by\u00a0Nick Turse<\/a>, Tom Dispatch In the dead of night, they swept in aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.\u00a0 Landing in a remote region of one of the most volatile countries on the planet, they raided a village and soon found themselves in a life-or-death firefight.\u00a0 It was the second time in two weeks that elite U.S. Navy SEALs had attempted to rescue American photojournalist Luke Somers.\u00a0 And it was the second time they failed.<\/p>\n On December 6, 2014, approximately 36 of America\u2019s\u00a0top commandos<\/a>, heavily armed,\u00a0operating<\/a>\u00a0with intelligence from satellites, drones, and high-tech eavesdropping, outfitted with night vision goggles, and backed up by elite Yemeni troops, went toe-to-toe with about six militants from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.\u00a0 When it was over, Somers was dead, along withPierre Korkie<\/a>, a South African teacher due to be set free the next day.\u00a0 Eight civilians were also killed by the commandos, according to local reports.\u00a0 Most of the militants escaped.<\/p>\n That blood-soaked episode was, depending on your vantage point, an ignominious end to a year that saw U.S. Special Operations forces deployed at near record levels, or an inauspicious beginning to a new year already on track to reach similar heights, if not exceed them.<\/p>\n During the\u00a0fiscal year<\/a>\u00a0that ended on September 30, 2014, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries — roughly 70% of the nations on the planet — according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).\u00a0 This capped a three-year span in which the country\u2019s most elite forces were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, conducting missions ranging from kill\/capture night raids to training exercises.\u00a0 And this year could be a record-breaker.\u00a0 Only a day before the failed raid that ended Luke Somers life — just 66 days into fiscal 2015 — America\u2019s most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014\u2019s total.<\/p>\n Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans.\u00a0 Unlike the December debacle in Yemen, the vast majority of special ops missions remain completely in the shadows, hidden from external oversight or press scrutiny.\u00a0 In fact, aside from modest amounts of information disclosed through highly-selective coverage by\u00a0military media<\/a>, official\u00a0White House leaks<\/a>,\u00a0SEALs<\/a>\u00a0with something to\u00a0sell<\/a>, and a few\u00a0cherry-picked<\/a>\u00a0journalists reporting on\u00a0cherry-picked<\/a>\u00a0opportunities, much of what America\u2019s special operators do is never subjected to meaningful examination, which only increases the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.<\/p>\n The Golden Age<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe command is at its absolute zenith.\u00a0 And it is indeed a golden age for special operations.\u201d\u00a0 Those were the\u00a0words<\/a>\u00a0of Army General Joseph Votel III, a West Point graduate and Army Ranger, as he assumed command of SOCOM last August.<\/p>\n His rhetoric may have been high-flown, but it wasn\u2019t hyperbole. \u00a0Since September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Operations forces have grown in every conceivable way, including their numbers, their budget, their clout in Washington, and their place in the country\u2019s popular imagination.\u00a0 The command has, for example, more than doubled its personnel from about33,000<\/a>\u00a0in 2001 to nearly\u00a070,000<\/a>\u00a0today, including a jump of roughly\u00a08,000<\/a>during the three-year tenure of recently retired SOCOM chief Admiral William McRaven.<\/p>\n Those numbers, impressive as they are, don\u2019t give a full sense of the nature of the expansion and growing global reach of America\u2019s most elite forces in these years.\u00a0 For that, a rundown of the acronym-ridden structure of the ever-expanding Special Operations Command is in order.\u00a0 The list may be mind-numbing, but there is no other way to fully grasp its scope.<\/p>\n The lion\u2019s share of SOCOM\u2019s troops are Rangers, Green Berets, and other soldiers from the Army, followed by Air Force air commandos, SEALs, Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen and support personnel from the Navy, as well as a smaller contingent of Marines.\u00a0 But you only get a sense of the expansiveness of the command when you consider the full range of \u201csub-unified commands\u201d that these special ops troops are divided among: the self-explanatory SOCAFRICA; SOCEUR, the European contingent; SOCKOR, which is devoted strictly to Korea; SOCPAC, which covers the rest of the Asia-Pacific region; SOCSOUTH, which conducts missions in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean; SOCCENT, the sub-unified command of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in the Middle East;SOCNORTH<\/a>, which is devoted to \u201chomeland defense\u201d; and the globe-trotting Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC — a clandestine sub-command (formerly\u00a0headed<\/a>\u00a0by McRaven and then Votel)\u00a0made up<\/a>\u00a0of personnel from each service branch, including SEALs, Air Force special tactics airmen, and the Army’s Delta Force, that specializes in tracking and killing suspected terrorists.