On Tuesday night, U.S. special operations forces secretly entered Somalia and freed two humanitarian aid workers — one of whom, Jessica Buchanan, is a U.S. citizen — from captivity by Somali kidnappers. Not a single member of the U.S. raiding team was harmed; neither were the hostages. All nine Somali captors, whom Pentagon spokesman George Little described as “heavily armed,” were killed.
The AP reports that the same Navy SEAL Team that killed Osama bin Laden last year was involved in the Somali raid; the Pentagon did not confirm that, but said it was a “joint” operation, meaning elite forces from the other services — most likely including Air Force air controllers, and members of the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment — also took part.
The last time elite U.S. forces staged in Somalia this large and this public, it ended in a disaster. A warlord’s forces downed a helicopter over Mogadishu in 1993 and dragged the corpses of U.S. troops through the streets, an incident broadcast around the world and immortalized in the movie Black Hawk Down.
But now, for the special operations community, it might be Black Hawk Up.
The Pentagon did not release many specifics on Wednesday morning about the raid itself, but said it took “hours” and was in the final stages during President Obama’s State of the Union address last night. It took place under the authority and control of U.S. Africa Command, and occurred at an “encampment” at Gadaado, in north-central Somalia. There are no indications thus far that any military equipment was lost during the operation, as happened with a stealth helicopter during the bin Laden raid.
According to the Washington Post, the Somalis guarding Buchanan and her Danish colleague, Poul Thisted, weren’t exactly the east African version of special operators. They were chewing a narcotic leaf, qat. And when the raiding team arrived, the Post reported, the Somalis “might have been sleeping.”
But Little and his Pentagon colleague, Navy Capt. John Kirby, said that the “criminals” who kidnapped Buchanan and Thisted were “armed and had explosives nearby” when the special-operations team arrived. Asked if the Somalis fired on the U.S. raiding team, Little said details were still coming in, but “there were very concrete plans for removing the kidnappers and placing them in detention,” with Kirby adding, “That opportunity didn’t present itself.” All nine kidnappers — whom both spokesmen said were not members of the al-Qaida aligned al-Shabab movement; and may not have been pirates, either — on scene were killed.
Obama said in a statement that he authorized the raid on Monday. The U.S. government had not said much of anything about the kidnapping of Buchanan and Thisted, whose captivity lasted three months. But Obama said the raid sent the message that the U.S. “will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice.”
Little and Kirby said that “actionable intelligence” recently presented itself for a “window of opportunity,” that led to the raid. Adding a sense of urgency were indications of a pre-existing medical condition afflicting Buchanan which “could be life-threatening.” Both spokesman said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had “full confidence” in Obama’s decision to order the raid — and Panetta “monitored” it from the White House before heading to the State of the Union address, where Obama was heard congratulating him on a “good job tonight.”
It’s possible that the “window of opportunity” arose when the captors moved their hostages. Robert Young Pelton’s Somalia Report claimed on Jan. 14 that Buchanan and Thisted were put on a Malaysian-flagged tanker, the MV Alvedo, out of fear of a “military attacks inside of Somalia.” But sometime “this week,” Somalia Report further reported, an internal conflict among the criminals allegedly led the captors to take Buchanan and Thisted off the tanker and move them back onshore. If Pelton’s team is correct, it would posthumously vindicate the kidnappers’ initial concern about a military strike.
Coming off last year’s Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the special operations community has rarely ridden higher. But the resonance of the Somalia raid is, perhaps, singular. Somalia has a totemic significance for many in the special-operations community, thanks to the 1993 debacle — even as they’ve slowly grown more comfortable quietly operating in the country. The hostage rescue can’t avenge Black Hawk Down, of course. But it does help turn the page on that ugly chapter.
Little demurred on making any historical comparisons. “The bottom line is this was a hostage rescue mission that was ordered after an added sense of urgency and after the time was determined to be right,” Little said. “It was accomplished after careful planning by the United States military and it was executed very well.”
But the raid does come at a time when increased spec-ops activity there is all but guaranteed. The U.S. is building two new bases for drone strikes in the Horn of Africa, and there’s been a U.S. military base in Djibouti for the better part of a decade. The Pentagon’s new budget — details from which will be unveiled on Thursday — will boost special operations forces. And as my colleague David Axe has noted, Somali pirates and their allies in al-Shabab terrorist group have gone on a recent kidnapping spree targeting tourists and aid workers.
Axe asked last October, “How will the U.S. respond?” The answer came Tuesday night.
“This successful hostage rescue, undertaken in a hostile environment,” Panetta said in a statement, “is a testament to the superb skills of courageous service members who risked their lives to save others.” Added Obama, “as commander-in-chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission, and the dedicated professionals who supported their efforts.”
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