Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

Carl Stiner:

One of the proudest moments of my tenure as Commander in Chief of USSOCOM occurred during the spring and early summer of 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War. It was called Operation PROVIDE COMFORT. Within a few short weeks, special operations forces, allied with many other wonderful organizations, saved thousands of lives. Our Special Operations troops used their soldier and special operator skills to bring peace, order, and stability instead of war, destruction, and violent change. In the end, the better part of an entire population of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, all of whom had been dispossessed from their homes, were able to return to their farms, towns, and villages.

These people were Muslims, but that is only marginally important. These people were people.

The story of how they were saved is important for all the reasons mentioned above. But it is also important for reasons that are more immediately relevant. In the war against terrorism, any Special Forces troops ordered into countries to root out terrorists and their bases will need the exact skills and training that stood them in such good stead in PROVIDE COMFORT. They will need to gain the trust, respect, and support of some significant part of the local population. They'll need the locals to help them, and the locals will have to be shown that the SF teams are necessary to their own future well-being.

The difference between peacetime and wartime operations is always radical, and yet the similarities are greatly enlightening.

It will happen again and again: Our special forces will have to shoot at people at night and shake their hands in friendship the next day.

REBELLION

Tom Clancy:

As the Gulf War came to an end in the winter of 1991, Saddam Hussein faced rebellions in both his south and his north — continuations of deep-and long-running conflicts. Though President Bush gave these rebellions verbal support, actual American aid was limited.

In the south, Shiite Muslim groups, long at odds with the regime and the country's Sunni majority, rebelled, with Iranian help. Mutinying Iraqi army units and the Shiite majority in several southern towns formed the backbone of the revolt, which began in Nasiriyeh on March 2, 1991, and reached its peak around March 7, when Shiite groups controlled Basra, Amara, Kut, Hilleh, Karbala, Najaf, and Samawa. By then, Saddam had already organized a counterattack, reassembling Republican Guard units that had escaped the coalition onslaught in Kuwait. By March 16, the tide had decidedly turned against the rebels; a week later, the revolt had all but ended.

While Saddam's attention was in the south, in northern Iraq the Kurds renewed their own rebellion. For generations the long-oppressed Kurdish tribes had considered their homeland to include parts of southern Turkey, northwest Iran, and northeastern Syria, as well as northern Iraq — Kurdistan. In the 1980s, they rebelled to make this homeland a reality. In a brutal counterattack, Saddam's forces used nerve gas and defoliants, together with more "conventional" forms of massacre, to suppress this attempt at self-determination.

The always-fractious Kurds were too splintered among tribal and political groups to present a common front against the Iraqi leader, but continued oppression brought the different groups together, and the allied campaign against Iraq provided them with another opportunity to assert their independence. On March 4, 1991, a rebellion by the Kurdish Democratic Party under Masud Barzani liberated the Kurdish town of Ranya in northern Iraq, igniting a freedom movement across the region. On March 11, the major Kurdish factions met in Beirut under the banner of the Joint Action Committee of Iraqi Opposition to discuss a coordinated rebellion. On March 14, a day after the conference ended, 100,000 members of the Fursan — a Kurdish-manned Iraqi army auxiliary in northern Iraq — rebelled. In a series of firelights with regular units, the Kurds captured a dozen major towns and a hundred-mile arc of territory. By March 21, the insurgents controlled the provinces of Suleimaniya, Arbil, and Dahuk — the so-called Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. They also controlled much of Tamim and its capital city of Kirkuk, a region with considerable oil resources. The rebel guerrilla forces called themselves "Pesh Mergas," or "those who stand in the face of death."

Just as in the south, Saddam reorganized his army and his civilian administration and launched a drive to regain control. Backed by helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, Iraqi armored and infantry units struck Kirkuk on March 28. Lacking heavy firepower and air cover, the Pesh Merga fell back in disarray.

It was the beginning of a rout. Civilians and guerrillas alike rushed into the snow-covered northern mountains, sometimes taking nothing with them but the clothes on their back. The roads north were jammed with buses, trucks, tractors hauling trailers, donkey carts, and people on foot. Earlier Iraqi actions against the Kurds had resulted in widespread atrocities; the civilians didn't stick around to see if history would repeat itself. Somewhere between half a million and one and a half million Kurds — a little less than half the prewar population — fled toward the Turkish and Iranian borders.

By April 6, the rebellion had been completely crushed, but the exodus continued. Thousands of Kurds died from starvation and disease. At the same time, Turkey — fearing its own Kurdish minority — moved to keep the refugees from crossing their border.

America and its other allies were slow to respond.

Meanwhile, on April 5, the UN passed Resolution 688, demanding that Iraq immediately end repression of civilians in the Kurdish areas and elsewhere. The UN also directed Iraq to allow humanitarian agencies to aid the civilians who had fled.

Soon after the vote, U.S. Air Force Special Operations cargo aircraft began dropping emergency supplies into the region, but Iraqi artillery and helicopter attacks on civilians continued. More fled; the narrow band of mountainous terrain near the Turkish border became crowded with people in hellishly squalid camps.

On April 10, America warned Iraq to cease operations north of the 36th Parallel (roughly the line separating Kurdish from Arab Iraqi territory). The next day, the UN announced it would send a peacekeeping force to the area. SOF ground units shipped out to Turkey to help survey and stabilize the air-relief operation.

On April 16, the United States, Great Britain, and France declared that Resolution 688 gave them authority to send troops into Iraq to help the refugees. A task force spearheaded by American Marines and U.S. fighter jets pushed back the Iraqis, preventing further atrocities. By that point, the death toll among refugees in the makeshift border camps was estimated at several hundred a day.

PROVIDE COMFORT, the allied relief mission, combined the efforts of thirteen nations under the direction of Lieutenant General John Shalikashvili. It had three aspects:

• Air interdiction to prevent Iraqi aircraft from operating above the 36th Parallel. This was primarily handled by U.S. Air Force fighters operating out of Turkey.

• A ground presence to secure northern Iraq and the refugees from attack, as well as prepare resettlement camps in Iraq. The Marine Corps 24th MEU (SOC) — Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) — spearheaded this effort, with its 3,600 members operating approximately five hundred miles inland from their support craft in the Mediterranean.

• A rescue operation to bring supplies and medical attention to the displaced Iraqi civilians. Army Special Forces soldiers from the 10th SFG played a key role in this phase of the operation, as did the Air Force's 39th Special Operations Wing, which flew MC- 130 cargo aircraft and MH-53J helicopters. Civil Affairs troops and members of the 4th Psychological Operations Group joined the effort by the beginning of May. Numerous helicopters from Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force units also played a vital role in the supply effort, as did a range of U.S. and allied C-130 and support aircraft.

Brigadier General Richard W. Potter, commanding general of Special Operations Command Europe, headed the SF task force charged with bringing relief to the Kurds. Potter's "Joint Task Force Alpha" would eventually add British and Italian forces, as well as small groups from other nations. A second task force organized around the 24th MEU, called "Joint Task Force Bravo" and headed by Major General Jay M. Garner, operated farther south in Iraq, preparing camps and assisting refugees near the front lines of the guerrilla war (the mission and resources of the two task forces overlapped to some extent, especially in the early and closing days). At its peak, 11,936 U.S. servicemen were involved.