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t think that\u2019s the end of it, either.\u00a0 As a result of McRaven\u2019s push tocreate<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca Global SOF network of like-minded interagency allies and partners,\u201d\u00a0Special Operations liaison officers, or SOLOs, are now\u00a0embedded<\/a>in 14 key U.S. embassies to assist in advising the special forces of various allied nations.\u00a0 Already operating in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, France, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Poland, Peru, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, the SOLO program is poised,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to Votel, to expand to 40 countries by 2019.\u00a0 The command, and especially JSOC, has also forged close ties with the\u00a0Central Intelligence Agency<\/a>, the\u00a0Federal Bureau of Investigation<\/a>, and the\u00a0National Security Agency<\/a>, among\u00a0others<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shadow Ops<\/strong><\/p>\n Special Operations Command\u2019s global reach extends further still, with smaller, more agile elements operating in the shadows from bases in the United States to remote parts of Southeast Asia, from Middle Eastern outposts to austere African camps. Since 2002, SOCOM has also been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces, a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM.\u00a0 Take, for instance,\u00a0Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P) which, at its peak, had roughly 600 U.S. personnel supporting counterterrorist operations by Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Abu Sayyaf.\u00a0 After more than a decade spent battling that group, its numbers have been\u00a0diminished<\/a>, but it continues to be active, while violence in the region remains virtually unaltered.<\/p>\n A phase-out of the task force was actually\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0in June 2014.\u00a0 \u201cJSOTF-P will deactivate and the named operation OEF-P [Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines] will conclude in Fiscal Year 2015,\u201d Votel\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Senate Armed Services Committee the next month.\u00a0 \u201cA smaller number of U.S. military personnel operating as part of a PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command] Augmentation Team will continue to improve the abilities of the PSF [Philippine Special Forces]\u00a0<\/em>to conduct their CT [counterterrorism] missions…\u201d\u00a0 Months later, however, Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines remained up and running. \u201cJSOTF-P is still active although the number of personnel assigned has been reduced,\u201d Army spokesperson Kari McEwen\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0reporter Joseph Trevithick of\u00a0War Is Boring<\/em>.<\/p>\n Another unit, Special Operations Joint Task Force-Bragg, remained in theshadows<\/a>\u00a0for years before its first official\u00a0mention<\/a>\u00a0by the Pentagon in early 2014.\u00a0 Its role, according to SOCOM\u2019s Bockholt, is to \u201ctrain and equip U.S. service members preparing for deployment to Afghanistan to support Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan.\u201d\u00a0 That latter force, in turn, spent more than a decade conducting covert or \u201cblack\u201d ops \u201cto prevent insurgent activities from threatening the authority and sovereignty of\u201d the Afghan government.\u00a0 This meant\u00a0night raids<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0kill\/capture<\/a>\u00a0missions — often in concert with elite Afghan forces —\u00a0that led to the deaths of unknown numbers of combatants and\u00a0civilians<\/a>.\u00a0 In response to popular\u00a0outrage<\/a>\u00a0against the raids, Afghan President Hamid Karzai largely\u00a0banned<\/a>\u00a0them in 2013.<\/p>\n U.S. Special Operations forces were to move into a support role in 2014, letting elite Afghan troops take charge.\u00a0 \u201cWe’re trying to let them run the show,” Colonel Patrick Roberson of the Afghanistan task force\u00a0told<\/a>USA Today<\/em>.\u00a0 But according to LaDonna Davis, a spokesperson with the task force, America\u2019s special operators were still leading missions last year.\u00a0 The force refuses to say how many missions were led by Americans or even how many operations its commandos were involved in, though Afghan special operations forces reportedly\u00a0carried out<\/a>\u00a0as many as 150 missions each month in 2014.