Bulatlat.com

What US Military Advisers Do

(Note: This briefer was written in response to several media queries about the role of U.S. military advisers in the world today, including those sent to the Philippines.)

In 1987, the Pentagon inaugurated an independent command to consolidate Special Operations Forces of Army Green Berets, Rangers, and the covert Delta Force, Navy SEALS, Special Boat Units, and the Covert Team 6 and Air Force Special Operations and Internal Defense Squadrons. These Special Forces command units now operate globally in exercises known as "Joint Combined Exchange Training" (JCET), an indispensable part of key post-Cold War foreign policy. These are different and should be differentiated from the 25-member Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) which is even today, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Manila.

BY ROLAND G. SIMBULAN

Bulatlat.com

The U.S. has had JCET operations in various parts of the world for many years, but for the past nine years, they have been almost invisible, free of virtually any U.S. congressional oversight. A 1991 law, Section 2011 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs money spent on overseas troop deployments, bypasses oversight requirements by giving commanders of Special Operations Forces the authority to deploy and pay for training of U.S. and foreign troops, if "the primary purpose of the training...shall be to train the Special Operations Forces of the Combat Command." The law also allows unreported financing of the foreign country's participation in training by buying fuel, food and ammunition, etc. Today, there are 47,000 personnel belonging to this most elite unit of the U.S. armed forces - the U.S. Special Operations Forces.

"Special operations" have evolved functions which were formerly the sole purview of the CIA or diplomatic officers, such as collecting strategic information on foreign countries, including everything from topography, backgrounds of foreign leaders, evaluation of the readiness of foreign troops, potential landing sites, and the like. Officially, the justification is that such operations are to facilitate the training of U.S. troops; though deployments appear to hold direct benefit for U.S. troops, U.S. officials maintain that by training foreign troops, U.S. forces are learning how to train foreign troops, one of their main official missions.

Special Operations Forces advisers may in fact be contributing to counterinsurgency and human rights violations. But there is definitely a political card played by the JCET advisers. They are a direct instrument of U.S. foreign policy, in fact, they may be the most involved, tangible, physical part of U.S. foreign policy in certain countries. They have definitely become a leading force in exerting U.S. influence abroad, revising the rules of U.S. engagement with scores of foreign countries where U.S. economic, security and political interests are affected.

Worldwide operations

JCET operations which are also functioning as Mobile Training Teams have been operating around the world. In Africa, they were in Benin, Botswana, Mali, Mauritania, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, to name a few.They have also been training special forces units in Colombia, Guatemala and other Central and Latin American countries under the auspices of an "anti-narcotics war campaign and operations". But the program has been criticized in the past in various South American countries and Africa for contributing to counter-insurgency operations by the trained troops and paramilitary units and providing yet another mechanism for channeling U.S. military training and equipment to favored regimes.

In Indonesia during the Suharto regime, U.S. Special Operations Forces advisers trained the notorious Kopassus troops, accused by Amnesty International of involvement in kidnappings and torture of anti-government activists. In the case of Colombia and Guatemala, the U.S. role in organizing the death squads and torture squads began with the Special Operations Forces advisers in 1991, when they set up "intelligence networks" under a secret Colombian military high command. The excuse then was officially the war against narcotics. Now it is the war against terrorism.

Small mobile training teams composed of U.S. Special Operations Forces usually train local units in "camouflage techniques, small-unit movement, troop leading procedures, soldier-team development, rappelling, mountaineering, marksmanship, weapon maintenance, and day and night navigation" Also included are "small unit leader training, intelligence, interrogation techniques, rifle marksmanship, first aid, land navigation, and tactical skills, such as patrolling." Of course, U.S. military training goes beyond purely military advice as it includes counterinsurgency techniques, according to a senior U.S. Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict official who was interviewed by Washington Post for its July 12, 1998 issue. In many countries, despite mounting evidence that U.S.SOF- trained local troops are in the thick of atrocities inflicted upon civilian populations, this form of U.S. military support continues. Bulatlat.com

We want to know what you think of this article.