-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.teleport.com/~pfp/Pages/Steinberg_South's_Special_Forces.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.teleport.com/~pfp/Pages/Steinberg_South's_Special_Forces.htm" > Steinberg_South's_Special_Forces</A> ----- The South's Special Forces By Michael Steinberg In some ways the U.S. military occupation of the South following the Civil War has never ended. A number of significant Pentagon domestic outposts continue to dominate southeastern parts of the United States. The first bombs dropped on Baghdad in the Gulf War came from aircraft based at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. Norfolk homeports most of the Navy's Atlantic fleet. Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C. is the Marine's east coast stronghold. The Trident submarine fleet, the most important component of today's U.S. nuclear strategic force, bases its eastern seaboard complement at King's Bay, Georgia. Newt Gingrich's home state also hosts the notorious School of the Americas, where torture and assassination have been taught, at Fort Benning. All these and many more military bases in the South fuel local economies and breed loyalty to Defense Department Big Shticks. But by placing so many military forces in the southeastern U.S., the federal government has also positioned them within easy reach of further south countries--whose citizens might have the temerity to act against the United State's political and economic interests. The disgraceful history of U.S. intervention in the Caribbean and Central and South America has demonstrated this again and again. Ironically, the Union's victory over and occupation of the Confederacy provided valuable lessons for future such interventions. But during the 1990s perhaps no U.S. military force has ben more consistently active, influential and far flung than Army Special Forces, commonly known as the Green Berets. Headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Army Special Forces over the last decade of the 20th century have increasingly come to represent U.S. governmental and corporate interests around the globe--as often as not in alliance with some of the world's worst contemporary human rights violators, such as Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Rwanda. And all this is happening largely out of view of the American people, and with little knowledge or oversight from supposed governmental regulators. Resurgent Commandos Watch out when the military designates something as "special." For example, special weapons is the Pentagon nomenclature for nuclear weapons. Special forces are the guerrilla groups within the conventional armed forces. They are taught to infiltrate and fight behind enemy lines, trained in tactics of counterinsurgency and counterrevolution. The Kennedy administration first promoted the Army's Green Berets. The John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and Center at Fort Bragg is a legacy of this development. Today it trains about 10,000 officers each year--foreign and domestic--in such subjects as special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, small unit tactics, and unconventional warfare. Army Special Forces first came of age during the 1960s U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia. Sergeant Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets" was number one on the hit parade with a whole lot of bullets in the mid '60s. The Green Berets went on to become the quintessential Cold Warriors, regularly involved with the CIA in clandestine overseas operations. But with the demise of the Soviet Bloc, and subsequent defense cutbacks, their future appeared uncertain the the '90s dawned. However, in 1991 a bland sounding piece of Pentagon sponsored legislation--Section 2011 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations--changed all that. The law allowed U.S. Special Forces to be deployed in foreign countries if their primary purpose was to receive rather than give training there. Perhaps most significantly, this legislation largely exempted Special Forces on these missions from training with known human rights violators. Under the auspices of Section 2011, U.S. Special Forces have become increasingly active around the globe. They are now operating in 110 countries worldwide, ostensibly in Joint Combined Exchange Training (JECT) programs. While defense cutbacks downsized much of the U.S. military, the ranks of its Special Forces swelled to 47,000. Bragg's Special Forces In July, 1998, the Washington Post ran a major investigative series on U.S. Special Forces expansion under Section 2011. The Post stated that "the Army's Special Forces are the largest element" within these Pentagon troops. And within this element Fort Bragg in North Carolina serves as the main command and training center. For Bragg in fact is headquarters of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). This command in turn serves under the U.S. Special Operations Command--formerly at Pope Air Force Base, N.C.