Battle Ready (2004)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  They then insisted on redesigning the camps, to make them more reflect their community structure, and on actually taking part in their construction. This was a good idea. It not only gave them the kind of environment they were comfortable with, it let them buy into the whole process. At the same time, it made us realize that the UN was right about the camps. They weren't going to work as a long-term solution.

  So then we thought, "Okay, we'll stretch out a little bit more and take part of northern Iraq. At least we can get some people into camps and others into their villages."

  In several stages, we took the northern part of the Kurdish areas, stretching to the provincial capital of Dohuk (sixty kilometers south of the Turkish border) and out toward Iran. (There were thousands of Kurdish refugees across the border in Iran, whom the Iranians were taking care of. These refugees also wanted to come back home.)

  But the UN was persistent: "If you're going to get a little bit pregnant, get all the way pregnant. Take them all home."

  They were right again; and we made an assessment of what it would take to move them there.

  ONCE THE decision was made to enter Iraq, we knew we would need additional forces. We also had to expand our own organization in order to control these new forces and coordinate our operations with those of the UN, the NGOs, the aid and security forces from other nations, and the agencies of our own government that had joined the humanitarian relief effort.

  The JTF became a CTF (Combined Task Force), with the inclusion of forces from twelve other nations (including Great Britain, France, Spain, and Italy). Lieutenant General John Shalikashvilli (General Saint's deputy at USAREUR, and, later, as a four-star general, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was sent to command the CTF; Jim Jamerson became the deputy commander; and I moved to chief of staff. Shali (as everyone calls him) had the command until June. Then Jim and I resumed our original billets.

  A subordinate JTF (JTF Alpha) under Dick Potter's command was responsible for the refugees in the mountain camps and getting them back into Iraq. Another JTF (JTF Bravo) was formed under Major General Jay Garner, U.S. Army, to enter Iraq and secure the Security Zones we were establishing. The Air Forces component was under the command of Brigadier General Jim Hobson. A Civil Affairs Command was formed under Brigadier General Don Campbell; and a Combined Support Command (CSC) for logistics under Army Brigadier Hal Burch. We also put in place a Military Coordination Center (MCC) under Army Colonel Dick Nabb, to work coordination with the Kurds and the Iraqis. There was a DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) team led by Dayton Maxwell,49 and over sixty NGOs and PVOs (Private Volunteer Organizations) were also working with us.

  The allied contributions to Provide Comfort were significant. The French, under the command of Major General Maurice LePage, a superb French Marine paratrooper, provided mobile combat teams that cleared the routes from the mountain camps back down into Iraq. The Royal Marines, under General Robin Ross, whose units had just returned from Northern Ireland, provided an excellent force for initial entry into the cities in the Security Zone. The Italians, under Lieutenant General Mario Buscemi, provided elaborate hospitals. The large brigades contributed by the French, British, Italians, and Spanish allowed us to give them each a sector of the Security Zone. General Shali ran this coalition brilliantly, with few (if any) written agreements.

  We pieced together this highly nontraditional, ever-evolving organization on the go. Though some of its components were first-time structures, they met the task. Even so, these strange new structures bothered many older officers. This made me come to realize that nontraditional operations like ours were best handled by younger, more innovative officers who could think outside the traditional and rigid wartime doctrine with which the older officers had grown up.

  General Shalikashvilli, a highly intelligent and capable senior officer and a real internationalist, was extremely effective dealing with the Iraqis and the thirteen-nation coalition. I learned a lot from watching him do that kind of business--persuading people, coordinating at that level. But when it came to the technical, tactical, and operational side of things we were trying to put in place, he was very traditional. He liked to follow standard Army doctrine.

  For example, when we were looking at how to handle the Security Zones in Iraq, I said, "We'll create a joint task force, we'll stick it out front, with Jay Garner and Dick Potter in charge."

  "No, wait a minute," he protested. "You're going to put a joint task force under a joint task force? Is that doctrinally correct?"

  "General Shalikashvilli," I said, "who gives a shit? It'll work. We should not worry about doctrine here."

  And when we started to change the refugees' transition camps to reflect the Kurds' cultural needs, he was skeptical. "What's wrong with the way we built them?" he laughed. . . . In time, he came to accept the need for cultural sensitivity (which I thought was essential; we constantly emphasized this in our briefs); but I felt he didn't think it was really all that important.

  OUR AREA of operations was roughly the size of Kansas, encompassing 83,000 square miles of rugged mountainous territory, with little infrastructure. The biggest challenge after the initial crisis was to establish a logistics distribution system in this austere and rugged environment. The transportation system was frail, it was austere; the road networks were extremely limited.

  Normally, the services provide logistics support to their own service components, while each nation similarly provides their own logistics to their own components. That's an okay system under normal circumstance. But it did not reflect the realities we faced--an omnium-gatherum of nations, services, and agencies all trying to force their stuff through the fragile infrastructure, all at the same time. We had major humanitarian and military demands on the distribution system (besides our military supplies and equipment, we were handling relief supplies contributed by over thirty nations), and nobody was pulling it together. We had no central management, no prioritization, and very thin security. It was like forcing a gallon of water through a soda straw.

