| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa: Horn |
| Excerpts from DoD briefing on the situation in the Horn |
| 2005-09-23 |
| This is my mission in a collage. Upper left-hand corner you have the terrorists -- the hyena, the jackal waiting to prey on the herd, on the innocent. The only way they can protect themselves is as a herd, regionally. How are we helping them? We're helping them through mil to mil, through our CA CMO projects. And who are we doing it for? We're doing it for the youth. We're doing it for the next generation. The region stands to protect -- basically to form the regional partnership that's going to deter the terroristic spread. That's my CJOA, the coalition joint op area. It's approximately two-thirds the size of the United States; about 500 percent the size of Afghanistan and Iraq combined. One hundred and twenty-three million people live there. If you can imagine having a business with the headquarters in Buffalo; you have a branch in Cincinnati, Ohio; and you have a branch in Jacksonville, Florida. You have no real infrastructure, no means of communication other than that which is jerry rigged. And I would like to conduct business and increase the profitability of your business. That's basically what we're faced with. The flags on the left and the right are those that are within the op area. We call it the AOR, area of responsibility, and AOI, area of interest. You have Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen. Those are the countries -- well, let me go back here. We don't work in Somalia. But those are the countries that I'm responsible for. Those, however, are the way the Africans divide themselves up, so you can see there's a slight bit of a mix here. If you look up in Eritrea and Ethiopia, where you see the Tigre, just so happens that there are some issues up in that area. And it's over a town up along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border, which happens to be in the Tigrean area. Both Prime Minister Meles and President Isaias are Tigrean, so neither are willing to really take too serious of a look at trying to solve that issue at this particular time. You have the Oromia, down in the lower left-hand corner of Ethiopia. The tribes all have to be addressed. Each one of my young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that go out have to be aware of the tribal area within which they're working. Now we get into the religious. So now you're having the tribe and the religious. You have a rather unique area up in Yemen, up in the highlands. Over 200,000 Jews lived there since Christ walked the face of the earth, and they've got along quite well in the Muslim nation. And then, of course, you have the threat. Those are the challenges. You have your sovereign boundaries, you have your tribal, you have your religious, and then, of course, you have your terrorist threat. Coming from Yemen you have the al Qaeda. Down into Somalia you have the al Qaeda network and associated movements. Then you have AIAI. And I blow this constantly -- it's al-Ittihad al-Islami; and then put an "O" at the end of it for Ogaden, and now you have the AIAI, AIAIO. And within the Ogaden, you also have the ONLF, which is Ogaden National Liberation Front. A little bit to the left there you have Oramean, which is the OLF, the Oramean Liberation Front. Up into Darfur you have the Jinjaweit; you have the Lord's Resistance Army, and of course you have the unrest along the Eritrean-Ethiopian border. You also have the seam that exists, which is the 12-mile limit. If you were to stand at high tide and let the water lap up at your ankles and then face about, I own all of that; what's behind me, I don't own. You're not allowed within 12 nautical miles of land; therefore, there's that gap that exists. That's -- the lower right-hand corner is the embassy, 1998. I want to make it really clear I'm not a direct action unit. I don't saddle up and go out and hunt down the enemy. That's not to say I don't have the inherent right of self-defense. My people go out, they have force protection. This time around, my force protection is provided by Bravo Company, 1st of the 294th, the National Guard out of Guam. Absolutely spectacular soldiers. They go out, they protect my Civil Affairs teams and Civil Military Operations operations. We don't seek to engage the enemy, but we do seek out those in need. The way we go about seeking out those in need, I send out CA assessment teams, Civil Affairs assessment teams, and they go out throughout the villages, they go out into the towns, they meet with the leadership of the villages, the Imam, the village elders, the mayor, ask them what they believe that that village could use to enhance that stability, to make life easier for the people. People want the same thing there as we want here. If you're a father or a mother, you want to be able to provide for your children. They're no different. If their child is hurting, they want to do something about it. We're trying to provide that. So they go out, they collect these projects, they take them to the embassy. I'm one of the tools that the embassy can employ. I try to solve the -- I try to address, I should say, the mission performance parameters, the MPPs, that each of the embassies have got. I do that through my civil