Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

28. Obama Embraces JSOC

SOMALIA, EARLY 2009—For the first year of the Obama presidency, much of the administration’s foreign policy attention was directed at Afghanistan and the president’s pledge to escalate the war there. Despite estimates that there were fewer than one hundred al Qaeda operatives remaining in the country, Obama was weighing a dramatic increase in the number of US troops he would deploy to Afghanistan, to continue an intervention Obama had characterized as the “right war” during his presidential campaign. But while Afghanistan was the administration’s top international concern, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula were experiencing a dramatic uptick in al Qaeda mobilizations.

With the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia decimated, al Shabab had become the dominant armed group in Somalia and was in control of substantial territory in Mogadishu and elsewhere. The United States and its African Union proxies were supporting a weak transitional government headed by Sheikh Sharif, the former chair of the ICU. In May 2009, fighting in the capital between Sharif’s government and al Shabab–linked groups became so intense that the United Nations accused al Shabab of trying “to seize power by force” in “a coup attempt.”

Around that time, al Shabab released two highly produced videos featuring a young bearded American named Omar Hammami. The former University of South Alabama student declared himself a member of al Shabab and called on other Western Muslims to join him on the battlefield of Somalia. Hammami—whose name comes from his father, a Syrian immigrant—grew up as an average American in the South, playing soccer and chasing girls. In high school, he converted from Christianity to Islam. He eventually dropped out of college, married a Somali woman and had a child. Hammami had begun a process of radicalization and was speaking of wanting to fight jihad and frequenting Islamic web forums. In 2006, he visited Egypt, where he met Daniel Maldonado, another US citizen, whom he knew from online chat rooms. Maldonado persuaded Hammami to travel to Somalia to witness the Islamic revolution firsthand. So he headed there, initially staying with his Somali wife’s grandmother in Mogadishu. By December, the two men had hooked up with al Shabab on the eve of the Ethiopian invasion. “I made it my goal to find those guys should I make it to Somalia,” Hammami asserted, saying that he “signed up for training.”

Maldonado was eventually captured by “a multinational counterterrorism team” along the Kenya-Somalia border. He was extradited to the United States and indicted on federal terror-related charges in early 2007. But Hammami evaded capture and remained among the ranks of al Shabab. According to US counterterrorism officials, he caught the eye of al Qaeda leaders Fazul and Nabhan, who viewed him as a potential asset because of his American citizenship. In late 2007, a year after he first arrived in Somalia, Hammami appeared on Al Jazeera—with a keffiyeh covering much of his face, explaining why he had joined al Shabab. “Oh, Muslims of America, take into consideration the situation in Somalia,” he declared, using the nom de guerre Abu Mansoor al Amriki, or the American. “After fifteen years of chaos and oppressive rule by the American-backed warlords, your brothers stood up and established peace and justice in this land.”

Hammami would become al Shabab’s most prominent online recruiter for young, Western Muslims. He grew closer to Nabhan and Fazul and eventually became one of al Shabab’s key foreign operatives. By that point, Somali officials estimated that more than 450 foreign fighters had come into Somalia to join al Shabab in its struggle. “The only reason we are staying here, away from our families, away from the cities, away from—you know—ice, candy bars, all these other things, is because we’re waiting to meet with the enemy,” Hammami said, in the first video al Shabab released about him, as he sat dressed in camouflage and wearing a keffiyeh on his head in a tree-lined area. “If you can encourage more of your children, and more of your neighbors, and anyone around you to send people…to this Jihad, it would be a great asset for us.”

In Hammami’s video, another English speaker—this one masked and wielding an AK-47—calls on other Western youth to join al Shabab, saying, “We’re calling all the brothers overseas, all the Shabab, wherever they are, to come and live the life of the mujahid. They will see with their own eyes, and they will love it.” In other videos, Hammami is seen with key al Shabab leaders reviewing maps and helping to plan operations. In 2008, another US citizen, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in a suicide attack in Northern Somalia, making him the first known American suicide bomber to hit in Somalia. He wouldn’t be the last.

The increasing number of cases in which American Muslims traveled to the Horn of Africa to join al Shabab ranked high among the Somalia threat assessments awaiting Barack Obama after he won election in November 2008. Obama had said little about Somalia on the campaign trail, though he did refer obliquely to the growing national security imperative in Africa. There would, he said, be “situations that require the United States to work with its partners in Africa to fight terrorism with lethal force.”

