people of that region.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. AID is also serving as a facilitator closer to home.\u00a0 Cole noted that her agency was sending advisors to SOCOM headquarters in Florida and had \u201carranged meetings for [special operators] with experts, done roundtables for them, immersed them in the environment that we understand before they go out to the mission area and connect them with people on the ground.\u201d\u00a0 All of this points to another emerging trend: SOCOM\u2019s invasion of the civilian sphere.<\/p>\n In remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral McRaven noted that his Washington operation, the SOCOM NCR, \u201cconducts outreach to academia, non-governmental organizations, industry, and other private sector organizations to get their perspective on complex issues affecting SOF.\u201d\u00a0 Speaking at the Wilson Center, he was even more blunt: \u201c[W]e also have liaison officers with industry and with academia… We put some of our best and brightest in some of the academic institutions so we can understand what academia is thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n SOCOM\u2019s Information Warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n Not content with a global presence in the physical world, SOCOM has also taken to cyberspace where it operates<\/a> the Trans Regional Web Initiative<\/a>, a network of 10 propaganda websites that are run by various combatant commands and made to look like legitimate news outlets.\u00a0 These shadowy sites — including KhabarSouthAsia.com<\/a>, Magharebia<\/a> which targets North Africa, an effort aimed at the Middle East known as Al-Shorfa.com<\/a>, and another targeting Latin America called Infosurhoy.com — state only in fine print that they are \u201csponsored by\u201d the U.S. military.<\/p>\n Last June, the Senate Armed Services Committee called out<\/a> the Trans Regional Web Initiative for \u201cexcessive\u201d costs while stating<\/a> that the \u201ceffectiveness of the websites is questionable and the performance metrics do not justify the expense.\u201d\u00a0 In November, SOCOM announced that it was nonetheless seeking to identify industry partners who, under the Initiative, could potentially \u201cdevelop new websites tailored to foreign audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n Just as SOCOM is working to influence audiences abroad, it is also engaged in stringent information control at home — at least when it comes to me.\u00a0 Major Bockholt made it clear that SOCOM objected to a 2011 article<\/a> of mine about U.S. Special Operations forces.\u00a0 \u201cSome of that stuff was inconsistent with actual facts,\u201d he told me.\u00a0 I asked what exactly was inconsistent.\u00a0 \u201cSome of the stuff you wrote about JSOC\u2026 I think I read some information about indiscriminate killing or things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n I knew right away just the quote he was undoubtedly referring to — a mention of the Joint Special Operations Command\u2019s overseas kill\/capture campaign as \u201can almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.\u201d\u00a0 Bockholt said that it was indeed \u201cone quote of concern.\u201d\u00a0 The only trouble: I didn\u2019t say it.\u00a0 It was, as I stated very plainly in the piece, the assessment given<\/a> by John Nagl, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former counterinsurgency adviser to now-retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus.<\/p>\n Bockholt offered no further examples of inconsistencies.\u00a0 I asked if he challenged my characterization of any information from an interview I conducted with then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye.\u00a0 He did not.\u00a0 Instead, he explained that SOCOM had issues with my work in general.\u00a0 \u201cAs we look at the characterization of your writing, overall, and I know you\u2019ve had some stuff on Vietnam [an apparent reference to my bestselling book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam<\/em><\/a>] and things like that — because of your style, we have to be very particular on how we answer your questions because of how you tend to use that information.\u201d Bockholt then asked if I was anti-military.\u00a0 I responded that I hold all subjects that I cover to a high standard.<\/p>\n Bockholt next took a verbal swipe at the website where I\u2019m managing editor, TomDispatch.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Given Special Operations Command\u2019s penchant for dabbling in dubious new sites, I was struck when he said that TomDispatch — which has published original news, analysis, and commentary for more than a decade and won<\/a> the 2013 Utne Media Award for \u201cbest political coverage\u201d — was not a \u201creal outlet.\u201d\u00a0 It was, to me, a daring position to take when SOCOM\u2019s shadowy Middle Eastern news <\/em>site Al-Shorfa.com<\/a> actually carries a disclaimer that it \u201ccannot guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.\u201d<\/p>\n With my deadline looming, I was putting the finishing touches on this article when an email arrived from Mike Janssen of SOCOM Public Affairs.\u00a0 It was — finally — a seemingly simple answer to what seemed like an astonishingly straightforward question asked a more than a month before: What was the total number of countries in which Special Operations forces were deployed in 2013?\u00a0 Janssen was concise. His answer: 80.<\/p>\n How, I wondered, could that be?\u00a0 In the midst of McRaven\u2019s Global SOF network initiative, could SOCOM have scaled back their deployments from 120 in 2011 to just 80 last year?\u00a0 And if Special Operations forces were deployed in 92 nations during just one week in 2013, according to official statistics provided<\/a> to the New York Times<\/em>, how could they have been present in 12 fewer countries for the entire year?\u00a0 And why, in his March 2013 posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee, would Admiral McRaven mention “annual deployments to over 100 countries?”\u00a0 With minutes to spare, I called Mike Janssen for a clarification.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t have any information on that,\u201d he told me and asked me to submit my question in writing — precisely what I had done more than a month before in an effort to get a timely response to this straightforward and essential question.<\/p>\n Today, Special Operations Command finds itself at a crossroads.\u00a0 It is attempting to influence populations overseas, while at home trying to keep Americans in the dark about its activities; expanding its reach, impact, and influence, while working to remain deep in the shadows; conducting operations all over the globe, while professing only to be operating in \u201ca number of locations\u201d; claiming worldwide deployments have markedly dropped in the last year, when evidence<\/a> suggests otherwise<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI know what you\u2019re trying to do,\u201d Bockholt said cryptically before he hung up on me — as if the continuing questions of a reporter trying to get answers to basic information after a month of waiting were beyond the pale.\u00a0 In the meantime, whatever Special Operations Command is trying to do globally and at home, Bockholt and others at SOCOM are working to keep it as secret as possible.<\/p>\n Key to the Map of U.S. Special Operations Forces around the world, 2012-2013<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Red markers: <\/strong>U.S. Special Operations Forces deployment in 2013.<\/p>\n Blue markers: <\/strong>U.S. Special Operations Forces working with\/training\/advising\/conducting operations with indigenous troops in the U.S. or a third country during 2013.<\/p>\n Purple markers: <\/strong>U.S. Special Operations Forces deployment in 2012.<\/p>\n Yellow markers: <\/strong>U.S. Special Operations Forces working with\/training\/advising\/conducting operations with indigenous troops in the U.S. or a third country during 2012.<\/p>\n ______________________________<\/p>\n Nick Turse is the managing editor of <\/em>TomDispatch.com<\/em><\/a> and a fellow at the Nation Institute.\u00a0 An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the <\/em>New York Times<\/a>, <\/em>Los Angeles Times<\/a>, the<\/em> Nation<\/a>, on the<\/em> BBC<\/em><\/a>, and <\/em>regularly<\/em><\/a> at TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the <\/em>New York Times bestseller <\/em>Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam<\/a> (just out in paperback).\u00a0 You can catch his conversation with Bill Moyers about that book by <\/em>clicking here<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Copyright 2013 Nick Turse<\/i><\/p>\n<\/a>