General Potter provides an overview of the operation:

In November and December of 1990, in talks with the Turkish General Staff to establish the second front for Desert Storm, Major General James Jamerson, Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, and I (as commanding general of SOCEUR — Special Operations Command Europe) had represented CINCEUR in support of U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Abramowitz. These talks resulted in the establishment of Task Force Proven Force, commanded by Jim Jamerson, and my supporting JSOTF, which operated into northern Iraq out of bases in southern Turkey.

In the spring of 1991, the EUCOM staff that had put together the European reinforcement of the VII Corps for DESERT STORM was still in existence. I had stood down the JSOTE and returned to EUCOM headquarters, but the relationships we had developed before and during DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM turned out to be of tremendous benefit as we put the relief effort together and as I stood up what General Shalikashvili later designated as Combined Task Force Alpha. We returned to Turkey on April 6 to work the relief effort. Within a week, Brigadier General Tony Zinni joined us as the deputy commander.

Early on, the relief effort focused on air resupply, marking of DZs, and distribution of relief supplies. Within days of our arrival, extensive reconnaissance of the camps and border areas, as well as discussions with the (always fragmented) Kurdish leadership on the Iraqi side of the border, and with the Turks on the Turkish side, had made it glaringly obvious that much more was required.

General Jamerson and I stressed the enormity of the situation to the EUCOM staff, which resulted in a confirmation visit by the DCINC, General Jim McCarthy. What the task force faced was literally hundreds of thousands of Kurds in makeshift camps clinging to the mountains along the entire Turkish/Iraqi border. Those in the camps confronted harsh weather, starvation, and exposure, which prompted a death rate of more than a thousand a day. The child mortality was horrific.

When General Shalikashvili was designated overall task force commander in mid-April, the humanitarian mission was changed from airdrop and distribution of supplies to on-thc-ground relief.

On April 17, as the remaining SOF forces were moving into the area, General Shalikashvili stated his Commander's Intent and gave me the following stated missions:1. Get into the mountains and stabilize the situation by all necessary means.2. Organize the camps.3. Get the Kurds under cover and safe from the elements.4. Work food supply and humanitarian supplies into the camps.5. Establish potable water distribution.6. Improve the sanitation, bury the dead bodies — both humans and animals.7. Stop the dying, especially the child mortality.8. Convince the Kurds to return to their villages.9. Turn the press around.

For the entire operation, General Shalikashvili never changed this overall mission set. Each time he met with me during the next three months, he simply inquired about the status of our efforts and asked how he could support them.

In fact, thinking back to General James Galvin's words as CINCEUR as Jamerson and I were deploying on the sixth—"The answer is yes, now what do you need" — I can only say that it was marvelous to have two such men in the chain of command. Direct, succinct orders, no bullshit: "Here is your mission, now get on with it." No one telling you how to suck eggs. As a Special Forces officer, 1 do appreciate such a command relationship.

After receiving the order, Colonel Bill Tangney, 10th Group Commander, was designated ground force commander, Task Force Alpha. Bill had command not only of his own group, but operational command of all U.S. Army personnel and units in the designated AOR, and of a British Commando Battalion and elements of the Luxembourg Army, and oversight responsibility of Canadian and French military hospitals in the AOR. Colonel I loot Hooten, commander of the 39th SOW out of Alconbury, England, was my air component commander, and established a marvelous relationship with Major General Jim Hobson, PROVIDE COMFORT air component commander. Jim Hobson, with bags of previous AFSOC assignments, was most supportive of our mission set.

The international border between Turkey and Iraq split the AOR, with camps on either side of the border. On more than one occasion, the border split the camp. On the Turkish side of the border, the companies and teams of Special Forces had to understand the political nuances of dealing with the Kurds, Turkish sovereignty issues, Turkish military concerns, NGOs, IOs, private organizations, and subtly with Kurdish political structure and tribal affiliations. Once you crossed the border, a different relationship existed with the Kurds, the Pesh Merga, the various representatives of the various Kurdish political establishments (both structural and family/tribal affiliated), and remnants of the Iraqi governmental structure and military. While doing this political and cultural maneuvering, the SF teams and companies had to continue to work their mission: to relieve the suffering, stop the dying, and organize the camps.

Within seventy days, the camps had been vacated, death was due only to natural causes, the child mortality rate was under control, and the Kurds had either returned to their villages or were in resettlement camps established by Major General Jay Garner's Task Force Bravo. Unlike my command, which was a standing command with permanently assigned units who habitually worked together on operations and exercises, Jay Garner had to put his task force together from scratch, using 24th MEU as the base element.

This operation confirmed what I have long known: Special Forces is a Renaissance force. During my career, I had supervised, led, and commanded SF troops in the Meo Tribesman program and Khmer Series programs in Indochina, in the attempt to hold the Lebanese Army together in the early eighties, and in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Give them the mission, put them in a difficult political situation, locate them in isolated outposts in rugged terrain, issue them a myriad of missions, both stated and implied, provide them top cover and the proper support, and they will accomplish any mission they've been given.

There arc literally hundreds of stories of children being saved, of the birthing of babies, of food getting delivered at the critical time, of potable water being provided, of adroit handling of conflicts between Kurds and Turks, Kurds and Iraqis, and every other imaginable conflict — family feuds, tribal animosities, disputes between tribal elders, and local political haggling. The constant in all of this is the professional Special Forces officer and NCO. In the camps and in the countryside, the Special Forces soldier kept the lid on volatile situations — always keeping in mind his principal mission of saving the Kurds.

The simple fact is that no other brigade-size element could have gone into the mountains of northern Iraq and southern Turkey in early spring 1991; taken responsibility for 600,000 Kurds; organized a relief effort; stabilized the situation; dealt with the international political and cultural ambiguities; and produced success with no compromise or embarrassment to the United States.

As the task force commander, I knew that our doctrinal manuals did not prescribe how to run a humanitarian operation of that size and complexity; nonetheless it was done in camp after camp in the spring of 1991, and the intelligence, maturity, and adaptability of the Special Forces soldier were the keys. Like the Confederates' Bedford Forrest, we could get to any location in our AOR "Firstest with the Mostest." And Colonel Bill Tangney masterfully transitioncd his units from combat operations to humanitarian endeavors and turned seemingly hopeless situations into success stories. That is the acme of Special Forces leadership.

THE BATTLE FOR LIVES

Tom Clancy:

Many of the 10th SFG troops called in to PROVIDE COMFORT during the second week of April 1991 were returning to an area they had only recently left. Lieutenant Colonel Stan Florer had deployed to Turkey at the beginning of the air war against Iraq. His unit's mission was to help provide combat air rescue for downed allied fliers; fortunately, they were called out for only one sortie. Soon after the end of the ground war, the 1st Battalion returned to its base in Germany, where it was assigned as part of SOCEUR.

Within two weeks, Florer was heading back to Incirlik, Turkey, to accompany General Potter as he surveyed the situation.

"We made a visit to the main camp, Shikferan, and it was absolute disaster. The Turks were overwhelmed," he recalls. "The mountains were as serious as you can get. They were up there at eight thousand to ten thousand feet on the tops, and there was a lot of snow; it was just absolutely brutal."

