July 23, 2009 -- U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan will continue to operate under a mantra proven successful in Iraq -- that victory against violent extremist groups can be achieved by dismantling their network of leaders, a senior Pentagon official said today.
“Going after an insurgent network or terrorist network's command-and-control capabilities and systematically picking apart the network through intelligence-led operations is a very important feature of counterinsurgency as we practice it,” Michael Vickers, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, said during a breakfast with reporters.
“Those operations were central to our success in Iraq, and they have been very important in Afghanistan from the beginning,” he said.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere will continue to act directly or through intermediaries to achieve their objectives, according to Vickers. Indirect action, as military officials have called this approach, should be the goal in all U.S. operations because it carries less risk of alienating local populations or the American people, Vickers argued.
“The question is, do circumstances in the United States or in that country allow me to do that right away?” he asked.
Vickers' comments today seem rooted in a relatively new concept in Defense Department thinking, which stipulates that extremist groups should be viewed as complex networks that are best fought by network-like organizations of DOD and the intelligence community.
Intelligence plays a central role part in this construct of a “global counterterrorism network,” as Vickers called it in a speech last October at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The idea of using intelligence to pick apart a shadowy network . . . by going after the top-level leadership and the mid-level leadership . . . is a very valuable approach,” he said today.
The secretive world surrounding this approach, with small teams of U.S. operatives located worldwide, remains entirely out of public view. Officials would only speak in general terms about the formation of “hunter networks” and the “global pursuit” to create what is known as the “global antiterrorist environment,” or GATE, in Pentagon jargon.
And, as Vickers said last October, the fight is “not for the faint of heart” because it requires “relentless” operations. -- Sebastian Sprenger