Battle Ready sic-4

by Tom Clancy

  Aideed maintained the serious tone — though without altering his long-held positions: The release of the UN-held prisoners was still a pressing concern, and so were the big questions about his own status and UNOSOM’s unceasing accusations against him. He made it abundantly clear that UNOSOM and the Secretary-General were as evil in his eyes as he was in theirs (though he pointed out that he did not oppose the UN itself). He welcomed the U.S. back into the peace process, and would further welcome an independent commission to look into the causes of war — headed by former President Jimmy Carter and with members who were not appointed by the UN Secretary-General.

  Following an in-depth debate of the program Oakley had put together earlier that month, Aideed gave it his reluctant consent, adding that he hoped to work within the earlier Addis agreements. Oakley’s policy was correct, he said in conclusion: Governing Somalia should be left to the Somalis.

  What form that governing might take still remained a very open question, as was the part the UN and the U.S. would take in the process of answering it.

  Before we left, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about the fight on October 3 that became known as the Battle of Mogadishu (dramatically captured in the book and movie Black Hawk Down).

  “Could you tell me the story from your side?” I asked Aideed.

  He was more than willing to do that.

  As he began his account, his respect for the military skill of the special operations force—“those dangerous men at the airfield,” [67] he called them — was obvious.

  The special operations forces had focused their attacks on Aideed’s meetings with his top staff. As a protective measure for his meetings, Aideed had ordered machine guns and RPG launchers to be positioned on neighboring roofs, with orders to concentrate fire on the helos if the Americans attacked. He knew American forces would rally around a downed helicopter and be easier to fix in the fighting. He had furthermore put out a standing order to attack any reaction force coming out of the airport. The UNITAF Marines had multiple reaction forces that could respond from several directions, but now the principal reaction force always came from the airport. For that reason, it was important to cut that off if he was attacked by the special operations forces.

  Aideed’s tactics had all been purely defensive… but that’s not the way they’d played on television. Even worse in the eyes of the world, they’d worked.

  This did not excuse Somali atrocities; and Aideed acknowledged that no apology could make up for Somali mobs brutally dragging dead soldiers through the streets. But he also was careful to point out that he had immediately taken control of the prisoner, Warrant Officer Durant, and had adhered to Geneva Convention requirements in his treatment of him.

  It was obvious that there were two widely different versions as to what happened and who was responsible for the violence. Even investigations and inquiries have presented different views.

  Our return ride to the rendezvous with our Marine security force took us through another screaming crowd. Soon after that, we returned to the States.

  And so my practical involvement in Operation Continue Hope, as the U.S. had named the UNOSOM II phase, ended.

  In the coming days, Oakley was busy planning the Addis conference and working out implementation of his overall program. Though he asked me to be ready to return, the focus was shifting from security (which had been my responsibility) to politics and humanitarian relief. In his mind, the security situation was under control.

  I returned to Quantico to watch developments from there.

  It quickly became clear that the Clinton administration wanted out of Somalia. The final nail in that coffin came when they announced that all U.S. forces were to be pulled out by March 1994. In my mind, Oakley had been used to achieve a cease-fire and provide a decent interval to allow the administration to cut its loses and pull out. The U.S. was not going to follow through on the Oakley program to put the peace process back on track.

  On a more positive note, at least the fighting had stopped and the ravaged country had a few quiet moments to catch its breath.

  As for the question of Aideed’s war crimes guilt: Months later, in February 1994, a UN commission of inquiry into responsibility for the June 5 clash published its findings. It concluded that both sides had been at fault.

  I MEF

  At Quantico, Zinni received good news: He was slated to take command of the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton the following summer. This was exciting; he couldn’t wait to move on to the division.

  He didn’t know that other plans were in the works.

  In the early spring of 1994, he was made president of a Reserve General Officer Promotion Board at Marine Corps headquarters. At the conclusion of their work, the board members took their recommendations to General Mundy. When they were done, he asked Zinni to stick around.

  “What do you want as your next assignment?” he asked, after all the others had left.

  This seemed an odd question, since he had already been told he would get a division command. “Is the question just a formality?” he asked himself.

  “I want a division,” he told the commandant, bearing that last thought in mind.

  “Which one do you want?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Zinni answered. “Any Marine division is just fine with me.”

  At that point, the commandant handed Zinni a folder. “Well,” he said, “I think there’s a division in here somewhere.”

  Zinni, who was by then enormously confused, opened the folder: It was a nomination for promotion to lieutenant general and appointment as commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF).

  He was shocked. He’d just been promoted to major general, and here he was moving immediately to three stars… and skipping over division command. That was a bummer; he’d wanted to command a division. On the other hand, it was a very big honor to command I MEF — and also pretty exciting.

  Zinni’s recollection of his next moments is blurry. He mumbled his thanks to General Mundy, then left his office wrapped in shocked confusion.