BY THE TIME PRESIDENT OBAMA TOOK OFFICE, Somalia was becoming a mounting concern in the US counterterrorism community. When the Islamic Courts took power in 2006, al Shabab was a little-known militia on the outskirts of the movement with little clan power. Its foreign fighters, particularly Fazul and Nabhan, were dangerous people with a proven ability to plan and implement large-scale attacks. But they were not in a position to conquer Somalia or hold substantial territory. Now, though, thanks in large part to a backlash against US policy, al Shabab’s ranks were growing and its territory expanding. Sheikh Sharif officially assumed the presidency in Somalia the same month Obama was sworn in, but Sharif could barely lay claim to being the mayor of Mogadishu. He loosely governed a small slice of territory in the capital—with the authority of a city council member surrounded by far more powerful enemies who wanted to kill him.

“The idea that Somalia is just a failed state somewhere over there, where people are fighting with one another over heaven knows what, is a construct that we adopt at our peril,” declared Hillary Clinton during her Senate confirmation hearing to become secretary of state. “The internal conflict within the groups in Somalia is just as intense as it’s ever been, only now we have the added ingredient of al-Qaida and terrorists who are looking to take advantage of the chaos.”

The Obama administration increased funding and arms shipments to the African Union Mission in Somalia, the peacekeeping force known as AMISOM. The Ugandan military, supported by Burundi, effectively took over where the Ethiopians had left off and began expanding its military base adjacent to Mogadishu’s international airport. By this point, al Shabab had the Somali government and the African Union forces surrounded at the airport and in the Green Zone–like Somali government complex known as Villa Somalia. Al Shabab forces were better paid than the Somali army and were far more willing to die than the AMISOM peacekeeping troops, who had no personal stake in the conflict. In February 2009, al Shabab operatives carried out double-suicide attacks, killing eleven Burundian troops. AMISOM commanders found their base under constant mortar attack and acknowledged the bombardment was reaching an “unprecedented level.” A retaliatory attack aimed at al Shabab sparked an exchange of fire that resulted in fifteen deaths in Mogadishu, and more than sixty others wounded, many of them from a stray mortar that slammed into a civilian area. The New York Times called the fighting “the heaviest of its kind since Ethiopian troops withdrew from Somalia.”

A few months into Obama’s presidency, top officials had begun to debate military strikes against al Shabab camps, despite the absence of a concrete threat outside of Somalia. The Washington Post reported a divide between DoD officials critical of a perceived “failure to act” and reticent civilian officials heavily influenced by the disastrous Bush policies of the previous few years. The Obama administration was “walking slowly, and for the players with continuity, the frustration continues to grow,” one official said. “There is increasing concern about what terrorists operating in Somalia might do,” a US counterterrorism official told the Post. By that point, the FBI had already been investigating at least twenty cases of young Somali Americans leaving the United States to join the Somali insurgency.

While al Shabab continued to broaden its authority, the first major crisis Obama directly confronted in Somalia did not come from the Islamist group, but rather from a totally different threat increasingly making its presence felt around the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula: pirates. It was this confrontation—with pirates, rather than al Qaeda—that would cement the growing affinity President Obama had for JSOC.

THE PIRACY INDUSTRY HAD DEVELOPED in Somalia following the fall of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991. During the six months that the ICU ruled Somalia, it cracked down substantially on hijackings. Following the Ethiopian invasion, the pirates reclaimed the high seas around Somalia. Although the pirates were often condemned as terrorists and criminals, there was a seldom-mentioned context to their actions. International corporations and nation-states had taken advantage of the permanent state of instability in Somalia, treating the Somali coast as their private, for-profit fishery, while others polluted it with illegal waste dumping. Initially, piracy was at times a response to these actions and some pirates viewed themselves as a sort of Somali coast guard, taxing ships that sought to profit from what was once the realm of Somali fishermen. Those aims were eventually sidelined as the pirates realized they could make huge sums of money by hijacking ships, taking hostages and negotiating large ransoms. Piracy was big business in Somalia. In some cases, the hostages went unharmed, ransoms were paid and everyone moved on. On rare occasions, hostages were killed or, more frequently, died of disease or neglect.

