War experience aids hostages
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Roy Hallums was enduring his 311th day of captivity, blindfolded, his hands and feet bound, stuffed into a hole under the floor of a farm building outside Baghdad. He heard a commotion upstairs and managed to get the blindfold off. Delta Force troops broke open the hatch. An American soldier jumped down.
"He looks at me and points and says, 'Are you Roy?' I say 'yes,' and he yells back up the stairs: 'Jackpot!"' Hallums recalled in a phone interview with The Associated Press six years after his rescue.
U.S. special forces units are compiling a string of successful hostage rescues, thanks to improved technology and a decade of wartime experience. But despite technological advances like thermal imaging and surveillance drones, the raids remain high-risk. Success or failure can depend on a snap decision made by a rescuer with bullets flying all around, or determination by kidnappers to kill any captives before they can be freed.
The kidnappings of foreigners living or traveling overseas continues unabated, as it has for decades. While the probability of a person being kidnapping is low, abductions do occur regularly, especially in high-risk nations like Somalia, Pakistan, Mexico and Colombia.
U.S. troops have been tasked with rescues mostly in areas where American forces were already stationed, like Afghanistan, Iraq and around Somalia, said Taryn Evans, an expert on kidnappings at AKE, a risk mitigation company outside London. As they've gotten more experienced, they've gotten better.
In 2009, SEAL sharpshooters killed three Somali pirates holding the American captain of the Maersk Alabama hostage in a lifeboat. And late last month, U.S. Navy SEALs parachuted into Somalia under cover of night, then moved on foot to where captors were holding an American woman and a Danish man who had been kidnapped together in October. The SEALs killed nine captors and rescued the two hostages while suffering no casualties themselves in the Jan. 25 operation.
Their skill in carrying out such missions has been honed by America's two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Seth Jones, a civilian adviser to the commanding general of the U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan from 2009-2011.
"They have conducted so many operations in these areas, from hostage rescues to strike operations to capture-kill missions. What it does is significantly improves the competence of special operations," Jones told The Associated Press. He said commando missions are "now routine."
Though Navy SEAL Team 6 rescued the American and the Dane, one American kidnapped in January in Somalia remains behind. His captors told AP they moved him several times in the hours immediately after the SEAL raid, out of fear the U.S. military could try another rescue attempt.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns said this week the U.S. is "very concerned" about the remaining hostage and that Washington is following the case closely and taking it very seriously.
"It's an essential obligation for any government to do everything we can to protect our citizens and that's exactly what President Obama did when he ordered the successful hostage rescue" in Somalia, Burns said.
Rescues entail risk, but Hallums, who was kidnapped by a gang in November 2004, is thankful the U.S. military carries them out.
Without a rescue attempt, the former contractor from Memphis, Tennessee, said: "I was going to be dead for sure."
Hallums' captors were demanding $12 million for his release. His Saudi Arabia-based employer -- which provided support services for U.S. troops -- offered $1 million.
Hallums noted that a successful rescue requires the work of many more people than the commandoes who carry out the raid. The FBI, CIA and National Security Agency all work to gather information, data that is then turned over to military intelligence, where an operations officer devises a rescue plan.
"You hear about SEAL Team 6 but behind them there's hundreds of people working to get information that they can take out and execute the rescue," Hallums said.
