Special Service Group
Pakistan Army special operations unit
The Special Service Group (SSG; Urdu: سپیشل سروس گروپ) is the Special Operations Command of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The SSG is also colloquially used to refer to the various special forces of the Pakistan Army. They are also known by their nickname of "Maroon Berets" due to the colour of their headgear.
The SSG is responsible to deploy and execute five doctrinal missions: foreign internal defence, reconnaissance, direct action, counter-terrorism operations, and unconventional warfare.
Other operational roles and responsibilities attributed to the SSG include: search and rescue, counter-proliferation, search and destroy, hostage rescue, information operations, peacekeeping missions, psychological operations, security assistance, and HVT manhunts.
The chain of command and control of the SSG falls within the domain of the Pakistan Army's Strategic Forces Command (ASFC), and many of its personnel are directly recruited into the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)'s counter-terrorism division or SS directorate upon their retirement. Much of the SSG's activities and operations are shrouded in secrecy and public knowledge of their work is heavily controlled through selective declassified documents and published literary works by retired military veterans or authorized media.
History
Roots of establishment
In 1950, the Pakistan Army established the school, Close Quarter Battle School, dedicated for teaching the methods of close quarters combat under Colonel Grant Taylor of the British Army in Quetta, Balochistan in Pakistan– the school was later moved to Attock under Colonel Kahoon, also an officer in the British Army. Citing unknown and unspecified reasons, the Close Quarter Battle School under Col. Kahoon was permanently closed and its passed out personnel who had earlier formed the 312th Garrison Company (312 Gar Coy (FF)), a light infantry, initially attached the military unit to the Frontier Force Regiment (FF Regiment) in 1952— the 312 Gar Coy (FF) still remains a part of the Frontier Force Regiment.
“Special Service Group” enters the record as pakistan Army special operations unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Special, Service and Group can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Special Service Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.