  A few months later, in June, he assumed command of the largest Marine operational force, I MEF, at Camp Pendleton, California. I MEF had in its ranks over 45,000 Marines and sailors, with its main components being a Marine division, an air wing, and a logistics group. Units were spread over bases in California and Nevada, but many of its forces were constantly deployed all over the world. The MEF had responsibilities that involved six different Unified and Sub-unified commands from Korea (where they were given a major new commitment), to the Western Pacific, to Latin America, to Europe, to the Middle East, and to the United States itself. During Zinni’s two years in command, the MEF had forces involved in security and counter-drug operations in Central and South America; in humanitarian operations in Africa; in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia; in human remains recovery operations in Vietnam; in sanctions enforcement operations in the Persian Gulf; and in disaster relief and counter-drug operations in the western United States. They were involved in over one hundred major military exercises around the world and in hundreds of smaller training events.

  The MEF’s most substantive new effort was a crisis response assignment in Korea. Though the Okinawa-based III MEF already had a commitment there, they were now greatly augmented by I MEF. The new role was particularly challenging in that the joint and combined forces they’d be assigned in their envisioned Korean missions would be significant. According to the war plan, the MEF in Korea would become a combined Marine Expeditionary Force. That is, Zinni would command two Marine divisions — the 3rd Marine Division would be added to his own 1st Division — two Marine air wings, a Korean Marine division, a Korean Army division, and the U.S. Army’s 101st Air Assault Division.

  The commander in chief in Korea, U.S. Army General Gary Luck, was a brilliant operator who taught Zinni a great deal about war fighting at this highest level of operations. Fighting a war in Korea would be much like fighting Desert Storm, but on a much larger
scale. The whole business of theater logistics, movement and integration of forces, the relationships between air components and ground components, working with coalition forces, fighting a strategic battle with deep strike and close combat, and integrating all these on a large and difficult battle space, took on for Zinni a new and far larger significance.

  Meanwhile, he continued to exercise his growing skills in peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions. He had become one of the few senior-level military experts on “Operations Other Than War” (OOTW).

  For obvious reasons, General Binnie Peay, the new commander of CENTCOM (one of the Unified Command CINCs the MEF answered to), gave the MEF the mission to respond to peacekeeping and humanitarian crises in his theater. To better accomplish that mission, Zinni retooled a major exercise, called “Emerald Express,” to develop his unit’s humanitarian and peacemaking capabilities. Since he didn’t have to worry about tactical-level field capabilities (his MEF had those down pat), he reshaped Emerald Express into a comprehensive conference to address issues like planning, coordination, and integration, especially at the operational and policy levels, and to direct special emphasis to coordination with relief agencies, international organizations, coalitions, and political organizations.

  In a short time, Emerald Express became the most significant and effective effort to promote integration of military, political, humanitarian, economic, and reconstruction functions in Operations Other Than War.

  Zinni’s growing OOTW expertise brought him to testify frequently before the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Armed Services Committees. His testimonies on specific interventions (such as in Bosnia), on U.S. humanitarian and peacekeeping policy, and on the nature of OOTWs in general, were not always encouraged by the administration or particularly the Pentagon leadership: General Shalikashvilli, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, did not relish OOTW missions. Zinni did his best to steer clear of problems with the chairman and other superiors, but he had strong feelings about these missions that he did not hesitate to express. He began to earn a reputation as outspoken — a reputation he thinks is undeserved. He has always maintained he has only done what Marines always do: Tell it like it is.

  By the time he took command of the MEF in June 1994, U.S. forces were out of Somalia, and the UN mission was sputtering out. Though Zinni did not forget the lessons of Somalia, he didn’t expect to return to that country.

  In a few months, he was thrown into the Somalia disaster for a third time.

  UNITED SHIELD

  Tony Zinni:

  During the summer of 1994, the UN decided to end the UNOSOM mission and withdraw UN forces from Somalia. The date set for the withdrawal was March 1995.

  This was going to be a complicated move: Since forces from several countries would be involved, there would be coordination problems; since the pullout would be phased, the last forces to leave were vulnerable to attack; and credible — though unsubstantiated — reports of handheld surface-to-air missiles made a withdrawal by air risky. As a result of these threats, the UN requested U.S. protection for the withdrawal. Though the Clinton administration was not excited about renewing its involvement in Somalia, the international forces on the ground had accepted the mission at our request. The administration felt responsible for their safety.

  That August, less than two months after I took command, I MEF received a warning order that we were to lead a Combined Task Force to protect the UN withdrawal. I MEF was the obvious choice for the mission: We already had responsibility for crisis response in their portion of Africa; the SAM threat required an amphibious withdrawal; and I MEF had conducted Operation Restore Hope in 1993, so the staff was already familiar with the situation.