\u00a0 \u201cI will not be able to discuss the specific number of operations that have taken place,\u201d Major Loren Bymer of Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan told\u00a0TomDispatch<\/em>. \u201cHowever, Afghans currently lead 96% of special operations and we continue to train, advise, and assist our partners to ensure their success.\u201d<\/p>\n And lest you think that that\u2019s where the special forces organizational chart ends, Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan has five Special Operations Advisory Groups \u201cfocused on mentoring and advising our ASSF [Afghan Special Security Force] partners,\u201d\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to Votel. \u00a0\u201cIn order to ensure our ASSF partners continue to take the fight to our enemies, U.S. SOF must be able to continue to do some advising at the tactical level post-2014 with select units in select locations,\u201d he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Senate Armed Services Committee.\u00a0 Indeed, last November, Karzai\u2019s successor Ashraf Ghani quietly lifted the night raid ban, opening the door once again to missions with\u00a0U.S. advisors<\/a>\u00a0in 2015.<\/p>\n There will, however, be fewer U.S. special ops troops available for tactical missions.\u00a0 According to then Rear-, now Vice-Admiral Sean Pybus, SOCOM\u2019s Deputy Commander, about half the SEAL platoons deployed in Afghanistan were, by the end of last month, to be withdrawn and redeployed to support \u201cthe pivot in Asia, or work the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Guinea, or into the Persian Gulf.\u201d\u00a0 Still, Colonel Christopher Riga, commander of the 7th Special Forces Group, whose troops served with the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan near Kandahar last year, vowed to soldier on.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fighting that is still going on in Afghanistan that is going to continue,\u201d he said at an awards ceremony late last year.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re still going to continue to kill the enemy, until we are told to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Add to those task forces the Special Operations Command Forward (SOC FWD) elements, small teams which, according to the military, \u201cshape and coordinate special operations forces security cooperation and engagement in support of theater special operations command, geographic combatant command, and country team goals and objectives.\u201d\u00a0 SOCOM declined to confirm the existence of SOC FWDs, even though there has been\u00a0ample<\/a>official<\/a>evidence<\/a>\u00a0on the subject and so it would not provide a count of how many teams are currently deployed across the world.\u00a0 But those that are known are clustered in favored black ops stomping grounds, including SOC FWD Pakistan, SOC FWD Yemen, and SOC FWD Lebanon, as well as SOC FWD East Africa, SOC FWD Central Africa, and SOC FWD West Africa.<\/p>\n Africa has, in fact, become a prime locale for shadowy covert missions by America\u2019s special operators.\u00a0 “This particular unit has done impressive things. Whether it’s across Europe or Africa taking on a variety of contingencies, you are all contributing in a very significant way,” SOCOM\u2019s commander, General Votel, told members of the 352nd Special Operations Group at their base in England last fall.<\/p>\n The Air Commandos are hardly alone in their exploits on that continent.\u00a0 Over the last years, for example, SEALs\u00a0carried out\u00a0a successful hostage rescue mission in Somalia\u00a0and a\u00a0kidnap<\/a>raid there that went awry.\u00a0 In Libya, Delta Force\u00a0commandos successfully captured an al-Qaeda militant in an early morning raid, while SEALs commandeered\u00a0an oil tanker with cargo from Libya that the weak U.S.-backed government there considered stolen.\u00a0 Additionally,\u00a0SEALs conducted a failed evacuation mission in South Sudan in which its members were\u00a0wounded\u00a0when the aircraft in which they were flying was hit by small arms fire.\u00a0 Meanwhile, an elite quick-response force known as Naval Special Warfare Unit 10 (NSWU-10) has been\u00a0engaged<\/a>\u00a0with \u201cstrategic countries\u201d such as Uganda, Somalia, and Nigeria.<\/p>\n A clandestine Special Ops training effort in Libya imploded when militia or \u201cterrorist\u201d forces twice raided its camp, guarded by the Libyan military, and looted large quantities of high-tech American equipment, hundreds of weapons — including Glock pistols, and M4 rifles — as well as night vision devices and specialized lasers that can only be seen with such equipment.\u00a0 As a result, the mission was scuttled and the camp was abandoned.\u00a0 It was then reportedly taken over by a militia.