MARA, Chad—From Yemen to Syria to here in Central Africa, the Trump administration is relying on Special Operations forces to intensify its promised fight against the Islamic State (IS) group and other terrorist groups, as senior officials embrace an Obama-era strategy to minimize the US military’s footprint overseas.
In Africa, President Donald J. Trump is expected to soon approve a Pentagon proposal to remove constraints on Special Operations air strikes and raids in parts of Somalia to target suspected militants with al-Shabab, an extremist group linked to al-Qaida.
Critics say that the change—in one of the few rejections of President Barack Obama’s guidelines for the elite forces—would bypass rules that seek to prevent civilian deaths from drone attacks and commando operations.
But in their two months in office, Trump officials have shown few other signs that they want to back away from Obama’s strategy to train, equip and otherwise support indigenous armies and security forces to fight their own wars instead of having to deploy large US forces to far-flung hot spots.
“Africans are at war; we’re not,” said Col. Kelly Smith, 47, a Green Beret commander who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a director of a counterterrorism exercise in Chad this month involving about 2,000 African and Western troops and trainers. “But we have a strategic interest in the success of partners.”
Trump came to office without a clearly articulated philosophy for using the military to fight terrorist groups. He had promised to be more aggressive in taking on the IS—even suggesting during the presidential campaign that he had a secret plan—but had also signaled a desire to rein in the notion of the United States as the world’s peacekeeper and claimed at various points to have opposed the ground invasion of Iraq.
Now, surrounded by generals who have been at the center of a decadelong shift to rely on Special Operations forces to project power without the risks and costs of large ground wars, he is choosing to maintain the same approach but giving the Pentagon more latitude.
That leeway carries its own perils. Last week, the Pentagon went to unusual lengths to defend an air strike in Syria that US officials said killed dozens of al-Qaeda operatives at a meeting place—and not civilians at a mosque, as activists and local residents maintain.
It was yet another example of the mixed success Trump’s forays with special operators have had so far. An ill-fated raid in January by the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 against al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen marred the president’s first counterterrorism mission, five days after he became commander-in-chief.
In Mosul, however, Special Operations advisers are the US troops closest to the fight in Iraq to oust the Islamic State group from its stronghold there. That is also likely to be the case in the impending battle to reclaim Raqqa in eastern Syria.
Trump is largely relying on the policies of his two immediate predecessors, Obama and President George W. Bush, who were also great advocates of Special Operations forces. On Obama’s orders, SEAL Team 6 commandos killed Osama bin Laden in his hideout in Pakistan in 2011.
But Trump seems to have taken that appreciation and reliance to another level. He appointed a retired Marine Corps general, Jim Mattis, as defense secretary, and a three-star Army officer, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, as his national security adviser.
Both men have extensive experience with Special Operations forces. And the National Security Council’s new senior director for counterterrorism, Christopher P. Costa, is a retired Special Forces intelligence officer.
Sharing an unusual window into the private conversations between Trump and his senior commanders, Army Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of the military’s Special Operations Command, said the president had made clear his urgent priority for counterterrorism missions conducted by the military’s elite forces during a visit to military headquarters in Tampa, Florida, in February.
“There were some pretty pointed questions about what winning looks like, and how are you going to get there,” Thomas told a Special Operations conference outside Washington after the presidential visit.
And while the Pentagon could eventually send a few thousand more conventional troops to the fights in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, Thomas warned that senior commanders feared that “more troops on the ground may mean you own the problem when you’re done with it”.
That concern gives weight to arguments for greater reliance on special operators as the Trump administration for now eschews larger deployments of conventional troops and proposes deep cuts in foreign aid and State Department budgets.
The global reach of special operators is widening. During the peak of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly 13,000 Special Operations forces were deployed on missions across the globe, but a large majority were assigned to those two countries. Now, more than half of the 8,600 elite troops overseas are posted outside the Middle East or South Asia, operating in 97 countries, according to the Special Operations Command.
Still, about one-third of the 6,000 US troops currently in Iraq and Syria are special operators, many of whom are advising local troops and militias on the front lines. About a quarter of the 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan are special operators.
Image credits: AP/Felipe Dana