The following month, a U.S. Navy SEAL team attacked a house in the insurgent stronghold of Barawe, 180 kilometers south of Mogadishu, in an abortive bid to arrest Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, the al Shabaab commander known as “Ikrima,” withdrawing with no losses after finding it was heavily outnumbered and had no hope of capturing the terrorist.

During the year the challenge posed by Somali pirates to merchantmen in the Horn of Africa shrank considerably, mainly as a consequence of NATO’s Ocean Shield mission, land-based anti-piracy operations, a robust response from ship owners employing teams of armed guards to defend their vessels while transiting the Gulf of Aden, and the willingness of an increasing number of flagged countries to accept custody of captured pirates and prosecute them. Somali pirates attacked 123 times in 2009, but in 2013, the International Maritime Bureau reported only 15 incidents, including two hijackings, the lowest numbers since 2007. Hitherto a reluctance of individual nations to tackle the jurisdictional problem of holding the prisoners and putting them on trial had meant that many pirates were either returned and freed in Kenya, or, as in the case of HDMS Absalon, at sea. The Danish crew on one occasion had been obliged to restore disarmed pirates to their skiffs, and even provide them with fuel, ostensibly so they could return home. In large measure, the credit for the region’s improved security environment was a period of relative calm in Somalia, a country wracked by 10 years of conflict.

In Uganda the continuing irritant and source of instability has been the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and in response, the U.S. Congress’ 2013 National Defense Authorization Act included a $50 million contribution for Operation Observant Compass, the hunt for the cult’s leader, Joseph Kony.

When testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2013, Gen. Carter Ham, then AFRICOM’s commander, noted that African troops, advised and assisted by U.S. special operations forces, had achieved some significant tactical gains and received a growing number of defectors. Operating out of Entebbe in Uganda, Nzara in South Sudan, and Obo and Djema in the Central African Republic, U.S. SOF flew Sikorsky/PZL M28 aircraft (designated C-145A) and a trio of helicopters across the region, including Dungu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The site was quickly surrounded by helicopter-borne Algerian special operations forces of the Groupe d’Intervention Spécial (GIS) based at Blida. Some 40 contractors were killed in the ensuing fair-day siege, together with 29 militants. The incident demonstrated the vulnerability of remote but economically critical facilities, and the porous nature of the region’s frontiers.

Elsewhere in Africa, SOCOM continued to invest heavily in training specialist units, improving marksmanship and practicing counterinsurgency tactics, and in April and May U.S. special operations forces were in Malawi to participate with the local defense forces for Epic Guardian 13, an exercise lasting three weeks in which more than 700 troops received close quarters combat training in Djibouti, Malawi, and the Seychelles.

Although largely unreported, Mauritania has been a combat zone since 2011, when the Mauritanian army announced it had killed three AQIM insurgents who had planned to assassinate Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. Since then the army has received considerable aid, and in March 2013, U.S. SOF participated in Exercise Flintlock around the southern towns of Nema, Kiffa, and Ayoun, which lasted three weeks and included participants from Spain, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

The conflicts in Mauritania and Mali spilled over to Algeria in January 2013, when Islamic jihadists in three pick-up trucks seized the huge gas plant at In Amenas, which services gigantic oilfields run by Sonatrach, BP, and Norway’s Statoil, and took hundreds of hostages, including several dozen foreign workers. The site was quickly surrounded by helicopter-borne Algerian special operations forces of the Groupe d’Intervention Spécial (GIS) based at Blida. Some 40 contractors were killed in the ensuing fair-day siege, together with 29 militants. The incident demonstrated the vulnerability of remote but economically critical facilities, and the porous nature of the region’s frontiers.

In line with President Barack Obama’s declared “pivot to the Asia-Pacific,” with a defense posture aimed at the Far East, in March 2013, U.S. Navy SEALs conducted joint training exercises with Indonesian Navy Kopaska divers. In the Philippines, SOCOM has been committed to the training of the Philippines special operations forces, who are fighting against the Abu Sayyaf Islamists in the southern Philippines. The support began with the deployment of 1,200 SOF personnel as part of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines. In September, 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, and Cambodia – as well as their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Russia for a U.S.-Indonesian joint-funded counterterrorism exercise held at a training facility in Sentul, West Java.

Although ostensibly there is a lower profile and presence of international SOF in Afghanistan, with a greater reliance on UAVs, the reality is somewhat different. Official International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) statistics reveal that from October 2012 to the end of March 2013, allied forces were involved in 1,464 operations, including 167 in which U.S. or coalition forces took the lead, and 85 that were unilateral ISAF operations. U.S. special operations forces’ role included mentoring lightly armed local security forces under the Village Stability scheme and training the Afghan National Army’s (ANA) Commando Brigade, a 12,000-strong elite organization trained for 26 weeks at Camp Morehead in Kabul province. The ANA doctrine, adopted from the coalition, was to build a capability on SOF lines in preference to more orthodox infantry structures.

In addition to the various U.S. task forces, Special Operations Command Forward elements were deployed to Pakistan, Yemen, and Lebanon in a training role, with the task of creating specialist units. The 10th Special Forces Group was in Lebanon helping the development of the 5,000 members of the local SOF units, the Navy Commando Regiment, the Lebanese Commando Regiment (the Maghaweer), the Lebanese Airborne Regiment, the Counter-Sabotage (Moukafaha) Branch and the Strike Force (Kouwa el-Dareba) Anti-Terrorism Division. In Pakistan the Special Services Group consists of 10 battalions based at Tarbela, and in Yemen the beneficiary has been the Central Security Forces’ counterterrorism unit.

Despite the very substantial mentoring role that has been embraced across much of the Third World, there remains a continuing requirement for more traditional, post-Cold War era defense deployments, especially on NATO’s new north and eastern borders. In May, British and American SOF took part in the 11th Spring Storm, the Estonian military’s largest annual training exercise in Harja county, north of Tallinn, which, for the first time, included the Estonian Navy. Also involved was Latvia, together with a reconnaissance platoon from Lithuania, and an anti-aircraft missile platoon from Belgium, with Polish aircraft acting as aggressors to test NATO’s resolve on its northern flank.