Breaking News: SEALS Rescue Kidnapped Aid Workers from Somalia

This article from today's Washington Post speaks volumes about the quiet work being done by our brave and talented military forces in the Horn of Africa and around the world.  In particular, the Navy SEALS are highly trained professionals who take some of the toughest missions, and accomplish them remarkably well.

U.S. forces rescue kidnapped aid workers Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted in Somalia

AP - Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, two aid workers, were freed from Somalia after a raid by U.S. special operations forces.

The quick, targeted raid by elite commandos represented the sort of military action that the Obama administration touted in its recent defense strategy review and the president himself extolled in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

But a mission against lightly armed and poorly trained criminals in a largely lawless region of Somalia may not provide a useful model in parts of the world where modern militaries make such actions far more complex and potentially deadly.

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President Barack Obama is praising Special Operations Forces who rescued two hostages, including an American aid worker, from pirates in Somalia early Wednesday. (Jan. 25)

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The elite counter-terrorism unit that took out Osama bin Laden deploys from a tiny military facility in Dam Neck, Va., just outside of Virginia Beach.

Although officials denied any political concerns in approving the raid, the rescue operation did serve as a counterweight to charges by Republican presidential contenders that Obama is weak and indecisive.

Hostage rescue has been one of the primary missions of Special Operations forces for decades, but officials said that the mission drew on the lessons learned and skills perfected over the last decade of combat and counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I don’t know that there is a nation that could pull this thing off with the speed, precision and stealth that these forces did,” a senior Defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

In Afghanistan’s Kunar province, a kidnapped British aid worker, Linda Norgrove, was killed by friendly fire during a rescue attempt by Special Forces in October, 2010.

On Wednesday, a Somali working for a Norwegian aid agency in Galkayo, the major city in the region, said he saw two American airplanes and 11 helicopters Tuesday night at the airport there, and heard helicopters overhead in the early morning hours.

The SEALs were prepared to take prisoners, but took none, Pentagon officials said. Although the kidnappers were said to be heavily armed, with explosives nearby, the team took no casualties and left nine kidnappers dead at the site before leaving the site by helicopter, U.S. officials said. The rescued hostages were flown to the U.S. air base in nearby Djibouti.

Somali clan elders and community leaders in Galkayo, the major city in the region, gave a slightly different account. They said eight kidnappers were killed, including two brothers, and a ninth was seriously injured and taken to Abado for medical treatment.

Somali pirates are part of large criminal and clan networks and strike whenever there’s opportunity. With the U.S. and other governments beefing up patrols and actively seeking sea-going pirates, some have turned their focus to kidnapping foreigners for ransom on land. With their clan ties, the pirates can hold their hostages in safe areas, under the protection of their clans, for months until a ransom is paid.

Buchanan, originally from Ohio, was employed with Thisted by the Danish Refugee Council, which provides aid for displaced Somalis in Mogadishu. They worked for the council’s Danish Demining Group, which has operated for decades in Somalia clearing unexploded ordnance and land-mines that are spread across the country from countless wars, when they were captured in late October near Galkayo.
Ann Mary Olsen, head of the council’s international department, declined to discuss Buchanan’s medical condition but said that neither of the freed hostages was hospitalized.

Buchanan went to high school in Springboro, Ohio and attended Valley Forge Christian College in Phoenixville, Pa. She first traveled to Africa as an undergraduate, Valley Forge President Don Meyer told CNN, and later became a full-time teacher at the Rosslyn Academy, a private Christian school in Nairobi.
Rob Beyer, dean of students at Valley Forge, said Buchanan met her husband in Nairobi.

The Danish council said that Buchanan has worked for its mine-clearance unit since May 2010. Thisted, a community safety manager with the unit, has been with the organization since 2009.

Obama telephoned Buchanan’s father shortly after the speech to tell him his daughter had been rescued, administration officials said.