Outside the Wire: How U.S. Special Operations Troops Secretly Help Foreign Forces Target Terrorists by Souad Mekhennet and Missy Ryan, Washington Post
… The operation illustrates the central but little-known role that U.S. Special Operations troops can play in helping foreign forces plan and execute deadly missions against militant targets.
In recent years, U.S. forces have provided this kind of close operational support — a range of activities including what’s known in military parlance as “combat advising” or “accompany” and “enabling” assistance — in a growing list of countries beyond the active battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, including Uganda, Mauritania, Kenya, Colombia, the Philippines and Tunisia.
Those activities have taken on greater importance as the Obama administration has scaled back the direct combat role of U.S. troops overseas and instead sought to empower local forces to manage extremist threats.
At the same time, the strategy, while low-risk to Americans, has done little to change the overall security picture in countries with deep political and economic problems. It is an approach that some analysts say may provide the partner forces — and the United States — with a false sense of security while having little lasting effect…
Comments
The article seemed fair to me, and of course the issue remains for those who advocate the indirect approach as the way to address these security issues, and that is, "At the same time, the strategy, while low-risk to Americans, has done little to change the overall security picture in countries with deep political and economic problems. It is an approach that some analysts say may provide the partner forces — and the United States — with a false sense of security while having little lasting effect."
This isn't an attack on the indirect approach or FID, but rather a call to do a much better job of connecting our ways to ends so we actually achieve our desired ends. Simply continuing the same approach around the world is wrong headed, this approach has repeatedly feel short in many parts of Africa, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Iraq. Why? The answers are different for each region, but they need to be explored and our approach modified accordingly.