Dirty Wars (52 page)

While al Shabab continued to broaden its authority, the first major crisis Obama directly confronted in Somalia did not come from the Islamist group, but rather from a totally different threat increasingly making its presence felt around the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula: pirates. It was this confrontation—with pirates, rather than al Qaeda—that would cement the growing affinity President Obama had for JSOC.

THE PIRACY INDUSTRY HAD DEVELOPED
in Somalia following the fall of Siad Barre's regime in 1991. During the six months that the ICU ruled Somalia, it
cracked down substantially
on hijackings. Following the Ethiopian invasion, the pirates reclaimed the high seas around Somalia. Although the pirates were often condemned as terrorists and criminals, there was a seldom-mentioned context to their actions. International corporations and nation-states had taken advantage of the permanent state of instability in Somalia, treating the Somali coast as their private,
for-profit fishery
, while others polluted it with
illegal waste dumping
. Initially, piracy was at times a response to these actions and some pirates viewed themselves as a sort of
Somali coast guard
, taxing ships that sought to profit from what was once the realm of Somali fishermen. Those aims were eventually sidelined as the pirates realized they could make huge sums of money by hijacking ships, taking hostages and negotiating large ransoms. Piracy was big business in Somalia. In some cases, the hostages went unharmed, ransoms were paid and everyone moved on. On rare occasions, hostages were killed or, more frequently, died of disease or neglect.

The hijacking on April 8, 2009, was a day Somali pirates hit the wrong ship. On that day, the
Maersk Alabama,
a US-flagged cargo ship, was making its way through the Indian Ocean to Mombasa, passing along the Somali
coast, when it was approached by a small vessel carrying four armed pirates. The crew on board the
Alabama
had received
counterpiracy training
and it did everything it was supposed to do: crew members shot off flares and began moving people on board the ship into
a secured safe room
. The crew
maneuvered the
Alabama's
rudders in an attempt to throw the much smaller ship off course, then shut down the ship's power and incapacitated its engines. But the young Somalis in the small boat were experienced pirates. In fact, the ship they were using in the attack on the
Alabama
was launched from the
FV
Win Far 161,
a Taiwanese vessel they had just seized. After some struggle with the
Alabama
crew's counterpiracy maneuvers, the four Somali pirates managed to board the
Alabama.
They had no idea that the ship they were hijacking belonged to a major
US Defense Department contractor
or that this operation would be any different from others they had carried out.

When the White House learned that a US-flagged vessel had been seized and that the ship's captain and other members of the twenty-man crew were Americans, the hijacking became a major priority. President Obama was swiftly briefed on the crisis. It was the first registered, US-flagged vessel to be hijacked
since the early 1800s
. Hours after the hijacking, Obama authorized the
deployment of a destroyer
, the USS
Bainbridge,
to respond.

By the time the
Bainbridge
reached the scene, on April 9, the
Alabama's
captain, Richard Phillips, had been
taken hostage
by the pirates and was in a smaller, encapsulated lifeboat en route to the Somali mainland. One of the pirates had sustained an injury during the hijacking and was ultimately captured by US Navy forces. The other three pirates had abandoned the
Alabama
and were attempting to flee with the only negotiating chip they had left, Captain Phillips. As the standoff continued, President Obama and his national security team worked around the clock with US military commanders to run through various scenarios of how to resolve the crisis and free Phillips unharmed.
Two other ships
, the guided missile frigate USS
Halyburton
and the amphibious assault ship, USS
Boxer,
were deployed to the scene.

Two days after Phillips was captured, President Obama received two national security briefings on the situation. Defense Secretary Gates said that US commanders twice requested the authority to use lethal force, which Obama granted “
virtually immediately
.” The
first authorization
was issued at 8:00 p.m. on April 10, after US Navy personnel watched a day earlier from the
Bainbridge
as Captain Phillips
tried to escape
his captors before being quickly retaken. In response, the pirates
threw into the ocean
the only communications devices they had on the lifeboat, fearing they were being used to conduct surveillance or to communicate secretly
with Phillips. That left the US naval forces with only eyes on the ship and the White House fearing that a US citizen would die very publicly at the hands of pirates only three months into Obama's presidency. On April 11, at 9:20 a.m., President Obama granted a
second authorization
to use lethal force to an “additional set of US forces.”

It was the seizing of the
Alabama
that would very directly introduce President Obama to JSOC and its capabilities. It was “
the first time I know of
that Obama, himself, had sort of a direct encounter or experience with these units, [and] in a sense, came to grips with the reality of his own power, as chief executive,” recalled Marc Ambinder, a journalist with very close ties to the Obama administration's national security team. The president authorized JSOC personnel in the United States to
deploy to the Horn of Africa
immediately. Obama was also briefed on the presence of a SEAL Team 6 unit
based at Manda Bay
, Kenya, that could make it to the
Bainbridge
in forty-five minutes. Those men, the president was told, were the best snipers available in the US military.

“If it comes down to putting sharpshooters up on the deck of an aircraft, and making sure that first shot doesn't miss, who do you want to do it?” asked General Hugh Shelton, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs and an ex-commander of the Special Operations Command. Referring to Team 6, he told me, “
They're deadly accurate
.” With the SEAL snipers in place, the commanders on board the ship asked for authorization to neutralize the pirates. Within the administration, “there was a little bit of debate,” recalled Ambinder. “Obama, the National Security Council and lawyers, they wanted to do this, because it was the first instance, the first time really, where they were creating an op from top to bottom, so they wanted to do it very carefully. They wrote very clear, careful, rules of engagement.”

