Leavenworth Strategist

UN ponders future of Congo mission

(FT) By Harvey Morris in Washington

The United Nations is being forced into a drastic reappraisal of its 10-year military presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo where conflict, displacement, disease and hunger continue to undermine the peace its forces were sent there to keep.

By the end of this year, and most likely this week, the Security Council will meet to extend the mandate of the force, known as Monuc, its French acronym, by just five months instead of the usual 12.

A decade after the UN dispatched a few dozen military observers to monitor a ceasefire in Congo's civil war, Monuc has 19,000 uniformed personnel on the ground trying to help the government of Joseph Kabila, president, establish security amid a plethora of internal conflicts.

In the past year, the peacekeepers have been battered from various sides, castigated by human rights groups that claimed they turned a blind eye to the crimes of allies in government forces and accused of passivity in their mission of protecting civilians.

NATO will 'stay the course' in Afghanistan: chief

(AFP) KABUL — Visiting NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday reiterated the alliance's commitment to Afghanistan, saying troops will stay for as long as necessary despite paying a high price.

"The international community will stand with you, will protect you and help rebuild your country until you are ready to stand on your own and prevent terrorism from taking root in this country once again," he said.

Rasmussen is visiting Afghanistan for the first time since NATO allies pledged 6,800 extra troops to fight alongside an additional 30,000 US soldiers committed by US President Barack Obama to the war against the Taliban...

NATO to cut troop levels in Kosovo

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC (AP)

BELGRADE, Serbia — Despite opposition from Serbia, NATO's commander for Southeast Europe said the alliance will cut down its force in Kosovo by some 4,500 troops in January for possible use in hotspots like Afghanistan or Iraq.

Adm. Mark Fitzgerald said Wednesday NATO will keep 10,000 troops in Kosovo which proclaimed independence from Serbia last year. He said there could be further reductions.

Fitzgerald said the pullout is because NATO assessed the security situation in the region as improved...

EU says war on Somali pirates not over

By MIKE CORDER (AP)

GOTEBORG, Sweden — Hulking gray naval frigates fanned out across the Gulf of Aden have combined with monsoon storms to sharply reduce pirate attacks in the world's busiest shipping lanes in recent weeks.

But the commanding officer of the European Union armada warned Tuesday that it is too early to declare victory over heavily armed Somali pirates in tiny, fast-moving skiffs.

"This is not a thing where we can say 'job done,'" Rear Admiral Peter Hudson said on the sidelines of an EU defense ministers' meeting.

Hudson's warning came as EU officials hailed their anti-piracy flotilla as a resounding success, saying it has helped shepherd hundreds of thousands of tons of World Food Program aid to starving Somalis and foiled 100 pirate attacks since it began patrolling the Gulf nine months ago.

The EU is joined patrolling the region by the United States, which has been at the forefront of fighting piracy, and NATO, Japan, South Korea, and China...

NATO Chief Proposes Linked US/Russian/NATO Defense

By ROBERT WIELAARD (AP)

BRUSSELS — The head of NATO called Friday for the U.S., Russia and NATO to link their missile defense systems against potential new nuclear threats from Asia and the Middle East, saying that the old foes must forget their lingering Cold War animosity.

Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen appealed for unity a day after the U.S. shelved a Bush-era plan for an Eastern European missile defense shield that has been a major irritant in relations with Russia.

"We should explore the potential for linking the US, NATO and Russia missile defense systems at an appropriate time," Fogh Rasmussen said. "Both NATO and Russia have a wealth of experience in missile defense. We should now work to combine this experience to our mutual benefit."

Fogh Rasmussen said in a speech calling for a rethink of NATO-Russia relations that long-range ballistic missile technology in the hands of such countries as North Korea and Iran threatens the West and Russia in large part because it could lead to regional proliferation...

French General Takes Over Senior NATO Job

By Lisa Bryant (VOA) Paris, 10 September 2009

For the first time in NATO  history, one of the alliance's supreme commanders is from a country other than the United States. Air Force general Stephane Abrial of France has taken over the job of Supreme Allied Commander Transformation for NATO.

French general Stephane Abrial takes over as supreme allied commander in Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States, just months after President Nicolas Sarkozy France announced his country would rejoin the NATO military command more than 40 years after leaving it.

At a NATO summit in Strasbourg, France, earlier this year, Mr. Sarkozy discussed France's return and assured fellow leaders that France was part of the same NATO family. Everyone can count on France, he said - and France knows it can count on its NATO allies.

