New Analysis
Arroyo’s Deal with U.S. Includes Special Covert Operations

The deeper President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo engages U.S. support for her counter-insurgency campaign against Leftist guerrillas, the more covert operations by U.S. special forces are expected to follow. The deal could pit the U.S. special forces – or local elite forces trained by them - against the New People’s Army.

By BOBBY TUAZON
Bulatlat.com

Now that the U.S. state department has again named the New People’s Army (NPA) in its Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, covert operations against the guerilla army and other suspected Leftist leaders are to be expected. These covert operations by the U.S. military will be handled directly by its own special operatives or by Philippine operatives trained by the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOFs).

The carte blanche for such operations has been given by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself when more than a week ago she ordered soldiers trained by the U.S. SOF to shift their operations from southern Mindanao to other regions where the NPA is said to be operating. The commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) also told reporters in Zamboanga City that with the “success” in the U.S. mission against the Abu Sayyaf military operations should now consider counter-insurgency as a focus.

The U.S. government’s FTO list vests legitimacy to America’s global military operations that aim to make the world safe from “international terrorism” even if such list includes many revolutionary organizations with clear ideological and liberationist goals. While George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” is aimed at the al Qaeda and its alleged terrorist cells in many countries, the FTO broadens the coverage of this borderless war. 

Expected to be assigned the task of bringing the war outside the Afghanistan theater are the SOFs. Last week, the New York Times reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld may soon field SOFs worldwide for anti-terrorist missions. The report, based on Pentagon and intelligence information, is not essentially new partly because U.S. special forces have been in the Philippines to train local forces in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency. What’s new is that Rumsfeld’s option came out a few days after the FTO list and following his meeting with Philippine defense secretary Angelo Reyes.

Reyes was in Pentagon last week to follow up a proposed Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA), a $55 million military aid pledge and a five-year military program deal between the two countries. Just like the MLSA, the new five-year military deal is highly-secret that deserves investigation.

Long-term covert operations

The New York Times said the SOFs will be deeply involved in long-term covert operations “in countries where the United States is not at open war and, in some cases, where the local government is not informed of their presence.

If the Rumsfeld plan is pursued in the Philippines, then the intensification of U.S.-backed counter-insurgency campaign as ordered by Macapagal-Arroyo will include covert operations. Covert operations can be launched through the direct participation of the U.S. SOFs – or by local elite forces trained by them.

The SOF was created by the U.S. Congress in 1987 as the open armed adjunct of the CIA – its central command based in Florida works closely with the spy agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The same congress gave the SOF in 1991 the authority to penetrate virtually every country on earth.

As a separate elite force, the SOFs  now number 46,000 including Army Green Berets, Rangers, Special Operations Aviation, psychological operations and civil affairs units; Navy Sea-Air-Land Forces and special boat units; and Air Force special operations squadrons. Two of these are highly-secretive groups: the Army’s special operations unit known as Delta Force is also called “the Combat Applications Group; and the Naval special warfare unit known as SEAL Team 6 is also called the “Development Group.”

As an elite force, SOFs take their command direct from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) through the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

Section 167 of Title 10, U.S. Code which created the special operations command, includes SOF operations as, among others, direct action (small-scale strikes), unconventional or irregular warfare, civil affairs and psychological operations (psyops or influencing public opinion), foreign internal defense (organizing and training host country paramilitary forces), counterterrorism and humanitarian assistance.

The section also authorizes the assistant secretary to assign SOFs for other special activities which the Code does not elaborate, however. It is presumed that, after absorbing many of the CIA’s covert operations, the SOF now specializes in political assassinations.

CIA adjunct

The magnitude of authority given to SOFs covers not only political and military operations to support the host government - but also unconventional activities to support internal forces out to change a standing government, especially if its existence threatens instability in the region (read: unfriendly to the United States). This is one reason why, according to Douglas Valentine, SOFs act as adjunct of the CIA.

Valentine, whose book, The Phoenix Program, is described by Alfred W. McCoy as the "most definitive account of the CIA's most secret and deadly covert operation in the Vietnam war," says the U.S. Special Forces were modeled on the German SS and, like the SS, their "unconventional" mission is to wage war against guerrillas (partisans during the last war) and the civilian population which supports them.

One of the SOFs' special weapons is "civic action" which is generally thought to mean only road construction, repair of public facilities or medical mission. Because civic action is part of the SOFs' irregular warfare, it is per se a form of irregular warfare which is intended not as a show of benevolence to a captive audience but to "win the hearts and minds" of the population in support of the SOFs' covert operations.

Again, the Times also cited a classified directive issued recently by the Pentagon to the SOF command to come up with fresh thinking on how elite counterterrorism units could be sent to "disrupt and destroy enemy assets."

Covert action, a former senior lawyer for the CIA said, is "an activity or activities of the U.S. government to influence the political, economic or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly." Based on a state department memorandum some years ago, the U.S. president, as commander in chief, had the power to order Delta Force to capture terrorists overseas and then bring them back to the United States, the Times also reported. This means, the SOF command can work independently around the world with only the U.S. president in the know.

The Philippines is one of at least 100 countries where the SOF has been on special training missions. But with the country among Bush’s list of 80 countries in his “war on terrorism” and the homegrown Leftist guerrillas again on the FTO list, covert operations by the SOF are expected to deepen.

In the Pentagon strategy, the Philippines serves not only as the second front of its war on terrorism. It continues likewise to serve as a springboard for the United States’ renewed drive for geopolitical hegemony in Southeast Asia. Bulatlat.com

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