Global War on Terror (Other Operations)

The 'Global War on Terror' — the umbrella term for America's post-9/11 military campaigns — expanded far beyond Afghanistan and Iraq into a shadowy, globe-spanning network of military operations that touches every inhabited continent. Under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) — a 60-word sentence passed three days after September 11 in a moment of national trauma — the United States has conducted military operations in at least 85 countries, deployed special forces to 149 nations, and built a counterterrorism infrastructure that would make George Orwell blanch.

This entry covers the 'other' operations — the ones beyond the named conflicts, the ones most Americans don't know exist. They include the Combined Joint Task Force — Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), operating from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti with 4,000+ personnel conducting strikes and surveillance across East Africa. They include the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, spending $100 million annually across 10 West African nations to train local militaries that frequently overthrow their own governments (as Niger demonstrated in 2023). They include Operation Enduring Freedom — Philippines, where 600+ Special Forces spent over a decade hunting Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Mindanao. They include scores of smaller deployments, training missions, and intelligence operations that collectively constitute the largest sustained military enterprise in human history.

THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK: A BLANK CHECK FOR GLOBAL WAR

The foundation of the entire enterprise is the 2001 AUMF, which authorizes the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." This 60-word sentence has been interpreted by four successive administrations to authorize military operations against groups that didn't exist on 9/11 (ISIS, al-Shabaab, ISIS-K, AQIM), in countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 (Somalia, Niger, Libya, Philippines, Yemen), using methods never contemplated by Congress (drone assassination of American citizens, indefinite detention without trial, extraordinary rendition to torture states).

Only one member of Congress voted against the AUMF: Representative Barbara Lee of California. She warned it was a "blank check" for endless war. She received death threats and was called a traitor. Twenty-five years later, she has been proven prophetic beyond her worst fears.

THE SECRET PRISON AND TORTURE PROGRAM

One of the darkest chapters of the GWOT was the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program — a network of secret prisons ('black sites') where terrorism suspects were subjected to what the government euphemistically called 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' The 2014 Senate Torture Report documented the full horror: waterboarding (simulated drowning), rectal feeding and rectal rehydration (sexual assault), sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours (over 7 days), stress positions causing permanent physical damage, confinement in coffin-sized boxes, mock executions, threats against detainees' families, and ice water immersion causing hypothermia.

The black sites operated in Thailand ('Cat's Eye'), Poland (Stare Kiejkuty), Romania ('Bright Light'), Lithuania, Afghanistan ('Salt Pit' and 'Cobalt'), and other undisclosed locations. At the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, detainee Gul Rahman was chained to a concrete floor in freezing temperatures and died of hypothermia. No one was prosecuted.

The extraordinary rendition program was equally horrifying. The CIA operated a fleet of aircraft through front companies (Aero Contractors, Jeppesen Dataplan), flying prisoners to countries known for torture — Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, Uzbekistan — where they were interrogated using methods even the CIA wouldn't employ directly. Over 136 individuals were rendered between 2001-2005. Some were entirely innocent — Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was rendered to Syria based on faulty intelligence and tortured for a year before being released without charges. Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped in Macedonia, rendered to Afghanistan, tortured for five months, and then dumped on a roadside in Albania when the CIA realized they had the wrong man.

The Senate Torture Report concluded that the CIA's techniques produced no actionable intelligence that couldn't have been obtained through legal interrogation methods. The program's architects — psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who were paid $81 million to design the torture program — faced no criminal consequences. CIA Director Gina Haspel, who oversaw the Thailand black site, was promoted.

THE HORN OF AFRICA: CAMP LEMONNIER AND CJTF-HOA

Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti — a tiny nation strategically located at the mouth of the Red Sea — became America's most important African military installation. Established in 2002, it grew from a small outpost to a sprawling base hosting over 4,000 personnel, serving as the hub for the Combined Joint Task Force — Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). From Lemonnier, the U.S. conducts drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia, surveillance across East Africa, special operations raids, and training missions for partner forces across the region.

The base's $1.4 billion expansion transformed it from a temporary counterterrorism outpost into a permanent military installation — a de facto American colony in Africa, leased from the Djiboutian government for $63 million per year. Djibouti also hosts military bases from France, China, Japan, and Italy — making it the most militarized patch of real estate on earth relative to its size.

CJTF-HOA's Area of Responsibility covers 20 countries across East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Its operations range from visible humanitarian missions (well-drilling, school construction) to classified strikes and intelligence operations. The task force has been instrumental in the drone campaigns against al-Shabaab in Somalia and AQAP in Yemen — campaigns that have killed thousands, including hundreds of civilians, with minimal public awareness or congressional oversight.

THE TRANS-SAHARA COUNTERTERRORISM PARTNERSHIP

The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), launched in 2005 as an expansion of the Pan-Sahel Initiative, represents America's attempt to prevent the Sahara-Sahel region from becoming the next Afghanistan. The program spans 10 countries — Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Burkina Faso — providing training, equipment, intelligence sharing, and joint exercises to partner militaries.

The irony is brutal: TSCTP-trained officers have led military coups in Mali (2012, 2020, 2021), Burkina Faso (2022), Niger (2023), and Guinea (2021). Captain Amadou Sanogo, who overthrew Mali's democratic government in 2012, was trained by U.S. Special Forces. The U.S. literally trained the soldiers who destroyed the democracies the program was supposed to protect. The pattern is consistent: American military training strengthens armies that then seize power, creating the instability that justifies more American involvement.