The hijacking on April 8, 2009, was a day Somali pirates hit the wrong ship. On that day, the Maersk Alabama, a US-flagged cargo ship, was making its way through the Indian Ocean to Mombasa, passing along the Somali coast, when it was approached by a small vessel carrying four armed pirates. The crew on board the Alabama had received counterpiracy training and it did everything it was supposed to do: crew members shot off flares and began moving people on board the ship into a secured safe room. The crew maneuvered the Alabama’s rudders in an attempt to throw the much smaller ship off course, then shut down the ship’s power and incapacitated its engines. But the young Somalis in the small boat were experienced pirates. In fact, the ship they were using in the attack on the Alabama was launched from the FV Win Far 161, a Taiwanese vessel they had just seized. After some struggle with the Alabama crew’s counterpiracy maneuvers, the four Somali pirates managed to board the Alabama. They had no idea that the ship they were hijacking belonged to a major US Defense Department contractor or that this operation would be any different from others they had carried out.

When the White House learned that a US-flagged vessel had been seized and that the ship’s captain and other members of the twenty-man crew were Americans, the hijacking became a major priority. President Obama was swiftly briefed on the crisis. It was the first registered, US-flagged vessel to be hijacked since the early 1800s. Hours after the hijacking, Obama authorized the deployment of a destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, to respond.

By the time the Bainbridge reached the scene, on April 9, the Alabama’s captain, Richard Phillips, had been taken hostage by the pirates and was in a smaller, encapsulated lifeboat en route to the Somali mainland. One of the pirates had sustained an injury during the hijacking and was ultimately captured by US Navy forces. The other three pirates had abandoned the Alabama and were attempting to flee with the only negotiating chip they had left, Captain Phillips. As the standoff continued, President Obama and his national security team worked around the clock with US military commanders to run through various scenarios of how to resolve the crisis and free Phillips unharmed. Two other ships, the guided missile frigate USS Halyburton and the amphibious assault ship, USS Boxer, were deployed to the scene.

Two days after Phillips was captured, President Obama received two national security briefings on the situation. Defense Secretary Gates said that US commanders twice requested the authority to use lethal force, which Obama granted “virtually immediately.” The first authorization was issued at 8:00 p.m. on April 10, after US Navy personnel watched a day earlier from the Bainbridge as Captain Phillips tried to escape his captors before being quickly retaken. In response, the pirates threw into the ocean the only communications devices they had on the lifeboat, fearing they were being used to conduct surveillance or to communicate secretly with Phillips. That left the US naval forces with only eyes on the ship and the White House fearing that a US citizen would die very publicly at the hands of pirates only three months into Obama’s presidency. On April 11, at 9:20 a.m., President Obama granted a second authorization to use lethal force to an “additional set of US forces.”

It was the seizing of the Alabama that would very directly introduce President Obama to JSOC and its capabilities. It was “the first time I know of that Obama, himself, had sort of a direct encounter or experience with these units, [and] in a sense, came to grips with the reality of his own power, as chief executive,” recalled Marc Ambinder, a journalist with very close ties to the Obama administration’s national security team. The president authorized JSOC personnel in the United States to deploy to the Horn of Africa immediately. Obama was also briefed on the presence of a SEAL Team 6 unit based at Manda Bay, Kenya, that could make it to the Bainbridge in forty-five minutes. Those men, the president was told, were the best snipers available in the US military.

“If it comes down to putting sharpshooters up on the deck of an aircraft, and making sure that first shot doesn’t miss, who do you want to do it?” asked General Hugh Shelton, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs and an ex-commander of the Special Operations Command. Referring to Team 6, he told me, “They’re deadly accurate.” With the SEAL snipers in place, the commanders on board the ship asked for authorization to neutralize the pirates. Within the administration, “there was a little bit of debate,” recalled Ambinder. “Obama, the National Security Council and lawyers, they wanted to do this, because it was the first instance, the first time really, where they were creating an op from top to bottom, so they wanted to do it very carefully. They wrote very clear, careful, rules of engagement.”

On April 12, believing that the pirates intended to kill Phillips, the JSOC commander aboard the Bainbridge was patched into the White House Situation Room, directly to President Obama. “The President is essentially asking the commander a series of questions,” said Ambinder. “‘Are these conditions satisfied? Is there any way to do this, save this guy without causing undue harm to US troops? Do you have a clear shot? Is there any chance of other collateral casualties or damage?’ ‘No, sir.’ And then the commander asked, ‘Do I have your permission to execute?’ And the President says, ‘Yes, you do.’ The commander gives his order.”