--now headquarterd at McDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. Again, in the South. Almost all the Army Special Operations Command components are based at Fort Bragg as well. These include the 1600-force Rangers; the command and active units of Psychological Operations and Civic Affairs; and the commandos within the commandos, the Delta Force of Chuck Norris fame. Also included are probably the most active Special Forces in the world to day--the 7th and 3rd Special Forces Groups. Each Special Forces Group (SFG) typically consists of over 1400 personnel. The USASOC oversees five active and two National Guard SFGs. Each of the active SFGs is assigned but not restricted to a particular region of the world. The 3rd SFG is assigned to the Caribbean and West Africa. The July '98 Post series reported that "In the last two years alone, U.S. special operations troops--mainly from the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C." have trained troops in 21 African nations in light infantry and other military tactics. This training is also under the auspices of Section 2011. The Pentagon says such training of foreign troops helps train U.S. Special Forces. George Orwell must be chuckling somewhere. U.S. War in Colombia But probably the 7th Special Forces Group is even more busy than the 3rd these days. The Post series reported that "in the 1998 fiscal year ... special operations troops will be deployed to all 19 countries in Central and Latin America." This totalled about 200 deployments involving over 2000 special forces. The heaviest concentration of these deployments were in the Andean nations where coca cultivation and social unrest are most intense: Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. The Post called these "special operations missions ... the most dynamic part of a larger U.S. military involvement in Latin America." A 1998 report by the Washington D.C.-based Latin American Working Group said that about 57,000 U.S. troops rotated in and out of Central and South America in fiscal 1997. Some of the more recent moves by the 7th Special Forces Group in the Americas did surface in the media. In May 1998, the Post reported that, in February, 1998, 20 U.S. Forces, presumably from the 7th, "trained 56 Colombians at a base 50 miles south of Bogota." In August 1998, the Dallas Morning News reported that southern Colombia, largely controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has become a stomping ground for "U.S. Special Forces, former Green Berets, Gulf War veterans, and even a few figures from covert CIA-backed operations in Central America during the 1980s." The article also cited sources who asserted that "some have been involved in direct combat with the Colombian guerrillas." The deployment of the 7th SFG in Colombia, like JCET's worldwide, is exempt from restrictions in aiding regimes certified by the U.S. government as serious human rights violators. This is because, under Section 2011, U.S. Special Forces in JCET operations are not subject to such restrictions, since, theoretically, they are there as trainees, not trainers or advisors. You gotta wonder what they're learning in Colombia. Because in that country thousands of innocent civilians have been brutally murdered each year by rightwing paramilitary death squads. They killed over 140 in only a few days in January of this year. The Colombia Solidarity Network reported a total of 3832 political murders in 1998. The U.S. State Department stated that in 1997 69% of such murders were committed by these rightwing death squads. The July 19, 1998, issue of the New York City-based Weekly News Update on the Americas reported that "Investigations have revealed that two years ago the [Colombian] military high command ordered joint training of counterinsurgency soldiers together with members of groups headed by paramilitary leader Carlos Castano," a known big time cocaine trafficker. According to a May 1998 Washington Post article, there were 29 JCET deployments involving 319 U.S. Special Forces to Colombia in 1997. Mostly from the 7th Special Forces Group, they "instructed Colombians in light infantry tactics and intelligence gathering for anti-drug operations, and have conducted eight-week counterterrorism courses, usually in remote jungle bases where guerrillas and drug traffickers are most active." In the July '98 Post series, a senior U.S. military officer said, "If you are going to train to take out a target, it doesn't make much difference if you call it a drug lab or a guerrilla camp. There's not much difference between counterdrug and counterinsurgency." Or death squad activities, some might add. Because since there is known to be training of Colombian troops in such tactics by U.S. Special Forces, and known collusion between paramilitary death squads and Colombian troops, the trickling down of these deadly skills may be contributing to the torrents of blood pouring out of thousands of innocents. There appears to be no end in sight to the escalating involvement of Fort Bragg Special Forces in the Colombian quagmire. The Spring 1998 issue of Special Warfare, the JFK School and Center's quarterly magazine, reported that "Colombia has announced the creation of a 5000 man counterinsurgency task force to deal with the increasing threat posed by ... FARC ... there have been Colombian media reports that FARC plans to target foreign