<\/p>\n In February of last year, elite troops traveled to Niger for three weeks of military drills as part of Flintlock 2014, an annual Special Ops counterterrorism exercise that brought together the forces of the host nation, Canada, Chad, France, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Senegal, the United Kingdom, and Burkina Faso.\u00a0 Several months later, an officer from Burkina Faso, who\u00a0received<\/a>\u00a0counterterrorism training in the U.S. under the auspices of SOCOM\u2019s Joint Special Operations University in 2012, seized power in a coup.\u00a0 Special Ops forces, however, remained undaunted.\u00a0 Late last year, for example, under the auspices of SOC FWD West Africa, members of 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group, partnered with elite Moroccan troops for training at a base outside of Marrakech.<\/p>\n A World of Opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n Deployments to African nations have, however, been just a part of the rapid growth of the Special Operations Command\u2019s overseas reach.\u00a0 In the waning days of the Bush presidency, under then-SOCOM chief Admiral Eric Olson, Special Operations forces were reportedly\u00a0deployed<\/a>\u00a0in about 60 countries around the world.\u00a0 By 2010, that number had swelled to 75,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the\u00a0Washington Post.<\/em>\u00a0 In 2011, SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye\u00a0told<\/a>TomDispatch<\/em>\u00a0that the total would reach 120 by the end of the year.\u00a0 With Admiral William McRaven in charge in 2013, then-Major Robert Bockholt told\u00a0TomDispatch<\/em>\u00a0that the number hadjumped<\/a>\u00a0to 134.\u00a0 Under the command of McRaven and Votel in 2014, according to Bockholt, the total slipped ever-so-slightly to 133.\u00a0 Outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel\u00a0noted<\/a>, however, that under McRaven\u2019s command — which lasted from August 2011 to August 2014 — special ops forces deployed to more than 150 different countries.\u00a0 \u201cIn fact, SOCOM and the entire U.S. military are more engaged internationally than ever before — in more places and with a wider variety of missions,\u201d he\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in an August 2014 speech.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t kidding.\u00a0 Just over two months into fiscal 2015, the number of countries with Special Ops deployments has already clocked in at 105, according to Bockholt.<\/p>\n SOCOM refused to comment on the nature of its missions or the benefits of operating in so many nations.\u00a0 The command would not even name a single country where U.S. special operations forces deployed in the last three years.\u00a0 A glance at just some of the operations, exercises, and activities that have come to light, however, paints a picture of a globetrotting command in constant churn with alliances in every corner of the planet.<\/p>\n In January and February, for example, members of the 7th Special Forces Group and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment conducted a month-long Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) with forces from Trinidad and Tobago, while troops from the 353rd Special Operations Groupjoined<\/a>\u00a0members of the Royal Thai Air Force for Exercise Teak Torch in Udon Thani, Thailand.\u00a0 In February and March, Green Berets from the 20th Special Forces Group trained with elite troops in the Dominican Republic as part of a JCET.<\/p>\n In March, members of Marine Special Operations Command and Naval Special Warfare Unit 1 took part in maneuvers aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS\u00a0Cowpens<\/em>\u00a0as part of Multi-Sail 2014, an annual exercise designed to support \u201csecurity and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.\u201d\u00a0 That same month, elite soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines took part in a training exercise code-named Fused Response with members of the Belizean military.\u00a0 \u201cExercises like this build rapport and bonds between U.S. forces and Belize,\u201d said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Heber Toro of Special Operations Command South afterward.<\/p>\n In April, soldiers from the 7th Special Forces Group joined with Honduran airborne troops for jump training — parachuting over that country\u2019s Soto Cano Air Base.\u00a0 Soldiers from that same unit, serving with the Afghanistan task force, also carried out shadowy ops in the southern part of that country in the spring of 2014.\u00a0 In June, members of the 19th Special Forces Group carried out a JCET in Albania, while operators from Delta Force\u00a0took part<\/a>\u00a0in the mission that secured the release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl inAfghanistan<\/a>.