Civilians were living in crude tents and hastily constructed shelters, or no shelter at all. Food was almost nonexistent, drinking water was polluted, and cholera and other diseases were rampant. The Turkish border troops had orders to keep the refugees out of Turkey — orders that were followed by whatever means necessary.

The battalion moved to Silopi in extreme southwestern Turkey, not far from the Syrian border. There, Florer split his men into small groups, distributing them in the camps all along the frontier toward Iran in the east. The SF forces, often operating in three-man teams in areas that could only be reached by air or foot, extended across a 3,600-square-mile security zone established in northern Iraq near the borders of Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The camps were on both sides of the borders, which in the remote, mountainous areas were not well defined (the Turks allowed some camps to be set up just over the line, but only as a temporary measure).

Bill Shaw, then a captain commanding ODA 063 of Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, headed a unit airlifted to Turkey as soon as the emergency was declared. Shaw and his team greeted the deployment with mixed emotions. Specialists in military freefall — parachuting into hostile territory — they had spent the war in Massachusetts, much to their chagrin. Next to combat, which they had missed, this assignment seemed a letdown.

"We were excited to have a mission," Shaw observes. "However, humanitarian assistance just did not seem very important at the time."

Attitudes soon changed. ODA 063 landed in Incirlik for a brief rest, then moved with a large headquarters group via helicopter to Pirincikin, a remote border settlement held by about 150 Turkish border guards and surrounded by thousands of refugees. Ten minutes after their arrival at the camp, a Kurdish woman approached the Turkish military commander, crying and begging for assistance. When the commander dismissed her, Shaw and the company commander intervened. They sent two medics to help the woman, whose husband had been shot in the hip. The medics soon had him patched up (Shaw never found out how the man had been wounded).

"Their action gave our unit instant rapport," Shaw remembers. "By the next day, all twenty thousand refugees in the camp had heard the good news: Forty to fifty U.S. Army doctors had arrived."

"They thought we were all doctors when we got there," adds Colonel Mike Kershner, who was operations officer for the 3rd Battalion of the 10th SFG. "It was a little disconcerting to my weapons men at first, because they didn't want to be associated with that."

As it happened in fact, when the Americans arrived in several of the camps, the Kurds kept their ill children and other family members hidden. Medies began going from tent to tent, looking for sick kids. "They didn't really want you, because they didn't trust the medics or anybody else at first," says Florer. "The medics literally had to convince these women to bring their kids out and to help them. Otherwise, they would just die. They would just bury them where they could find a little spot and dig kind of a shallow little grave and put these little kids in it. They were dying by the dozens when we first got there."

For the first few days, SF medics tried to cope with the incredible array of health problems with their own supplies — which were, of course, designed to help a six- or twelve-man team in a combat situation. They were quickly overwhelmed.

Once the units established secure landing zones and road routes to the camps, however, medical supplies began to arrive in large quantities. World Health Organization packages — which typically include medicine, antibiotics, and other necessities for thousands of people — helped stabilize the health situation.

THE CAMP'S

Calling the refugees' makeshift collection of shelters "camps" is a wild overstatement.

Pirineikin was typical. Thousands and thousands of people were packed into a one-hundred- to three-hundred-yard-wide valley. Observers compared it to the scene at a rock concert — without any of the good stuff, and more bad than anyone could imagine.

"The ground was covered with the detritus of their flight," Shaw remembers, "including clothing, feces, and vomit." Trees had been stripped and used for firewood. Most tents were simple tarps four or five feet high. A dozen or more people — children to elderly — could be living in each one. Ground unoccupied by tents was covered with waste and the remains of butchered animals.

As soon as they arrived, SF soldiers generally set up secure areas for sleeping away from the main camp. They stayed in canvas tents, either in small two-man tents or "GP mediums" — general-purpose medium-sized tents that could house several people. In some cases, soldiers set up one-man "poncho hootches" and bunked there. As soon as their perimeters were established — and often before — they went to work.

While the chaos in the camps seemed to invite terrorists (and, of course, Iraqi secret agents bent on mischief), the vastly outnumbered Americans were actually relatively secure. According to SF security analysts, part of the reason had to do with the mission: The Kurds generally recognized that the Americans were there to help; they were grateful for it, and in many cases protective. Various other factors, including close ties with the civilian leadership and local guerrillas, the presence of Turkish military, and not least of all the SF's own firepower, also helped prevent attack.

On another front: The SF units included a range of foreign-language experts, yet not one spoke Kurdish. The troops had to rely on Kurds who spoke English, sometimes surprisingly well, sometimes haltingly. Since the refugees included a number of doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, and other professionals, they often served as translators.

THE SUPPLY EFFORT

U.S. Air Force Hercules transports had been dropping supplies to the Kurds since April 7, at first aiming to provide the refugees with a thirty-day supply of food, water, and other necessities. But the difficult flying conditions and the unfamiliarity of the refugees with airdrop procedures had led to waste and tragedy. Harsh winds in the mountains and foothills blew ordinary parachutes off course; high-speed parachutes could defeat the winds, but often meant the pallets would smash on landing and ruin the contents.

The Kurds were so desperate to get the supplies, they would often run under the falling chute, not realizing that a pallet could crush them. An unknown number of civilians died this way. Other Kurds were killed when they tried to retrieve the supplies from minefields.

SF troops began organizing the supply effort from the camp site, clearing roads for trucks and establishing helicopter landing zones. The first few helicopters in were mobbed by anxious Kurds, creating unmanageable chaos. The SF troops ended that quickly.

"We figured out where the LZs were that we needed to create and then we barbwired them off," Flofer remembers. "That was the way to start to bring order." The Kurds' leaders, meeting in camp councils with the SF commanders, helped allocate supplies, so resources could be distributed in a somewhat organized fashion.

Coordinating the supply pipeline was more difficult. As the relief operation got into high gear, supplies from thirty nations had to be processed and shipped to the front line. The Military Traffic Management Command off-loaded cargo at three Turkish ports, shipping cargo and pallets to a string of bases that supplied the camps. But even as a routine developed and more roads were opened, the sheer size of the operation and the involvement of nearly one hundred relief agencies with their own agendas complicated the effort. Getting any supplies to the camps in the first few days was difficult, but getting the right supplies to the right places was for a while nearly impossible, a classic case of catch-22s complicated by misinformation and a lack of resources.

Kershner's SF unit took to setting up "air guards" to spot approaching helicopters. They'd contact the aircraft, find out what they were carrying, then direct them to the camp that needed that particular supply, often countermanding the pilot's original orders. They also diverted the helicopters for medical transports. And they convinced civilian organizations to give supplies to those who needed them, rather than to the people originally intended.

"Somebody will show up representing some church organization with food or something, with instructions that it goes only to a specific group," Carl Stiner recalls, "when you're trying to treat everybody equally. Our troops had to try to redress the imbalance. The charitable groups all had the best of intentions, but preconceptions and conditions on aid added greatly to the chaos and delay."

The first wave of food rations came from the military in the form of MREs. Though this prepackaged food had been designed for American palates, the Kurds were so hungry they ate it gratefully. As days went on, food began arriving from donor countries that seemed inappropriate at best and bizarre at worst. Large two-gallon-sized cans of corn were plentiful — but to Kurds, corn was animal food. They would open a can, discover what it was, and dump it. Chcesc balls were everywhere. And then there was the plum pudding — tons of the stuff were delivered by airplane, helicopter, and truck. Not even the Americans would eat that.

