Dirty Wars (42 page)

An incident in June 2008 underscored the risks associated with a potential expansion of US special operations activity in Pakistan. A battle between US and Taliban forces in Afghanistan's Kunar Province spilled over into Pakistan. US forces called in air support and American choppers descended, launching missiles at the Taliban forces. The strikes also killed eleven Pakistani soldiers positioned on their side of the border. The action was denounced by Pakistan as an “
unprovoked and cowardly
” attack by the United States. “We will take a stand for sovereignty, integrity and self-respect,” Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani told parliament. “We will not allow our soil [to be attacked].” The fact was, Pakistan could not back up such declarations.

Two days after the incident, on June 13, 2008, Vice Admiral William McRaven assumed command of JSOC from General McChrystal, inheriting the role of running the hunt for bin Laden and other HVTs. The botched raid that killed the Pakistani soldiers clearly didn't faze him. McRaven, a former Navy SEAL team leader and McChrystal's deputy commander at JSOC, began advocating for wider latitude to strike in Pakistan. In July 2008, President Bush
approved a secret order
—which had been the subject of much debate among the CIA, State Department and Pentagon—authorizing US Special Ops Forces to carry out targeted kill or capture operations. Unlike the early arrangement with President Musharraf, the US Special Operations Forces would not be working alongside Pakistani forces and they would not seek permission from Pakistan's government before conducting strikes on Pakistani soil. “To soothe the worries of U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson about the mounting civilian deaths from JSOC raids in other countries, commandos brought her a Predator console so she could witness a raid in real time,” according to reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin. In August 2008, Musharraf, long a malleable US ally, resigned from office under threat of impeachment. JSOC's forces almost immediately began testing his successor. As a Special Operations source who worked with McRaven at the time told me, “
Bill rapidly expanded operations
” in Pakistan.

On September 3, 2008, two helicopters carried a team of JSOC Navy SEALs across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Backed by a high-powered AC-130 Spectre gunship, with the capacity to do serious damage, they descended
on a village near
Angoor Adda
, a small Pakistani mountain town in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. The helicopters landed quietly, and more than two dozen SEALs, equipped with night-vision goggles, took up positions around the home of a fifty-year-old woodcutter and cattle herder. Some reports suggest that the Special Ops team had intel that an al Qaeda leader was inside. The
Washington Post
reported that it was “the first US ground attack against a Taliban target inside the country.” In any case, once in position, the SEALs executed their raid.

What happened after the first shots were fired remains in dispute. According to US officials, “about
two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters
” were killed in “a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.” But
according to local villagers
, the SEALs opened fire, killing Payo Jan Wazir, the home's owner, along with six children, including a three-year-old girl, a two-year-old boy and two women. When Payo Jan's neighbors heard the gunfire and ran out to see what was happening, villagers said, the SEALs opened fire on them, killing ten more people. The Pakistani government said that all of the dead were civilians. The United States maintained they were al Qaeda militants. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador Patterson. In a statement it denounced the operation, calling it a “
gross violation of Pakistan's territory
” and a “grave provocation,” alleging the raid had caused “immense loss of civilian life.” The Foreign Ministry said it was “unfortunate” that US forces had “resorted to cross-border use of force against civilians,” asserting that “such actions are counter-productive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they undermine the very basis of cooperation and may fuel the fire of hatred and violence that we are trying to extinguish.”

After years of being directed to focus most of its resources on Iraq, JSOC was finally getting its chance to hit in a more concerted way in Pakistan. As it turned out, Rumsfeld's vision of the world as a battlefield was more fully realized after he left than when he was in power. His departure ushered in an era in which America's most potent dark side forces pivoted from Iraq to the US twilight wars in South Asia, Africa and beyond.

