The Crux of the Crisis

Sattahip, Thailand - Peter Leentjes, in his role as coordinator of humanitarian operations injected into a three-nation military exercise here, was in high dudgeon as he slammed his palm down on the table and declared: "I think this is despicable."

Leentjes, a retired Canadian army colonel who has served in several peacekeeping operations, told Colonel John Sanford of the US Army, in the role as head of the combined task force's Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC): "It is unconscionable that you planned this military operation without planning to take care of these people."

In this simulation that was part of the annual COBRA GOLD 02 combined Thai-U.S.-Singapore exercise, Leentjes accused Sanford and his staff of permitting the troops of the coalition to herd 200,000 civilians displaced by the military operation into makeshift camps without food, water, shelter, medical care, or sanitation. "You're just going to dump them," he said.

Even though it was a simulated drill, the stormy session was realistic and after several minutes, Sanford finally pleaded: "Why don't we lower the temperature a little bit, and I am not talking about the air conditioning." Under a broiling Southeast Asian sun, the hour-long meeting took place in an army trailer packed with the CMOC staff and representatives of ten relief agencies.

Sanford and his staff officers explained that they had drawn up a plan for handling displaced persons and launching relief efforts and sought to point out where various military units were employed. One officer reported that mine fields around one camp had been breached and a safe lane cleared.

Sanford said, however, that "we will have to deal with this case by case. At this point, we don't have the assets to support all the people in those camps."

Leentjes contended: "This plan is too late." He argued: "The reality belies everything you have said." He further asserted that staff officers alone could not make things happen, but that their commanders needed to make decisions and issue orders.

He summed up: "The reality is that we are in a crisis."

The crisis here and in other peace operations could be found on several levels:

Soldiers and humanitarian operatives come out of different cultures, cultures that have nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with mission, training, and experience. In its simplest terms, soldiers are trained to kill people and break things. Humanitarian operators seek to save lives and relieve suffering. Each has a hard time adjusting to the other.

Military units from different countries usually have little difficulty in learning to work together because soldiers share an ethic. Humanitarian and other non-governmental organizations strive to maintain their independence both from military forces and from each other. They do not share the sense of hierarchy and discipline found in military cultures.

Humanitarian operatives and military people literally do not speak the same language, even when it is English. Concepts differ, each has its own jargon, and the acronyms that lard daily conversations, briefings, and documents clog rather than facilitate communication.

Peace Operations: Yes or No?

The experience of COBRA GOLD 02, moreover, raised the even more fundamental question as to whether soldiers should be deployed in peace operations when they have been trained for combat and live every waking hour preparing to employ maximum violence to achieve an objective. Some military officers argue that troops should not be so engaged because peace operations require an entirely different mindset, training, and rules of engagement.

Other officers contend that using combat forces for peace-making or peace enforcement is an acceptable mission as they can, when operating like cops wading into a barroom brawl to separate the belligerents, impose a cease fire. The training and battle skills of soldiers can be honed to permit them to engage successfully in a peace- making venture.

In the COBRA GOLD 02 scenario, Major General Clive Milner, a retired Canadian officer with extensive experience in peace operations, said they were "the most complex operations that mankind could devise." He added later: "Peace enforcement may not be the best job for soldiers-but only they can do it,Ó an assessment held since Dag Hammerskold was Secretary General of the UN in 1953-1961.

Still others assert that, given proper training, combat soldiers can be effectively employed as peace keepers, keeping the belligerents apart, providing security for humanitarians to bring relief to suffering civilian refugees and displaced persons, and making possible the beginnings of a lasting peace. They emphasize, however, that training in the measured use of force is essential.

During COBRA GOLD 02, Lieutenant General Wallace C. Gregson, the U.S. Marine who commanded the US forces in this year's exercise, was asked whether trying to provide security to the 200,000 refugees and displaced persons crammed into eight scattered camps was an undue burden on his troops. "Our people," he said, "will get a lot of satisfaction in protecting people who can't protect themselves."

On one point, most officers agree: Military peacemaking and peace keeping operations are here to stay because many political leaders have decided that there is no one else to take on the assignments. As LTG Gregson said in response to a query: "Missions such as peacekeeping, peace enforcement, disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, security duties, non-combatant evacuation, and others have been with us for a long time. It is not likely that the need for these actions will disappear."

