by Sadler, John
Al-Qaeda had its principal bases on the lower slopes of the southern Hindu Kush Mountains and circling Bagram Airfield. These were well concealed with heavily defended compounds and made full use of natural cave networks, very difficult to detect from the air. Reliance therefore fell on the SAS, providing close target reconnaissance (“CTR”) and target acquisition. These were swiftly followed up by ‘hammer and anvil’ tactics; i.e. a main force with tanks and infantry approaches the target after reconnaissance with air support, while ground-attack aircraft bomb targets, obliging the terrorists to retreat away from the main assault into a carefully prepared ambush/kill zone where SAS are awaiting their arrival.
After the battle for Bagram Airfield, captured Taliban and Al-Qaeda were separated by Northern Alliance captors into indigenous Afghan fighters, normally paroled or recruited, and foreigners, usually Pakistani, who could expect to be maltreated or killed. A large number of the latter were incarcerated in the ancient Quali-i-Janghi fortress for interrogation by the CIA while guarded by Northern Alliance. A revolt of the prisoners who seized arms occurred; the leading CIA operative and Northern Alliance bodyguards were shot down, and a major battle developed within the compound with CIA survivors and Alliance fighters getting the worst of it. The US appealed to a nearby SBS unit, six men, who stormed the fortress, weapons blazing, killing a large number of insurgents and restoring order – the senior non-com who led the group received the US Congressional Medal of Honor.10
This type of buccaneering action would have been instantly recognisable to those who served in the LRDG – daring and boldness, coupled with mobility and firepower. The enemy was clearly defined and visible.
Jihad
With the ‘War on Terror’, and the rise of asymmetric and now hybrid warfare, the perceived role of Special Forces has changed. Interstate wars are an increasingly rare phenomenon. International rivalries, as illustrated by the long decades of the Cold War, are often fought out vicariously. Conflicting ideologies, control of diminishing resources, and the rise of nationalism fuel modern conflicts which continue to proliferate. Special Forces are now deployed as the front line rather than purely for intelligence gathering and raiding. The clear and high moral plateau offered by the fight against fascism no longer exists. Civilians are very often first in the firing line, the ‘enemy’ a shifting, faceless chiaroscuro of changing factions and alliances.
Britons woke up to the reality of the Islamist threat at 5.50 am on 16th January 2013 when terrorists attacked the giant Tigantourine natural gas installation near Amenas, Algeria. The sudden eruption of the crisis, and the costly ruthlessness of the government’s response, threw into stark relief the potential danger to British workers in the region. Such facilities are isolated, sprawling and virtually impossible to defend, apart from a massive military deployment. The terrorist will always have the advantage that only he knows where, when and exactly how he will strike. The incident left many hostages dead and injured, including a number from the UK.
On 28th January that year, French and Malian troops drove rebels from the fabled city of Timbuktu which, over a very long history, has seen its fair share of invaders. Islamist fighters, who had opted for a conventional, non-guerrilla response to the French deployment, had been easily routed and driven back from their earlier gains. Despite their major and pivotal role, the French have been keen to stress that their intervention was only part of a co-ordinated African response. Thus far, however, the hoped for Senegalese, Nigerian and Ivorian reinforcements have yet to arrive and demonstrate their capacity. It seems inevitable that the French will be staying for the foreseeable future. The lessons of Afghanistan clearly show that defeating the enemy in a conventional battle will certainly lead to a sustained asymmetric conflict, rather than to immediate and convincing victory.
What then will be the role of UK forces in this developing conflict? Earlier, Prime Minister David Cameron was too canny to respond directly to the question of whether British ‘Boots on the Ground’ in Africa would be needed. He did not rule out the possibility, and this is an eventuality which many may view with understandable alarm, given the fate of recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose long-term effectiveness is still open to question.
