SurrogateWarfareRoleofARMYSF.pdf

United States Army Special Forces (SF) has played a critical role in prosecuting the Global War on Terror. Their ability to wage unconventional warfare remains their trademark. Operations in Afghanistan and northern Iraq demonstrated SF's ability to successfully leverage a surrogate force to achieve U.S. objectives. These UW campaigns were unique in many ways and suggest what future unconventional warfare operations in the Global War on Terror may look like. However, this was not guerilla warfare characterized by small units using hit and run tactics. This was positional warfare in which cities were taken, ground was held, and the enemy capitulated or defeated. The Northern Alliance and Kurdish Peshmerga functioned as surrogate armies in place of U.S. conventional forces and they were controlled by U.S. Army Special Forces. The U.S. Army has a long history of using surrogates to achieve their objectives, however, nowhere in joint and army doctrine is surrogate warfare mentioned. The primary question this monograph seeks to answer is what is required of U.S. Army Special Forces to conduct surrogate warfare in the future? Analysis of the two most recent UW campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest that cultural awareness and regional expertise are critical to conducting surrogate warfare, as well as the ability to function as an operational-level joint headquarters capable of planning and supporting a UW campaign. Analysis reveals that while SF is adept at applying their cultural expertise across different cultures and regions, they need to invest more in their language and cultural awareness training to more effectively meet the challenges of the future. Further analysis also reveals that while the 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups (SFG) successfully performed the mission of a Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF), it was not without great growing pains.