The Point of No Return
The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify—by Allah’s permission—until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq.
—Abu Musab al-Zarqawi105
There had to be a military option, King Abdullah calculated, some sort of spectacular rescue operation, that could be mounted to bring Moaz home alive. The Jordanian monarch was a soldier at heart—one who was disheartened to learn that as monarch he wouldn’t be allowed to parachute, both static line and freefall, with his men. Although he began his military career as a tank officer, the special forces were his passion, and he served in a commando battalion and then as commando brigade commander. Promoted to the rank of general, he put the pieces in place to create RJSOCOM—the Jordanian version of the US Special Operations Command based at MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, Florida. As a colonel and later a flag officer, Abdullah saw to it that Jordan’s tip of the spear had the best training and equipment possible. He personally enhanced the capabilities of CTB-71, the army’s counterterrorism and hostage-rescue unit. The king saw to it that “71” trained and interacted with the top teams in the world, including the US Army 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta,1 US Navy DEVGRU,2 Britain’s 22 Special Air Service, France’s GIGN and Canada’s JTF-2. Since the establishment of KASOTC, a world-class special operations training center near Amman in 2009, Jordan had become a hub for the world’s top commando and counterterrorist units to share tactics and innovations.
Commando operations were always equations of risk versus reward with the ever-present asterisk of Murphy’s Law. The commanders of the special operations forces had to plan and prepare missions that could be articulated in a presentation, as well as be tactically possible in practice. The blueprint of daring was always perfected on models. Rehearsals of the real thing transformed theory into live-fire practice. All the pieces of the operation were brought together in a dress rehearsal. Most important, they had to sell the plan to the decision makers. Politicians and generals had to authorize a strike with so many precious assets—men and machines—that would have to cut a path deep behind enemy lines in order to carry out an operation that was fraught with risk. Their thought process consisted of harsh calculations of strategic necessity and political fallout. Operations that are successful can rally a nation and become national legends: Entebbe, Prince’s Gate and Abbottabad have become synonymous with boldness, imagination and unprecedented daring.
The special operations side of the Inherent Resolve coalition was ready to go into Raqqa and extricate Moaz. The coalition had some of the world’s best special operations units on call in the anti–Islamic State alliance, and they never shied away from a mission.
Months earlier President Obama gave the okay for two units inside the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, to enter Syria to try to rescue James Foley and other American hostages held by the Islamic State. Twenty-four Delta operators were flown to northwestern Syria by the famed Night Stalkers of the army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne).106 The operators ventured deep into enemy territory in both rotary and fixed-wing aircraft; surveillance aircraft flew overhead. The White House never had any intention of revealing mission details, even though many Islamic State gunmen were killed or wounded in the exchanges of gunfire. “We never intended to disclose this operation,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden revealed in a statement. “An overriding concern for the safety of the hostages and for operational security made it imperative that we preserve as much secrecy as possible. We only went public today when it was clear a number of media outlets were preparing to report on the operation and that we would have no choice but to acknowledge it.”107
Part of the secrecy stemmed from the fact that the mission failed. The hostages were never found. James Foley was beheaded on August 19, 2014. Steven Sotloff, the American-Israeli journalist also held by the group, was beheaded two weeks later.
Coalition spokesmen repeatedly told the press that they were doing everything possible to secure Moaz’s release. But privately Jordanian officials sensed a lack of urgency on the part of the allies. King Abdullah wanted CTB-71, his unit, to be involved, as well. But intelligence that was both accurate and actionable was key in launching a successful strike and collecting real-time information inside Raqqa was near impossible. The city was primed and on full alert expecting some sort of retaliation or rescue attempt. Roads leading in and out of the city were booby-trapped with powerful IEDs; defensive positions were reinforced with squads of gunmen, particularly Chechens and North Africans, because of their combat experience in recent fighting, who were positioned with antiaircraft guns and even shoulder-fired missiles to repel any lightning-fast attempt to land commandos near the Islamic State’s capital.108
King Abdullah ordered the GID to assemble a special task force to identify and locate the men who held Moaz. The GID believed that if they could find those responsible, they could also pinpoint where Moaz was being held. “We believe that he was moved every day while in custody,” Colonel Mohammed,3 a senior officer in the GID’s counterterrorism division, explained.109 “When Moaz was moved, it was primarily done under the cover of darkness,” Colonel Mohammed elaborated. “He was moved with great concealment, and always under heavy guard.”110
The GID relied heavily on human sources, primarily agents they recruited in the field. But the service’s assets inside Raqqa were unable to get close enough to anyone inside the Caliphate security apparatus to pinpoint Moaz’s location. Anyone suspected of helping the enemy was tortured and executed by the Islamic State’s aggressive and highly capable internal security organs. There were summary executions throughout the territories controlled by the Caliphate; most of those killed were innocent, of course, informed on to settle a score, but the counterintelligence thugs always believed it better to err on the side of caution. “The Islamic State gunmen holding Moaz were incredibly paranoid, more paranoid than they were in the day-to-day running of their war. They were certain that there would be some sort of spectacular operation mounted to rescue the pilot and they moved him constantly,” a GID officer who identified himself by the pseudonym of “Walid” explained. “Real-time intelligence-gathering from sources and assets in the vicinity was virtually impossible to ascertain. The moment we received a lead, we were always late.”111
Coalition intelligence services, primarily the CIA and NSA, relied heavily on SIGINT and ELINT measures. The United States also provided satellite imagery, reconnaissance overflights and even drone missions over the city. The effort revealed very little, however. Islamic State operatives displayed a keen knack for counterespionage tradecraft. Islamic State military commanders changed SIM cards on their mobile phones frequently; they chatted on encrypted applications, such as the Russian-designed Telegram.112 There was very little chatter, and by the time a hint of communications could be detected, the intelligence was old and no longer useful. The spies—Jordanian and American—had a grudging respect for the tradecraft displayed by their adversaries in the Islamic State.
Quick action was imperative. The longer Moaz languished in the custody of the khawarij, the outlaws of Islam, as King Abdullah referred to them, the less likely it was that he could ever be retrieved.
There were discussions and even plans drawn up at JSOC and coalition headquarters to launch a rescue attempt. The GID and the JAF, as well as CENTCOM and intelligence arms of the Inherent Resolve coalition found it virtually impossible to gather real-time and reliable intelligence on where Moaz might be held. Launching high-risk top-tier special operations missions without the required intelligence was neither tactically nor strategically prudent. With the invaluable and irrefutable intelligence, the rescue operation never materialized.