On April 12, believing that the pirates intended to kill Phillips, the JSOC commander aboard the
Bainbridge
was patched into the White House Situation Room, directly to President Obama. “The President is essentially asking the commander a series of questions,” said Ambinder. “‘Are these conditions satisfied? Is there any way to do this, save this guy without causing undue harm to US troops? Do you have a clear shot? Is there any chance of other collateral casualties or damage?' ‘No, sir.' And then the commander asked, ‘Do I have your permission to execute?' And the President says, ‘Yes, you do.' The commander gives his order.”

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Three shots
, fired almost at the exact same moment by three different snipers. Three dead Somali pirates.

Captain Richard Phillips was rescued and returned to the United States with much fanfare. President Obama won praise from across the political
spectrum for his leadership in taking down the pirates and bringing an end to the hostage situation without losing a single US life and with just three bullets fired. Behind the scenes, it was a powerful lesson for President Obama about the clandestine force that President Bush once praised as “awesome”—JSOC. In thanking the teams that worked on the
Maersk Alabama
operation, President Obama for the first time
publicly used the name
of Admiral William McRaven, JSOC's commander, who oversaw the operation. “Great job,” Obama told McRaven when he called him after the operation. “The Somali pirates are dead, the captain is rescued and Obama, I think, really tangibly, physically gets it that he has this power as the President,” recalled Ambinder.

Deploying Special Ops Forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan was one thing, but to use them in a truly unconventional, unanticipated operation brought the capability of this force home. After the takedown of the pirates, Admiral McRaven became a much more frequent guest of the president and, just as under President Bush, the troops from JSOC became Obama's prized ninjas. After the
Alabama
operation, “
The President personally invited
the leaders of the Special Operations forces to the White House, and asked them to have an integral role in policy,” recalled a Special Ops source who worked on Horn of Africa policy at the time. Obama “asked for their professional military advice in how best to carry out these operations. That was absolutely unheard of in the previous administration, in that they would dictate what the policy was and they would tell the Pentagon, and the Pentagon would ensure that the subordinate commands would carry that out.” Obama, he said, embraced the Special Ops leaders, particularly Admiral McRaven. His time at the White House in the early stages of the Global War on Terror “taught him how to anticipate policymakers' needs and desires, so JSOC was always ahead of the curve, they always had the perfect policy prescription for the White House,” he added. JSOC “knew what they were gonna be asked to do before they were asked. That's key. This is why McRaven is a pivotal figure—he bridges those worlds.”

While Afghanistan and Pakistan would be the primary front lines of JSOC's wars, the situations in Yemen and Somalia were demanding significant attention from Obama's counterterrorism team. Much of the foreign policy energy would be publicly focused on Afghanistan, but in the dark, both al Shabab and JSOC were expanding their targeted killing operations, quietly transforming Somalia into one of the premier battlegrounds for asymmetric warfare.

IN JUNE
2009, an al Shabab suicide bomber carried out a
bold attack
on a hotel near the Ethiopian border, killing Somalia's security minister and more than a dozen others, including a former Somali ambassador. That same week, insurgents killed
Mogadishu's police chief
in a gun battle. By July 2009, al Shabab had advanced so far into Mogadishu that its forces came within a
few hundred yards
of Villa Somalia, threatening to overrun the Mogadishu Green Zone, which housed Sheikh Sharif's government. The attack was repelled only when the US-backed African Union intervened. Officials from Somalia's fragile government were besieged and scared. “The government is
weakened by the rebel forces
,” Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur, the speaker of the parliament declared after the police chief was killed. “We ask neighboring countries—including Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen—to send troops to Somalia within 24 hours.” That would not happen.

That summer, the United States announced a
shipment of forty tons
of weapons to Somalia's government forces. In August, Secretary Clinton held a press conference in Nairobi with Sheikh Sharif. Putting an exclamation point on the Somali president's extraordinary journey from the head of the Islamic Courts, deposed by the United States only to return as the US-backed leader of choice, Clinton called Sharif the “
best hope we've had
in quite some time.” But the US priority was not Sharif's government. It was the hunt. “We have presented President Obama with
a number of actions and initiatives
against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups,” said John Brennan, Obama's counterterrorism adviser. “Not only has he approved these operations, he has encouraged us to be even more aggressive, even more proactive, even more innovative, to seek out new ways and new opportunities for taking down these terrorists.” Most prominent in Obama's scope, Brennan said, were “those who attacked our embassies in Africa eleven years ago...and our homeland eight years ago.”

In the summer of 2009, Somalis began seeing clusters of large naval ships appear off the Mogadishu coast. They were part of a US battle group—and they were there with a purpose.

SAUDI ARABIA, WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN, LATE
2009—In late August 2009, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Nayef
received a phone call
from one of the kingdom's most wanted men, al Qaeda operative Abdullah Hasan Tali al Asiri. Prince bin Nayef was the son of the powerful Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz, third in line to the throne. In addition to serving as his father's deputy, bin Nayef was also Saudi Arabia's head of counterterrorism. As part of his official duties, bin Nayef encouraged al Qaeda fighters to turn themselves in through the kingdom's terrorist rehabilitation program. Asiri, who was placed on the Saudi's eighty-five most wanted persons list in February 2009, had
fled the kingdom
and was living in neighboring Yemen. If Asiri was calling the prince to turn himself in, it would be an unthinkable coup for the Saudis. Asiri was reportedly
recruited
to join al Qaeda by his brother, Ibrahim Hassan al Asiri, whom Saudi and US intelligence alleged was the chief bomb maker for AQAP

“
I need to meet
you to tell you the whole story,” Asiri told Prince bin Nayef.

“If you come, I will sit with you,” the prince replied.

Asiri told the prince that he would meet with him in person if Prince bin Nayef sent a private jet to
pick him up
in a Saudi town just across the border with Yemen and bring him to bin Nayef's palace. The prince agreed. On August 27, the two men met in person.