  We could see right away that we needed to put in place a centrally designed distribution system, with forward staging bases and interim bases, where we could build up stocks of supplies which everybody could draw from.

  The component commanders--Garner and Potter--fought this; each wanted to run his own logistics support. I had constant battles over this issue with them, two of my closest friends. They were shouting at me and I was shouting at them. "Don't mess with our logistics," they kept telling Shali. "We're running our own show. We need our own stuff here."

  From the other direction, our logisticians were begging me to convince General Shali to form a Combined Support Command. But when I told him the logistics were going to break, and we were going to see a real disaster, he was reluctant to change the book-dictated system.

  Finally, when it was totally obvious that it was either change or endure the world's most embarrassing traffic jam, he made the decision to set up the CSC.

  We opened small Humanitarian Service Support Bases (HSSB) in a "hub and spoke" system that let us stretch our reach well into Iraq. We brought down Army Brigadier Hal Burch (a USAREUR logistics commander), and he set it up.

  OUR UNORTHODOX command structures eventually caught the attention of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. During a visit in May, Colin Powell, who is a very quick study, was initially impressed with how well the operation was going, but wasn't clear how we had it all organized. The easiest way to explain that was to show him our organizational chart. . . . The chart was of course as weird as our organization; but we had done what we could to draw the lines and links and labels according to the proper doctrinal procedures. So we had lines for "Operational Control" and for "Tactical Control" and so on. Of course, when Powell looked at the chart, he saw right through it. "Is this for real?" he asked. "Tell me the truth. What kind of control do you really have here? What are your real lines of authority? Is it Operational Control?"

  "Sir," I told h
im, "what we really do is HAND CON (Handshake Control). We work out our problems on the fly and shake hands on the deals. We don't have time to do anything else."

  He laughed. He loved that. It became one of General Powell's favorite stories.

  OUR RELATIONSHIP with the Iraqis was predictably tricky. Though the war was obviously over, the Iraqi forces in the north still presented a problem. Unlike units in the south, they had not experienced combat with superior American and Coalition power; and they were not as cowed. Later, after several units from southern Iraq were moved north, we used to watch with fascination how the southern and the northern Iraqi units reacted when our planes flew over their positions. Those who had faced us in the south during the war waved nervously and looked for cover, while the northern troops were more frequently defiant, and once in a while even fired at our planes.

  The Military Coordination Center was set up to maintain contact with the Iraqi military; and an Iraqi, Brigadier General Nashwan Danoon, was assigned as our point of contact.50 For more important meetings with General Shali, the Iraqis sent a Lieutenant General Saber from Baghdad.

  As we moved the refugees back to their homes in the south, we increased the size of the Security Zone and demanded the Iraqi military pull back. They were--unsurprisingly--reluctant to do that; and on several occasions we had to threaten them. A show of force always brought compliance (we had in all sixteen incidents of hostile fire with the Iraqis51).

  Eventually, we decided to create a zone that allowed all 500,000 of the Kurds to return home . . . and we also decided to help them repair their homes and make them livable. We not only repaired much of the damage to the areas evacuated by the fleeing population, we provided services and utilities to forty-one communities until their local services could be reestablished.

  At this point, we realized that wasn't going to be enough. We just couldn't leave them on their own. We had to make sure the Iraqis didn't return once we pulled out.

  To emphasize that point, the Iraqis massed seventeen divisions on the borders of the Security Zone we had formed. These divisions were there to block further expansion and to seal off the zone . . . and to convey a threatening posture toward the Kurds. As a result, we established what was called "the Green Line" as the border of the Security Zone. None of the Iraqis were allowed to pass it. Our air cover in the no-fly zone (which was larger than the Security Zone) further ensured the good behavior of the Iraqi military.

  The process of moving the refugees and managing the Iraqis went through several stages. In the beginning, we agreed to allow the Iraqis a police presence in the Security Zone; but it quickly became clear that idea was a non-starter. The Iraqis' idea of a "police presence" was the Mukhabarat--their secret police.

  The Kurds were dead set against any Iraqi government presence, and the Peshmerga set about eliminating it the old-fashioned way--by killing the Mukhabarat and other Iraqi officials. Eventually, all Iraqi government presence was removed from the Security Zone.

  Another agreement that didn't work out was the protection arrangement for Saddam's eight lavish palaces in the region. We had approved a plan that allowed the Iraqis to retain military security over the palaces; but when an Iraqi unit guarding one of them opened fire on a British Royal Marine patrol, the Marines blasted the Iraqis; and that ended the agreement.

  Saddam's private airfield at Sirsenk was turned into a logistics base for our operations. Our troops made pen sets from its black marble wall panels and passed them out "Compliments of Saddam."