advisers, including military personnel, who are assisting Colombian counterdrug efforts." Perhaps a quote from General Manuel Jose Bonett, head of the Colombian military, puts this all in perspective: "You have to understand we're fighting this war on behalf of the United States," he told the May 25, 1998 Washington Post. "We're fighting for you." GAFE at Bragg The 7th Special Forces Group has also been training Mexican Special Forces at Fort Bragg. In January 1996, Special Warfare magazine reported that Mexico was modernizing its special forces, with a focus on Grupo Aerotransportado de Fuerzas Expeciales (GAFE). The report also said that "A particularly heavy emphasis is being placed on those forces that will be located in the states of Chiapas and Guerrero." These of course are two of the Mexican states where indigenous peoples' insurgency and Mexican Army counterinsurgency are strongest. Subsequently both the New York Times and Washington Post reported that GAFE was being trained at Fort Bragg. In early March of '98 the Post stated that, since 1996, 1067 Mexican officers per year have been training at 17 military bases inside the U.S. The Post said that "the most specialized of the field training is provided at Fort Bragg by the 7th Special Forces Group." The 7th SFG had trained almost 400 GAFE at Bragg through 1998. These included six GAFE among 28 implicated in the December 1997 kidnapping and torture of 18 young people in the Mexican state of Jalisco. One of the youths, Salvador Lopez Jimenez, was tortured to death. The six GAFE trained at Bragg by the 7th SFG included the leader of the torture squad, Lt. Colonel Julian Guerrero Barrios. On April 11, 1998, U.S. human rights observer Michael Sabato was among three American citizens seized when the Mexican military invaded and destroyed the Zapatista autonomous community of Ricardo Flores Magon. Sabato and the two others subsequently were deported. In his eyewitness testimony, Sabato detailed what may have been another consequence of training Mexican special forces at Bragg: "Jeff and I ran into a group of commandos--special forces--dressed in camouflage with their faces painted and bandannas covering their faces from the nose down. They carried machetes and M-16s--some with grenade launchers--with which they hit and pushed us repeatedly, saying "You're not from here!" "The special forces used excessive force to push Jeff and I towards the main road. They handed us over to police, who also pushed and hit us with their weapons." In August 1998, 20 more GAFE were arrested in Juarez, charged with trafficking in illegal drugs and undocumented at the city's airport. Sixty more GAFE were removed from their airport posts there. Interestingly, the majority of the 17 U.S. military bases training Mexican personnel are also in the South: Bolling Air Force Base outside Washington D.C.; Randolph Air Force Base and Lackland Air Force Base in Texas; Fort Benning, GA; Fort Rucker and Fort McCullen in Alabama; Fort Eustis and Norfolk Navy Base in Virginia; and Pensacola Navy Base in Florida. These U.S. trained Mexican Special Forces are likely taking part in the current Mexican military offensive against Zapatista autonomous communities in Chiapas. Anything, Anytime, Everywhere Unfortunately, none of this is really all that new for the 7th Special Forces Group. The 7th's webpage provides its imaginative version of its history. This included "advising the South Vietnam Army in 1961," as well as being "actively involved in Laos and Thailand" during U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia. During the early '80s the unit "drafted the initial plan for U.S. military trainers in El Salvador" and "played a critical role in helping the Salvadorean military grow ... to a counterinsurgency force of 55,000 men under arms." In addition, the 7th SFG "played a very important role in preparing the Honduran military to resist and defeat an invasion from Nicaragua," and "also assisted the Honduran forces in conducting their own counter-insurgency operations and ultimately defeating the Honduran communist-supported insurgency." Later in the '80s the 7th "became involved in counter-narcotics operations in the Andean Ridge countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia," then "participated in Operation 'Just Cause' to restore democracy in Panama." But, as this article details, the 7th Special Forces Group isn't content to rest on these laurels. It's official history tells us, "Today we are continuously engaged in Foreign Internal Defense throughout Central and Latin America." The history concludes that "Those who wear the Red Flash of the 7th Special Forces Group continue the proud tradition of 'Lo que sea, Cuando sea, Donde sea.' 'Anything, Anytime, Anywhere.'" Most unfortunately, this history appears to be repeating itself, at Fort Bragg, at numerous other military installation across the South, throughout the Americas, around the world. [Portions of this article appeared in "The Prism," Chapel Hill, N.C.] (Michael Steinberg in an activist and investigative journalist based in Durham, N.C.) ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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