White House widening covert war in North Africa

KIMBERLY DOZIER

AP Intel­li­gence Writer

WASHINGTON — Small teams of spe­cial oper­a­tions forces arrived at Amer­i­can embassies through­out North Africa in the months before mil­i­tants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambas­sador in Libya. The sol­diers’ mis­sion: Set up a net­work that could quickly strike a ter­ror­ist tar­get or res­cue a hostage.

But the teams had yet to do much coun­tert­er­ror­ism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new mil­i­tary task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, accord­ing to three U.S. coun­tert­er­ror offi­cials and a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial. All spoke only on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the strat­egy publicly.

The coun­tert­er­ror effort indi­cates that the admin­is­tra­tion has been wor­ried for some time about a grow­ing threat posed by al-Qaida and its off­shoots in North Africa. But offi­cials say the mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion was too new to respond to the attack in Beng­hazi, where the admin­is­tra­tion now believes armed al-Qaida-linked mil­i­tants sur­rounded the lightly guarded U.S. com­pound, set it on fire and killed Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Repub­li­cans have ques­tioned whether the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has been hid­ing key infor­ma­tion or hasn’t known what hap­pened in the imme­di­ate after­math of the attack. They are using those ques­tions in the final weeks before the U.S. elec­tions as an oppor­tu­nity to assail Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on for­eign pol­icy, an area where he has held clear leads in opin­ion polls since the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

On Tues­day, lead­ers of a con­gres­sional com­mit­tee said requests for added secu­rity at the con­sulate in Beng­hazi were repeat­edly denied, despite a string of less deadly ter­ror attacks on the con­sulate in recent months. Those included an explo­sion that blew a hole in the secu­rity perime­ter and another inci­dent in which an explo­sive device was tossed over the con­sulate fence. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton told Con­gress in a let­ter respond­ing to the accu­sa­tions that she has set up a group to inves­ti­gate the Beng­hazi attack, and it is to begin work this week.

As of early Sep­tem­ber, the spe­cial oper­a­tions teams still con­sisted only of liai­son offi­cers who were assigned to estab­lish rela­tion­ships with local gov­ern­ments and U.S. offi­cials in the region. Only lim­ited coun­tert­er­ror­ism oper­a­tions have been con­ducted in Africa so far.

The White House, the CIA and U.S. Africa Com­mand all declined to comment.

“There are no plans at this stage for uni­lat­eral U.S. mil­i­tary oper­a­tions” in the region, Pen­ta­gon spokesman George Lit­tle said Tues­day, adding that the focus was on help­ing African coun­tries build their own forces.

For the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand, spokesman Col. Tim Nye would not dis­cuss “the mis­sions and or loca­tions of its coun­tert­er­ror­ist forces” except to say that spe­cial oper­a­tions troops are in 75 coun­tries daily con­duct­ing missions.

The go-slow approach being taken by the Army’s top clan­des­tine coun­tert­er­ror­ist unit — known as Delta Force — is an effort by the White House to counter crit­i­cism from some U.S. law­mak­ers, human rights activists and oth­ers that the anti-terror fight is shift­ing largely to a secret war using spe­cial oper­a­tions raids and drone strikes, with lit­tle pub­lic account­abil­ity. The admin­is­tra­tion has been tak­ing its time when set­ting up the new unit to get buy-in from all play­ers who might be affected, such as the U.S. ambas­sadors, CIA sta­tion chiefs, regional U.S. mil­i­tary com­man­ders and local leaders.

Even­tu­ally, the Delta Force group will form the back­bone of a mil­i­tary task force respon­si­ble for com­bat­ing al-Qaida and other ter­ror­ist groups across the region with an arse­nal that includes drones. But first, it will work to win accep­tance by help­ing North African nations build their own spe­cial oper­a­tions and coun­tert­er­ror units.

And noth­ing pre­cludes the admin­is­tra­tion from using other mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence units to retal­i­ate against the per­pe­tra­tors of the Sept. 11 con­sulate attack in Benghazi.

But some con­gres­sional lead­ers say the admin­is­tra­tion is not react­ing quickly enough.

“Clearly, they haven’t moved fast enough to bat­tle the threat,” said House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

While Rogers would not com­ment on the spe­cial oper­a­tions coun­tert­er­ror­ism net­work, he said, “You actu­ally have to hunt them (ter­ror­ists) down. No swift action, and we will be the recip­i­ent of some­thing equally bad hap­pen­ing to another diplomat.”

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has been con­cerned about the grow­ing power and influ­ence of al-Qaida off­shoots in Yemen, Soma­lia, Iraq and North Africa. Only the Yemeni branch has tried to attack Amer­i­can ter­ri­tory directly so far, with a series of thwarted bomb plots aimed at U.S.-bound air­craft. A Navy SEAL task force set up in 2009 has used a com­bi­na­tion of raids and drone strikes to fight mil­i­tants in Yemen and Soma­lia, work­ing together with the CIA and local forces.

The new task force would work in much the same way to com­bat al-Qaida’s North African affil­i­ates, which are grow­ing in num­bers and are awash in weapons from post-revolutionary Libya’s looted stock­piles. They are well-funded by a crim­i­nal net­work traf­fick­ing in drugs and hostages.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM, and Nigerian-based extrem­ist sect Boko Haram are arguably the two largest and most dan­ger­ous affil­i­ates. Both have mor­phed in recent years from extrem­ist rebel groups that chal­lenge their home gov­ern­ments into ter­ror­ist groups that use vio­lence to try to impose extreme Islamic rule on any ter­ri­tory they can seize across Africa.

U.S. offi­cials believe AQIM may have helped the local Libyan mil­i­tant group Ansar al-Shariah carry out the Beng­hazi attack, and Boko Haram has killed more than 240 peo­ple in an anti-Christian, anti-government cam­paign of assas­si­na­tions and bomb­ings this year alone.

The gov­ern­ments of Libya and Niger have already asked for U.S. assis­tance to build their own spe­cial oper­a­tions capa­bil­ity to help com­bat such al-Qaida-related groups, and Nige­ria has requested help to con­trol its porous bor­der to stop mil­i­tant traf­fick­ing, accord­ing to two U.S. offi­cials. They, too, spoke only on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Mali has asked for inter­na­tional assis­tance to win back con­trol of its north­ern region from al-Qaida groups includ­ing AQIM and Boko Haram, open­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of a return of U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions forces there. A U.S. train­ing unit was pulled out of the coun­try after a March coup that gave the mil­i­tants the chaos they needed to seize the north­ern territory.

The top State Depart­ment offi­cial for African affairs said Tues­day that the mil­i­tants in Mali “must be dealt with through secu­rity and mil­i­tary means.”

“But any mil­i­tary action up there must indeed be well planned, well orga­nized, well resourced and well thought through,” said John­nie Car­son, the U.S. assis­tant sec­re­tary of state for African affairs. “And it must, in fact, be agreed upon by those who are going to be most affected by it.”

U.S. Africa Com­mand chief Gen. Carter Ham said “a mil­i­tary com­po­nent” would be a part of an over­all solu­tion in north­ern Mali, but he ruled out an overt U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence, speak­ing to reporters dur­ing a visit to Alge­ria over the weekend.

Asked about the attack in Beng­hazi, Ham said it’s the host country’s respon­si­bil­ity to pro­tect diplo­matic mis­sions on its territory.

Posted by AP News on Oct 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.