working with that partner. they didn t know how dangerous it was. and because this group was ambushed, outgunned, outmatched, they re now reasassessing a lot of the issues. i m sure this will be several investigations. right now the initial assessm t assessment, it was isis behind this attack, not al qaeda, isis is the final assessment. pentagon pretty confident in this assessment, it sounds like. yes, they are. for folks that have not been following this story as closely, hans, what exactly are we doing in that part of africa? why is this part of the world so vital? in niger that s where america keeps some drones, to follow the rat lines, where terrorists go from the south to north, sometimes human smugglers as well. you need these drones in place and you need a base to operate them from. you have some 800 personnel in
so, they have the intent, numbers and access to weapons. you can buy an ak-47 in europe f and an open society makes these attacks that much more lethal when they happen. and if i may add to that. of course. having served my last tour before retiring, there was a continual watch of the movement of all kinds of people and not just terrorists, but human trafficking, there s a lot of ak-47s, a lot of rpgs in that area. and for a long time, the u.s.-military forces were tracking those so-called rat lines across europe, from syria,
marched on palmyra in syria. these are three major operations isis has mounted concurrently all of which suggests that the strategy is not succeeding like gangbusters, so this could be very well designed to say, hey, look we can still you know kick butt and take names, it s not the first time special operations forces have gone into syria and i don t just mean the abortive or unsuccessful unfortunately rescue attempt for james foley last year in 2008 jsox, joint special operations command launched an operation to kill abu gadiya a border amirror a runner of the so-called rat lines of jihadis coming in from syria to iraq. he was killed after numerous attempts of trying to convince the assad government to hand him over. they didn t and in a similar style or fashion as to this was in also in deir ezzor, in an area easily accessible to u.s.
what do you make of it? the borders there in popular areas are very poor. we re hearing the alleged gunmen slipped into libya, got training and then came right back there and made an attack. the border has come to roost. if you look at a lot of countries like jordan, saudi arabia, the ue there was a lot of support certainly to kind of undermine the country of syria for assad. so they were facilitating not just with financial assistance but also with routes. so there have been, you know historical rat lines as we would call them that have been utilized for many years. it s a humongous border. we know it s pretty rampant. it costs maybe 20 to $35 equivalent to pay somebody to get across. and there s absolutely no way they can manage it from a size perspective to ensure that nobody is getting through. and today we have a scattering of suicide bombings
it also has an okay economy because of the tourist industry it has. so why tunisia is producing these thousands of foreign fighters for isis i don t really know what the answer is. it s hard to explain. the number we have heard is about 3,000 tunisians have left to go fight with isis in syria and iraq. general hertling you were a commanding general in europe. i know tunisia is a place u.s. intelligence community watches very closely. why is that? we watched it very closely because it s one of the nations in what is called the land of the maghreb by al qaeda affiliates and we were seeing a lot of rat lines coming across the mediterranean sea and affecting europe. we had to pay a lot of intelligence potential to it. there is also a historical link. as you know you have been to tunis, you know that the battle of the pass between germans and americans took place in tunisia during world war ii. in addition to that you have the linkages that s where a lot