by Brandon Webb
What was ISA doing in Mali when two of their members and a Civil Affairs soldier were killed? AQIM was the main focus, and the Mali coup intersected with the mission. More than likely these ISA operators were working the intelligence piece for Direct Action operations that would be carried out by Malian military units or for airstrikes that would take out AQIM HVTs.
Sadly, the driver, Master Sergeant Bast, lost control of the vehicle they were riding in. The three Moroccan women were prostitutes more than likely trafficked into Mali from their home country. At the time of the crash, Bast was driving the van south, toward a safe house used by one of the ISA operators.
Every Special Operations unit has some black marks on its record. Delta Force has Operation Eagle Claw, the failed effort to recover American hostages held in Iran in 1980. SEAL Team Six accidentally killed Linda Norgrove, a hostage they were supposed to rescue from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pat Tillman died in a tragic friendly fire incident while serving in 2nd Ranger Battalion. ISA makes mistakes like the rest of the Special Operations community, but this single incident should not paint the unit in a negative light, especially when one considers the volume of their work during the War on Terror, the vast majority of which has gone completely unreported.
It should also not tarnish the image of the three soldiers directly involved. Each contributed years of service to his country.
Meanwhile, in East Africa, a U–28 airplane wired up to collect Signal Intelligence crashed in Djibouti. Wired magazine’s Danger Room reported that, “the crew of the single-engine U–28 had been on a mission that ‘had to do with ISR’—that is, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for special operations forces on the ground. The U–28 is a small, retrofitted commercial plane that looks indistinguishable from a civilian plane to the naked eye, especially from high in the air.”
Operated by a crew of four airmen, the U–28 could record electronic intercepts and take reconnaissance photos that would later be used by Special Operations troops to conduct combat operations.
Throughout West Africa, various intelligence-gathering assets were moved into place. Behind closed doors, President Obama had given his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, carte blanche to run operations in North Africa and the Middle East, provided he didn’t do anything that ended up becoming an exposé in The New York Times and embarrassing the administration. In 2012, a secret war across North Africa was well underway.
Sources indicate that ISR platforms like the U–28 that crashed in Djibouti have been a constant presence in the skies over West Africa as well. Operating under the codename “Creek Sand,” these surveillance flights were based out of Burkina Faso but flew over Mali.
With JSOC, Brennan waged his own unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure. These Direct Action (DA) operations, unlike the traditional ISR missions mentioned above, were “off the books” in the sense that they were not coordinated through the Pentagon or other governmental agencies, including the CIA. With Obama more than likely providing a rubber stamp, the chain of command went from Brennan to McRaven, who would then mobilize the men of ISA, SEAL Team Six, or Delta Force to conduct these missions.
This way, the operations remained tightly compartmentalized to prevent knowledge of them from leaking to the public, something that the Obama administration had become weary of after getting in hot water due to the leaks they themselves initiated after the Osama Bin Laden raid. Of course, the problem became that they had to find ways to “deconflict” JSOC operations with those conducted by the CIA and by other branches of the military so that they didn’t step on other ongoing missions.
While ISA and others developed intelligence on the ground, a small JSOC element was secretly ferried to the sprawling naval airbase in Southern Europe. A few dozen men strong, this element was in place to conduct operations in Algeria, Libya, Mali, and Nigeria, and perhaps other countries as well.
Sometime prior to September of 2012, this JSOC element was directed by John Brennan to conduct combat operations in Libya. These operations targeted a high-level Al Qaeda operative who will not be named here out of consideration for operational security.
WITH THE LIBYAN Fighting Group essentially defunct, a group called Ansar Al-Sharia, meaning supporters of Sharia Islamic law, is now the most prominent Islamic extremist group in Libya. The group gained some notoriety during the 2011 revolution, in which it played a small role in the battle for Sirte. The group may have embellished its actual participation after the fact in order to gain more exposure.
Ansar Al-Sharia gained traction during the Libyan civil war as people took up arms against the Gaddafi regime. On February 20th of 2012, the blast from a suicide bomber tore apart the headquarters of Gaddafi’s security forces in Benghazi. Suicide vests are considered by many to be an indicator of a jihadist action.
The group and its leader, Abu Sufian Bin Qumu, hail from the Libyan port city of Derna—a notorious hotbed of Islamic extremism, as mentioned above—but have also set up shop in another center for international jihadists: Benghazi. Abu Sufian Bin Qumu is actually a former Guantanamo prison inmate who was released from US custody in 2007. Previously, he had worked for one of Osama Bin Laden’s companies in Sudan before traveling to Pakistan to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 2001, he is reported to have traveled into Afghanistan, where he worked for the Wafa Humanitarian Organization, a charity that was actually an Al Qaeda front, until he was arrested by authorities in Pakistan after being tipped off by Libyan security forces in 2002.
The Pakistanis then turned Qumu over to the US authorities, who transferred him to Gitmo in May of 2002.
Abu Sufian Bin Qumu.
