Victory Point (10 page)

The capabilities that Special Operations Command units bring to a fight span a broad range of mission types, from foreign internal defense, or FID, which the Green Berets mastered in Vietnam with their work with local fighters, to direct-action “hard hit” teams, to counterterrorism groups, and many, many more. All four conventional branches of the U.S. military provide personnel for SOCOM units (the Marine Corps was the last to join SOCOM with their MARSOC units), and once with a SOCOM unit, troops fall under an entirely new command structure. And unlike the Army, Air Force, Navy, and the Marine Corps, SOCOM not only controls training and equipping of individual units, by doctrine they also control units operationally (although they can be temporarily tasked to fall under the command of a division-level conventional command, such as Combined Joint Task Force 76), creating an environment where SOF units and conventional forces can either work in a synergistic union or render each other’s efforts counterproductive.

Because of the nature of the fight in the earliest days of Operation Enduring Freedom—where the first and foremost goal was the toppling of the Taliban regime—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld felt that Special Operations Command units, particularly the Army’s Special Forces with their global orientation and years of foreign internal defense work and capability to topple an “asymmetric” and elusive enemy, best fit the bill to lead the charge. Hence his ultimate designation of SOCOM as the main effort of the war, meaning that SOF units would be supported by conventional forces (Operation Enduring Freedom marked the first time in American military history when SOF had been tasked as the lead,
supported
element in a large-scale campaign). But special operations forces are just that—
special,
units extremely capable at highly focused mission spectra. After the incredible work that the SOF teams completed in early OEF—linking up with the Northern Alliance, going far, far downrange virtually unsupported, ground-directing precision interdiction strikes from F-15s, B-52s, B-1s, and other platforms, and facing side by side with their Northern Alliance allies often overwhelming forces of Taliban—the fight evolved into one of stabilization and nation building, which requires long-term conventional-force commitment versus short-term get-in-get-out roles that SOF teams often perform. And as the conflict would reveal, this long-term military commitment would be one of a counterinsurgency nature, necessitating that American forces work closely with locals to pull the rug of support out from under terrorists and other destabilizing elements in addition to kinetically engaging those inimical groups.

During 3/3’s predeployment workup, Cooling studied not only the enemy and their tactics, but the complex command structure in which he and his battalion would fight. With an eye for ensuring that the toils of his Marines would have lasting effects on the overall mission, the battalion commander and his staff focused on the myriad SOF command lines driving into AO Trinity, forming not a single chain of command, but one best described as a complex web of invisible strands. The SOF teams used most frequently would be those tasked directly by Major General Olson, the commander of CJTF-76, through a unit called Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, or CJSOTF-A. The ground units under the command of CJSOTF-A were mostly Special Forces, broken into groups called Operational Detachments, either company-size Operational Detachment Bravos (ODBs), or the smaller, team-size Operational Detachment Alphas (ODAs). The ODAs and ODBs primarily worked FID missions with an emphasis on border security along a corridor called Joint Special Operations Area (JSOA) “Oklahoma,” which ran along the frontier with Pakistan and “on top of” the eastern edge of AO Trinity. But other teams could be sent in by levels even higher than CJSOTF-A—directly from a SOF command working in concert with CENTCOM (a unit called SOCCENT). Additionally, SOCOM itself could insert teams, ordering units to hit the ground in Afghanistan from SOCOM’s command center at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. And beyond that, supposedly, are the so-called Tier-1 SOF teams, whom the president or the secretary of defense can activate directly, for those missions deemed to be of the highest national priority (such as acting on time-critical intelligence indicating the location of Osama bin Laden).

Cooling and his staff, upon studying the after-action reports of the Third Battalion of the Sixth Marine regiment (whom 3/3 was replacing in their November 2004 Afghan deployment) as well as their on-the-ground experience once in-country, realized that one of their greatest operational hurdles would be maintaining an ever-productive relationship with locals in areas where SOF conducted direct-action raids. The Marines of 3/3 worked day and night to establish and strengthen ties with the Afghan people as soon as they hit the ground in AO Trinity, developing strong bonds over weeks and months that led to multisource human intelligence. This “HUMINT” led to scores of weapons-cache discoveries and the identification of enemy hideouts. Just as important—
more
important in the minds of many—3/3’s COIN campaign fostered bonds of trust and friendship between the Marines and the locals, helping to legitimize the national government in the minds of Afghans living in some of the farthest recesses of the Hindu Kush.

