AMMAN, Jordan — Maj. Gen. John Mulholland, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, Central — the special operations component of U.S. Central Command — emphasized the critical role of special operations forces in building government legitimacy in counterterrorist and counterinsurgency campaigns in a March 31 presentation here that encapsulated what he described as “lessons learned” operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, although he acknowledged that “if anything, these are lessons relearned, rather than learned anew.”

Speaking at the Middle East Special Operations Commanders Conference that precedes SOFEX 2008, he said government legitimacy was vital “because ultimately this is a battle for — in an oft-overused phrase but nonetheless true — hearts and minds of the people,” who will decide for themselves whether one side or the other “is the legitimate one.”

Mulholland identified the following factors as critical to building government legitimacy:

* Building popular support for the government by connecting the population to government services. “In many instances, our special operations forces will be among the first [security] forces to make contact with many outlying locations, remote villages, different ethnic groups that may have not been accustomed to receiving government services,” he said.

These special operations forces must use their own initiative “to connect the needs of the people” to government services” while protecting the people, Mulholland said, quoting former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Thomas “Tip” O’Neill’s saying that “All politics is local.”

* Building professional security forces. “Nothing speaks louder than the professionalism of our forces on the battlefield, and our adversaries exploit every event where there’s a breakdown in that professionalism,” he said.

Therefore, special operations forces who help develop local security forces must ensure that, no matter how small the range of missions those forces are trained for, “doing those jobs well, consistent with law, is a critical dimension in success on the battlefield,” Mulholland said. “The people and our adversary measure us by what we do and how we do it.”

* Effective information operations. “Information is much more than just having prepared messages,” he said. “It is everything we say, do and convey to the people. He said it is critical “that you do have a strategic communication message prepared and a mechanism for quickly disseminating that message to the people so that the people understand what it is you are trying to do and how it mates with the larger campaign.”

* Denying the enemy a sanctuary, either internal or external. “It is frequently the job of special operators to penetrate these sanctuaries, identify them and contest them so that the enemy ... is not free to move and refit and rest and communicate from these areas unimpeded,” Mulholland said.

* The role of external actors. “There are those external actors, both state and nonstate … that seek to undermine what it is we do,” he said. Because of the dynamics of the international environment, “contesting those directly poses a significant challenge.”

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