Benghazi (3 page)

Libya seemed to be becoming something of a free-for-all, with Gaddafi loyalists, rebel fighters, mercenaries, jihadists, contractors, and SAS and Delta force soldiers running around the battle space. Navigating this mess on behalf of the United States was Christopher Stevens, who arrived in Libya as a Special Representative of the State Department during the civil war.

With NATO enforcing a no-fly area over the warzone, there were no commercial flights into Libya, so Stevens and his entourage had to come into the country on a Greek cargo ship docking in Benghazi. Fluent in Arabic and French, Stevens had held diplomatic posts in Israel, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, in addition to his previous position as the Deputy Chief of Mission between 2007 and 2009. Known for his ability to mix it up with the locals and stroll around the
souks
of the Middle East on his own, Stevens was by all accounts the right man for the challenging task that lay ahead of him in the midst of a full-blown civil war.

B
Y THEIR NATURE,
very little is known about covert and clandestine operations—unless, of course, something goes drastically wrong.

At five in the morning on April 20th, 2012, a van hurtled over the guardrail on a bridge crossing the Niger River in the West African nation of Mali. In total, six people were killed when the van sank into the river below. Three were Moroccan prostitutes. One was a US Army Civil Affairs soldier. Another was listed as Civil Affairs as a cover for his real work. The remaining fatality was Master Sergeant Trevor Bast, assigned to Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) at Ft. Belvoir, also a cover. Bast and one of the Civil Affairs soldiers were almost certainly members of the elite, but relatively unknown, Intelligence Support Activity.

Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA, operates under various codenames, which rotate every few years. As a part of JSOC, ISA operators help prepare battlespace for other Special Operations units, usually Delta Force or SEAL Team Six. Previous ISA missions include hunting down war criminals in the Balkans and locating Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Man hunting is one of this unit's specialties—part of a robust list of SIGINT and HUMINT capabilities. Like the rest of JSOC, ISA has not been hurting for work during the War on Terror.

Special Operations forces had been focusing on Africa for a number of years. As Rangers, Delta, and SEALs churned through one High Value Target after another in Afghanistan and Iraq, strategic planners knew that Islamic radicals would be looking for new places to seek safe harbor and to stage future operations. Blue Squadron of SEAL Team Six culled more than a few Al-Shabbab terrorists in Somalia, while Red Squadron executed the USS Maersk hostage rescue mission in Somali pirate waters. Meanwhile, Special Forces and SEALs moved into Uganda, seeking to rid the country of the already-defunct Lord's Resistance Army. The British SBS launched a failed hostage rescue mission in Nigeria, in broad daylight, in March of 2012.

West Africa took on a different flavor. Through the Joint Special Operations Task Force Trans-Sahara, Special Forces ODAs had been training soldiers in Mali to battle AQIM. Making life difficult for the operators working out of the US embassy in Mali was Ambassador Milovanovic, who did not care for or trust the military. Compounding the problem, the Defense Attaché came from the US Air Force and had a poor understanding of Special Operations missions and capabilities.

In the months immediately after 9/11, Delta Force operators had been able to hunt down terrorists in a number of different countries, sometimes unilaterally, usually through host nation counterparts. Eight years later, the bureaucracy had come back in full swing, and the days were long gone when missions could be blessed by a handshake between a JSOC operator and the ambassador.

The nearby 2011 Libyan civil war also affected Mali, as Gaddafi had been a heavy hitter in the country before he was abandoned by his South African bodyguards and executed in the street.

Many taureg fighters, who had been allied with Gaddafi going back to the 1987 Toyota War with Chad, fought for him during the Libyan civil war in 2011. After Gaddafi was defeated, these fighters returned home with weapons, combat experience, and the motivation to carve out a separate, independent state for themselves.

When the coup sparked in Mali, formal US military assistance to the government was withdrawn, however AQIM remained a regional threat, one that no one wanted to see rise to power in the wake of a coup. AQIM was known for kidnapping—mostly Europeans, from whom they made millions in ransom dollars each year. Jihadist fighters coming back from Afghanistan also joined their ranks and began making deals with Al-Shabbab in Somalia and the Nigerian Taliban. Reportedly, many of these Nigerians had attended AQIM training camps.

What was ISA doing in Mali when two of their members and a Civil Affairs soldier were killed? AQIM was the main focus, and the Mali coup intersected with the mission. More than likely these ISA operators were working the intelligence piece for Direct Action operations that would be carried out by Malian military units or for airstrikes that would take out AQIM HVTs.

Sadly, the driver, Master Sergeant Bast, lost control of the vehicle they were riding in. The three Moroccan women were prostitutes more than likely trafficked into Mali from their home country. At the time of the crash, Bast was driving the van south, toward a safe house used by one of the ISA operators.

Every Special Operations unit has some black marks on its record. Delta Force has Operation Eagle Claw, the failed effort to recover American hostages held in Iran in 1980. SEAL Team Six accidentally killed Linda Norgrove, a hostage they were supposed to rescue from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pat Tillman died in a tragic friendly fire incident while serving in 2nd Ranger Battalion. ISA makes mistakes like the rest of the Special Operations community, but this single incident should not paint the unit in a negative light, especially when one considers the volume of their work during the War on Terror, the vast majority of which has gone completely unreported.

It should also not tarnish the image of the three soldiers directly involved. Each contributed years of service to his country.

