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Secret Warfare: U.S. Special Forces Expand Training to Allies With Histories of Abuse

September 11, 2015

Secret Warfare: U.S. Special Forces Expand Training to Allies With Histories of Abuse

THEY HAD HIM AT THEIR MERCY. The burly man, hooded and helpless, sat on the ground as his two captors — a soldier dressed in black from helmet to boots, another clad in camouflage, both with rifles slung on their backs — grabbed him by his armpits and hauled him to his feet. A dark Mercedes minivan snaked up the dirt road toward them, as two other soldiers in full camouflage scanned the bare tree line with their automatic weapons at the ready. The van pulled up, its door slid open, and the men, captors and victim, were gone. It looked like a scene out of a thriller starring Liam Neeson or Jason Statham.

It was, indeed, something of a fiction.

In March, members of the U.S. Special Operations forces traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to train with local special police units. Carried out at Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national training center in Manjaca, the arrest demonstration, chronicled in an official video, was part of the first-of-its-kind Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) in the Balkan nation.

The training program was part of a shadowy and growing global engagement strategy involving America’s most secretive and least scrutinized troops. Since 9/11, Special Ops forces have expanded in almost every conceivable way — from budget to personnel to overseas missions — with JCETs playing a significant role. Special Operations Command keeps the size and scope of the program a well-guarded secret, refusing to release even basic figures about the number of missions or the countries involved, but documents obtained by The Interceptdemonstrate that from 2012 to 2014 some of America’s most elite troops — including Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets — carried out 500 Joint Combined Exchange Training missions around the world.

Special Police Units of the Republika Srpska participate in a tactical demonstration at the training center Manjaca near western Bosnian town of Banja Luka, 260 kms west of Sarajevo , Bosnia, on Wednesday, March 25, 2015. Ten soldiers from U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, 18 police officers from the Police Forces of the Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina and 18 from the Police Forces of the Republic of Srpska trained and lived together for a month and conclude their training with this exercise. The month-long Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program provides U.S. Special Operations Forces a chance to train with colleagues in partner nations to develop their military tactics and skills in unfamiliar settings, while also improving bilateral relations and interoperability with partner nation forces. (AP Photo/Radivoje Pavicic)

Members of a Special Police Unit conduct a drill as part of an exercise with U.S. forces in a Joint Combined Exchange Training at Manjaca, Bosnia.
Photo: Radivoje Pavicic/AP

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