But a one-hour direct-action raid by a SOF team that captured or killed the wrong—i.e.
innocent
—target and left piles of smoldering collateral damage in the form of dead livestock and destroyed homes would undermine—even destroy—the benefits of months of 3/3’s work with locals. Cooling noted during his research that some of the SOF hits relied on what he and his staff considered to be questionable intel gleaned not from numerous counterbalanced and cross-referenced sources (as Cooling mandated before his Marines conducted any kinetic operation), but from single individuals, whom some SOF teams “ran” through monetary payouts and used repeatedly without cross-checking their statements. Furthermore, these units weren’t required to share intel with either Cooling or Cheek preoperation, often assuming the posture that their missions were of such a degree of importance and specialty that disclosing their information with a conventional unit might compromise them—as they felt that conventional forces couldn’t maintain operational security to a high enough degree to be entrusted with such intel. And by USSOCOM doctrine, these teams didn’t have to share intel anyway—even if a compelling reason surfaced, such as the need to compare their information with that of the Marines for accuracy to ensure that an intended target really was who they thought he was, and not an innocent noncombatant—allowing the individual who should have been the target to slip into the night as he heard the raid going down a few houses down from his location. Cooling knew that relying on single-element or even a small number of HUMINT sources risks a unit being led astray by the personal grudges a source may harbor against another villager, or just plain financial greed.

While the vast majority of the SOF units operating in RC-East worked with exceptional professionalism, Cooling knew that at any moment—and without notice—a misdirected hard-hit raid might go down and ruin weeks or even months of COIN work of untold value. But he also knew of the doctrinal brick wall he and his staff faced: SOCOM could have units undertake missions whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted, and however they wanted, with or without informing 3/3 or Task Force Thunder; and in theory, even without informing CFC-A Command, which ran the entire Afghan Theater. Frustrated by the nonintegration of SOF with conventional forces, and by the extreme difficulty—sometimes impossibility due to unannounced operations—of simply deconflicting a conventional unit’s plans with those of SOF units, Cooling and his staff brainstormed avenues to partially integrate and to fully deconflict operations so that both his battalion and any SOF team undertaking simultaneous missions in a given area not only wouldn’t interdict each other, but would actually aid each other, fostering a synergy of mutual effort. Cooling viewed SOF teams as uniquely capable and ultraspecialized but absolutely vital entities in the larger war-fighting machine—much like an AH-1W Super Cobra, an artillery battery, or a Marine scout/sniper team, any of which he could directly control as part of a MAGTF. But by doctrine he couldn’t control a SOF team—directly. So the hard-charging Texan, who’d graduated near the top of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy, worked with his staff to create his own way to utilize special operations forces—for the benefit not of just his battalion or those SOF teams with which 3/3 would work, but for the entire war effort in AO Trinity.

Cooling, however, didn’t want to control the SOF units; he just wanted to ensure that his battalion’s COIN efforts wouldn’t be undermined. So he and his operations officer, Major Drew Priddy (also a Naval Academy graduate), developed their own operational model, not one where missions would be planned to “employ” SOF under 3/3’s command, or for special operations teams to take the lead over the battalion’s Marines, but one where SOF and 3/3 would work as equal players for the benefit of the overall operation—each, in essence, would work for the operation. The two most salient issues Cooling and Priddy faced in developing operations of this novel style were command and control, and intel—called C2I. The two officers wanted to be able to craft missions that adhered fully with the concept of unity of effort, and as much as possible with unity of command, and also to share intelligence with SOF teams in order to determine which targets had the highest probability of being actual “bad guys” and which ones might have been incorrectly identified. But while the concept seemed to them to be an effective work-around to the situation in AO Trinity, they’d have to get “buy-in” from the teams themselves as well as the nod from Major General Olson. So Cooling went to Colonel Cheek and then to CJTF-76 headquarters at Bagram Airfield, and Priddy arranged face-to-face meetings with members of the ODAs and ODBs, Navy SEALs, and a group of Army Rangers—Task Force Red—at 3/3’s headquarters at Jalalabad Airfield.