\u00a0 That same month, Delta Force commandos helped\u00a0kidnap<\/a>Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspected \u201cringleader\u201d in the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, while Green Berets\u00a0deployed<\/a>\u00a0to Iraq as advisors in the fight against the Islamic State.<\/p>\n In June and July, 26 members of the 522nd Special Operations Squadron carried out a 28,000-mile, four-week, five-continent mission which took them to Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Japan, among other nations, to escort three \u201csingle-engine [Air Force Special Operations Command] aircraft to a destination in the Pacific Area of Responsibility.\u201d \u00a0In July, U.S. Special Operations forces traveled to Tolemaida, Colombia, to compete against elite troops from 16 other nations — in events like sniper stalking, shooting, and an obstacle course race — at the annual Fuerzas Comando competition.<\/p>\n In August, soldiers from the 20th Special Forces Group conducted a JCET with elite units from Suriname.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve made a lot of progress together in a month. If we ever have to operate together in the future, we know we\u2019ve made partners and friends we can depend upon,\u201d said a senior noncommissioned officer from that unit.\u00a0 In Iraq that month, Green Beretsconducted<\/a>\u00a0a reconnaissance mission on Mount Sinjar as part an effort to protect ethnic Yazidis from Islamic State militants, while Delta Force commandos\u00a0raided<\/a>\u00a0an oil refinery in northern Syria in a bid to save American journalist James Foley and other hostages held by the same group.\u00a0 That mission was a bust and Foley was brutally executed shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n In September, about 1,200 U.S. special operators and support personnel joined with elite troops from the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Finland, Great Britain, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Slovenia for Jackal Stone, a training exercise that focused on everything from close quarters combat and sniper tactics to small boat operations and hostage rescue missions.\u00a0 In September and October, Rangers from the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment\u00a0deployed<\/a>\u00a0to South Korea to practice small unit tactics like clearing trenches and knocking out bunkers.\u00a0 During October, Air Force air commandos also conducted simulated hostage rescue missions at the Stanford Training Area near Thetford, England.\u00a0 Meanwhile, in international waters south of Cyprus, Navy SEALs\u00a0commandeered<\/a>\u00a0that tanker full of oil loaded at a rebel-held port in Libya.\u00a0 In November, U.S. commandos conducted a\u00a0raid<\/a>in Yemen that freed eight foreign hostages.\u00a0 The next month, SEALs carried out the blood-soaked\u00a0mission<\/a>\u00a0that left two hostages, including Luke Somers, and eight civilians dead.\u00a0 And these, of course, are only some of the missions that managed to make it into the news or in some other way onto the record.<\/p>\n Everywhere They Want to Be<\/strong><\/p>\n To America\u2019s black ops chiefs, the globe is as unstable as it is interconnected.\u00a0 \u201cI guarantee you what happens in Latin America affects what happens in West Africa, which affects what happens in Southern Europe, which affects what happens in Southwest Asia,\u201d McRaven\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0last year\u2019s Geolnt, an annual gathering of surveillance-industry executives and military personnel.\u00a0 Their solution to interlocked instability?\u00a0 More missions in more nations — in more than three-quarters of the world\u2019s countries, in fact — during McRaven\u2019s tenure.\u00a0 And the stage appears set for yet more of the same in the years ahead.\u00a0 “We want to be everywhere,\u201d said Votel at Geolnt.\u00a0 His forces are already well on their way in 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cOur nation has very high expectations of SOF,\u201d he told special operators in England last fall. \u201cThey look to us to do the very hard missions in very difficult conditions.\u201d\u00a0 The nature and whereabouts of most of those \u201chard missions,\u201d however, remain unknown to Americans.\u00a0 And Votel apparently isn\u2019t interested in shedding light on them.\u00a0 \u201cSorry, but no,\u201d was SOCOM\u2019s response to\u00a0TomDispatch<\/em>\u2019s request for an interview with the special ops chief about current and future operations.\u00a0 In fact, the command refused to make any personnel available for a discussion of what it\u2019s doing in America\u2019s name and with taxpayer dollars.\u00a0 It\u2019s not hard to guess why.<\/p>\n Votel now sits atop one of the major success stories of a post-9\/11 military that has been\u00a0mired<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0winless wars<\/a>,\u00a0intervention blowback<\/a>,\u00a0rampant<\/a>criminal<\/a>activity<\/a>, repeated\u00a0leaks<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0embarrassing secrets<\/a>, and\u00a0all<\/a>manner<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0shocking<\/a>scandals<\/a>.