Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan JSOC carried out raids in Afghanistan. The number is not publicly known, but is estimated to be in the hundreds. Several have been documented in the 2013 documentary
Dirty Wars by
Jeremy Scahill and by other reporting. In
one 2010 raid in
Gardez, JSOC troops killed one U.S.-trained Police commander and another man, and three women, two of whom were pregnant, who went to the men's aid. Then-JSOC commander
William McRaven visited the affected family, offered them a sheep in restitution, and apologized. On 11 January 2007, President Bush pledged in a major speech to "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." Sometime in 2007, JSOC started conducting cross-border operations into Iran from southern Iraq with the CIA. These operations included seizing members of Al-Quds, the commando arm of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, as well as the pursuit, capture or killing of
high-value targets in the war on terror. The Bush administration allegedly combined the CIA's intelligence operations and
covert action with JSOC clandestine military operations so that Congress would only partially see how the money was spent.
Operations in Pakistan According to
The Washington Post, JSOC's commander Lieutenant General
Stanley McChrystal operated in 2006 on the understanding with Pakistan that US units will not enter Pakistan except under extreme circumstances, and that Pakistan would deny giving them permission if exposed. According to a November 2009 report in
The Nation, JSOC, in tandem with
Blackwater/Xe, had a drone program, along with snatch/grab/assassination operations, based in Karachi and conducted in and outside of Pakistan. In October 2009,
leaked diplomatic cables from the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan,
Anne W. Patterson, states the Pakistani Army approved the embedding of U.S. Special Operations Forces, including elements from the Joint Special Operations Command, with the Pakistani military to provide support for operations in the country. This goes beyond the original claims of the U.S. that the only role of the Special Forces was in training the Pakistani military. The leak further revealed that JSOC elements involved in intelligence gathering and surveillance and use of drone
UAV technology. JSOC is credited with coordinating Operation Neptune Spear that
killed Osama bin Laden on 2 May 2011.
Horn of Africa and Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen Operations against al-Qaeda linked terrorists continued in 2009 when on 14 September several U.S. Navy helicopters launched a
a raid in Baraawe,
Lower Shabelle, Operation Celestial Balance, against
Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, killing him as well as five other militants. Also in 2009, British Army soldiers from the
Special Air Service and the
Special Reconnaissance Regiment were deployed to Djibouti as part of
Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa to conduct operations against Islamist terrorists in Somalia. They carried out missions focusing on surveillance and targeting of terrorists, alongside their US counterparts, they have also been carrying out this role in Yemen. JSOC directed a 30 September 2011 air attack that killed
Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda cleric and Yemeni-American U.S. citizen. After several days of surveillance of Awlaki by the Central Intelligence Agency, armed
drones took off from a new, secret American base in the Arabian Peninsula, crossed into northern Yemen and unleashed a barrage of
Hellfire missiles at al-Awlaki's vehicle.
Samir Khan, a Pakistani-American al-Qaeda member and editor of the jihadist
Inspire magazine, also reportedly died in the attack. The combined CIA/JSOC drone strike was the first in Yemen since 2002—there have been others by the military's Special Operations forces—and was part of an effort by the spy agency to duplicate in Yemen the covert war which has been running in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On 28 October 2013, a
drone strike by JSOC on a vehicle near the town of
Jilib in
Lower Shabelle killed two senior Somali members of
Al-Shabaab. Preliminary evidence suggested that one of them was Ibrahim Ali (also known as Anta), an explosives specialist known for his skill in building and using homemade bombs and suicide vests. The US administration has been reluctant to use drone strikes in Somalia. The reluctance partly centered on questions of whether Al-Shabaab—which has not tried to carry out an attack on American soil—could legally be the target of lethal operations by the military or the CIA. In May 2013, the White House announced that it would carry out
targeted killing operations
only against those who posed a "continuing and imminent threat to the American people." The strike on 28 Oct was the first known American operation resulting in death since that policy was announced and is considered evidence by some observers that views have changed in Washington and that the Obama administration has decided to escalate operations against Al-Shabaab in the aftermath of the group's
Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya, that took place from 21 to 24 September 2013 and which left some 70 people dead. According to
The New York Times the Yemen government banned military drone operations after a series of botched drone strikes by JSOC, the last of which was a December 2013 drone strike that killed numerous civilians at a wedding ceremony. Despite a ban on military drone operations, the Yemen government allowed CIA drone operations to continue.
Operation Inherent Resolve On 25 March 2016, Special Operations Forces in
Syria killed ISIL commander
Abu Ala al-Afri.
Operation Kayla Mueller On 26 October 2019 U.S. Joint Special Operations Command's (JSOC) Delta Force conducted a raid into the Idlib province of Syria on the border with Turkey that resulted in the death of brahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai also known as
Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi. The raid was launched based on a
CIA Special Activities Center intelligence collection and close target reconnaissance effort that located the leader of ISIS. Launched after midnight local time, the eight helicopters carrying the teams along with support aircraft crossed hundreds of miles of airspace controlled by Iraq, Turkey and Russia. Upon arrival, efforts were made for Baghdadi to surrender, with those efforts unsuccessful U.S. forces responded by blowing a large hole into the side of the compound. After entering, the compound was cleared, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. The two-hour raid culminated with Baghdadi fleeing from U.S. forces into a dead-end tunnel and detonating a suicide vest, killing himself along with three of his children. The complex operation was conducted during the withdrawal of U.S. forces northeast Syria, adding to the complexity.
Death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi On 3 February 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that a raid conducted by Joint Special Operations Command in the city of
Atme, Syria in Northwest Syria near the border with Turkey, had killed the second leader of ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. After U.S. forces evacuated 10 civilians using an Arabic translator and a bullhorn, al-Qurashi proceeded to detonate a bomb that killed himself and 12 others, many of which were members of his family. After the explosion, the U.S. soldiers entered the compound and had a shootout with the survivors, including a deputy of al-Qurashi, who was then shot and killed by the U.S. forces. The raid lasted nearly two hours and no U.S. forces were killed. == List of JSOC commanders ==