MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, FLA. — Weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, a small team of Green Berets was quietly sent to the Philippine island of Basilan. There, one of the world's most virulent Islamic extremist groups, Abu Sayyaf, had established a dangerous haven and was seeking to extend its reach into the Philippine capital.
But rather than unleashing Hollywood-style raids, as might befit their reputation, the Green Berets proposed a time-consuming plan to help the Philippine military take on the extremist group itself. Seven years later, Abu Sayyaf has been pushed out of Basilan and terrorist attacks have dropped dramatically.
"It's not flashy, it's not glamorous, but man, this is how we're going to win the long war," said Lt. Gen. David P. Fridovich, the Army officer who designed the Philippine program.
Fridovich is part of a quiet but significant transformation taking place within the most secret of the U.S. military's armed forces, the Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which encompasses the Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Delta Force and similar units from the Air Force and the Marines.
SOCOM Commander Adm. Eric T. Olson, who was appointed to the post in July 2007, is shifting emphasis away from the high-profile raids that were the hallmark of the early years of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. Instead, Olson has stressed "indirect action": training friendly militaries to better fight terrorism and violent separatists within their own borders.
In his first extended interview since becoming SOCOM leader, Olson acknowledged that secretive "direct action" operations remained "urgent and necessary."
But, he added: "They are not by themselves decisive in the long term."
Olson is renowned within the tightly knit SOCOM world as leader of a team that in 1993 led trapped Army units out of a fierce firefight in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu, a rescue retold in the book "Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War."
Shortly after that, he headed SEAL Team Six, the Navy's super-secret anti-terrorism unit.
An internal debate
Yet Olson has argued that headline-making U.S.-led attacks can be counterproductive, angering locals and undermining domestic leaders.
"We pride ourselves, for good reason, on our ability to respond to the sound of guns," Olson said in the interview at his headquarters on a sprawling Air Force base on the outskirts of Tampa, Fla. "We also pride ourselves on our ability to move ahead of the sound of guns. If we can move ahead of the sound of guns, and prevent them, we're all better off."
