Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan

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Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan
By Spencer Ackerman Email Author
August 18, 2010 | 8:15 pm

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ever since the Afghanistan war became a counterinsurgency fight, critics have charged that commanders’ cautions about using force only inhibit the fight against the Taliban. But in the shadows, NATO Special Operations Forces are engaged in an intensely lethal war of their own.

According to information provided to Danger Room by Gen. David Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, in just the past 90 days these elite units have captured or killed 365 militant leaders, detained 1,335 insurgent foot soldiers and killed another 1,031 insurgents on top of that.

Yes, some units once engaged in armed coercion have de-emphasized taking direct action against insurgent bombers. But the rough stuff against the networks that create improvised explosive devices has been part of the special forces’ hot summer –- represented by green, blue and orange bursts on the map of Afghanistan that Petraeus compiled into a briefing slide.

“We’ve been taking a lot of kinetic activities against them, actually,” Petraeus says, using military jargon for violent operations. “I don’t know if there’s an incident a day, but certainly close to it, where our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets are detecting a group” planting IEDs, and U.S. forces go after that group.

“Maybe not all Task Force ODIN, by the way,” he clarifies, referring to one of two task forces charged with stopping the blasts. “There’s lots of others that are out there, lots of other elements detecting individuals planting IEDs and killing or capturing them.” That he certainly does not clarify. But he suggests that the pointy end of the counter-IED spear is now in the hands of Special Operations Forces.