Special Forces in International Operations - Challenge for the future

FOI Memo

By Dr. Magnus Norell and Karin Ströberg

The memo as a pdf-file

Introduction
In March1994, General Sir Michael Rose – a former SAS (Special Air Service) officer, or ‘ex-Regiment’ in SAS-parlour - the head of UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) in Bosnia, requested the help of a SAS-squad for a sensitive job. In Bosnia at the time there was already a SAS-squadron deployed; this was D-squadron, which was on stand-by duty. This meant that the troop could be called up for ‘significant events’ at short notice1. The job General Rose had in mind, however, called for reinforcements. Therefore a second SAS squadron was called up. In the spring of 1994, the Croats and Moslems in Bosnia were prepared to recognize each other’s borders on condition that their respective lines could be mapped and agreed to by April 12 2. For Rose, a former SAS officer, the sensitivity of the matter and the short time-frame, made it natural to turn to a force well-known for it’s ability to perform difficult tasks in ‘tight’ situations.

The force was sent down under cover as part of the Signals Regiment, and they operated as a so called ‘green army unit’ under the banner of the UN. The official name of the unit was United Kingdom Liaison Officers (UKLO). In reality the SAS-teams in Bosnia were used for a number of other tasks than the map-making business along the Croat-Moslem lines. In essence, the SAS in Bosnia worked as the eyes and ears of General Rose. In short, they performed classic SF tasks in Bosnia with a certain emphasis on Intelligence gathering. At the time, the ‘secret’ of SAS involvement, and any other Special Forces (hereafter SF), was of course a very official one. SF has been used in International Operations (hereafter IO) for many years. But officially the governments using such forces as part of their IO forces have always done so behind a cloak of ‘deniability’, only reluctantly admitting the official presence of SF.

The fact that SF is used in IO is in itself not very strange; in all military operations SF has played, and will continue to play, an important role, albeit often a very small and limited one. There will always be a need for good intelligence and very often room for small forces to perform Special Operations (hereafter SO) such as hostage rescue, destroying special targets or hunting down individuals. This was the case in Bosnia during the war, and it is the case today in various theatres of operations where IO’s are active.

What the war in Bosnia showed, perhaps to a greater extent than before, was that the kind of conflicts that IO forces will be involved in, in the future, is far removed from the kind of traditional peacekeeping roles that the UN is still structured for3. The kind of missions that SAS, and other SF, saw in Bosnia, with an emphasis on peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks, is likely to be the kind of missions the International community will encounter in the 21st century. In addition, the peace-enforcement roles that will be seen in the future will probably be of the kind where the ‘enemy’ is either the kind of ‘punk-soldier’ seen on the streets of Monrovia to the villages in northern Macedonia or Kosovo. Or it’s the kind of soldier that slips in and out of uniform in the jungles of Sri Lanka to the mountains of Kashmir. These people could be answering the calls of a warlord in Colombia as well as to a dictator in central Africa or, as we have seen in Afghanistan during the autumn months of 2001, a religious leader intent on waging a global war against the ‘enemy’, defined in the broadest possible terms.

What these examples have in common is that in countering such zones of conflict and human misery, small and specially trained forces might be a far more useful, and cheaper, way of dealing with at least some of the problems of IO’s in such scenarios. The role of larger forces from several countries will presumably be there in the foreseeable future, but their role might diminish as focus of IO’s shifts towards a more regional4 approach and as conflicts turn from ‘Interstate’ to ‘Intrastate’.

In this regard, it is perhaps time to let SF out of the closet and into the daylight.

1 In the way the SAS works, there are always four squadrons on active duty, so called ‘Sabre squadrons’. Of these squadrons one is on counter-terrorist duty, or CT. Another squadron is on ‘standby’ duty, ready to deploy at short notice to ‘significant events’ overseas. A third squadron is on reserve standby duty, which in practice means training. A fourth squadron devotes its time exclusively to training exercises.
2 Spence, Cameron, ’All Necessary Measures’, Penguin Books, London 1998.
3 See UN manual on peacekeeping operations.
4 As an example of this ‘regionalisation’ of ’peace-operations’ that the international community might be forced to deal with in the future, one can look at the UN operation in East Timor. Initially, troops from Australia went in for the ‘peace-enforcement’ part. A more multilateral, and traditional, UN operation followed when matters had calmed down sufficiently. It is fair to argue that in terms of speed, command & control and communication, a unilateral approach to such a mission (limited in scope and with a clear mandate), the Australian East Timor operation points ahead towards a model that should be emulated.