No, I don't think you need an entirely new command. But, one of the great strengths of the selous scouts was their ability to recruit native Shona, and Ndebele speakers, who could actually talk the talk. I'm not sure, but I think the number of native Arabic speakers in the SF is probably not enough to form even one psuedo team. You'd have to have, as the Selous Scout had, recruits from the territories you were going to operate in. That means, your typical green beanie is out. They had a problem kind of like this in the Scouts, while they could find whites who spoke Shona. The problem was still that they were white, and it would be hard to believe they were part of the black/communist/nationalist insurgency. What they ended up doing was putting black make up on the white officer in charge, (No I'm not kidding) Obviously, this wouldn't pass close inspection, but it was good enough is someone saw them from say 50m. So the white officer, had to stay kind of off in the distance. He would primarily direct the team from the rear and maintain radio contact. While there was a black team member who could actually do close in meets, with other guerrillas and villiage heads. I think in one case, probably in others they actually tied up their white officer to make him look like he was one of their hostages! I think you're right. I haven't or don't remember any mention of a Rhodesian Paratroop Bn. I think the RLI were it. Of course the SAS were parachute qualified, but that's not exactly the same as a conventional airborne force. I don't think, however, that the RLI became, a parachute until sanctions began to take a toll on the number of available Allouette helos. That is when they started to use Dakotas, cargo planes, to insert their fireforces. At the height of the war, troops of the RLI were doing 3 combat drops per day!!!

I've been hunting in Zimbabwe a couple of times in the late 90's, before this latest mugabe mess. The professional hunters were almost to a man ex south africa or rhodesian army types, most of them commandos of various sort, including Scouts. Some of the conversation around the campfire revolved around the old days. A lot of what they did was black ops - *very* black ops - and they seemed to routinelly get away with it, due to superior intelligence, lack of communications amongst the rebels, and the very poor training/abilities of most rebels. One op I remember involved hijacking red cross trucks, putting mg's behind the tailgates, and driving them into rebels camps. The locals (rebels and refugees, they were often but not allways the same) would come gather around the trucks, and at a signal they droped the tailgates and machine gunned everyone in sight, most of whom were holding their cups and canteens. Others were about surrounding camps or insurgent towns, dropping mortars into them and waiting r everyon the ruch out and then gunning them down. Yet others were about monitoring the zambesi river, waiting for insurgents to make a crossing, then gunning the canoes -either killing them or dropping them into heavily croc-infested waters. It seems they were *awfully* tough, unscrupulous and effective bush warriors - though by our standards much of what they did would be considered at least unscrupulous civilian repression, or even war crimes.

It seems they were *awfully* tough, unscrupulous and effective bush warriors - though by our standards much of what they did would be considered at least unscrupulous civilian repression, or even war crimes. -snip- That sounds about right from my read on the Scouts and the RLI. Coming from a man who keeps a color copy of the UDI on his wall at work. Last I read Ian Smith is still kicking!

It seems they were *awfully* tough, unscrupulous and effective bush warriors - though by our standards much of what they did would be considered at least unscrupulous civilian repression, or even war crimes. -snip- I hope there was no opinion in your statement.

>>But, one of the great strengths of the selous scouts was their ability to recruit native Shona, and Ndebele speakers, who could actually talk the talk.<< It wouldn't work in Iraq. One of the reasons it worked in Rhodesia was because of the dreadful quality of communications the guerillas possessed -- no one could check a Selous Scout team's bone fides via radio until it was far too late. Another reason was that the guerillas largely hid out in the bush and made sporadic contact with villagers. Iraq is straight forward urban guerilla work, so Selous Scout type tactics there would not only have to fool the guerillas, but fool and infiltrate the populace in general, which provides several orders of magnitude more chances for discovery and compromise. Finally, the rank and file of ZANLA and ZIPRA in Rhodesia do not appear to have been very effectively indoctrinated with revolutionary ideology -- as evidenced by the Scouts' ability to turn captured prisoners in the field with reliable consistency -- which compares very negatively with the death-cult commitment of your typical Arab jihadi and his jahiliyya apostasy. Not to mention the complication introduced by actual demographics of the insurgents in Iraq -- even native Iraqi agents would have problems getting into cells since the most active insurgent elements are foreign infiltrators who have already been vetted and delivered via rat lines. To pull a Selous Scouts type operation you'd have to infiltrate individuals, not teams, via the infiltration network from Syria, etc. A repeat of the Selous Scouts tactics might work in some places in the modern era, but I'm skeptical of its applicability to Iraq. >>I'm not sure, but I think the number of native Arabic speakers in the SF is probably not enough to form even one psuedo team.<< 5th Special Forces Group has the Middle East as its primary geographic AOR, with all 18 series personnel and some of its military intelligence personnel receiving language training relevant to its AOR. I suspect that somewhere within the personnel on ODAs/ODBs or in the MIDs (approaching a thousand authorized slots within that Group alone) you can scare up a half dozen fluent Arabic speakers who can look the part . . . >>You'd have to have, as the Selous Scout had, recruits from the territories you were going to operate in. That means, your typical green beanie is out.<< Latino SF personnel fluent in Arabic were operating deep in Iraq and posing as Arabs or Kurds successfully for much of the lead up to Operation Iraqi Freedom and during that operation. Not all can manage it -- too much indian blood and one looks out of place, but dark complected, basically southern European ancestry with a mustache looks like 99% of the men in Iraq today. As can some others with, obviously, actual Arabic ancestry or some other southern European ethnic backgrounds, etc. But if all that was required was looking the part and scouring the brush to find insurgents, then SF already has that capability covered. The problem is that pulling such an operation in Iraq is more complicated (by improved technology and urban versus rural operating environment), and of a different nature (i.e. insurgents are delivered into Iraq via an infiltration network, not just handed their guns and told to march in to a safe area as the Rhodesian guerillas did, as well as their ideological indoctrination, etc), than the operations the Selous Scouts ran.