At present there is not an answer to this quandary; in all probability the government is equally undecided, but the Malian intermeddling is a European, rather than US-led, deployment. France is Britain’s ally; UK forces now train extensively with their Gallic counterparts and share operational capacities. France has ‘form’ in the region, a long period of colonial involvement and clearly, the established state governments, finding themselves under concerted attack, are more than willing to look to Europe for assistance.
The subsequent terrorist attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi offered a stark reminder of the vulnerability of ‘soft’ urban targets. Large retail parks present a complex labyrinth with built-in security features which may be used by attackers to thwart security forces. Such scenarios are, if we accept the arguments put forward by a leading expert in the field, David Kilcullen,11 the shape of horrors to come. The murderous spree in Kenya bears similarities to the earlier attack in Mumbai, five years earlier.
In the past, guerrilla armies from David, seeking sanctuary in the Cave of Adullam, to Patrick Leigh Fermor and Stanley Moss spiriting Axis commander General Kreipe across the Cretan mountains, have sought refuge in the high ground. Geronimo led an entire US army on a merry dance through the sharp peaks and ravines of Arizona for decades with a mere handful of followers.
Now, modern surveillance and satellite tracking systems have largely stripped the hills of comfort. It is estimated that by 2050 some 75 percent of the world’s population, which will by then have increased by another three billion, will be crowded into urban centres. In the developing world sprawling cities, an irresistible magnet to the rural poor, will grow exponentially in a riot of slums and shanties, perfect conditions for the rise of extremism. Kilcullen cites four main drivers priming the powder keg: huge growth in populations; concentration of people in cities; movement towards the world’s coastlines; a spiralling revolution in technology-driven connectivity.
He foresees in some instances (Somalia being a case in point perhaps), doomsday outcomes where states and their governments fail and cities become a jungle and a battleground. The major powers, rather than deploying troops for counter-insurgency across barren plains and rock-strewn deserts, may find themselves fighting in the tangled rookeries of urban hives where all order has gone. The US experience in Mogadishu vividly recalled in Black Hawk Down, illustrates the perils such conflicts hold.
Street fighting is inevitably harder and costly, and demands infinitely more boots on the ground. Firepower, aerial observation and heavy weapons are far less effective. Ask General von Paulus. Worse, there is unlikely to be a defined ‘enemy’ as such, no Saddam or bin Laden to focus on. The current, awful civil war in Syria is being fought, on the rebel side, by a multiplicity of often-diverse groups, at best uneasy allies, very often mutually antipathetic, enmeshed in a quicksand of changing allegiances.
Conventional armies like conventional enemies, but Western forces could find themselves up against Al-Qaeda lookalikes or franchises, drug cartels, or sectarian mercenaries such as Hezbollah, fighting under the instructions and in the pay of a hostile or rogue state; war by proxy. The Nairobi attack, Kilcullen argues, like Mumbai, demonstrates how a small gang of well prepared, murderously ruthless terrorists can bring a whole city to a standstill.
No one anticipated the Arab Spring, fuelled largely by internet connectivity; nobody really understands how it may finally play out. Libya has descended into anarchy, and Egypt is balanced on the edge of chaos, the void of failure which provides an open door for extremists. Kilcullen takes a view that whilst huge areas of urban slum housing are nothing new, the internet changes everything, altering the dynamic in a way we have never seen before. Tinder for these volcanoes is provided by the deep wells o
f inequality, lack of opportunity, ‘permanent exclusion and marginalization’. Awareness without hope is a dangerous pairing.
Je Suis Charlie
On the morning of 7th January 2015, two gunmen burst into the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a left leaning iconoclastic publication that was, ironically, struggling to stave off insolvency. Yelling their war cry Allah Akbar, the killers hosed the place with automatic fire, killing a dozen people. The massive hunt for the murderers, and an accomplice who held up a Kosher supermarket taking hostages, ended in much more gunfire and yet more deaths. Je Suis Charlie swept through the Western world, and the magazine’s hitherto very modest sales soared to unimagined heights.