Packaging of the food presented another problem in the mountain wilderness. "Can openers were not supplied, so the Kurds used large rocks to open the cans," Shaw reports. The smashed cans — and in many cases the ruined contents — littered campsites for weeks.

Lentils, rice, flour, and other staples were preferred by the refugees, who could turn them into foods with which they were familiar. As these arrived in bulk, diseases caused by malnourishment ebbed.

THE HEALTH EFFORT

Water and sanitation were no less concerns. When the troops arrived, most camps had no latrines. "Everyone had amoebic dysentery," Shaw recalls, "and would go to the bathroom wherever they wanted. The river and creeks were used for a water source, bathing, dish-washing, cleansing the dead, and, worst of all, as a depository for dead animals. Our medics took water samples and found the microorganisms too numerous to count."

"In late April," Dick Potter recalls, "the press was hitting us hard about our inability up to then to stop what appeared to be cholera in Cukurca Camp. A lot of children were dying.

"We had sent samples to Louis Pasteur Hospital in Paris and to Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany, with the same findings: no cholera, but what I would call acute dehydration and diarrhea. I was reminded of the rice water diarrhea we had in Vietnam, and the resultant child mortality. I traveled to Cukurca Camp, and by this time the camp's Is medical systems were organized: The Free Irish Hospital, Doctors Without Borders, Medicine Lamonde, German Red Cross, and Red Crescent Tent Hospitals were in the center of the camp. SF medics were in the surrounding hills and subcamps, tending to the sick; anyone requiring advanced treatment was sent to the center of the camp and one of the IO field hospitals.

"When I arrived, about six hundred infants had been triaged in three areas, and the doctors believed they could probably save two or three hundred of them.

"To Americans, leaving the others to die was completely unacceptable.

"Bill Tangney organized the response: He sent for six hundred cots, cut holes in the cots so the children could defecate through the hole without reinfecting themselves, brought in IV apparatus for all of the children, and convinced the elders to have the wives and mothers attend the children with Special Forces soldiers present.

"We called Landstuhl and had them send us powder to mix with water; it locked up the kids tighter than Dick's hatband.

"Bill ordered the battalion commander to reinforce the troops on the ground. After receiving a quick refresher on the use of IV apparatus, a Special Forces soldier was assigned to about three sets of mothers and children.

"Bottom line, the powder worked, the IV worked, the cots worked, the constant attention to the children by the wives, mothers, and SF worked; and I believe only two infants were lost."

Gradually, order was imposed. The security provided by the SF troops, as well as the Marines and other units closer to the Iraqis, allowed civilian relief agencies to set up makeshift hospitals. Latrines and trash piles were established; dead animals were removed from water sources. Clean water was air-dropped and trucked in. Hastily dug graves were moved from the main camp areas to better ground. New camps and hospital areas were established along roads where they could be better supplied and maintained.

Doctors Without Borders helped provide emergency medical care throughout the region; the doctors would simply show up at a camp and get to work.

There was occasional friction with (or among) the volunteer groups, or with Turkish officials, or the UN, but this tended to be generated by administrators. On a personal level in the camps, people tended to get along to get things done — though at times this came after initial distrust. "At first there was a great distance, particularly with Doctors Without Borders and some of these more liberal organizations," Florer recalls. "But it only took a matter of days and the typical SF soldier, or the officers, or whatever, would schmooze their way into their hearts, because we were really making things happen."

Now and again, working with civilians turned out to be pleasant from the start — especially when the civilians were female. One group of Irish nurses showed up in a camp just secured by SF personnel. "Fellows, could you give us a hand?" one of the women asked when their truck pulled up. Twenty men fell out, tents were up quickly, and generators were soon humming.

Special Forces units became an unofficial supply conduit for volunteer organizations. "They'd come to us and say, 'We need more fuel. Do you have more batteries? Do you have this? Do you have that?' " Florer remembers. "And of course we took care of all that stuff for them. And what we didn't have, they'd call back (to the bases in Turkey) and say, 'Hey, sir, our credibility's at stake here. You've got to get us this thing.' " SF supply sergeants practiced their time-honored tradition of begging and borrowing to supply the front lines, which in this case were refugee camps. "It was schmooze your way to victory," Florer adds.

One group that proved fairly resistant to schmoozing was the Turkish military. Threatened with its own Kurdish minority, the Turkish government did not want Iraqi Kurds within its borders. The government and military at times looked on the relief operation with suspicion, and there were a number of clashes between the Turks and refugees throughout the operation — though most occurred in the early days. In one case, a driver for the Turkish Red Crescent pulled a handgun and shot at refugees trying to overrun his bread truck. The local Turkish military unit moved in with weapons blazing to control the crowd. American SF troops responded in a helicopter to calm the scene, and came back with a half-dozen refugees the Turkish army had shot. One victim was a child.

"There were a lot of incidents," recalls Lieutenant Colonel Chris Krueger, who helped coordinate operations for the 10th Special Forces. "There just wasn't any love between the Turks and the Kurds."

As one might expect, emergencies were almost normal.

Bill Shaw and Green Beret medic Doug Swenor were in a guerrilla camp late one afternoon when a four-year-old got too close to a campfire, which set her nylon dress in flames. In seconds, she sustained third-degree burns over most of her body. Swenor emptied his medic's bag trying to clean and dress her wounds, and gave her morphine to ease her pain, but there was little else he could do.

In the meantime, Shaw got on the radio and tried to arrange a medical evacuation — nearly impossible to do; night was falling.

And yet, somehow, help came.

Though he was extremely low on fuel, a British Chinook pilot heard the distress call and diverted to the camp. The girl and her mother were loaded aboard. Shaw watched the helicopter disappear into the darkness, wondering if it had enough fuel to make it through the mountains back to Turkey.

A week later, Shaw met the pilot when he returned to drop off supplies. He had made it home to his base, but it had been very close: The helicopter's engines had coughed dry as they touched down.

Had the girl lived?

The pilot didn't know. It seemed doubtful, given the extent of her injuries. And yet none of the men — the pilot, Shaw, Swenor — could have lived with himself if he hadn't done all he could to save her.

Just a few days earlier, Shaw had complained about the mission. It was a long way from what he'd trained for. But that afternoon, its meaning — and its frustrations — hit Shaw hard. It was exactly what he had trained for.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, generally referred to as UNHCR or simply the UN, gradually took a more active role running the camps. At times there was considerable friction between the UN, Turkey, the SF forces, and the Kurds. It often took several days to build a working relationship. In some cases, rapport came only in the face of danger. At one camp, female members of UNI ICR were attacked by Iraqi secret service agents; they retreated to their tent and were surrounded. SF personnel managed to get the women out to safety without firing a shot.

Iraqi secret agents were a problem throughout the region, but it was difficult for Americans to ferret them out and deal directly with the problem. At one point, Florer was presented with ID cards belonging to Iraqi secret service agents in Zakhu, a Kurdish stronghold. But the Americans were in no position to play detective, and Florer couldn't promise action.

"No problem," the Kurds assured the Americans — leaving what that meant to the imagination. The SF troops later learned that the guerrillas had attacked the secret police station with grenades, then gunned down the survivors.