>>no one could check a Selous Scout team's bone fides via radio until it was far too late<< I think you might over estimate the level of commo that the insurgents have in Iraq, and even when the do have commo, there is no one to call to verify bona fides, in some cases! >>death-cult commitment of your typical Arab jihadi<< I don't think most of the insurgents you find over there would fit this bill. Many are in it for the money, or they are just disenfranchised sunnis. Sure there are some Jihadis but they constitute a minority. There is a big difference between a fluent speaker and a native speaker. While 5th groups may have plenty of fluent speakers, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that they don't have more than 10 people who grew up in arab homes. In spite of these problems, psuedo operations or undercover work whatever you want to call could be done there. You might not be able to follow a Rhodesian template but you could modify it to work. I still think you'd have to incorporate alot of Iraqis into your program though.

>>I think you might over estimate the level of commo that the insurgents have in Iraq, and even when the do have commo, there is no one to call to verify bona fides, in some cases!<< I don't know -- suffice it to say, I know that Ron Reid Daly's book was just about required reading for members of SF during the Reagan era, so the knowledge base is there to attempt such operations (and some TTPs described in his book have been used in other theaters where SF teams found themselves as combatants or advisors). But I also see significant and probably insurmountable contraindications to running those sorts of infiltration operations in the Iraqi AOR, as I outlined previously. At the end of the day it basically boilds down to guerillas in a sympathetic urban environment being infinitely more secure from detection and infiltration than those living in isolated rural camps as the Rhodesian guerillas were prone to do. (As a side note, Michael Yon's blog has at least one anecdote about a conventional army unit pulling an operation entirely in the spirit of the Selous Scouts -- the unit staged a fake IED attack on an Iraqi police vehicle, then pulled up Strykers to offload simulated Iraqi casualties and left the police car burning. All the bad guys in the neighborhood promptly ran and got their AKs to go do the usual "Allahu akhbar" video posing that savages so fancy, unaware that the battalion snipers were overwatching the burning police car. Apparently if you were holding a gun, you died. Ron Reid Daly would have been proud, I'm quite certain.) >>There is a big difference between a fluent speaker and a native speaker. While 5th groups may have plenty of fluent speakers, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that they don't have more than 10 people who grew up in arab homes.<< Yes and no. I'll happily take your bet that I can find 10 ethnic Arabs who grew up in multi-lingual homes where Arabic was spoken daily. I'll even go so far as to bet you I can find at least 10 ethnic Arabs from Lebanon, or even specifically from Beirut, in 5th Group (most probably being Christians, but that has no real significance for language skills). Probably more than 10 if my search is not limited to SF personnel, but can include interrogators and other MI specialists. But such are not native Iraqi Arabic speakers . . . though you do not necessarily want such for Selous Scouts types black ops, since many, if not all the people you really want to kill via such operations are not Iraqi either. The problem being that in neighborhoods and towns sympathetic to the guerillas, even being a native Iraqi is not sufficient -- the people in those areas are intensely aware of who does and does not belong on their turf, enough so that it complicates even the most basic sorts of reconnaissance >>In spite of these problems, psuedo operations or undercover work whatever you want to call could be done there. You might not be able to follow a Rhodesian template but you could modify it to work. I still think you'd have to incorporate alot of Iraqis into your program though.<< Undercover work, yes. I simply do not think the Selous Scouts model is applicable in Iraq, because of the differences or complications I mentioned earlier. More than Selous Scouts infiltration operations, what is needed in Iraq is the third leg of the triangle that made them so effective, which has not been mentioned -- black-face wearing reconnaissance specialists and fire force guys leaping out of airplanes would neither one have made the least bit of difference if it weren't for Special Branch and the top-end intelligence network it ran.

Good points! Hey who is Michael Yon's? Where is his blog?

Michael Yon -- a former military guy, now freelance journalist who embedded with 1-24th Infantry (a Stryker battalion) up in Mosul. I've not read his book ("Danger Close") about his military experiences, but his blog is often good reading. The account about the fake IED operation is somewhere in there -- I was going to post a URL, but my first six guesses on back posts turned up wrong. Seems like it is back around the time he was posting various "Battle of Mosul" pieces, though. http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/ He tends to provide a very good look at details both of battalion ops over there and also the broader story beyond the usual media "if it bleeds it leads" thumbnail snippets.

Horsesoldier, Good point on why Selous Scouts-style units arent viable for Iraq. Just to add another aspect to it... Many of the white members of the Selous Scouts would probably have grown up in large farms/plantations with plenty of native African help. More likely than not, most would have some idea of the language -- i.e a supposedly "turned" rebel cant blatantly do a double-cross in plain sight and language. It has been known to happen to some US units in Iraq. Another thing is that their household help would have consisted of the best local hunters in some capacity or another -- if Colonial studies is worth anything. That said many of them probably have had better field-training than the idologically motivated Communists and Nationalists being led by clerks and school-teachers. There arent that many American soldiers who grew up with a Bedu tracker as their master-of-the-hunt, and if they did it would be of little help in Mosul ;-) This much is apparent in almost ALL colonial societies... remember the 150,000 Brits in 300,000,000 man India??? As an Indian it sure galls me, but as a student of history its quite simply a fact of life. And it has not always been a European speciality either, though it was the most recent manifestation. Frankly I think it would be better for the American Republic in the long run that it never learns this particular nasty lesson, as it will only retard its progress towards true freedom.