Key element missing in hostage rescue attempt

One of the most successful hostage rescues of the modern
era took place on July 4, 1976, when Israeli commandos
stormed Entebbe Airport in Uganda to rescue dozens of
Israeli hostages held there by a Palestinian terrorist group.
In key ways the raid on Entebbe differed from the raid on
Saturday in Yemen to free Luke Somers, the American
photojournalist held hostage by al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, and that resulted in Somers' death.
Jonathan Netanyahu (the older brother of the Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu) led the Entebbe raid. An
officer who read Machiavelli to relax and an intense
Israeli patriot, Netanyahu paid close attention to the
smallest details of any operation he commanded.
At the time of the Entebbe raid it was virtually unthinkable
that a force would fly more than seven hours from Israel
to Uganda to launch a rescue operation.
Adding to the element of surprise, the Israeli commandos
who landed at Entebbe airport wore Ugandan uniforms
and the lead assault element drove the same type of
Mercedes that was then driven by Ugandan generals.
It took only a few minutes between the first Israeli
transport plane landing at Entebbe and the commandos
securing the hostages, but Netanyahu was mortally
wounded in the assault. The seven hijackers and dozens of
Ugandan soldiers were killed in the raid, as well as three
hostages. 102 hostages were freed, by any measure a great
success.
Adm. Bill McRaven, the commander of the raid that
killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, published a
book almost two decades ago, Spec Ops: Case Studies in
Special Operations Warfare, which is regarded as the
bible for how to best understand and plan special operations.
For the book, McRaven interviewed the key participants
in a number of Special Operations raids such as the
Entebbe operation.
After a careful examination of a number of raids
McRaven identified some key principles that had made these
operations a success: Speed, purpose and, of course, the
critical element of surprise.
-- Speed meant that "relative superiority" over the enemy
needed to be achieved in the first few minutes of the attack,
as it was at Entebbe, and that the entire mission should be
completed in around half an hour.
-- Purpose meant both that the operation was well
understood by each of the soldiers involved -- "release the
hostages" at Entebbe -- and that the soldiers were
completely committed to the mission.
-- Surprise meant catching the enemy entirely off guard,
as had happened at Entebbe.
With these principles in mind it's clear that the operation on
Saturday in Yemen conducted by members of SEAL Team
Six to free Somers lacked the crucial element of surprise,
in particular, because two weeks ago a SEAL team had
raided another location in Yemen in an unsuccessful bid to
locate Somers, an operation that received widespread
media coverage.
On Saturday Somers was being held in a compound in
southern Yemen by well-armed militants, which made a
surprise approach difficult. The militants may have been
alerted to the operation by a barking dog when American
forces were still 100 yards away. Another account suggests
that one of the militants was relieving himself outside and
spotted the SEAL team and alerted his colleagues.
Alerted to the SEALs' approach the hostage takers
mortally wounded Somers and Pierre Korkie, a South
African teacher, who they had also captured.
Achieving the element of surprise was made particularly
difficult by the failure of the previous Special Operations
attempt. On November 25, U.S. Special Operations
forces along with a Yemeni counterterrorism unit successfully
freed eight foreign hostages in a raid on a location in Yemen
where Somers was believed to be held.
Unlike Saturday's operation, this raid did have the element
of surprise, but it suffered from lack of up-to-date
intelligence. The militants had reportedly moved Somers to
a new location days before the raid.
This surely prepared the militants holding Somers for the
possibility of another U.S. raid to free him.
American Special Operations Forces have a mixed record
when it comes to the tricky task of rescuing hostages held by
well-armed terrorists. In July, a Special Operations
team conducted a raid in the Syrian city of Raqqa in an
attempt to free James Foley, a 40-year-old American
journalist held by ISIS, as well as other westerners
captured by the group.
The Special Operations team flew modified Black Hawk
helicopters deep into ISIS-held territory and according to
American officials killed a "good number" of militants, but
the western hostages had been recently moved.
In another failed rescue attempt, Linda Norgrove, a 36-
year-old British aid worker in Afghanistan, was killed
when American commandos tried to free her from her
Taliban captors on October 8, 2010. American forces
arrived in helicopters in a remote area of eastern
Afghanistan, but because of the remote location they lacked
much of the element of surprise. In the ensuing firefight, a
SEAL threw a fragmentation grenade killing Norgrove.
The SEAL was later disciplined for throwing the
grenade.
U.S. Special Operations Forces have also successfully
freed American hostages, particularly when they had up to
date intelligence and maintained the element of surprise.
On January 25, 2012, members of SEAL Team Six
parachuted into Somalia and hiked two miles to a
compound where Somali pirates held Jessica Buchanan, a
32 year-old American aid worker, and Poul Thisted her
60-year-old Danish co-worker. They surprised the
pirates and freed Buchanan and Thisted.
There's also the well-known case of the rescue of Capt.
Richard Phillips whose ship the Alabama Maersk was
hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.
Three U.S. Navy SEAL sharpshooters on a U.S.
warship tracking the Alabama Maersk fired simultaneously
at the pirates from a distance of 30 yards in heaving seas at
nightfall, killing them all. The SEALs were able to
generate surprise through astonishing sniping skills married
to technology -- night vision scopes allowed them to shoot
and kill the pirates in a matter of seconds and free Capt.
Phillips unharmed.
In another successful mission on September 7, 2005, the
Army's Delta Force rescued Roy Hallums, an American
contractor who was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2004 by
armed men from a local kidnapping ring demanding a $12
million ransom. The Delta Force operators were pointed
to the house where Hallums was held because of good
intelligence from an Iraqi detainee and when they dropped
onto the house from helicopters they found that the
kidnappers had fled.
Successful Special Operations missions require good
intelligence and the element of surprise. Hostage rescues are
particularly tough as they require not only reaching the
target undetected, but also doing the operation in a manner
that ensures the hostages' safety. Even the brilliant
operation to release the hostages at Entebbe airport resulted
in the deaths of three of the hostages.
Some of the successful recent hostage rescues such as the
operations that freed Buchanan and Thisted, Phillips, and
Hallums were operations to free hostages held by criminal
groups rather than by terrorists.
As terrorist groups like al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula and ISIS frequently engage in hostage taking,
American special operators may increasingly find themselves
confronting enemies who are better armed and trained and
more willing to threaten the lives of hostages than is the case
of ordinary criminal groups.

Credits: CNN