Another increasingly pertinent question is whether US military forces should be engaged in peace operations, especially when they are stretched thin around the world today, or should that task be left to nations with fewer commitments. At the beginning of 2002, the US had 255,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines stationed in foreign countries, which was 18 percent of the force of 1.4 million men and women. That snapshot included 118,000 in Europe, where they have been posted since the end of World War II, and in the Balkans, where they have been deployed more recently. It included another 91,000 in Asia and the Pacific, and 26,000 in and around the Persian Gulf. But it did not include troops in Afghanistan, or Central Asia, or on temporary duty in the Philippines.

Compare that with the size of the force at the time of the Gulf War in 1991, when 447,500 men and women were deployed in foreign countries, or 22 percent of the force. Over the last eleven years, the US armed forces have been shrunk by 30 percent overall but 43 percent in the forces deployed abroad where they are available for combat or peace keeping duties. In the jargon of the US armed forces, in the tooth-to-tail ratio, the teeth have been reduced far more.

American military leaders have constantly sought to reassure Asian nations that the US considers itself to be a Pacific power and intends to remain such. At the same time, they have cautioned Asians that the US cannot carry the burdens of security alone nor does it necessarily assume that it will be the leader in every venture. The former commander of US forces in the Pacific, Admiral Dennis Blair, told a gathering of senior Asian policy makers at the East-West Center in August 2000 that, to have security, Asian nations "need only shared security interests and the willingness to work together. Nor must all coordination and cooperation involve US participation, and certainly US leadership will not always be required, though often nations will desire access to US capabilities."

Reflecting a New Thought

COBRA GOLD 2002 reflected that thought. A Thai officer, Lieutenant General Archawin Svetasreni, was the commander of the exercise while the US Marine, Lieutenant General Gregson, served as deputy commander. A Singaporean officer, Brigadier General Chua Chwee Koh, was third in command.

In the scenario for the exercise, the forces of a fictitious nation, Greenland, had invaded another fictitious nation called "Country X." A United Nations resolution called on Greenland to withdraw. The UN fostered the formation of a combined task force from Whiteland, (read the US), Blueland (Thailand) and Singland (Singapore) that was dispatched to repel the invaders and enforce a truce.

A specific mission of the coalition was to set up a buffer zone between the two combatants. At the same time, a humanitarian mission was launched to rescue the 200,000 refugees and displaced persons. They were either in makeshift camps or roaming the countryside with no shelter, food, water, sanitation or medical care.

The Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (COE) assembled an experienced crew to undertake the simulated humanitarian operations. General Milner played the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General. Leentjes, the humanitarian operations coordinator, in real life is a senior staffer at the COE. John Derick Osman, a retired Malaysian army officer, specialized in civil-military relations. Nikola Mihajlovic of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees flew in from Cambodia. Sharon Daniel of the Mercy Corps came from Malaysia, as did Mohdshah bin Awaluddin. Jean Pierre de Margerie, a Canadian with the World Food Program came from his post nearby in Bangkok. Yuji Uesugi and Kyoko Nakamura represented a Japanese non-government organization in Okinawa. Thomas Dolan, an American from the US Agency for International Development (USAID)/Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance based in the Philippines, lent his expertise and Benjamin Lucas advised on international law.

This was a command post exercise intended to challenge the military leaders and their staffs on the realities of dealing with civilian agencies and was not directly connected with the troop maneuvers. The military part appeared to have gone well. LTG Gregson said later the most important lesson learned was that "US, Thai, and Singapore military and naval forces can come together and work as a multi-national, multi-service joint and combined coalition in very complex and difficult contingency circumstances."

Things did not go so well in humanitarian operations as the military officers were not prepared to take on the mission, particularly at the staff level. On their side, representatives of the NGOs were often impatient with military needs and modes of operation. During the weeklong exercise were these simulated incidents:

1. An aerial bombing of a refugee camp left 75 civilians dead and several hundred wounded. The aircraft was not identified but was presumably from a coalition air force because Whiteland officers contended that they dominated the airspace over Country X.

2. Medical conditions in a camp called Non Han deteriorated so fast that 825 people died overnight and 1,600 were infected with serious diseases.

3. Coalition forces failed to comply with the Geneva Conventions by detaining civilians as if they were criminals instead of displaced persons. A representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross said his organization expected to have access to the civilians.

4. Thomas Dolan noted that all requests for relief flights into the air space over Country X had been denied by the coalition.

5. Jean Pierre de Margerie contended: "If we don't get help to those people, we are talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths." He said coalition troops had forced a convoy laden with supplies off a road and left it stuck in the mud.

6. Another convoy had been attacked, presumably by Greenland guerrillas, because it lacked protection by the coalition forces, with the loss of 12 people and 45 tons of supplies.