Priddy received warm responses from Special Forces and the Navy SEALs, who fell under the command of CJSOTF-A. Task Force Red also found the new operational model agreeable, but the Rangers worked directly for SOCOM and had no official area of operation—they went anywhere SOCOM directed them, so working with them on such missions would prove more difficult. Cooling had success as well—with Cheek, a vociferous advocate for Cooling and Priddy’s plan, and with Major General Olson, who immediately embraced the model. The ops began . . . sharp, well-vetted intel rolled in, 3/3 and SOF units weeded out bad guys, and the Marines’ COIN campaign flourished. The battalion primarily worked with Special Forces and Navy SEALs, who found the model to work as a powerful “force multiplier,” enabling them to achieve far more than they could have achieved if working alone. Cooling and Priddy had effectively adapted the essence of a MAGTF and applied it to build a conventional-forces-SOF team. During the planning stages of each operation, SOF and 3/3 would pore over each other’s intel, develop a general “scheme of maneuver,” and then execute. Because they’d incorporated SOF into their operations, Cooling and Priddy elevated the saliency of their missions, grabbing the attention of Olson, which paid the dividend of gaining 3/3 access to scarce aviation assets, essentially placing the
A
back into the “MAGTF” the Marines emulated in-country. So in addition to balancing SOF intel with theirs to ensure that the direct-action raids were limited, contained, and mitigated collateral damage, the battalion gained additional resources to which they would not otherwise have had access, helping them to operate more or less as a MAGTF.

Typically, SOF would undertake the first phases of an operation as 3/3 supported them by cordoning off a village while a direct-action team took down a target. Once SOF’s part of the mission was complete, they’d “exfil” (typically by helicopter), and 3/3’s Marines would conduct a Medical Capabilities mission (a MEDCAP), where medical supplies and health care would be doled out; during one operation, 3/3 aided over five hundred villagers in a remote part of AO Trinity with everything from simple bandages to inoculations, to casting broken limbs, to enabling locals to better care for themselves by stocking basic medicinal aids and information on how to use those aids. The Marines would then continue to maintain security in a region and undertake various humanitarian assistance missions, typically handing out school and other supplies. 3/3’s operations typically spanned a week or more in duration, with the “kinetic” portion lasting just the first few hours.

Myriad noncombat-oriented agencies formed integral components in 3/3’s greater COIN efforts in Afghanistan. Chief among these were the PRTs, or Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Tasked with digging clean wells, building roads, schools, and mosques, and helping to maintain other vital infrastructure in the tiny villages throughout AO Trinity, 3/3 employed the PRTs as one of their most effective and long-term COIN “weapons.” During an operation, Marines would list the needs of a village, pass that information to one of the PRTs, and within weeks, the lives of the villagers would improve. 3/3’s leadership would also meet regularly with other agencies, both of the Afghan and U.S. governments, and nongovernmental organizations like the Red Cross and others associated with United Nations relief workers and U.S. AID.

The Cooling-Priddy operational model reached its zenith of success in early February of 2005 with Operation
Spurs
. Named in honor of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team (3/3 used sports-team names—primarily Texas basketball teams—for their major operations during their deployment),
Spurs
had Marines of India and Lima companies driving into the heart of the vicious Korangal Valley. Inserting by day via U.S. Army CH-47s, the grunts cordoned off target zones while U.S. Navy SEALs captured a number of known and suspected Islamic fundamentalist combatants. The operation culminated in a number of meetings with village elders (called
shura
meetings), and then a MEDCAP. 3/3 Marines maintained a presence in the Korangal for weeks after
Spurs,
continuing to pressure one particular individual who had proved to be cunningly elusive both to 3/3 and to the SOF teams who were there before 3/3’s arrival in Afghanistan. This individual was a man named Najmudeen.