affairs. Once the embassy has agreed to what my CA assessment teams have come up with, they bring it back to the CJTF headquarters. Each of those projects are vetted, racked and stacked, prioritized, and then they're addressed with resources. Our primary maneuver elements? Doctors, veterinarians, well drillers, civil engineers. And it's so important that you understand about my -- the folks that go out and what they can accomplish. Where can seven soldiers who work for five months to drill a well affect 1,500 people for the next 10 years? I had -- there's a small town out in -- Yoboki, in Djibouti. The well is 640 feet deep, drilled through volcanic rock. Took us five months to drill it. Those young soldiers pumped water on the Army's 230th birthday. They said it was coincidence; I don't believe it. I think they did that just to prove a point. But they pumped water. It comes out at 105 degrees. The nomads out there, the Bedouins, have never had a well out there. Now, for the next at least 10 years, they're going to have a water source. Quite a significant impact. I also conduct mil-to-mil training. I have forces that go forward and conduct border security. They conduct counterterrorism training. And they conduct your basic military training: taking a group of individuals, forming a squad, moving them along to fire maneuver, disciplined fire, and mutual support. Q Let me give a hypothetical. If you get intelligence that some al Qaeda cell is operating in your AOR, and you know about it -- GEN. GHORMLEY: I'd bounce it right straight up to CENTCOM. Q Uh-huh. GEN. GHORMLEY: And then I await guidance. Q Because -- can you talk about al Qaeda presence there and kind of what about -- talk about the terrorist threat that you see in the Horn of Africa? GEN. GHORMLEY: I see the terrorist threat coming south. At some point those -- we're winning up north. We're winning in Afghanistan, we're winning in Iraq. They're going to have to go someplace. We see the possibility of even coming -- of them coming south. And that's why it's so important for us to get out, get our message across to the people that there is an alternative, and that we are there for them, and that we can, in fact, protect them. Remember, I said I don't go seek them out, but I certainly have the right, the inherent right of self-defense. Does that answer your question? Q Yeah. Just the last thing. I'm sure you're aware a lot of the suicide bombers that you're seeing in Iraq, some are from Yemen, some are from Sudan. Are you hearing about recruiting in your area for that kind of activity? GEN. GHORMLEY: I'm seeing -- I've heard nothing of -- I don't know what's going on in Somalia. We're not in Somalia. I have no charter to go in there. So what's happening down there, I don't know. I know that there's a great amount of concern about it, especially with the -- coming from Yemen south into Somalia. I know of no recruiting. I have heard of the transnationals coming up through Sudan and then on into Saudi Arabia and across. Q Follow-up on that, sir? GEN. GHORMLEY: Sir. Q The prime minister of Ethiopia has said that there's an al Qaeda cell in Mogadishu. Can you confirm that, or at least confirm the suspicion? Are you or CENTCOM doing anything about that? GEN. GHORMLEY: I -- no. We are -- we are not going into Somalia. We are not in Mogadishu. Yes, I know that the prime minister has said that there is an al Qaeda cell in Mogadishu. I think on my slide I showed you that there is al Qaeda in Mogadishu. I have no direct information, I have no direct intelligence source telling me in CJTF-HOA that that is going on. Okay? That doesn't mean -- that doesn't mean there isn't an intel source out there. Q Bret's other question about terrorism moving into your area -- are you concerned about increasing fundamentalism in the schools, in the madrassas in any particular areas that -- and is there anything that you can do about increased fundamentalism at that level? GEN. GHORMLEY: I have no true fundamentalistic madrassas in the area that I know of. I know that, from the reports that I get, that mosques are springing up rather rapidly in Mogadishu. But I don't know about the number of madrassas that that would involve or would include. Q But not in your -- in the areas where you do operate? GEN. GHORMLEY: No. I don't know of any severe radicalism in the areas that I operate. Q General? GEN. GHORMLEY: Yes, sir? Q What would it take to get you engaged in Somalia? GEN. GHORMLEY: Permission from DOS. Q And -- it sounds like you ought to be there. GEN. GHORMLEY: Yes, sir. Q Well, is that in the works? Are you pushing them for it? GEN. GHORMLEY: I know that there's quite a bit of interest on it, on what's going on in Somalia. But, no, sir, I am not pushing to get into Somalia. Q Because it's technically a failed state -- GEN. GHORMLEY: Absolutely. Q Okay. GEN. GHORMLEY: Absolutely. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 This is my mission in a collage. Do you think they noticed he was talking down to them? Or thought about why he would assume it was necessary? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-09-23 17:46 |
| #1 the terrorists ... the jackal waiting to prey on the herd Now just a cotton-pickin' minute here! |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-09-23 15:09 |