PESH MERGA

American policy favored the Pesh Merga guerrillas for practical as well as political reasons. The resistance infrastructure represented the Kurd leadership, and like the Americans, they opposed Saddam Hussein. But having a common enemy did not ensure rapport; the American units had to sell themselves on the ground, day after day.

Soon after their arrival, Shaw and one of his men ventured from their camp to an area controlled by Pesh Merga guerrillas to meet other refugees. They were led by their guide about ten miles from the Turkish border, passing patrols of well-armed guerrillas, until they came to the camp in the ruins of an old village — destroyed during the 1980s in an attack that included both nerve gas and defoliants, which had wiped out the once-elaborate orchards.

About five to eight hundred people now lived there. The guerrillas used it as a supply and rest area for troops fighting farther south. "Things here were organized," Shaw recalls. "Family areas were separated. There was a community meeting area under a slot-ring parachute canopy and stacks of weapons and supplies everywhere."

The two Americans were greeted by heavily armed men and led to Rasheed Hadgi, the small, elderly man who headed the camp. Hadgi, a many-times-injured hero of the Kurdish uprising, offered them food and drink — damaged MREs and Kool-Aid, obviously made from the contaminated water.

Though Shaw and his sergeant didn't want to catch dysentery, they didn't want to insult the guerrillas either; they had no other choice but to accept their hospitality. "It was the right thing to do to build rapport, but later that night we both paid the price from both ends. At the time, I personally wished I had taken the bullet."

Kershner attended several meetings with the Pesh Merga leadership, generally by car supplied by the guerrillas. "No matter what kind of car we got in, we were always at 125 percent of capacity," Kershner remembers. "Everybody was jammed in together.

"I carried a pistol; everyone else in the car had an AK-47 or a machine gun; none of these weapons had been placed on safe within memory. I spent the entire, bumpy ride in these vehicles just watching for the muzzles of all these rifles to make sure I did not get shot by accident."

The guerrillas wanted more than just medical and food support from the Americans; they were looking for massive military assistance — which they couldn't have. "It was the usual ballet dance," Kershner continues. "Two boxers circling each other in the ring trying to figure out what they're going to give and what you're going to give."

The politics between different bands of guerrillas generally followed clan lines, and sorting it all out was often a nightmare for the Americans. The different groups rarely coordinated with each other; each had to be approached separately.

Since there were no Kurdish speakers among the SF units, first contacts were often creative. In one case, a group of SF soldiers came under sporadic fire as they approached a guerrilla position. Trying to reassure the Kurds that they meant no harm, they tried yelling that they were Americans. The gunfire continued. They yelled the name of the camp; that didn't work either. Finally, one of the soldiers yelled, "George Bush."

The entire guerrilla contingent jumped up from their positions and began chanting the name of the American president, who had become a hero because of the Gulf War victory. "George Bush! George Bush!" The troops were welcomed as brothers.

Small SF elements eventually set up camps within the guerrilla strongholds as part of the effort to maintain good relations. Since the rebels controlled much of the countryside, this greatly increased security as well as built rapport. In general, the U.S. attitude toward the Pcsh Merga was lenient and cooperative throughout the operation. But the British had different ideas. They set up checkpoints in their areas and often would not allow armed guerrillas to pass.

THE COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT

Reliable communications over such a far-flung operation were vital. There were no telephone lines in the mountains, and the terrain made communication by conventional radios difficult, but U.S. SF troops had brought SATCOM radios with them, so geography and terrain were no longer barriers.

Though SATCOMs accounted for as much as ninety-five percent of the communications, the devices were not without drawbacks — capacity was limited and communication had to be rationed, because there was only so much "space" on the satellite frequencies.

The relief effort also required a great deal of hands-on command attention. General Potter would "work the camps" every day — flying in and out to check with the commanders in the field. Planning sessions later in the day would allocate resources, trying to anticipate needs for the next days and weeks.

As conditions became more stable, the job of distributing supplies was gradually handed over to civilian agencies. A ration card system was instituted in many of the camps. Water-purification and — distribution systems were created. Dental clinics were established, with SF medies — and in some cases others; Bill Shaw got his first chance to practice basic dental skills he'd learned in training — pulling rotted teeth, supplying more basic care, or even acting as midwives.

"That made us nervous," Kershncr recalls. "We did not want to be in a position where we were responsible or could even be peripherally involved with a dead baby or something. Fortunately, every case we had like that turned out okay. But it made us extremely nervous.

"Our guys were very concerned about the Islamic prohibitions against hanging out with their women, or even looking at their women; and here they're going to ask a woman to lie down on this camp cot and hike up her skirts…. Invariably the guy that was with her always had a rifle."

In fact, the Kurds took the pregnant women to the medies — a sign of enormous trust.

The trust the SF troops created was everywhere; the rapport was extraordinary.

In one camp, Major Rick Helfer built a particularly strong working relationship with its Kurdish leaders. One day, the leaders decided to honor him. A thousand kids suddenly ringed the SF perimeter and began chanting, "Helfer! Helfer! Helfer! USA! USA! George Bush! George Bush!"

"My people! yelled Helfer, hamming it up to the other Americans' amusement. Later, he repaid their praise by dressing head-to-toe in the clothing of a Kurdish tribal elder.

Life in the refugee camps could turn hellish in seconds. A few days after the children's demonstration for Helfer, the same kids were throwing rocks at Turkish soldiers who had come to their camp to steal some of the refugees' supplies. The Turks locked and loaded, and lined up in firing positions. SF personnel, their own weapons at the ready, rushed between the Turks and the refugees and faced off the Turks — preventing a possible massacre.

Mines — a constant, deadly danger — had been laid along the roadways and in many flat, open areas, stepping off a well-trod path could bring death.

Some children saw them as toys.

"They would go out and collect mines," says Krueger, "then go to the top of a hill and roll the mines down to see how far they would go before they went off."

Mines caused many injuries, mostly to kids who wandered into a mined area without knowing it. "I remember an SF soldier running up to the LZ carrying a little boy with a leg that had just been severed," says Krueger, who gave up his helicopter so the kid would be evacuated to a hospital. "That big burly SF soldier with that little bitty body in his arms. His entire focus was to get him medical attention."

The danger wasn't only to Kurds; an SF soldier had to have his leg amputated below the knee after stepping on a mine.

Even relief operations could injure people. CH-47 Chinooks are powerful helicopters, capable of delivering large amounts of food and other supplies. Their massive rotors, powered by huge engines at either end of the aircraft, generate immense downdraft as they land. "It would blow little kids over. They would just go flying like tumbleweeds," Kershner recalls. "It was no fault of the helicopter. That's just physics."

The SF found safer "games" for the kids than collecting mines or watching helicopters land. One favorite involved policing the area. "The guys would give them candies from the MREs," Kershner continues, "for whoever picked up the most trash or something.

"I went to a camp and there was a medic walking through it, and a little four-year-old kid would follow this medic around everywhere. And if the medic had a free hand, the kid was holding it. I finally asked what the deal was. It turned out that the kid had choked and the medie had done the Heimlich maneuver on him. That had changed his life, and this kid was just attached to the medic."