7. Greenland soldiers were reported to have had taken off their uniforms and infiltrated into the refugee camps despite pledges by the coalition to protect those in the camps.

Several Lessons That Should be Learned

In an after-action report, Leentjes asserted that a basic problem arose from military planning being divorced from humanitarian planning. The military's civil-military operations center never gained an appreciation of the structure and roles of the humanitarian community nor under- stood the horror of the camps.

Moreover, the CMOC and the humanitarian operations center (HOC) lacked a common operating picture. Their maps showed different locations of camps and positions of forces. The HOC needed to do a better job of furnishing information to the CMOC. The CMOC, in turn, should have made sure that troops did not make targets of refugees by getting them out of the way of maneuvers.

It appeared that communications between the CMOC staff and the military operational staff were not good, with the CMOC officers seemingly unable to relate the urgent needs of the humanitarian operatives to the staff of the combined task force. They never managed to transmit a true picture of terrible conditions in the camps to the staff and commanders.

CMOC staff officers evidently did not understand the difference between refugees and displaced persons, and that they needed to be treated differently. Refugees have crossed international borders and have legal rights under the United Nations charter. Displaced persons are within their own country and are subject to the laws of that nation.

Information Purveyors Take on a Special Role

Lastly, the press relations and public affairs of COBRA GOLD 02, which would have been vital to the success of the mission in the real world, were flawed. From Sun Tzu in the East to Carl von Clausewitz in the West, strategic thinkers have asserted that the sustained support of the people is essential to success of national security policy and military operations. In peacemaking and peacekeeping, good press relations are even more important and more difficult because the operations themselves are so complicated.

Peace operations need to be publicized with skill and sophistication through the press and television to several audiences:

a. Members of the United Nations,

b. Governments and publics of the coalition with forces on the ground,

c. Leaders and the public of the aggrieved nation,

d. Governments and publics of nations that may be influential in making or keeping the peace even if they don't have forces on the ground,

e. Even the government and public of an aggressor.

In COBRA GOLD 02, Rule One in press relations was ignored: It says: Always know who it is you're talking to, always know who's around covering you. The public affairs office in COBRA GOLD 02, however, did not know who was in the vicinity and what they were doing. In one case, General Gregson and his senior staff met with General Milner and his colleagues. The press office didn't know about it and no one showed up to handle the press waiting to catch people as the meeting broke up. General Gregson didn't need help but a less prepared general might have been caught off guard.

During the contentious meeting in the CMOC, two correspondents sat quietly in the back of the trailer, even though it was a closed meeting. No one checked their credentials, no one asked them to leave, and later a public affairs officer arrived to stand next to them and failed to recognize them. A story with quotes that could have come only from inside the meeting was circulated later. The public affairs office, whose responsibilities include knowing what is being written and broadcast about their operation, never caught on.

Similarly, a deliberate mistake in an article was fed into the exercise. It accused a US Marine of murder, or at least negligent homicide, in the death of a civilian refugee. In the real world, the story would have caused an uproar. The COBRA GOLD 02 press office, which should have been monitoring everything written or broadcast about the war game, never caught it.

Press briefings were perfunctory, uninformative, and focused on military while mostly ignoring humanitarian operations. No effort was made to communicate the coalition's objectives or to explain what the combined task force was doing to resolve the devastating humanitarian crisis. In several instances, inaccurate information was given out. In one case, a briefing officer asserted that security was being provided to all but one camp when the humanitarian operations center was reporting that several were without security.

An elementary mistake, not the fault of the press officers, was that they had been tasked both to handle real world inquiries about the COBRA GOLD 02 exercise and, at the same time, to play roles in the war game. Those two responsibilities should have been separated so that the press officers could focus on one or the other.

Several times during COBRA GOLD 02, officers engaged in information operations proposed feeding misinformation out through the press. This would have been a serious mistake because once the press finds out - and chances are they will - they will blow the information operation out of the water. Its effectiveness will be compromised and its credibility lost, as will that of the press office.

Lesson: Build a wall between information operations and press relations and insist that it not be breached. Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago: "All war is based on deception." True, but find a way other than through the press to deceive adversaries.

Richard Halloran was with The New York Times from 1969 to 1990, mostly as a foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington, D.C. After an early retirement, he assumed the position of Director of Communications and Journalism at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and was editorial director of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The author of five books and numerous awards, Halloran currently freelances and writes a weekly column entitled "The Rising East" about Asia and the United States of AmericaÕs relations with Asia, particularly in security.

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