THE RISING EAST
U.S. commanders devise plans for future Iraqs
By Richard Halloran
U TAPAO, Thailand — The U.S. Marine general leaned across the table in the briefing room and told his staff and subordinate commanders: "We are in an era of complex contingencies. In this operation, there will not be a military phase and then a humanitarian phase. They have to be done together."
Lt. Gen. Wallace C. Gregson, commanding the III Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa, Japan, left no doubt in anyone's mind of the difficulties ahead. "What we are embarked on here," he said, "is to negotiate issues for which there is no doctrine."
The Marines were deployed to this Thai air base, from which U.S. B-52 bombers flew sorties over Vietnam three decades ago, to take part in an annual war game known as COBRA GOLD. Officers from Thailand, Singapore and the United States were required to devise an operation that would expel an invader, set up a buffer zone, and restore order to a strife-ridden land.
Associated Press
In this third task, which was to work with civilian agencies to relieve the human suffering that is the consequence of war, they were confronted with unfamiliar troubles that bore striking parallels with those in Iraq. That task continues to baffle American, British and Australian forces in and around Baghdad.
U.S. troops return from a river patrol north of Baghdad. On Friday, U.S. forces killed 7 Iraqis and arrested 74 in separate operations. Restoring order in postwar Iraq is a major problem for the U.S. military.
Six weeks after President Bush declared victory, a breakdown in law and order continues, the flow of water and electricity is only half of what is needed, and food distribution in Baghdad reaches only 11 percent of the people. A report from the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance in Honolulu said warning signs had arisen from increases in diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and typhoid even though there have been "no major outbreaks of disease."
In the COBRA GOLD command post exercise, the joint task force commanded by Vice Adm. Somjai Watanaothin of Thailand was confronted with 10 camps holding 750,000 starving, sick and poorly sheltered refugees, some of them astride routes over which the task force planned to attack. Commanders had three options — move the camps, plunge through them or go around.
Initially, military planners sought to move the camps. When civilians in a Humanitarian Operations Center pointed out the resulting logistic and security problems, the planners prepared to send the forces around the camps, with some breaking off to provide security to the displaced persons.
In a planning meeting, Peter Leentjes, a retired Canadian colonel with extensive experience in humanitarian operations, said: "We would like the humanitarian organizations to move right behind the military forces so that we can render assistance in the camps right away."
Gregson nodded his head vigorously in agreement, saying: "The CTF (combined task force) is thoroughly engaged in this issue."
In another instance, the civilians urged Gregson, nominally second in command of the joint task force, to post Marines as policemen but he demurred, asserting that "military people are not law enforcement people." When pressed, he elaborated: "The problem is using third-party people in the middle of a conflict when they don't speak the language, don't know the area, are unfamiliar with the customs, and are not responsible to a local authority."
"Our people would be pulled in two directions," he said, referring to their training as warriors using violence to win battles and their lack of training as policemen using restraint to keep order. "This does not make for good law enforcement," he concluded. That has been proven in Iraq where soldiers have been pressed into service as cops, duty for which they have not been trained and have had 30 men killed.
Derek Boothby, a Briton and former senior official at the United Nations who acted as the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general here, pointed up the predicament: "Many nations have extra soldiers to send on missions like this but no nation has extra policemen to send."
Another unresolved issue was sharing information. Military operators hesitated to give humanitarian agencies classified information for fear of revealing sources and methods. Similarly, civilians were reluctant to share information for fear of being considered spies and thus losing credibility with the people they came to assist.
When COBRA GOLD was over, Gregson, who is slated to be transferred to Hawai'i to command all U.S. Marines in the Pacific, said the experience here and in Iraq would stand U.S. forces in good stead as they are called upon to fight and to help distressed civilians at the same time.
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia and Washington. Reach him at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com.