Meanwhile, in East Africa, a U–28 airplane wired up to collect Signal Intelligence crashed in Djibouti.
Wired
magazine's Danger Room reported that, “the crew of the single-engine U–28 had been on a mission that ‘had to do with ISR'—that is, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for special operations forces on the ground. The U–28 is a small, retrofitted commercial plane that looks indistinguishable from a civilian plane to the naked eye, especially from high in the air.”

Operated by a crew of four airmen, the U–28 could record electronic intercepts and take reconnaissance photos that would later be used by Special Operations troops to conduct combat operations.

Throughout West Africa, various intelligence-gathering assets were moved into place. Behind closed doors, President Obama had given his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, carte blanche to run operations in North Africa and the Middle East, provided he didn't do anything that ended up becoming an exposé in
The New York Times
and embarrassing the administration. In 2012, a secret war across North Africa was well underway.

Sources indicate that ISR platforms like the U–28 that crashed in Djibouti have been a constant presence in the skies over West Africa as well. Operating under the codename “Creek Sand,” these surveillance flights were based out of Burkina Faso but flew over Mali.

With JSOC, Brennan waged his own unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure. These Direct Action (DA) operations, unlike the traditional ISR missions mentioned above, were “off the books” in the sense that they were not coordinated through the Pentagon or other governmental agencies, including the CIA. With Obama more than likely providing a rubber stamp, the chain of command went from Brennan to McRaven, who would then mobilize the men of ISA, SEAL Team Six, or Delta Force to conduct these missions.

This way, the operations remained tightly compartmentalized to prevent knowledge of them from leaking to the public, something that the Obama administration had become weary of after getting in hot water due to the leaks they themselves initiated after the Osama Bin Laden raid. Of course, the problem became that they had to find ways to “deconflict” JSOC operations with those conducted by the CIA and by other branches of the military so that they didn't step on other ongoing missions.

While ISA and others developed intelligence on the ground, a small JSOC element was secretly ferried to the sprawling naval airbase in Southern Europe. A few dozen men strong, this element was in place to conduct operations in Algeria, Libya, Mali, and Nigeria, and perhaps other countries as well.

Sometime prior to September of 2012, this JSOC element was directed by John Brennan to conduct combat operations in Libya. These operations targeted a high-level Al Qaeda operative who will not be named here out of consideration for operational security.

W
ITH THE
L
IBYAN
Fighting Group essentially defunct, a group called Ansar Al-Sharia, meaning supporters of Sharia Islamic law, is now the most prominent Islamic extremist group in Libya. The group gained some notoriety during the 2011 revolution, in which it played a small role in the battle for Sirte. The group may have embellished its actual participation after the fact in order to gain more exposure.

Ansar Al-Sharia gained traction during the Libyan civil war as people took up arms against the Gaddafi regime. On February 20th of 2012, the blast from a suicide bomber tore apart the headquarters of Gaddafi's security forces in Benghazi. Suicide vests are considered by many to be an indicator of a jihadist action.

The group and its leader, Abu Sufian Bin Qumu, hail from the Libyan port city of Derna—a notorious hotbed of Islamic extremism, as mentioned above—but have also set up shop in another center for international jihadists: Benghazi. Abu Sufian Bin Qumu is actually a former Guantanamo prison inmate who was released from US custody in 2007. Previously, he had worked for one of Osama Bin Laden's companies in Sudan before traveling to Pakistan to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 2001, he is reported to have traveled into Afghanistan, where he worked for the Wafa Humanitarian Organization, a charity that was actually an Al Qaeda front, until he was arrested by authorities in Pakistan after being tipped off by Libyan security forces in 2002.

The Pakistanis then turned Qumu over to the US authorities, who transferred him to Gitmo in May of 2002.

Abu Sufian Bin Qumu.

Unsubstantiated reports point to Abu Sufian Bin Qumu as being Bin Laden's driver, which would indicate that they had a very close relationship. Given that Bin Qumu was released from Gitmo before taking control of Ansar Al-Sharia, one must ask whether or not American intelligence services had “flipped” him while he was held in duress at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Is the Libyan terrorist leader a double, or even a triple agent?

Whatever the case, he was released from Guantanamo in 2007 and handed over to Libyan security forces until Gaddafi ordered him released with dozens of other dissidents in 2010 to celebrate his 41st year in power and as part of a deal struck with former leaders of the Libyan Fighting Group. In a recent interview posted on Ansar Al-Sharia's Facebook page, Qumu claims that he was tortured in Guantanamo and is deeply resentful of the United States.

The group is believed to be attempting to grow its numbers by recruiting from the disenfranchised in Derna and Benghazi, and also to be running information operations to mold public perceptions through a media outlet called Al-Raya Media Productions Foundation, based in Benghazi. The group's I/O message is to depict itself as the “defender of Islam and sharia,” and to “highlight[e] its goodwill and civic activities in Benghazi, such as visits to hospitals and trash cleanup efforts” in hopes of establishing credibility and legitimacy with the local population. Such techniques for ingratiating themselves to the public are also seen in groups such as Hezbollah and, more recently, Syrian jihadist rebels. While the idea of a kinder, friendlier jihadist group may seem laughable, these are actually advanced propaganda efforts that attempt to mold popular perceptions and are especially dangerous where the state is weak and failing governmental institutions have left a power vacuum.