  At one point, I went out to see one of the palaces. It was still under construction, occupying the top of an imposing hill; and it was massive--like a fairy-tale castle. Luxurious villas were scattered down the hillside; and water pumped up to the top flowed down the side of the hill in a system of water-falls. Underneath the hilltop castle was a vast tunnel complex. At first, we thought this may have been for WMD storage; but it turned out to be for something like a casino. It was shocking to see these grand structures in the midst of the poverty of the local population.

  During the same trip, I visited the villages that had been gassed by the Iraqis in 1988 . . . a chilling sight. They were not only empty of people, but the Iraqis had left not one stone upon another. The Kurds who'd made their homes there had asked to return; but when we did soil tests, we found dangerous toxic chemical traces that made return impossible.

  THE HUMANITARIAN aspects of the operation were of course its primary focus. Except for our Civil Affairs officers, this was a new experience for most of us; and it led to many coordination problems.

  When the NGOs started showing up, most of them had had no experience working with us, we had had no experience working with them, and there was mutual suspicion.52 They were all wonderful, well-meaning humanitarians; but they all seemed to think they could do their own thing without much coordination with the common effort: NGO planes would suddenly show up in our airspace demanding landing permission, unable to understand why we had a hard time accommodating them.

  To minimize these problems, we established a Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC) under Civil Affairs control to coordinate with the NGOs, DART, and the UNHCR. Though friction between the military and the relief agencies continued (on a much smaller scale), the CMOC provided an excellent forum to work out the problems. EUCOM established a Civil Agency Response Element (CARE) at their headquarters that helped a great deal to sort out problems at the Unified Command and Washington levels.

  In spite of our mutual problems, working with the NGOs and the various government agencies like DART and the Centers for Disease Control was not at all a bad experience. I learned a lot from the teams advising us. Each of them provided valuable lessons in their specialty areas (water, food, medical care, etc.) that I would use later in missions of this sort.

  From the CDC I learned about the nature of diseases--the cycle, the causes, and the treatment . . . the conditions that lead to them, the signs that diseases are spreading, and what you have to do to prevent that. This was a totally unique experience . . . and it's not an instrument you normally find in the military tool kit.

  Cholera, for example, is difficult to cure--especially in the case of children. The kids will initially seem to be improving, but they're really not. They'll look like they're getting better; then they'll sink down; then they seem to be getting a little better; and then they sink down a little more. The process is really a gradual decline, but you'll find upswings that give you hope. The upswings can fool you.

  I also learned a lot from the teams sent in by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). They are not only fine doctors; they are also culturally sophisticated in dealing with refugees and third world peoples. They had serious concerns about the level of care we were providing.

  The Kurds needed a great deal of medical help instantly. To fill that need, we brought in what we had--technically advanced military medical units and field hospitals. (I observed a major operation at a Belgian field hospital, where they were doing elective surgery. It was a world-class facility.) Our idea was to come in and lay down a massive effort . . . really flood the place. But when we pulled out, we'd leave a tremendous void. That is, we were bringing in a level of care that couldn't be maintained after we left.

  By way of contrast: when Doctors Without Borders work within a third world environment, they try to leave something behind that can be maintained. It's the old idea: You just don't hand people fish, you try to leave the skill of fishing behind. They know how to leave the skill behind far better than we in the military do. And I took many lessons from this which I used later in Somalia and elsewhere.

  RETURNING REFUGEES to their country of origin was no simple task. The large number of international laws and regulations created to safeguard the rights of refugees generate a large administrative and technical burden. This was the first operation at this level of civil-military coordination; and many lessons learned emerged that would be useful in future operations. For example, I had never kno
wn before that there's a difference between "displaced persons" within borders and "refugees." Each class has rights, but the rights of displaced people are not the same as the rights of refugees.

  Processing all that took a great deal of our time and energy; but it was all necessary. You assume all these people want to go home; but that assumption is not totally correct. Some Kurds did not want to go back. Some were simply too paralyzed with fear to move. We knew they couldn't stay in the hills. But we couldn't just herd them into trucks and carry them wherever we thought it best to take them. We had to convince them we would protect them and take care of them before we could get their agreement. It was not easy.

  Every single Kurd had to have written documentation spelling out that they weren't going home under duress and that they understood what they were doing. Forms had to be filled out for each Kurd, and somebody had to fill them. That meant Potter's guys in the camps had to interview every adult among the 500,000 Kurds and take care of all the necessary paperwork.

  Later, each Kurd had to be continuously accounted for--where they started from, where they were at that particular moment, where they would end up. We set up a transit system with checkpoints, way stations, and the like, to keep track of everybody; but of course things didn't work out the way we planned. Some of the Kurds moved out without telling anybody . . . just took their donkeys or whatever and went back down the trails. We were losing count. "My God," Shali told me one day, "I've lost 100,000 Kurds. Where have they gone?" We sent recon airplanes to find out, but we didn't have much luck with that. The Kurds had simply scattered into the hills. We had to trust that they knew their way home.