The exploits of Special Operations Forces — particularly the US Army "Green Berets" and the British Army’s Special Air Services (SAS) — are the stuff of legend.

In the 1960s, during the early stages of America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict, several dozen Green Beret military advisors — Army paratroopers handpicked for their language skills, intelligence and fighting abilities — successfully taught the South Vietnamese to embrace enemy guerilla tactics in order to slow the tide of the Communist insurgency.

More recently, in 1980, a handful of SAS troops ended a six-day hostage siege of the Iranian embassy in London, dispatching the five invaders in just 17 minutes, and freeing all hostages unharmed.

Understandably, the general public perceives Special Operations Forces missions as daring, action-packed operations in exotic locales, with SOF secretly slipping into a target area by sea or parachute in the dead of night, conducting a paramilitary operation and — just as stealthily — slipping away.

Indeed, many of the Special Operations missions involve incredible military derring-do.

However, many of these elite forces are also trained to conduct other missions, many of them far less violent — and far more constructive — than portrayed by the Hollywood and paperback novelists.

News reports coming out of the war in Afghanistan are credited for a recent shift in public perception of Special Operations Forces. Journalists in the region report that small groups of Special Operations troops from the SAS, the US Army and the US Central Intelligence Agency had secretly infiltrated Afghanistan, and were offering advice and other support to armed groups intent on overthrowing the Taleban regime.

Special Operations troops in Afghanistan operating from positions behind enemy lines were also used to call in US strike aircraft against enemy targets, often "painting" targets with hand-held laser designators to guide laser-guided bombs to their intended landing point.

But Special Operations Forces — particularly American SOF — are more than just commandos, and the missions of the US SOF are more complex than mere war fighting.

American SOF — which include units from the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines — are trained to conduct a variety of missions. These missions include:

1. Unconventional warfare: Fighting side-by-side with indigenous forces directed, in varying degrees, by an external source.

2. Foreign internal defense: Helping another government protect its society from subversion, lawlessness and insurgency.

3. Direct action: Short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions.

4. Special reconnaissance: Reconnaissance surveillance to obtain or verify — by visual observation or other collection method methods — data concerning the capabilities, intentions, and activities of an actual or potential enemy.

5. Counterterrorism: Offensive measures to prevent deter and respond to terrorism.

6. Psychological operations: The planned use of media and actions to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences.

7. Civil affairs: Military activities that cement a relationship between military forces in an area and the civil authorities and population in that area.

"Of all the missions conducted by Special Operations, psychological operations and civil affairs are perhaps the most misunderstood," says a civilian contractor who provides instruction to American SOF forces at the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. "These two missions are part of the entire mix. Yet they are also — in my opinion — the most important and satisfying missions we conduct."

"Psychological operations conducted by SOF are designed to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and — ultimately — the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals," says the SOF instructor, who spoke to Strategic Policy on condition his identity remain anonymous.

He explains, "PSYOPs can be strategic, operational or tactical. They’re all designed to bring psychological pressure to bear on hostile forces and to persuade civilian authorities to assist commanders in achieving their objectives."

"SOF engaged in civil affairs operations are usually working in a foreign country in the wake of a conflict that has come to an end," says the Fort Bragg instructor, "These operations can include national support, civil assistance, populace and resources control, the protection of cultural properties, and the establishment of civil administrations in a war ravaged country. These latter missions involve military forces exercising certain executive, legislative and judicial authority normally the responsibility of an indigenous civilian government."

The military training specialist also says that recent assurances voiced by President George W. Bush that the United States will not engage in nation building "is contrary to the policies of the United States Department of Defense."

"We [SOF forces] are there. We are on the ground," says the military instructor. "We are there to help the Afghan people to remove a totalitarian regime and help the Afghan people build their country into something better. If that’s not nation building, I don’t know what is."