  We knew it would be a difficult assignment. The international forces would have to execute extremely complex tactical tasks (tough even for U.S. units); and interoperability problems with doctrine, procedures, equipment, and language could compound the difficulty.

  The good news was the planning time. We’d have five months to plan, coordinate, and practice the mission.

  “Plans are nothing, but planning is everything,” Eisenhower said, possibly apocryphally. Whether he said it or not, the saying is true. We had a lot of time. I wanted to use it all to plan exhaustively, think through every possibility, and cover every contingency (or branches and sequels, in military terms). One innovation in our contingency planning was to produce a “playbook” that gave us a course of action if one of the possible scenarios occurred. At the end of the operation, I reviewed the playbook and found every event that occurred covered by a contingency plan.

  The entire five months, from August to mid-January, was devoted to planning and coordination. This was the first phase of the operation. The second phase, deployment, rehearsal, and positioning, was scheduled from mid-January to the beginning of February. Phase three, setting conditions for the withdrawal and assuming of control of UN forces, was scheduled for February 8 to 28. Phase four, the execution, was scheduled for February 28 to March 3. Our fifth and final phase, the redeployment of our forces, was planned to last from March 4 until the end of that month.

  The operational tasks during the execution phase were extremely complex. We would conduct two night amphibious landings at the Mogadishu port and airfield; two reliefs in place of UN forces; a withdrawal and passage of lines by the Pakistani Brigade through our coalition lines (U.S. and Italian Marines); a day and night defense of the air- and seaports; a Non-combatant Evacuation of UN, media, and civilian agencies personnel; and two night amphibious withdrawals. These difficult tactical evolutions were tough enough, but the mix of coalition forces, the nighttime executions, and the prospect of doing these under fire compounded the difficulty exponentially.

  We had another serious concern — civilian crowds, mobs, and looters… always a possibility in Somalia. Mobs especially were always a major problem… and they were one of the warlords’ most effective weapons. They could effectively block many of our actions, yet they were only very rarely a physical threat to our troops. A response using lethal force was obviously unjustified; but nonlethals had been very hard to come by. That situation was about to change.

  Early in our planning, I pressed for a more substantial nonlethal capability… a search that yielded surprisingly good results. We were able to gather a significant and varied arsenal of gadgets, ranging from rubber bullets to sticky foam guns to high-tech acoustic devices, microwaves, and lasers. During the coming months, we trained our forces in these capabilities, while the lawyers developed new rules of engagement for them. (They prohibited some of the more experimental devices, since there were no details on their effects.)

  Our attempts to prevent unnecessary loss of lives actually sparked controversy. “You’re disarming our Marines!” claimed alarmed op-ed articles. Other articles by military professionals claimed: “Our troops will be confused. They won’t know the difference between ‘lethal’ and ‘non-lethal’ weapons.” When I threw this question at my Marines, they told me, “Don’t worry, sir. We know the difference.” They all wanted and needed this capability. [68]

  We took the plan to General Peay on November 8; and to the Joint Chiefs a little over a week after that. Quick approval came. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Shalikashvilli, remained opposed to OOTWs and was in no hurry to get reengaged in Somalia, he knew this was an obligation the Clinton administration had to take on. One month later, on December 16, President Clinton approved the plan and gave the go-ahead for the operation.

  In early January, we held our final planning conference at CENTCOM; and on the fourteenth the joint task force United Shield was formally established. That day I gave the CINC a final brief, at which point General Peay added a highly unusual wrinkle to the command structure. Normally, the JTF commander reports directly to the CINC. But for this particular operation, General Peay decided that I would report to his naval component commander, Vice Admiral Scott Redd, rather than directly to him.

  Peay’
s decision raised a serious question: Was I going to be running the JTF or was Admiral Redd? And yet I appreciated the CINC’s logic: This operation required a large number of supporting U.S. and coalition ships (during the actual operation we had twenty-three); directing this large seaward component was potentially a huge — and unnecessary — distraction.

  In the event, the arrangement presented zero command problems for either of us. Scott Redd felt strongly that United Shield was my operation, and his role was to ensure that I got what I needed. He and I worked closely and productively together. When the time came, Scott attended the final CENTCOM planning sessions, and then I flew with him back to his headquarters in Bahrain, where I received a firsthand experience of another rationale for General Peay’s command arrangement. Scott’s was the only CENTCOM headquarters near our AOR, making his people more quickly responsive to our needs. During the operation, he was able to instantly respond to several immediate requests for support, not the least of which was the rapid dispatch of a U.S. cruiser to provide us a last-minute naval gunfire capability.

  I was also fortunate in having Rear Admiral Lee Gunn (from the U.S. Third Fleet) as my deputy commander and the commander of my JTF naval component. Because Lee and Scott were able to work all the ship issues, we were able to keep our total focus on the withdrawal.