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Special Forces: No Magic Bullet
by Jonathan Foreman
The New York Post, October 15, 2001

Much has been made in the media of the probable use of "special forces" in Afghanistan. These troops most likely will come from units like the U. S. Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEALs and Britain's Special Air Service.

Indeed, the British press reported exchanges of fire between SAS units and Taliban soldiers more than two weeks ago. There has been no official confirmation, but anonymous White House officials have let it be known that we already have special-forces troops on the ground, presumably acting as spotters and scouts for bomber and cruise-missile strikes.

Those leaks irritated the special-forces community on both sides of the Atlantic, who rightly fear that such loose lips put the troops in greater danger. Still, if ground forces are to be used - as they're likely be - in the Afghanistan campaign, they will certainly include such elite commandos in some capacity.

However, it does them and their abilities no disservice to point out that special forces are not a magic bullet. There's not a Rambo among them. (Special-forces soldiers detest that movie, by the way.)

But they are highly trained, intelligent and motivated soldiers who can operate with unusual autonomy in small groups, survive in extremely challenging physical environments, and who are kept at the highest levels of readiness so that they can be deployed anywhere in the world at minimal notice.

During the Cold War, western special forces were often used successfully in small-unit counter-guerilla warfare and anti-terrorist action. They helped defeat insurgents in Malaya and Indonesia, stormed hijacked planes at Entebbe and in Mogadishu and ambushed terrorists on their way to plant bombs in Belfast streets. In the Gulf War, they spotted and called in air strikes on Scud missiles deep in Western Iraq. More recently, they have captured war criminals hiding in Bosnia.

While their raids behind enemy lines can be devastating, and their reconnaissance and forward-observation work can make a tremendous difference to the use of air power, special-forces units - by their nature small - cannot and do not win wars.

Nor should America's leaders underestimate the dangers our special forces face in Afghanistan. They will be operating in harsh geographical conditions, among an armed and hostile population whose language, for the most part, they do not speak, without even a guaranteed supply of drinking water (the enemy will be watching wells, rivers and springs).

If captured, they face the agonizing death the Afghans traditionally afford prisoners, and the knowledge that bin Laden and al Qaeda will likely use the manner of their death for potentially devastating propaganda purposes - thereby turning one of our most effective weapons against us.

This is not a new thing for our special forces. In 1965, during Britain's successful counter-guerilla war in the mountains and deserts of the Yemen (home of the bin Laden family) one four-man SAS team was captured. All four men were disemboweled and castrated while still alive. After death, their heads were cut off and mounted on poles, medieval-style.

This was of course long before the Islamist terrorists of Hezbollah sent a video of the torture and murder of kidnapped CIA Station Chief William Buckley back to his appalled bosses at Langley.

And before the Afghan rebels did something very similar to Soviet POWs in the 1980s. They filmed Russian conscripts being flayed alive and sent tapes of it to Moscow - tapes which Russian authorities understandably never released.

Now, if such a hideous fate were to befall U.S. or U.K. special-forces troops in Afghanistan, it's all too likely that their torture and murder would put on the Internet for the world to see, in the hope that it would send the infidel Yankee invader running back home.

It is also important that our political leaders not use special forces for the wrong kind of task. While Delta, the SAS and the Navy's SEALs are meant for and very good at insertion, observation, demolition and extraction - and excellent at training friendly forces - it would be a terrible waste if they were used as light infantry.

They are extremely expensive to select and train. They are the only people we have capable of storming a hijacked plane or guiding in bomb attacks on selected sites while hiding deep behind enemy lines. They should not be used as the mainstay of any ground campaign against the Taliban or al Qaeda when America has other forces that are better suited to the task.

Remember, the Taliban have at most 45,000 troops, some of them of dubious loyalty to the regime.

Remember also that, for all their celebrated marksmanship and hardiness, the Pathans are not supermen: They have a tendency to break off contact prematurely and were regularly beaten by undertrained, often demoralized and drug-addled Russian conscripts during the Afghan war.

(In fact, it wasn't until the United States supplied the rebels with the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that the tide began to turn in that conflict.)

To shatter the Taliban and take Kabul and Kandahar, you need a relatively small American army with appropriate tactical air support and helicopter mobility. This is not a mission for regular U.S. infantry used to training with heavy armor.

But it is precisely the kind of mission that the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, Army Rangers, the Marines and 3 Commando (Mountain/Arctic) Brigade of the British Royal Marines are perfect for. [In the unlikely event that good intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts is acquired, a possible scenario might begin with commandos reconnoitering a key area and calling in tactical airstrikes. Then shock troops would come in by helicopter to form a perimeter or hold a "box" of territory, while the Delta troops conducted searches of enemy hiding places.]

Such a use of a combined specialized infantry and special forces are an alternative to the one thing that would indeed be a terrible mistake: a full scale invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Foreign armies have often defeated the Afghans in battle, but no foreigner has ever been able to rule the country. (For that matter, no Afghan ruler has ever really succeeded in dominating the country's various warring tribes)

But the record of soldiers, former civilians trained and dispatched by civilized states - against warriors, tribesmen with an ethos of violence and addiction to blood feud - is a long and almost completely successful one.

Warrior tribesmen nowadays survive only in lands too desperately poor to attract any sustained interest by civilized states - in short, in places like Afghanistan. In a campaign against them, the chances of the best soldiers - of special forces - are likely to be excellent, if they are supported by the political will of the societies they have enlisted to defend.