This issue is all too familiar to the British SOF, who have accepted severe restrictions, contractually enforceable, on what can be mentioned in individual memoirs. All such attempts have to be submitted for clearance by the Ministry of Defense. It will probably be years before details come to light of one major 22 SAS operation undertaken in Afghanistan in June 2012 following the abduction of a group of aid workers by the Taliban in the northeast of the country, near the Tajikistan border. The victims, all employed by Medair, a Swiss charity, included 28-year-old aid agency worker Helen Johnston, Moragwa Oirere, from Kenya, and two Afghan women. As soon as a ransom video had been delivered to Kabul, accompanied by a demand for £6 million and the release of a Taliban prisoner, intelligence analysts isolated the communications traffic to caves in the notorious insurgent stronghold in Koh-e-Laran known as the Valley of the Ants. Accordingly, a team of 70 British and U.S. SOF personnel were deployed to a forward operating base in Badakhshan province, with a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters and Apache gunships. Simultaneously, Predator drones were flown over the area to maintain visual and electronic surveillance of the site in the Shahr-e-Bozorg District.

French SOF units, stationed in Chad and Cameroon, but with combat experience in Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso, were swiftly deployed to counter what was perceived by intelligence analysts as a regional threat to the Sahel from a relatively new faction, designated as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The current regional instability stems from recent events in Libya, exacerbated by militancy in southern Algeria emboldened by recent atrocities.

Successful ELINT interceptions of Taliban conversations indicated that the hostages were likely the victims of an imminent “show of intent,” an assessment that led to Prime Minister David Cameron hastening a rescue operation. The joint teams were flown to a nearby valley to enable them to make a 3-kilometer nighttime approach through thick forest to the caves in silence, and they achieved complete surprise. In a late evening assault in two waves, the troops entered the cave complex and killed 11 insurgents in a fierce firefight before the four hostages were freed unharmed and evacuated by an RAF helicopter.

As NATO and ISAF troops withdraw from Southwest Asia, Western strategy has evolved into the development of a highly mobile quick-reaction capability, as demonstrated in early October 2012 by Cougar 12, an exercise in which the newly created multinational Rapid Force Task Group (RFTG) sailed to the Mediterranean to cooperate with the French navy’s Task Force 473, led by the Charles de Gaulle carrier battle group. The British contribution to the amphibious assault RFTG centered on 45 Commando, Royal Marines, carried aboard the flagship HMS Bulwark, supported by HMS Illustrious, HMS Northumberland, HMS Montrose, and RFA Mounts Bay, equipped with a total of 14 helicopters. A Trafalgar-class nuclear hunter-killer submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles supplied an underwater dimension.

The RFTG’s establishment in 2011 was in anticipation of future commitments, especially in West Africa, where the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) failed to deter al Qaeda affiliates in Niger and Mali from taking advantage of a local power vacuum and a sudden influx of weapons made available by the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Tripoli. The fragility of the situation became clear when heavily armed, disaffected Tuareg took control of northern Mali, a rebellion that led to a military coup in March and an immediate suspension of U.S. support for the government.

French SOF units, stationed in Chad and Cameroon, but with combat experience in Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso, were swiftly deployed to counter what was perceived by intelligence analysts as a regional threat to the Sahel from a relatively new faction, designated as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The current regional instability stems from recent events in Libya, exacerbated by militancy in southern Algeria emboldened by recent atrocities. Among them was the abduction of Algerian diplomats in Gao, an incident attributed to the “Tawhid and Jihad” group. Algerian security forces have identified 100 terrorist leaders to be captured or eliminated. With coordination enhanced by the annual Flintlock exercises conducted from the airport at Zewela in Libya, French, Spanish, Italian, and British SOF have encouraged their Algerian counterparts to cultivate the Faradi, al-Zaghaymat, and Sassou tribes, whose area of influence extends across the porous international borders in the area.