\u00a0 Through a deft combination of bravado and secrecy,\u00a0well-placed<\/a>leaks<\/a>, adroit marketing and\u00a0public relations<\/a>\u00a0efforts, the skillful cultivation of a\u00a0superman<\/a>\u00a0mystique (with a dollop of tortured\u00a0fragility<\/a>\u00a0on the side), and one extremely popular, high-profile,\u00a0targeted killing<\/a>, Special Operations forceshave<\/a>become<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0darlings<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0American<\/a>popular<\/a>culture<\/a>, while the command has been a consistent\u00a0winner<\/a>\u00a0in Washington\u2019s\u00a0bare-knuckled<\/a>budget<\/a>battles<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is particularly striking given what\u2019s actually occurred in the field: in Africa, the arming and outfitting of militants and the training of a coup leader; in Iraq, America\u2019s most elite forces were implicated in\u00a0torture<\/a>, the destruction of homes, and the killing and wounding of\u00a0innocents<\/a>;\u00a0 inAfghanistan<\/a>, it was a\u00a0similar<\/a>story<\/a>, with\u00a0repeated<\/a>reports<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0civilian deaths<\/a>; while in\u00a0Yemen<\/a>,\u00a0Pakistan<\/a>, and\u00a0Somalia<\/a>\u00a0it\u2019s been more of the\u00a0same<\/a>.\u00a0 And this only scratches the surface of special ops miscues.<\/p>\n In 2001, before U.S. black ops forces began their massive, multi-front clandestine war against terrorism, there were\u00a033,000<\/a>\u00a0members of Special Operations Command and about\u00a01,800<\/a>\u00a0members of the elite of the elite, the Joint Special Operations Command.\u00a0 There were then also\u00a023 terrorist groups<\/a>— from Hamas to the Real Irish Republican Army — as recognized by the State Department, including al-Qaeda, whose membership was\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0at anywhere from 200 to 1,000.\u00a0 That group was primarily based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although small cells had operated in numerous countries including\u00a0Germany<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n After more than a decade of secret wars, massive surveillance, untold numbers of night raids, detentions, and assassinations, not to mention\u00a0billions<\/a>upon<\/a>billions<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0dollars<\/a>spent<\/a>, the results speak for themselves.\u00a0 SOCOM has more than doubled in size and the secretive\u00a0JSOC<\/a>\u00a0may be almost as large as SOCOM was in 2001.\u00a0 Since September of that year, 36 new terror groups have sprung up, including multiple al-Qaeda franchises, offshoots, and allies.\u00a0 Today, these groups still\u00a0operate<\/a>\u00a0in Afghanistan and Pakistan — there are now11\u00a0recognized al-Qaeda affiliates in the latter nation,\u00a0five<\/a>\u00a0in the former — as well as in Mali and Tunisia, Libya and Morocco, Nigeria and Somalia, Lebanon and Yemen, among other countries.\u00a0 One offshoot was\u00a0born<\/a>\u00a0of the American invasion of Iraq, was\u00a0nurtured<\/a>\u00a0in a U.S. prison camp, and, now known as the Islamic State, controls a wide swath of that country and neighboring Syria, a proto-caliphate in the heart of the Middle East that was only the stuff of jihadi dreams back in 2001.\u00a0 That group, alone, has an estimated strength of around\u00a030,000<\/a>\u00a0and managed to take over a huge swath of territory, including Iraq\u2019s second largest city, despite being\u00a0relentlessly targeted<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0its<\/a>infancy<\/a>\u00a0by JSOC.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to continue to synchronize the deployment of SOF throughout the globe,\u201d says Votel.\u00a0 \u201cWe all need to be synched up, coordinated, and prepared throughout the command.\u201d\u00a0 Left out of sync are the American people who have consistently been kept in the dark about what America\u2019s special operators are doing and where they\u2019re doing it, not to mention the checkered results of, and blowback from, what they\u2019ve done.\u00a0 But if history is any guide, the black ops blackout will help ensure that this continues to be a \u201cgolden age\u201d for U.S. Special Operations Command.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015 by\u00a0Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch click here for original article In the dead of night, they swept in aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.\u00a0 Landing in a remote region of one of the most volatile countries on the planet, they raided a village and soon found themselves in 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\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n