Across the globe, SOF units trained by Western mentors have been in action, and the partnership in the Philippines paid dividends Feb. 2, 2012, when a Jemaah Islamiyah meeting in Patiul, in the southern Sulu province, received a direct hit from precision, air-launched ordnance. Three senior terrorist commanders – Malaysia’s most notorious bomb-maker Zulkifli bin Hir (alias Marwan); Umbra Jumdail, alias Dr. Abu Pula, known to be a leader of the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf group; and the Singaporean Abdullah Ali, who used the nom de guerre Muawiyah – were all eliminated at night, along with a dozen other insurgents. This operation, code-named Nemesis, was probably planned by the U.S. JSOC intelligence cell at the Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga and executed after a homing device had been planted in the property. Reportedly, the stand-off air-to-ground weapons were delivered by a pair of obsolete Philippine Air Force OV-10 Broncos.

Usually based at Kandahar, the SBS happened to be in the city, and working with Afghan soldiers, were able to reoccupy the building while gunfire from circling American Black Hawk helicopters picked off targets on the building.

Not all such interventions were as successful, and in March, the SBS failed to safely recover British engineer Christopher McManus and an Italian, Franco Lamolinara, being held captive in northern Nigeria. Both men, employed by a Central Bank building contractor in Birnin Kebbi, had been abducted from their compound in May 2011 by Boko Haram, a Nigeria-based group that seeks to overthrow that country’s current government and establish Islamic law in its place. Two videos, containing the ransom demands, were delivered, and a sophisticated rescue plan was coordinated from the British High Commission. After the kidnappers had been traced by SIGINT, two troops plus their logistical support from the SBS’ A Squadron, with an armed Hawker Beechcraft intelligence and surveillance AT-6 circling overhead, moved to rescue McManns and Lamolinara. However, they were unable to enter the target building, on the town’s outskirts, until the pair had been murdered by their captors, two of whom were also shot dead as the house was stormed.

A month later, the SBS led an assault on a construction site in Kabul that had been seized by the Taliban the previous day. From their vantage point on the half-built structure, the Taliban fighters were able to fire on the rest of the city, with the British, American, German, and Japanese embassies within range. Usually based at Kandahar, the SBS happened to be in the city, and working with Afghan soldiers, were able to reoccupy the building while gunfire from circling American Black Hawk helicopters picked off targets on the building.

Naturally, not all SOF deployments become known, and details of the commitments accepted by JSOC, commanded since June 2011 by Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel, are largely classified, although it is common knowledge that the 3rd Special Forces Group has personnel in at least 10 countries in the Middle East. This is doubtless a reflection of the contingency planning required in anticipation of the likely consequences of an escalating civil war in Syria and the implications for Jordan and Turkey. Special operations forces in both countries changed their posture, but not their doctrine, in preparation for greater regional instability, an exodus of refugees, and the likely need to defend safe havens for armed militias seeking to mount cross-border raids. Turkey’s Maroon Berets, who are primarily defensive and benefit from NATO collaboration, fulfill a domestic security and counterterrorism role directed against Kurdish terrorism. In contrast, Jordan’s 37th King Abdullah II Royal Special Forces Brigade and the 28th Prince Hussein Bin Abdullah II Rangers Brigade, the country’s two main SOF units, act as a key regional hub, having benefited from a long relationship with the 22 SAS, to run training programs for their counterparts from Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen. As conditions for the Assad regime in Damascus deteriorate, pressure will have built on Amman and Ankara to prepare for various alternative scenarios, spanning a demand from existing partners to accommodate covert training and logistics facilities to the need to insert clandestine reconnaissance patrols, if not direct intervention. These intensely political decisions are controversial and high risk, and, for Turkey, fraught with the danger of inadvertently promoting the interests of an independent Kurdistan.

Whereas there may be some inevitably overt, high-profile operations conducted by U.S. and other international special operations forces, the growing investment is undisguised, and JSOC’s Votel has anticipated an annual 5 percent increase in manpower, which has already peaked at 60,000. Indeed, Adm. Eric T. Olson, then-chief of SOCOM before his replacement by Adm. William H. McRaven in August 2011, mentioned 51 countries of concern, and testified to the House Armed Services Committee that 85 percent of SOCOM was engaged in the 20 countries of U.S. Central Command’s area, consisting of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the UAE, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. SOCOM spokesman Col. Tim Nye acknowledged that SOCOM personnel were active in nearly 70 countries across the globe, and other open-source research reveals that SOCOM participated in joint training projects during the year, apart from those already mentioned, in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Indonesia, Jordan, Norway, Panama, Poland, Romania, South Korea, and Thailand. Put simply, “the army that trains hard, fights easy.”

This article was first published in The Year in Special Operations: 2012-2013 Edition.