Secret of the US Seals' success: hot and isolated Camp Lemonier

THE US NAVY Seal unit that rescued a 32-year-old American aid worker and her Danish colleague from Somalia on Tuesday was ordered into action after the pirates holding the couple had turned down a ransom offer of $1.5 million, it has emerged. With ransoms as high as $10m now being paid to pirates according to the New York Times, £1.5m was considered inadequate by the pair's captors.

Another factor in President Obama's decision to send in the Seals was the "actionable intelligence" that the health of the American, Jessica Buchanan, was deteriorating after she had run out of medication for an unspecified existing complaint.

More details of how the two dozen Seals conducted their swift and successful raid to free Buchanan and the 60-year-old Dane, Poul Thisted, held by the pirates since October, have also come out overnight. Crucial to the success of the mission was a new US strategy of low-cost military outposts dotted around the globe, designed as launchpads for anti-terror operations.

Setting off by helicopter from one such base, Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, the Seals parachuted into a drop-zone two miles from the pirates' location and then hiked silently to the compound holding the hostages.

The pirates – described by US officials as "criminals" rather than al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist al-Shabab militants – were sleeping off the effects of the narcotic leaf qat, or khat, and were killed within moments of the Seals opening fire.

A pirate who gave his name as Bile Hussein told the Associated Press (AP) that he was not present but had spoken to others who were. He described the Seals as firing "missiles" into the camp before charging the guards. He said that nine pirates had been killed and three more "taken away".

However, Washington officials said that the Seals had taken no captives.

Although the firefight had taken only a minute, the Seals remained at the site for about an hour before flying by helicopter back to Camp Lemonier.

Lemonier, described by the New York Times as "an austere Pentagon outpost in the hardscrabble desert on the Horn of Africa", is one of an "archipelago" of small US military outposts set up at a modest cost in "far-flung regions of interest" from which US commando raids and intelligence operations can be launched.

The camps offer runways, communications, housing, a hospital — and privacy – for what are termed "economy of force" missions.

With US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta bound to cut $487 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade, the trend in camps like Lemonier is expected to grow, says the New York Times.

As The Week reported yesterday, the Seals who freed the two aid workers came from the same unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden last year.

Jessica Buchanan's brother, Stephen, said: "It is a great day to be an American. We are very proud and very thankful to Seal Team Six."

The Guardian reports that some Somalis were also celebrating. "We are really happy with the successful release of the innocents kidnapped by evildoers," said an elder, Muhammad Sahal. "They were guests who were treated brutally. That was against Islam and our culture."

President Obama said in a statement: "The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice."

At Camp Lemonier, they will doubtless have cracked open a few beers: one of the unusual benefits for the military personnel assigned to the hot and isolated outpost, according to the New York Times, is a daily beer ration, prohibited in Iraq and Afghanistan under General Order No. 1. ·