Like 9/11, this was a game-changer. There had been previous atrocities committed by jihadists claiming affiliation to ISIS or Al-Qaeda, but the carnage at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert, in the 11th Arrondissement, focused the world’s attention as never before. The continuing Islamic tyranny practised by ISIS in Syria and northern Iraq, characterised by mass murder and regular decapitations as spectator sports, may well define the decade. These are stateless enemies, and waging interstate, industrial war against them is, for the most part, impossible. Terror does not normally have a capital city or well-defined bases, or tanks, or planes or heavy guns.
In times of crisis, the most reassuring call a prime minister can make is to the commander of Britain’s elite Special Forces. Whether a terror cell in Yemen is plotting to blow up a passenger jet in mid-flight, or a group of al-Qaeda militants is threatening to kill British hostages, Downing Street can draw comfort from the fact that there is always a Special Forces unit ready to react at a moment’s notice.
The SAS certainly proved its ability to rescue British subjects in hostile terrain last summer when, with the backing of US special forces and Afghan troops, it staged a daring operation to rescue British aid worker Helen Johnston and three other hostages just hours before they were about to be murdered by their captors in north-east Afghanistan. A team of 28 special forces troops stormed the remote caves where Miss Johnston was being held, killing all four of the kidnappers while securing the aid workers’ release.
British Special Forces units were also very much in evidence during the Libyan conflict two years ago – despite Mr Cameron’s repeated insistence that there were no “boots on the ground” in Libya. They helped identify potential bombing targets for Nato air strikes, as well as conducting classic behind-the-lines sabotage operations, such as cutting communications and energy supplies, to cripple the Gaddafi regime.
Time and again the SAS and SBS have displayed a range of skills and levels of personal courage that have not only made them the envy of the world, but have also delivered spectacular results.12
Little Green Men
‘Hybrid Warfare’ is a new buzz expression. It involves warfare at every level, not the type of all-out industrial war we saw in the twentieth century, but a new breed of conflict where media manipulation and the use of the internet is as important as bullets and boots on the ground. The expression came into vogue when President Putin was manoeuvring to wrest Crimea back from Ukraine in 2014.
We heard of ‘little green men’, not from Mars but from Moscow. The expression may have gained something in translation but it derives from a colloquial term describing masked, military-looking types with no insignia but plenty of state-of-the-art weapons. President Putin naturally denied that these had anything to do with him, asserting they were purely locally raised militia units. This bland denial rather lost credibility when a Finnish expert (and the Finns have many reasons to be watching Russia), confirmed their kit was exclusive to Russian Special Forces.
None of this was particularly subtle, but the deployment represents an aspect of hybrid warfare. War isn’t any longer a business of armies facing each other, relying on armour, airpower and battlefield tactics. Such confrontations will become much more rare. For one thing, industrial war is just too expensive. The UK campaign in Afghanistan, from the intervention in Helmand in 2006, cost £14m a day just to keep going.
We can’t afford that. By and large, neither can anyone else. The new school of war embraces economics, IT and all manner of subterfuge. The recent drop in oil prices has hit Mr. Putin very hard. It’s hit all producers, but Russia is especially dependent. Had the West organised this fall in prices rather than belatedly reaped the kudos (cue for conspiracy theorists), it would have been a clear and telling example of hybrid warfare in practice.
Some commentators suggest that Mr. Putin was rather quicker off the mark here than NATO. That may be right, but conditions in Ukraine perfectly suited this form of hybrid approach. Britain is now forming a bespoke unit specialising in the doctrine. This new 77th Brigade will have a complement of around 2,000. These will be military personnel but they’ll be using words and media more than ammunition. Some ‘civvies’ may also be recruited independently to bring additional expertise in related fields such as psychology and marketing.