After the 2023 Niger coup — which expelled U.S. forces and handed a $110 million drone base to Russian Wagner mercenaries — the entire Sahel strategy collapsed. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger formed a new alliance, expelled French and American forces, and turned to Russia for military support. Twenty years and billions of dollars in American investment produced nothing — less than nothing, since the region is now aligned with Moscow.

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM — PHILIPPINES

Operation Enduring Freedom — Philippines (OEF-P) was one of the GWOT's earliest and most sustained secondary fronts. From 2002 to 2015, 600+ U.S. Special Forces operated in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, targeting Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) — a Moro separatist-jihadist organization responsible for kidnappings, bombings, and the 2004 SuperFerry 14 bombing that killed 116 people.

The Philippines operation was initially considered a success story — Abu Sayyaf was degraded from 1,200+ fighters to a few hundred, key leaders were killed or captured, and the U.S. maintained its relationship with Manila. But the operation also demonstrated the GWOT's whack-a-mole problem: as Abu Sayyaf weakened, elements pledged allegiance to ISIS, and in 2017, ISIS-affiliated militants seized the city of Marawi, triggering a five-month battle that killed over 1,100 people and displaced 360,000.

The Philippines deployment cost an estimated $6.4 billion over 13 years and involved direct combat (despite the 'advisory' label) — including the 2002 rescue mission for hostage Martin Burnham (who was killed during the rescue) and numerous firefights in the jungles of Mindanao and Basilan.

THE SURVEILLANCE STATE

The GWOT's most pervasive domestic legacy is the surveillance apparatus revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. Programs like PRISM (collecting data from Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and other tech companies), UPSTREAM (tapping undersea fiber optic cables), XKeyscore (searching nearly all internet activity in real-time), and BOUNDLESS INFORMANT (tracking metadata collection) demonstrated that the U.S. government had built the most comprehensive surveillance system in human history — monitoring the communications of billions of people worldwide, including millions of American citizens.

The legal framework for this surveillance was Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of FISA Amendments Act — laws passed in the GWOT's panic that were interpreted secretly by the FISA Court to authorize mass collection far beyond what Congress intended. The NSA collected metadata on every phone call made in the United States, tracked email and internet activity globally, and shared intelligence with Five Eyes partners (UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) to circumvent domestic legal restrictions.

The surveillance state outlived every other aspect of the GWOT. While troops withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq, the surveillance infrastructure remained — and expanded. The capabilities developed to track terrorists are now used for immigration enforcement, drug investigations, and domestic law enforcement. The GWOT built a surveillance architecture that the Founders' nightmares couldn't have imagined.

THE COST

The full financial cost of the 'other' GWOT operations is impossible to calculate precisely because much of the spending is classified, spread across multiple agencies (DoD, CIA, NSA, DIA, State Department), and deliberately obscured in budget documents. Brown University's Costs of War project estimates total post-9/11 spending at over $8 trillion — including direct military operations ($2.3 trillion), veteran care ($2.2 trillion), interest on war borrowing ($1.1 trillion), Homeland Security ($1.1 trillion), and increases to the Pentagon's base budget ($900 billion).

The 'other operations' — everything beyond the named conflicts — account for an estimated $80-100 billion in direct costs. But this figure is misleading because these operations are deeply intertwined with the broader GWOT infrastructure. Camp Lemonnier supports operations across multiple conflicts. SOCOM's 70,000 personnel rotate through dozens of countries. The intelligence community's $80+ billion annual budget serves all operations simultaneously. The true cost of America's global counterterrorism enterprise is embedded in the Pentagon's $900+ billion annual budget in ways that resist accounting.

THE HUMAN TOLL

Brown University estimates that post-9/11 wars have directly killed over 940,000 people and displaced 38 million — more than any conflict since World War II. The 'other operations' have killed thousands: drone strikes in Pakistan (2,500-4,000), Yemen (1,500+), Somalia (1,200+), and Libya (500+). Special operations raids have killed hundreds more. Extraordinary rendition and torture programs destroyed dozens of lives even among those who survived. And the indirect deaths — from destroyed healthcare systems, displacement, malnutrition, and the cascading effects of destabilization — number in the hundreds of thousands.

The U.S. military's own casualty figures for 'other operations' are deliberately understated. The 65 deaths and 150 wounded listed here represent only acknowledged combat casualties in named operations outside the major war zones. The true figure — including training accidents, classified operations, and contractor deaths — is significantly higher.

THE PERPETUAL WAR MACHINE

The most profound consequence of the GWOT's 'other operations' is institutional: the creation of a self-perpetuating war machine that generates its own justification. The pattern is consistent across every theater: U.S. intervention destabilizes a region → destabilization creates extremism → extremism justifies more intervention → intervention creates more destabilization. This cycle has operated in Somalia, Yemen, Libya, the Sahel, Pakistan, and the Philippines for over two decades with no end in sight.

The 2001 AUMF provides the legal lubrication for this perpetual motion machine. Each new group — al-Shabaab, ISIS, AQIM, ISIS-K, Jundallah, Boko Haram — is declared an 'associated force' of al-Qaeda, bringing it under the AUMF's umbrella regardless of any actual connection to 9/11. The authorization has metastasized from a response to a specific attack into a general license for global war — exactly the kind of permanent military establishment the Founders warned against in every major founding document.

The libertarian critique is devastating: the United States government has used the shock of 9/11 to construct a permanent warfare state operating across the globe with minimal oversight, no democratic accountability, and no defined enemy, battlefield, or objective. The 'war on terror' — like the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on poverty' — is a war against a concept, which means it can never be won and therefore never needs to end. It is the perfect war for those who profit from war.