The withdrawal may have been caused by a successful drone strike in early May on the Mayfa’a district in Shabwah, a mountainous province in central Yemen that had been safe haven for al Qaeda. A car carrying two brothers, Musaed Mubarak and Abdullah Mubarak Aldaghery, both key terrorist commanders, was the target. Their elimination followed a period of unrest during which al Qaeda attempted to extend its influence, leaving only Sana’a in the government’s control. However, one unintended consequence of the disorder was a wider freedom for JSOC to pick off elected terrorists. Its first major hit was a Tomahawk cruise missile launched in December 2009 against an al Qaeda training camp in al Majalah, in Abyan province, which killed 14 militants. Then the organization’s leadership was decapitated, including Abu Basir al Wuhayshi; his second-in-command, Said Ali al Shihri; the military commander Abu Hurayrah Qasim al Raymi; the recruiter Ibrahim Suleiman al Rubaish; and finally, in September 2011, the group’s chief ideologist Anwar al-Awlaki. The American-born imam had been linked to numerous other terrorist incidents including the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting in June 2009 and the “underwear bomber” on Christmas Day 2009.

Aerial reconnaissance flights were flown constantly over known terrorist sites in Aden, Marib, Abyan, and in the Alehimp and Sanhan districts of Sana’a, and several strikes were aimed at al Qaeda concentrations in Shabwah, Hadramawt, and Lahj provinces, thereby degrading the country’s reputation as a safe haven for al Qaeda in the Arabian Gulf.

The JSOC campaign in Somalia, codenamed Black Hawk after the catastrophe in Mogadishu in October 1993 that cost the lives of 18 U.S. soldiers, most of whom were special operations forces, has benefited from first-rate intelligence gathered under the leadership of John Bennett, once the CIA station chief in Nairobi, Kenya, but now director of the National Clandestine Service. The high-risk Task Force Orange teams developed relationships with several Somali warlords who were willing to sell SAM-7/14/16/24 shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles and identify foreigners linked to al Qaeda. To support their exceptionally dangerous missions, which began in the town of Ras Kamboni, in the Badhaadhe district, and spread north, JSOC practiced rescues from Djibouti, codenamed Mystic Talon, which required the insertion at short notice of troops by V-22 Ospreys.

While JSOC extended its activities on the mainland, Ocean Shield continued to present a challenge, with Somali pirates ranging at will across the Indian Ocean. The first sign of a more aggressive response to the growing problem of piracy was the appearance of French commandos at Garacad, near Eyl in the badlands of the northern Puntland province where a French yacht, Le Ponant, had been moored since it had been captured in April 2010. As soon as the 30-strong crew had been freed with the payment of a ransom, the amphibious assault began, resulting in the capture of six pirates and the death of two local Somali militiamen.

Then, soon afterward, South Korean naval special forces operating off a South Korean destroyer, the Choi Young, freed 21 crew aboard the Samho Jewelry, a 11,500-ton chemical carrier on a voyage from the United Arab Emirates to Sri Lanka. As a Lynx helicopter flew overhead in support, the troops killed eight gunmen and took five prisoners. The episode was probably connected to the seizure in November 2010 of another of the company’s vessels, the oil tanker Samho Dream, for which a ransom of approximately $9.5 million was paid. During 2011, it is thought that nearly $70 million was passed to the pirates and then shared with al-Shabaab.

In February 2011, four Americans aboard the yacht Quest were shot dead by their captors off the Oman coast while they were being monitored by U.S. Navy warships. After boat owners Jean and Scott Adam, accompanied by their friends Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, had been murdered, SEALs off of a U.S. warship intervened, killing two pirates and taking another 13 into custody aboard the USS Enterprise. All had come from the pirate safe haven village of Hobyo, but their likely destination was Manhattan, where the previous week Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the sole pirate survivor of the Maersk Alabama episode in April 2009, was sentenced to more than 33 years imprisonment.

The British Special Boat Squadron was also deployed to Somalia and reportedly spent two months on an extensive covert reconnaissance of the coast, entering Haradhere and Eyl in July to assess the rag-tag opposition that is lightly armed but well financed.

In October, British and U.S. SOF units successfully boarded the Italian bulk carrier Montecristo, which had just been seized 620 miles off the Somalia coastline. The 56,000-ton cargo vessel, with a crew of 23, who had secured themselves in a purpose-built panic room-like “citadel,” had been taken over by 11 pirates who surrendered as soon as the frigate USS De Wert (FFG 45) and the RFA Fort Victoria (A387) appeared on the scene, supported by a helicopter. The ship was liberated by Royal Marines without loss of life, and the pirates were detained in a multinational collaboration that is intended to protect the sea lanes off the Horn of Africa. On her second patrol as part of Ocean Shield, Fort Victoria soon afterward arrested a mother ship and delivered 14 pirates to custody in the Seychelles.

The introduction of citadel areas to sustain crews while under attack, with the more widespread employment of contracted armed specialists placed aboard vulnerable ships while transiting the Gulf of Aden, are tactics designed to deter the pirates who, though venturing farther away from the coastline, are in danger of losing their home bases. Successful criminal prosecutions in New York and Paris during 2011 appear to have eliminated the jurisdictional loopholes that had been exploited by the Somali pirates and ended the revolving door of instant release by the Kenyan authorities. Nevertheless, with the piracy statistics dropping during the year, the industry seems set to continue.

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