23 September 2007

Special Operations



President Bush would not talk about the raid, and I don't blame him. He was asked three times in the press conference last Thursday, and each time he declined to comment.

Others are eager to talk, though not officially. The Times of London has a fine article about Operation Orchid this morning, and highlights the importance of Special Operations forces. The same paper carries the continuing story of the Blackwater affair in Baghdad, which is now far beyond a case of public force by a private entity and has entered into the realm of national sovereignty.

The core of the Blackwater business model is providing security personnel with extraordinary training and mission focus. These characteristics weres, at least originally, derived from the specialized training of the Army and Navy elite units; the Special Forces and SEALs. Blackwater has moved on to provide its own training syllabus, but from the President of the company on down, the corporate rank-and-file acquired their job skills through the government.

In that regard, the origin of the American special commandos can be traced back to John Kennedy, who chartered the Army to establish an elite corps of warriors to deal with a troubling insurgency in a place called Vietnam. The concept was to produce small units capable of independent operations through intense training, uncommon endurance, and with the ability to think and act decisively.

None of these factors were known as the hallmark of the draft-era Army.

There has been a long tradition of American special warriors, from the Revolutionary War Roger's Rangers to the celebrated WWII Merrill's Marauders. These units have nearly all been “ad hoc” formations that disappeared when the conflicts that required their services were over.

In establishing the Special Forces, Kennedy was almost certainly thinking of the capabilities resident in a special component whose members are drawn largely from Her Majesty's Parachute Regiment- The Special Air Services, or SAS. That small unit was renowned for its success against the Nazis in long-range desert reconnaissance in North Africa, and continued its quiet work in the decades that followed as the Empire was dismantled. Their successes were kept as national secrets, though it achieved a mythic status in the 1980 hostage rescue at the Iranian embassy in London, televised live to a breathless world.

The requirement for hard-eyed quiet warriors has been recognized everywhere. The Russian have the Spetzialnaya Naznachenya, or SPETZNAZ, for short, a force that emerged in the Russian war in Afghanistan as the elite deep reconnaissance capability of the Red Army.

The Israeli Army has a similar capability, modeled on the SAS, and established in 1957. The unit even shared the same motto, “Who dares, Wins.” It is called the Sayeret Matkal, and its existence is an official secret. That is why people are reluctant to talk about what happened near the northern border in Syria near Dayr az-Zawr. An act of war is a not something to be undertaken lightly, and like the famous attack on the Osirak nuclear facility near Baghdad in June, 1981.

The unit apparently was tasked to provide proof that materials associated with North Korea's nuclear weapons program were being assembled there. They apparently did so, and Washington agreed to acquiesce to unilateral action by the Israelis.

The site in Syria had been under surveillance for several months, and Israel had precisely the same motivation as it did for the attack on Iraq. It was considered a matter of national survival.

It is a matter that is more than tangentially related to the war on terror, since there can be nothing more terrifying than nuclear weapons available to be smuggled into the capitals of the West. The urgency associated with the agreement with North Korea to terminate its weapons program provided Pyongyang the opportunity to migrate the technology to the other nation with a major interest, Iran, via the most useful surrogate, Syria.
 
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is an alumni of the Sayeret Matkal, as is former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was suspected by early summer that material and personnel were in transit, and logical that the commandoes be tasked with providing the justification for the strike, and then provide the laser designation to ensure that the smart bombs arrived precisely where they were intended to go.

The raid went on the 6th of September, with extraordinary secrecy. The Israelis all came home safely. The North Koreans and Syrians at the site did not.

President Bush refused to comment on the matter, though he did take the time to warn North Korea that the transfer of nuclear materials would put food and fuel relief at risk. It is always a difficult task to deal with the Northerners, and diplomacy relies on a certain amount of trust, which is entirely unwarrented. The Chinese are sadi to be concerned.

It is not just about nuclear technology, though that has been at the top of the list of problems. There are reports from Jane's Defence Weekly that Iranian and Syrian technicians were killed in a mishap associated with mustard gas and SCUD missiles in July. The rockets and the warheads are likely of North Korean manufacture, and are being exported with haste on the principal of “use it or lose it.” An earlier massive and still-mysterious railway explosion in North Korea in April of 2004 may also have included Syrian casualties.

Since the death of President Hafiz al Asad in June of 2000, his son has held the reigns of power. His judgment has been notoriously bad, or at least seriously under the influence of the Iranians. His nation has served as a highway of weapons re-supply to Hezballah forces in the Bekaa Valley and south Lebanon. He apparently is also happy to serve as a conduit between North Korea and Tehran.

The latest round in this complex and secret puzzle appears to go to Israel's hard-eyed men. But it is not over, not by a long shot.

Everyone has special operations forces, including the Syrians and the Iranians included. The next move will be up to them.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Close Window