SOMALIA,
2007–2009—While much of the media focus on Somalia in early 2007 was on the Ethiopian invasion and occupation, JSOC was focused on hunting. It had quickly set up its makeshift “lily pad” at the discreet US base in Manda Bay, Kenya, in early January and was waiting to pounce. US war planners wanted the Ethiopian invasion to force the Islamic Courts Union leadership to flee the capital and head for strongholds, especially along the Kenyan border, where Task Force 88 could take them out. JSOC had AC-130 gunships positioned covertly at an airbase
near Dire Dawa
, Ethiopia, that could pummel retreating ICU leaders and foreign fighters, enabling follow-up JSOC teams based at Manda Bay to enter Somalia and finish the job, if necessary. US policy had boiled down to one mentality in Somalia: find, fix and finish. “
It's kinetic
, hard kill,” asserted Malcolm Nance. “If it's not hard kill, it doesn't get played, you know?”

On January 7, an
unarmed US Predator drone
launched from Camp Lemonnier flew into southern Somalia, tracked down a convoy of vehicles and broadcast a live feed of them back to task force commanders. A short time later, an AC-130 flew into Somalia and
strafed the convoy
just before it disappeared into a forest along the Kenya-Somalia border.
Reports suggested
that the target was Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, al Shabab's military commander; or Fazul or Nabhan, the East Africa
al Qaeda leader
s. US officials claimed the strike killed between eight and twelve fighters, and rumors spread of an “al Qaeda leader” being among the dead. US and Ethiopian intelligence sources believed it might have been Ayro or Abu Talha al Sudani, the al Qaeda financier. A JSOC team from Manda Bay landed at the site of the strike in Somalia to take DNA samples from the dead. There, among the corpses and wreckage, they found Ayro's
bloodied passport
. They believed they had a major kill.

As it turned out, Ayro had indeed been in the convoy and was believed to have been injured, but he ultimately escaped.

On January 9, JSOC launched another strike “against members of the East Africa Al Qaeda cell believed to be on the run in a remote area of
Somalia
near the Kenyan border
,” according to a US diplomatic cable from the Nairobi Embassy. Over the next few days there were several more air strikes that killed scores of civilians, according to witnesses and human rights groups. Whether these strikes were carried out by the United States or Ethiopia, or jointly, has never been confirmed. Undoubtedly, Ethiopia had its own helicopters and other aircraft pounding Somalia unilaterally. The Pentagon
took credit
for the January 7 strike but would not comment on the others, though anonymous US officials privately acknowledged they were American strikes. Initial US media reports portrayed the strikes as successful hits that were deftly picking off the “al Qaeda” leadership one by one in Somalia. Several reports, based on information provided by anonymous US officials, had Ayro and Fazul killed by US Special Ops troops. One particularly clownish report in the
New York Post,
claiming Fazul had been killed, bore the headline: “
Qaeda Clobbered
: U.S. Somalia Raid Kills Embassy Fiend.” In reality, all but one of the major figures sought by the United States went unscathed in these operations. At some point, as US AC-130s, helicopters and Ethiopian aircraft strafed suspected al Shabab or al Qaeda strongholds, Sudani was
randomly killed
, though the United States did not learn of his death until months later.

This was the beginning of a concentrated campaign of targeted assassinations and snatch operations by JSOC in Somalia, but it initially produced few significant counterterrorism results. In fact, the men they were hunting would ironically become the beneficiaries of the very strikes that were aimed at killing them. “We were coming in and we were doing AC-130 strikes,” Nance told me. “I mean it's a fine, fine instrument, when used against mass known troops, which is what the AC-130 is very good for.” Rather than troops, he said, “We were wiping out groups of civilians.”

Indeed, the AC-130 attacks resulted in a shocking number of Somali civilians being killed. In one particularly horrible incident, a large group of nomadic Somali herders and their families was attacked. The human rights group Oxfam alleged that seventy innocent Somalis were killed. “There were
no combatants amongst them
,” said an Oxfam official. “It could possibly be related to a bonfire that the herdsmen had lit at night, but that's something they normally do to keep animals and mosquitoes away from their herd.” Oxfam joined Amnesty International in questioning the legality of the air strikes. “Under international law, there is a duty to distinguish between military and civilian targets,” Oxfam warned. “We are deeply concerned that this principle is not being adhered to, and that innocent people in Somalia are
paying the price
.”