This represents a significant shift in strategic and tactical doctrine. Readers may recall the ill-fated attempts by David Cameron and President Obama to get the West involved in Syria’s fratricidal war. This would have been a deeply flawed policy had representatives on both sides of the Atlantic not vetoed the idea. In such conflicts – and Syria is very much the shape of things to come – it will be very difficult to identify clear factions. No more good guys and bad guys, but the shifting sands of fractious temporary allegiances, a mix of ideologies and theocratic doctrines, seasoned by ruthless barbarity. Nuclear submarines will have little or no role to play; aircraft carriers undoubtedly will.
Hybrid warfare will not replace military action, but may well dictate the timing and use of conventional forces. Those little green men might be there to quietly put some stick about or to harness and focus local militias. An ability to move and shape economic factors has always influenced warfare. Germany blamed its defeat in 1918 not on the superiority of the BEF but on a shadowy fifth column, a Jewish banking cartel which stabbed its generals in the back. Hitler knew all about hybrid warfare – using concentration camp victims, murdered and then uniformed, to create a myth of enemy action for his casus belli in Poland.
The designation 77th Brigade evokes the potent image of the original formation, far better known as the Chindits; a name to conjure with. Appropriate too, as Wingate’s brainchild launched a new and unexpected type of jungle warfare behind Japanese lines. In such circumstances, the burden of the West’s military response must fall on Special Forces. In the Western desert, LRDG were a tiny proportion of the whole Allied war effort, but today their successors very often are the war effort. What is certain in so uncertain a world is that the pioneers of LRDG created British Special Forces as we know them, and that resonance has a global implication. To that extent, the story continues.
Certainly, as we prepare to tackle the wars of the future, it is clear we need more investment in our special forces, not ill-judged budget cuts. For, as George Orwell memorably remarked, ‘People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf’.13
The Last Post
As a young man, interested in desert travel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, this author was and remains an admirer of Colonel John Blashford Snell. In his autobiography Colonel Blashford Snell recounts a very odd and inexplicable experience that occurred, almost certainly, as Mike Morgan confirms, at the site of the Gebel Sherif skirmish. In the 1960s, working with fellow sappers and based at Kufra, the group was carrying out surveying and scientific work in the Fezzan. Blashford Snell was in charge of logistics. During one, otherwise unremarkable run, the supply team, who’d hoped to get back to Kufra before darkness, found they needed shelter for a night in the open. The ground was broken, with low indistinct hills, traversed by narrow wadis.
Their maps were poor and the wadi they drove down proved tricky. They got bogged several times and decided to call it a day under the lee o
f some rock buttresses. As he stepped out, in the gathering dark after a cold supper, for the purposes of nature, Blashford Snell heard a voice. None of the crew had called out so he turned in, thinking the sound a trick of the wind. Next morning, he awoke to the same internal imperative and stepped out a few paces from the camp. It was now just before dawn and a dull half-light was sharpening outlines. This was when he saw the truck. The ragged, wrecked but recognisable shape of an LRDG vehicle, the carcass surrounded by the detritus of battle: spent cases, ammo cases, rifle parts.
Daylight revealed a vehicle graveyard; the shells of more blitzed trucks littered the wadi. High up, almost hidden amongst the stones, they found a Pattern 37 canvas haversack, an old Kodak camera and a pile of spent .303 cartridges. Blashford Snell was sure this was the remains of Clayton’s patrol and the residue of battle from 31st January 1941 with the Italian Air Force and Auto Saharan Patrol. The newcomers also found the remains of two graves, marked by simple wooden crosses, presumably the men Moore and the other escapers had buried. Blashford Snell and his team tidied up the graves, saluted, held their moment silence, and then drove away back into the present; but he never found out who it was who had spoken to him that night.14
Perhaps the ghosts, like King Arthur’s knights, are out there still.
Notes
1 Quoted in Morgan, p. 141.
2 Dictionary of Military and Associated terms (2005).
3 Smith, General Sir Rupert, The Utility of Force Allen Lane, London, 2005, p. 197.
4 Bill Sculthorpe, a Canadian who served with 22nd SAS in Malaya, 1955–1957, quoted in Neillands, R., In the Combat Zone (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1997), p. 109.