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Three shots, fired almost at the exact same moment by three different snipers. Three dead Somali pirates.

Captain Richard Phillips was rescued and returned to the United States with much fanfare. President Obama won praise from across the political spectrum for his leadership in taking down the pirates and bringing an end to the hostage situation without losing a single US life and with just three bullets fired. Behind the scenes, it was a powerful lesson for President Obama about the clandestine force that President Bush once praised as “awesome”—JSOC. In thanking the teams that worked on the Maersk Alabama operation, President Obama for the first time publicly used the name of Admiral William McRaven, JSOC’s commander, who oversaw the operation. “Great job,” Obama told McRaven when he called him after the operation. “The Somali pirates are dead, the captain is rescued and Obama, I think, really tangibly, physically gets it that he has this power as the President,” recalled Ambinder.

Deploying Special Ops Forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan was one thing, but to use them in a truly unconventional, unanticipated operation brought the capability of this force home. After the takedown of the pirates, Admiral McRaven became a much more frequent guest of the president and, just as under President Bush, the troops from JSOC became Obama’s prized ninjas. After the Alabama operation, “The President personally invited the leaders of the Special Operations forces to the White House, and asked them to have an integral role in policy,” recalled a Special Ops source who worked on Horn of Africa policy at the time. Obama “asked for their professional military advice in how best to carry out these operations. That was absolutely unheard of in the previous administration, in that they would dictate what the policy was and they would tell the Pentagon, and the Pentagon would ensure that the subordinate commands would carry that out.” Obama, he said, embraced the Special Ops leaders, particularly Admiral McRaven. His time at the White House in the early stages of the Global War on Terror “taught him how to anticipate policymakers’ needs and desires, so JSOC was always ahead of the curve, they always had the perfect policy prescription for the White House,” he added. JSOC “knew what they were gonna be asked to do before they were asked. That’s key. This is why McRaven is a pivotal figure—he bridges those worlds.”

While Afghanistan and Pakistan would be the primary front lines of JSOC’s wars, the situations in Yemen and Somalia were demanding significant attention from Obama’s counterterrorism team. Much of the foreign policy energy would be publicly focused on Afghanistan, but in the dark, both al Shabab and JSOC were expanding their targeted killing operations, quietly transforming Somalia into one of the premier battlegrounds for asymmetric warfare.

IN JUNE 2009, an al Shabab suicide bomber carried out a bold attack on a hotel near the Ethiopian border, killing Somalia’s security minister and more than a dozen others, including a former Somali ambassador. That same week, insurgents killed Mogadishu’s police chief in a gun battle. By July 2009, al Shabab had advanced so far into Mogadishu that its forces came within a few hundred yards of Villa Somalia, threatening to overrun the Mogadishu Green Zone, which housed Sheikh Sharif’s government. The attack was repelled only when the US-backed African Union intervened. Officials from Somalia’s fragile government were besieged and scared. “The government is weakened by the rebel forces,” Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur, the speaker of the parliament declared after the police chief was killed. “We ask neighboring countries—including Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen—to send troops to Somalia within 24 hours.” That would not happen.

That summer, the United States announced a shipment of forty tons of weapons to Somalia’s government forces. In August, Secretary Clinton held a press conference in Nairobi with Sheikh Sharif. Putting an exclamation point on the Somali president’s extraordinary journey from the head of the Islamic Courts, deposed by the United States only to return as the US-backed leader of choice, Clinton called Sharif the “best hope we’ve had in quite some time.” But the US priority was not Sharif’s government. It was the hunt. “We have presented President Obama with a number of actions and initiatives against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups,” said John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser. “Not only has he approved these operations, he has encouraged us to be even more aggressive, even more proactive, even more innovative, to seek out new ways and new opportunities for taking down these terrorists.” Most prominent in Obama’s scope, Brennan said, were “those who attacked our embassies in Africa eleven years ago… and our homeland eight years ago.”

In the summer of 2009, Somalis began seeing clusters of large naval ships appear off the Mogadishu coast. They were part of a US battle group—and they were there with a purpose.