Unsubstantiated reports point to Abu Sufian Bin Qumu as being Bin Laden’s driver, which would indicate that they had a very close relationship. Given that Bin Qumu was released from Gitmo before taking control of Ansar Al-Sharia, one must ask whether or not American intelligence services had “flipped” him while he was held in duress at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Is the Libyan terrorist leader a double, or even a triple agent?
Whatever the case, he was released from Guantanamo in 2007 and handed over to Libyan security forces until Gaddafi ordered him released with dozens of other dissidents in 2010 to celebrate his 41st year in power and as part of a deal struck with former leaders of the Libyan Fighting Group. In a recent interview posted on Ansar Al-Sharia’s Facebook page, Qumu claims that he was tortured in Guantanamo and is deeply resentful of the United States.
The group is believed to be attempting to grow its numbers by recruiting from the disenfranchised in Derna and Benghazi, and also to be running information operations to mold public perceptions through a media outlet called Al-Raya Media Productions Foundation, based in Benghazi. The group’s I/O message is to depict itself as the “defender of Islam and sharia,” and to “highlight[e] its goodwill and civic activities in Benghazi, such as visits to hospitals and trash cleanup efforts” in hopes of establishing credibility and legitimacy with the local population. Such techniques for ingratiating themselves to the public are also seen in groups such as Hezbollah and, more recently, Syrian jihadist rebels. While the idea of a kinder, friendlier jihadist group may seem laughable, these are actually advanced propaganda efforts that attempt to mold popular perceptions and are especially dangerous where the state is weak and failing governmental institutions have left a power vacuum.
Pictured above is the Ansar Al-Sharia logo, with the now-ubiquitous black flag of Al Qaeda proudly displayed.
One US government report on Islamic extremism in Libya contains an interesting passage about groups such as Ansar Al-Sharia:
In the process [of creating an Islamic Caliphate], al-Qaeda will seek to undermine the current process of rebuilding Libyan state institutions as a way of preventing the establishment of strong state counterterrorism capabilities that could hinder its abilit
y to grow in Libya. As an example of this strategy, in late May 2012, a video surfaced on YouTube from the previously unknown figure Abu Mus’ab Al-Huwari and narrated by the similarly unknown Abu Dujanah Al-Aquri, who identify themselves as “mujahidin.” The video threatens to attack the Libyan government if it refuses to withdraw from counterterrorism agreements with the West, or if it allows its territory to be used to attack jihadists in North Africa, which appears to be a reference to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The video appeared after several attacks on international targets in eastern Libya were committed by jihadist groups, including the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in Benghazi.
In other words, Al Qaeda and other jihadists have the goal not just of establishing a system of Sharia law but of hollowing out any existing state institutions that could threaten their own base of power. This is an important point that has played into counter-terrorist operations in Libya.
Additionally, Ansar Al-Sharia is known to conduct assassinations and bombings directed against former Gaddafi loyalists and current government officials, attacks that serve as a recruitment tool for disenfranchised youths rather than as a means to a political end. Around Derna, the group has set up various training camps, at least one known to be home to senior Al Qaeda operative Abd Al-Baset Azzouz. Azzouz was dispatched to run Libyan AQ operations from Pakistan by none other than Al-Zawahiri to establish a base of AQ operations in Libya.
Ansar Al-Sharia is known as a katiba, meaning “battalion,” one of many militias thought to be associated with Al Qaeda or generally sympathetic toward jihadist causes. Although it was Ansar Al-Sharia that attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi, it was not Qumu, but rather another Ansar Al-Sharia leader, named Ahmed Abu Khattala, who has been accused of directing the attack on the ground the night of 9/11/12. Abu Khattala made a halfhearted attempt to explain to the Associated Press that he was in the consulate to rescue people he heard were trapped inside, but few are buying his story.
Abu Khattala is also the leader of the Abu Obaida Bin Jarrah militia, which has joined forces with Ansar Al-Sharia. The Bin Jarrah militia is best known for the assassination of defecting Gaddafi army officer Abdel Fattah Younis, who was helping to lead the rebellion.
MEANWHILE, JSOC COUNTERTERRORISM operations began sometime in mid-summer of 2012, when the organization began placing “boots on the ground” inside Libya. With the first phase of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) all but over, JSOC was starting in on “GWOT Season 2,” as it were, where North Africa was seen as the most dangerous hub of terrorist activity.
The nature of these operations remains highly classified. They were never intended to be known to anyone outside a very small circle in the Special Operations community and within Obama’s National Security Council. Ambassador Stevens, the CIA Chief of Station in Tripoli, and then-Director of the CIA, General Petraeus, had little if any knowledge about these JSOC missions.
With a small element launching from an airfield in a European nation, JSOC operations targeted Al Qaeda personalities within Libyan militia organizations. In the weeks before the Benghazi tragedy, they most likely hit a known associate of Al-Suri in order to get him to “up periscope” and increase his visibility, which would then make it possible for JSOC to run a targeted operation to kill or capture him.
The aftermath of one of these secret raids into Libya would have grave consequences for all of them, including former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty. SOFREP believes the Benghazi attack on 9/11/12 was blowback from the late-summer JSOC operations that were threatening the Al Qaeda-aligned militant groups (including Ansar Al-Sharia) in Libya and North Africa, now a leading base of operations for Islamic extremism.