It was hard to find a Kurd who was not grateful in some measure to the Americans. One Kurd leader offered Kershner a fourteen-year-old daughter as a wife. "It took me quite some time to convince him that it probably would not be a good idea for me to take a second wife home."

CULTURE

Americans and Kurds have vastly different cultures. The Kurds' attitudes to women, children, the elderly, and to male privilege make most Americans uncomfortable — and of course that goes the other way around.

To the Kurds, for example, children counted for very little. Adults certainly valued the youngest members of their society — if the kids needed help, they helped them when they could — but they clearly put a much higher priority on helping other adults, especially the very old. Children were often the last to get food, water, and medical attention. A dead child would generally be buried in a shallow, mass grave; an adult would receive a much more elaborate funeral and separate burial.

"They would abandon the children that were too young or too weak — they would just leave them out to die," Kershner remembers. "It was a cultural problem for the Americans to accept that they took care of the old people first. But you have to understand the old people were their corporate history — the institutional memory. They were the decision makers. So that was where their emphasis was."

Attitudes toward women also shocked Americans. It was not uncommon to see a woman carrying heavy loads while men carried nothing at all. Girls were expected to marry as soon as they were old enough to bear children. And when SF personnel tried to show the women how to make a substitute formula for children from rice water, they nearly came to blows with Kurdish men, who resented their dealing directly with the women. Such techniques had to be shown to the men first, who would then teach it to the women — if they decided the women should know it.

While some Kurdish attitudes bothered the Americans, their strong family structures provided a base for organizing relief efforts. The elders were the primary decision makers, and their decisions were normally accepted without dissent. They were therefore the first people with whom to deal.

"If you told an older Kurdish guy, 'Hey listen, why don't you get your family together, cause this is what we're going to do,' generally speaking he'd get his family together to do whatever you wanted him to do," Kershner recalls.

"In fact, the Kurds seemed to enjoy working with our guys. And we had real good relationships with them. Whenever you met with them, they enjoyed hearing about your family. They wanted to find out how many kids you had, what they did for a living…. They were very generous people. They would share their last bits with you."

Or even on occasion offer to make the ultimate sacrifice:

"One day," Dick Potter recalls, "I was involved with the tribal and camp elders in Cukurca Camp, the largest camp located entirely in northern Iraq [125,000 population]. The meeting was heated. The elders were ready to move south, but only if the town of Dahuk was under CTF PROVIDE COMFORT control. At that time, I could not make such a commitment, and so the debate went on for hours.

"As I was leaving, the elders took me out of the tent and introduced me to two young Kurdish men, in excellent health and in their mid-twenties. The elders had heard of President George Bush's heart problems, and with great solemnity told me that if President Bush, their dear brother in Washington, needed a new heart, these two men were ready to travel to the United States to be heart donors. I thanked the elders, told them that our President had healed, and passed the message back to General Shalikashvili, who I am told passed it to the Chairman, who in turn informed the President."

The loyalty and generosity went both ways. "Big loyalties were created," Kershner continues. "If you could have told the SF guys, 'Well, we are going to leave you in place and you are just going to carve out the country, and we're going to call it Kurdistan and let all the Kurds live there,' they would have done it in a heartbeat."

GOING HOME

As the situation was stabilizing in the camps, diplomatic and political progress was also being made elsewhere. The allied occupation of Kurdish cities attacked by the Iraqis helped stabilize the political situation, and a second round of negotiations began May 7 between Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdistan Front, led by Kurdish Democratic Party leader Barzani. By this time, roughly 16,000 allied troops were involved in the relief and security operations.

Several firefights between Iraqi and Kurd forces during the first weeks of May led to planning for an allied assault on Dahuk, one of the trouble spots. But the Iraqi-Kurd negotiations — and possibly a U.S. show of force as the Marines prepared to engage the Iraqis — led to a tentative agreement on May 18, and lessening hostilities.

Refugees began returning to their homes in the northern regions of Iraq.

"First, the Kurdish leadership had to be convinced that it was safe for them to go back home," says Chris Krueger. Meetings with the various leaders and top American generals, including General Shalikashvili, laid the groundwork. Then came the job of getting the word from the leaders to the refugees, and especially to the Pesh Merga guerrillas guarding the roads and passes.

"Colonel Bill Tangney and I and the chief Kurd in the area got on an MH-60 helicopter and we started just outside of Silopi at the very first camp," recalls Krueger. "We put the Kurdish leader on a monkey strap and we would fly over the checkpoints, do a hard bank, and kind of hang him out the door, and he would wave at them and they would signal us to land." On the ground, the leader would tell the guerrillas that it was now time to return home. The trio would then board the helicopter and travel to the next site. They spent the entire day and several hundred gallons of fuel visiting camps and checkpoints.

Within twenty-four hours, the Kurds were on the move. SF units had established about a half-dozen safe routes south and supplied easy-to-read maps showing checkpoints and highways. Among the most important messages on the maps: Don't leave the roadways, because of the mines. Thousands of maps were handed out and air-dropped in the camps.

Way stations on the southern routes home included hospitals, often staffed by Doctors Without Borders, as well as military personnel. The refugees would stay there perhaps overnight, then move on. Food and water, as well as medical supplies, were available at the checkpoints. "Logistically, we didn't want another humanitarian disaster, a trail of tears, moving back to their homes and people dying en route," says Florer.

The way stations helped maintain the Kurds as they returned.

Many simply walked back home. Americans moved many others south by truck on the treacherous mountain roads. Krueger remembers that among the refugees were Kurdish construction firms, whose heavy equipment was used to rebuild — and in some cases, create — roads. The rough roads were hell on the vehicles; U.S. deuce-and-a-half transports would quickly blow out their tires, running through their duals and spares as they navigated south. Tires were often more difficult to come by than fuel, and the troops had to borrow and occasionally beg for spares. A French offer of twenty-five tires was greeted with an offer of canonization by one grateful crew.

"As we went through towns somebody would beat on the roof of a truck and say, 'Hey, a bunch of us live here,"' Kershner remembers. "And they'd stop and eight people would get out of the truck and then they'd drive on.

"We'd just truck the people back and drop them off wherever they said they needed to be dropped off."

According to Kershner, as many as fifty-six Kurds could crowd into the back of a deuce-and-a-half — a space American troops would call crowded at twenty-five. Families tended to stay together when they moved, so fitting upward of fifty people in the back of a truck — or sometimes even more than a hundred in a Chinook — was a necessity.

"They packed everything very nicely and many of them hauled it on their backs," says Florer. "And just overnight we would look out across the camp and there'd be thousands less people."

SF units from the camps escorted many of the refugees back into their hometowns, sometimes remaining for a few days. At times, disputes broke out with squatters who had moved into vacant homes; the Americans tended to stand back as the locals sorted out those problems. In the meantime, disputes between the Kurds and Iraqis continued.

As it became clear that the United States intended to pull most if not all its troops out of northern Iraq, Kurds protested. The Americans were their shield against Saddam. But by the end of June, SF units were pulling back to Incirlik, then restaging to their home bases. For many, Incirlik gave them their first opportunity for a shower in weeks.

BEYOND COMFORT

Ground operations connected with PROVIDE COMFORT were effectively concluded July 15, 1991, when the last Marine unit in northern Iraq hauled down its colors and prepared to pull out. Seventeen thousand tons of relief supplies had been delivered; at least half a million people had been helped.