The US strikes focused intently on the areas around the Kenya-Somalia border, the stronghold of Ahmed Madobe and his Ras Kamboni militia.

Madobe was a protégé—and brother-in-law—of Hassan Turki, a career jihadist commander who founded the militia and led militant forces for each of Somalia's successive Islamist movements: AIAI, ICU and, eventually, al Shabab. When the strikes began, Madobe and his men were making their way back toward their home base near the Kenyan border, unwittingly putting them directly in the scope of JSOC's Task Force 88. Members of JSOC's intelligence division, the Activity, were tracking Madobe's movements and those of other ICU leaders. Like Indha Adde, Madobe had come to know and respect the international fighters who had come to Somalia and had helped in the battle against the CIA-backed warlords. His mentor, Turki, was now a
US-designated terrorist
. These facts, along with his leadership position within the Courts, put Madobe on a JSOC target list.

Madobe knew that the United States and Ethiopia were striking at fleeing ICU leaders and, after a few near misses, suspected he might be a target, so he and a small group made their way through the Somali countryside, trying to stay away from the growing number of aircraft overhead. “At night, we were afraid of lighting a fire to cook and in the daylight we did not want to create smoke,” he told me when I met him at an outpost near the Kenyan border. “We had no precooked food, so it was really very tough.” In retrospect, he said, it was likely technology that did him in. “We had Thuraya satellite phones, which clearly
helped the Americans easily trace us
.”

On the night of January 23, 2007, Madobe and his group set up camp under a large tree. “At around 4:00 a.m., we woke up to perform the dawn prayers, and that's when the planes started to hit us,” he remembered. “The entire air space was full of planes. There were AC-130s, helicopters and fighter jets. The sky was full of strikes. They were hitting us, pounding us with heavy weaponry.” The eight people, whom Madobe said included both men and women who were with him in the camp, were all killed. Madobe himself was wounded. He believed that a ground force would come for him. “I picked a gun and a lot of magazines. I believed that death was in front of me and I wanted to kill the first enemy I saw,” he remembered. But it did not happen.” Madobe lay wounded and losing blood and energy. Then, at around 10:00 a.m., he said US and Ethiopian forces landed by helicopter near his position. He recalled a US soldier approaching him as he lay shirtless on the ground. “Are you Ahmed Madobe?” the soldier asked. “Who are you?” he replied. “We are the people that are capturing you,” he remembered the soldier telling him. The American held a photo of Madobe. As the American handcuffed Madobe, the guerrilla leader asked him why it was necessary. “You see I am half dead,” he said.

They loaded Madobe onto a helicopter and took him to a makeshift base
in Kismayo that the US and Ethiopian forces were using. The US forces, he said, immediately began interrogating him and only after Ethiopian agents intervened did they give him water and medical treatment. In Kismayo, as Madobe recovered from his injuries, he was regularly interrogated by the Americans. “They had names of different rebels and fighters on a list and they were asking me if I knew them or had information about them,” he said. A month later, he was rendered to Ethiopia, where he was held for more than two years.

Unlike Madobe, the former chair of the ICU, Sheikh Sharif, was looking to make a deal. Even though senior US officials had suggested that the ICU was tantamount to the Taliban or was being run by al Qaeda, the United States actually viewed Sheikh Sharif as a “moderate.” On December 31, 2006, as the ICU disintegrated, Sharif had made it to Kismayo, where he spoke by phone to the US ambassador in Nairobi. “
The Ambassador told Sharif
that it was the U.S. view that he could play an important role in helping to promote peace and stability in Somalia,” according to a US diplomatic cable sent from Nairobi back to the State Department. The ambassador, who consulted with Washington before offering Sharif a deal, “indicated that the U.S. was prepared to recommend that Kenya help bring [Sharif] to Nairobi if he were prepared to give his commitment that he was willing to work to support peace and stability in Somalia...and to reject terrorism.”