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Sitting Ducks
“Overall, the number of Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) security staff in Benghazi on the day of the attack and in the months and weeks leading up to it was inadequate, despite repeated requests from Special Mission Benghazi and Embassy Tripoli for additional staffing. Board members found a pervasive realization among personnel who served in Benghazi that the Special Mission was not a high priority for Washington when it came to security-related requests, especially those relating to staffing.”
State Department’s After Action Report
ALTHOUGH THE MEDIA has repeatedly referred to the compound that Ambassador Stevens was staying in the night of the 9/11/12 attack as a “consulate,” the State Department actually designated it a Temporary Mission Facility. For the sake of clarity, we will continue to call the compound a consulate (or just compound) since it served a similar purpose and readers are already accustomed to the term. (The key difference between an actual consulate and a Temporary Mission Facility is that a consulate is well established and serves as a miniature embassy that can conduct diplomatic services in other parts of the country, whereas a Temporary Mission Facility is something set up on a much more ad hoc basis and not given the same level of support.)
In the run-up to the attack, there were multiple indicators that threats existed against the consulate in Benghazi. As noted previously, Ambassador Stevens was well aware of the jihadist threat in Libya. The Regional Security Office in Tripoli also “compiled a list of 234 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, 50 of which took place in Benghazi.”
A UK Armored Toyota that was hit by a Rocket Propelled Grenade in April 2012. US Diplomats would help the British with security in the aftermath. It was no secret that Benghazi was heating up and that western diplomacy was not welcome. Courtesy of SOFREP.
It was clear from both classified intelligence reports and open-source information that there was an escalating threat to Western targets as the jihadist presence became more pervasive in eastern Libya. The Senate’s “Flashing Red” report points to four particularly important incidents, which should have served as warning signs in the run-up to the attack:
On May 22nd, 2012, the International Committee for the Red Cross/Red Crescent (ICRC) building in Benghazi was hit by two Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) rounds, causing damage to the building but no casualties. Several days later, the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman claimed responsibility for this attack, accusing the ICRC of proselytizing in Libya.
On June 6th, 2012, the US Temporary Mission Facility [referred to as a consulate in most media reports] in Benghazi was targeted by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack that blew a hole in the perimeter wall. Credit for this attack was also claimed by the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, which said it carried out the attack in response to the reported drone strike on al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya Al-Libi in Northern Waziristan.
On June 11th, 2012, an attack was carried out in Benghazi on the convoy of the British Ambassador to Libya. Attackers fired an RPG on the convoy, followed by small arms fire. Two British bodyguards were injured in the attack. This attack was characterized afterwards in an incident report by the Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security as a “complex, coordinated attack.”
On June 18th, 2012, the Tunisian consulate in Benghazi was stormed by individuals affiliated with Ansar Al-Sharia Libya (AAS), allegedly because of “attacks by Tunisian artists against Islam.”
The Flashing Red report also makes the point that, while there was sufficient evidence to warn of a threat against American personnel and facilities in Libya—enough that it should have elevated their security posture—there was no specific intelligence information that pointed toward a targeted attack on the consulate on 9/11/12.
Full Timeline of Security Incidents from the State Department’s Report Leading Up to September 11th, 2012.
• March 18, 2012—Armed robbery occurs at the British School in Benghazi.
• March 22, 2012—Members of a militia searching for a suspect fire their weapons near the compound and attempt to enter.
• April 2, 2012—A UK armored diplomatic vehicle is attacked after dr
iving into a local protest. The vehicle is damaged, but occupants are uninjured.
• April 6, 2012—A gelatina bomb (traditional homemade explosive device used for fishing) is thrown over the SMC north wall.
• April 10, 2012—An IED (gelatina or dynamite stick) is thrown at the motorcade of the UN Special Envoy to Libya in Benghazi.
• April 26, 2012—A Special Mission Benghazi principal officer is evacuated from International Medical University (IMU) when a fistfight escalates to gunfire between Tripoli-based trade delegation security personnel and IMU security.
• April 27, 2012—Two South African nationals in Libya as part of the US-funded weapons abatement, unexploded ordnance removal, and de-mining project are detained at gunpoint by militia, questioned, and released.
• May 22, 2012—Benghazi International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) building is struck by RPGs.
• May 28, 2012—A previously unknown organization, Omar Abdurrahman group, claims responsibility for the ICRC attack and issues a threat against the United States on social media sites.
• June 6, 2012—IED attack on the SMC. The IED detonates with no injuries but blows a large hole in the compound’s exterior wall. Omar Abdurrahman group makes an unsubstantiated claim of responsibility.
• June 8, 2012—Two hand grenades target a parked UK diplomatic vehicle in Sabha (800 km south of Benghazi).
• June 11, 2012—While in Benghazi, the British ambassador’s convoy is attacked with an RPG and possibly AK–47s. Two UK security officers are injured; the UK closes its mission in Benghazi the following day.