Coalition air units continued to patrol the northern stretches of Iraq from Turkey, enforcing the cease-fire and UN agreements, and some ground units remained in the region to monitor events and deliver additional aid when necessary. Operating under the auspices of Operation COMFORT, over the next five years, allied units delivered another 58,000 tons of supplies to Kurds in their home villages.

On June 22, 1991, Barzani announced that he had agreed with Baghdad on a settlement that gave the Kurds military and political authority over the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Though other Kurdish leaders were divided over this agreement, an uneasy peace settled temporarily over the region.

Meanwhile, a simmering, low-key war continued between Turkey and Kurds within Turkish borders, but at times this flared into large-scale Turkish actions against the Kurdistan Workers' Party — the PKK. The Marxist Kurdish group had actively opposed the Turkish government since at least 1984 and continues to do so.

In Iran, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) vied for domination in the northern areas of Iraq. In a complicated three-way conflict with the PKK, the KDP eventually aligned itself with Saddam Husseins regime. In the summer of 1996, the KDP and Iraqi forces captured Irbil, a prominent Kurdish city in northern Iraq. The KDP and PUK, which has received support from Iran, still struggle for domination in the Iraqi Kurdish region.

A tragic coda to Operation PROVIDE COMFORT was written in 1994, when two American helicopters were accidentally shot down by American F-15s. The helicopters were ferrying a variety of officials involved in relief and peace work. Though humanitarian efforts continued, changes in the Turkish government eventually forced the United States to disband the relief effort on December 31, 1996.

Air interdiction of Iraqi flights continues under NORTHERN WATCH, paralleling efforts in the south under Operation SOUTHERN WATCH.

DEBRIEF

"Why do we need Special Forces guys to do this?" Stan Florer asks.

"Because nobody else has all it takes to do the job — the capability to organize and direct, together with the security edge. Civil Affairs guys don't have all that. Our solders are packing an advantage, and they know how to use it."

Or to put it another way: Fifty armed Americans add an eloquence of persuasion to any suggestion. It's not so much "You better get your act together or we're going to shoot" as "Here is a strong, steady, and secure structure within which you can operate. With that in place, you can begin to take charge of your own needs."

Similar conditions apply in dealings with external relief organizations. These are all fine people, but they tend to run off every which way, and tending to horrendously complex needs in an utterly chaotic situation requires focus, direction, and order.

Carl Stiner points out that the Army's — and especially the SF's — streamlined command structure facilitates getting things done, and getting cooperation from such organizations. "We obviously won't use force on them, but if they persist in wanting to do their own thing, the CINC can step in and say, 'I am responsible for this whole area and you are going to comply. And here is the schedule you're going to operate under if you want security, and if you don't, you are on your own."'

"What was interesting about this was its relationship to the larger political picture, a larger connection to DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM obviously, and the combat relationship," Florer comments. With more than two dozen government and nongovernment relief agencies involved, Special Forces' ability to work with a variety of groups under difficult conditions proved to be critical. While strict discipline is necessary for any military operation, PROVIDE COMFORT demonstrated what Bill Yarborough and others long ago foresaw, that flexibility and creativity are a major force multiplier.

The same attributes that make Special Forces soldiers so valuable in combat actions — the ability to adapt to unexpected situations, to use cutting-edge technology to its fullest, to think creatively, to act quickly, decisively, and independently — turned out to be the qualities most needed to help the Kurds in the free-flowing crisis following the war with Iraq.

Training for war goes hand in hand with the battle to save lives. Tomorrow's SF soldier will continue to find his role in a shadowy territory, where there are few boundaries between armed conflict with bad guys, on the one hand, and working closely and productively with local friendlies, on the other.

"In a way," Dick Potter recalls, "the Special Forces legacy lives on in that part of the world. If you travel in northern Iraq and visit a Kurdish settlement, you're likely to encounter children in the ten-to-eleven-year group. Ask the parents and the elders their names. If they were born in the camps on the Turkish border during the great migration, you will find a middle name of Smith, Jones, Swicker, or Gilmore — the Kurds' tribute to men of the 10th Group, a living honor to the men that saved them."

FACING FORWARD

During the next ten years, special operations optempo greatly increased, with many more humanitarian assistance missions, and many more missions across the broad range of SOF capabilities. From Somalia, Haiti, and Afghanistan to Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, they were busy men.

A small sample of what they were doing during that busy decade:

SOMALIA During the '90s, SOF missions called on them to prevent fighting — or keep the lid on it — more often than to engage in combat. Through no fault of their own, their peacemaking efforts did not necessarily yield freedom from strife, most notably in Somalia, where several special operators on a UN-sponsored peacekeeping and humanitarian operation sacrificed their lives in the fiercest close combat engaged in by American forces since the Vietnam War. Two of the men earned Medals of Honor.

This incident took place in Mogadishu in October 1993, and generated much press and a bestselling book. Its notoriety has tended to overshadow the genuine successes of American and UN operations in that benighted country. In the early 1990s, many Somalis were starving, and anarchy is too kind a word to describe the chaos. The country was divided among warring tribal factions; many of these were ruled by warlord-thugs, most were engaged in "civil wars" with the others, and some were fundamentalist Muslims, hostile to the United States.

Mending Somalia — like mending Afghanistan — will not be a quick fix.

Nevertheless, during the period from 1992 to 1995, SOF made a positive difference there. They conducted reconnaissance and surveillance operations (SOF elements drove more than 26,000 miles); assisted with humanitarian relief (bringing an end to starvation); conducted combat operations; for a time tamed many of the warring factions; and protected American forces (capturing hundreds of weapons and destroying thousands of pounds of ordnance). PSYOPs troops hired and trained thirty Somalis as a nucleus for radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. They put out a newspaper, Rajo—"Truth" — set up a radio station, and distributed millions of leaflets. Civil Affairs troops helped coordinate overall UN and NCO humanitarian efforts, and were involved in great and small projects — from rebuilding the Mogadishu water supply system to setting up playgrounds in the city in order to give children something better to do than throwing rocks at military vehicles.

HAITI In 1990, after hundreds of years of corruption and oppression, Haiti — always in a bad way — seemed about to lurch at last into the twentieth century. In their first free election, the Haitian people selected a civilian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The new freedom did not last long. In September 1991, the legitimate government was thrown out by a military government, headed by General Raoul Cedras. After diplomatic efforts and a UN-mandated embargo failed to force the Cedras clique to step down, and with thousands of Haitians fleeing the impoverished country in rickety, leaky boats (many perished at sea), a U.S. invasion was planned — Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY, modeled on Operation JUST CAUSE (Panama).

As in Panama, the XVIII Airborne Corps would run the operation, with extensive support from Army, Air Force, and Navy SOF. Special operators would take down key governmental sites, followed by linkup with conventional forces. Special Forces teams would then fan out and secure the countryside.

In September 1994, former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn, and retired General Colin Powell negotiated a last-minute deal with Cedras that aborted the invasion. Cedras stepped down in favor of Aristide, and the U.S. forces were quickly reconfigured for peaceful entry. The invasion metamorphosed into a large-scale humanitarian mission.

Lieutenant General Henry Shelton, the XVIII Airborne Corps commander, used conventional forces (most of the from the 10th Mountain Division) to secure Port-au-Prince, the capital. To secure the rest of the country, he called on Brigadier General Dick Potter to form an SF task force (called Joint Task Force Raleigh). A-Detachments fanned out into the villages and countryside, and became the only source of law and order until the Haitian civilian government could move in and take over.

The PSYOPs campaign used leaflets, radio broadcasts, and airborne loudspeakers to send the message that cooperating with American forces and staying out of bloody conflicts with the remnants of the illegal regime would be the quickest route to a restoration of democracy. Civil Affairs troops made a start on restoring Haiti's long-wasted civilian infrastructure. For example, in an operation they called LIGHT SWITCH, they brought electricity back to Jeremie, Cap Haiticn, and other northern cities and towns — places that hadn't had electricity in years.

THE BALKANS

In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia fractured into rival independent states, each striving to attain some dream of ethnic-religious purity — Eastern Orthodox, Muslim, or Roman Catholic. An impossible dream — the different ethnic groups were scattered pretty much all over the map. Tragedy followed, when the ethnic factions tried to bring about ethnic purity by force — and acted out age-old hatreds in the process. Thousands of people were driven from homes their people had lived in for centuries — or worse, they were massacred.

From 1992, the UN and NATO sent forces to the region in order to impose peace, but it took a coordinated bombing of Serb targets (Operation DELIBERATE FORCE — August to September 1995) to bring about a cease-fire among the warring factions. This in turn led to the Dayton Peace Accords of November 1995 and the Paris Peace Agreement of December 1995. The peace agreements were to be implemented by Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR (December 1995 to December 1996).

SOF had an important mission in support of JOINT ENDEAVOR — primarily to interact with foreign military forces, as they had done in DESERT STORM and Somalia. But other missions included personnel recovery (such as downed pilots) and fire support.

For their primary mission, Special Operations Command on the scene sent out Liaison Coordination Elements (LCEs) to both NATO and — far more important — to non-NATO battalion or brigade commanders within each area of operations. The LCEs made certain that the intent of information and instructions passed on to the battalion or brigade commander was understood.

LCEs conducted daily patrols with their assigned units, maintained communications, assessed the attitudes of the local populace and the various warring factions, provided accurate information about violent incidents, and made general reconnaissance. Since they had their own vehicles, they were not tied to the transport of their assigned units.

Civil Affairs coordinated reconstruction of the civil infrastructure and organized relief — a big job; there were better than five hundred UN, government, and nongovernment organizations to harmonize. Civil Affairs units helped in several ways: coordinating the repatriation of refugees; restoring public transportation, utilities, public health, and commerce; and organizing elections and setting up new national and local governments.

PSYOPs got out factual information through print and broadcast media, and conducted a mine-awareness campaign, aimed mostly at children.

Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR gave way to further stabilization efforts (Operations JOINT GUARD and JOINT FORCE — December 1996 through 1999). Most SOF personnel were involved with PSYOPs and Civil Affairs specialists.

In March 1999, NATO initiated Operation ALLIED FORCE to bring an end to Serbia's violent ethnic-cleansing campaign against ethnic Albanians (primarily Muslim) in Kosovo. The nineteen-nation NATO coalition heavily bombed Serbia for seventy-eight days, at the end of which the Serbian President, Milosevic, threw in the towel and agreed to stop the ethnic cleansing. By then, the better part of a million refugees had been forced out of Kosovo.

During ALLIED FORCE, Civil Affairs units coordinated large-scale humanitarian relief with other U.S. agencies and international relief organizations. SOF aircraft airlifted food and supplies. PSYOPs EC-130E Commando Solo aircraft broadcast Serb-language radio and TV programs to inform the people of their government's genocidal policies and to warn them against committing war crimes in support of those policies.

SOF Combat Search and Rescue MH-53 Pave Low and MH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters rescued two U.S. pilots (one from an F-117, the other from an F-16) downed in Serbia. These two missions each took less than a minute on the ground.

During the follow-up Operation JOINT GUARDIAN, SOF liaison teams initiated street patrols throughout their operational area in Kosovo. In the process, they arranged meetings between local Albanians and Serbs, to defuse ethnic violence, searched for illegal weapons caches, and helped war crimes investigators find massacre sites. Though SOF teams did not end violence, they managed to establish rapport with both ethnic factions, and their on-the-scene eyeball reports gave the leadership a clear view of local conditions.

HUMANITARIAN DEMINING OPERATIONS

In 1988, millions of mines left over from the Soviet invasion remained in Afghanistan, stopping millions of refugees from returning to their homes. Troops from the 5th SFG deployed to Pakistan to work with UN personnel and Afghan refugees to find a way to remove this tragic legacy safely. The results became a prototype for other SOF and UN humanitarian demining programs.

It was not an easy job. There was then no effective Afghan government, and there was a multitude of organizations to coordinate. The SOF troops had to more or less invent the program on the spot, and then sell it to everyone else involved. The fractious and suspicious Afghan tribes and factions did not make things easier. Special Forces had to use their political even more than their technical skills.

Practically, SOF training programs taught millions of Afghans how to identify, avoid, report, or destroy mines — and how to set up training programs they could run themselves. When SOF troops left Afghanistan in 1991, the Afghans were able to manage demining without further outside help.

Other SOF demining training programs were later set up in Cambodia, Laos, the former Yugoslavia, Central America, and elsewhere — with PSYOPs and Civil Affairs units playing a large part in making local people aware of the danger from land mines, as well as showing them how to clear them.

AFRICAN CRISIS RESPONSE INITIATIVE

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and unrest the following year in its neighbor Burundi that pointed to a similar outcome, the U.S. Defense Department worked out a plan to deal with the situation — and others like it — based on training battalion-sized units from free and democratic African states to conduct peacekeeping operations within the continent. This plan matured into the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), which the State Department launched in the fall of 1996.

Though military assets from the United States and its allies were used in the ACRI program, Special Forces troops soon found themselves at its heart.

The 3rd SFG, under EUCOM's command and control, developed an instruction program and sent teams to work the training. SF planners developed common peacekeeping tactics, techniques, and procedures. Training the African battalions in common doctrine and standards allowed the multinational forces to work effectively together.

The 3rd SFG-designed ACRI training came in two phases: First there was an intensive sixty-day training for individuals, platoons, companies, leaders, and staff. This was followed by exercises to practice what they had learned.

At the end of 1999, SF teams had trained ACRI troops in Malawi, Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Benin, and the Ivory Coast.

NEOs SOF troops also took part in a number of noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs) — usually Embassy personnel in danger during revolutions or civil wars.

In April 1996, SEALs and SF troops provided security for the American Embassy in Liberia during the evacuation of Americans and third-country nationals. Using Air Force SOF MI I-53J — and later Army MII-47D — helicopters, 436 Americans and nearly 1,700 foreign nationals were safely flown out of the country.

SOF also took part in NEOs in Sierra Leone, Congo, and Liberia (again).

PEACEKEEPING AND TRAINING

SOF troops continue to be deployed in many countries in peacekeeping and/or training roles. Examples include many African nations, Kuwait, Venezuela, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, and Macedonia.

And then, in September 2001, a new mission came to SOF….