The Norfolk position is one of two top command posts promised to France when it rejoined the alliance. Another Frenchman now heads a NATO command in Lisbon. General Abrial takes over the Virginia post from U.S. marine general James Mattis. The French general is the first non-US commander assuming a top NATO command in the alliance's history...

 

Brigades Represent New Iraq Mission, Commander Says

By Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2009 – The new advisory and assistance brigades to flow into Iraq in the coming months will bring important new capability as they focus on building the Iraqi security forces, the commander of Multinational Corps Iraq said yesterday.

Army Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby Jr. called the so-called AABs – reconfigured brigade combat teams that focus on advising, assisting and developing Iraqi security forces – “a concept we believe in” for moving forward in Iraq.

“We think it’s the right way to go as we move from counterinsurgency and full-spectrum ops to our strategy of being done with combat operations for U.S. forces in August 2010,” he told Pentagon reporters via videoconference from Camp Victory, Iraq.

The Pentagon announced the new brigades in July.

The first four brigade combat teams to be assigned the mission are the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st and 2nd Brigade Combat Teams based at Fort Stewart, Ga., and its 3rd BCT at Fort Benning, Ga.; and the 4th Infantry Division’s 3rd BCT at Fort Carson, Colo.

They will deploy beginning this fall, and be dispersed throughout Iraq in areas where they can best support provincial reconstruction teams and the training of Iraqi forces, Jacoby said. “We’ve done a fair amount of work studying where we think the advisory assistance brigades can best serve that mission,” he said.

The AABs represent a mindset as well as a mission, Jacoby said, as they operate within the stability operations realm to improve the Iraqi security forces’ ability to conduct combat operations and take the lead in other security operations.

For now, traditional brigade combat teams deployed to Iraq are passing back lessons learned and observations being made to help prepare the AABs for their new mission. Jacoby lauded the “great exchange of information between the theater and back home in the training base.”

AABs will be about the size of a standard brigade combat team, but will include more field-grade officers serving as advisors, and more engineering, military police, civil affairs, transportation and other capabilities to support the training and mentoring mission, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman explained when announcing the new teams in July.

Their pre-deployment training is expected to differ considerably from that of standard brigades, Whitman said. In addition to standard combat training, they will undergo scenario-based training and mission-readiness exercises designed to prepare them for the complex challenges they will encounter in Iraq.

 

US, NATO Military Commander Offers Review on Afghanistan

By VOA News 31 August 2009

The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has completed a months-long strategy review and delivered his assessment to U.S. and NATO officials.

U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal says the situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and strategic changes must be made.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the assessment does not include specific requests for more troops, but U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO leaders could discuss the issue later.

Whitman said the review is being viewed as a confidential military assessment, and there are no plans to release it to the public.

President Obama had called for the U.S. strategy review in Pakistan and Afghanistan to battle a growing insurgency of Taliban and al-Qaida militants...

Australia, US to Invite China to War Games

By Phil Mercer (VOA)
Sydney
03 September 2009

Australia and the United States will invite China to take part in joint military exercises to help ease fears about an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region.

Ties between Australia and China have been strained over concerns about Beijing's military expansion and the precarious nature of trade negotiations.

As a way of soothing tensions, Australian and U.S. defense officials have agreed to approach the Chinese about taking part in joint military exercises.

Admiral Timothy Keating, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told a Sydney newspaper that talks with Beijing were a positive sign that China was willing to cooperate in the plan. Keating also expressed hope that any joint exercise would help the U.S. and its allies better understand China's reasons for boosting its weapons capabilities...

From "Environmental Demands Grow for U.N. Peacekeeping Troops"

NY Times article By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD, STAFF REPORTER of Greenwire

Last week, the Security Council held a debate on the state of peacekeeping since it was first conceived some 60 years ago. At the center of the talks lay a 56-page document prepared by DPKO outlining the problems and possible remedies, a "non-paper" dubbed internally as "New Horizons." The diplomats engaged in the all-day discussions covered the litany of grim statistics and bad news but failed to come up with an ultimate solution to the problem.

"There's clearly a consensus on the points which have to be strengthened in peacekeeping operations, broadening the base of troop-contributing countries, and consensus on how to have better guidance on protection of civilians and robust peacekeeping," DPKO chief Alain Le Roy told reporters.

DPKO says it has more than 115,000 people deployed to 20 operations it leads globally, including 100,000 uniformed personnel, far above the 65,000 troops that NATO has deployed around the world. According to the Center on International Cooperation's most recent "Annual Review of Global Peace Operations," the United Nations today manages the second-largest overseas force in the world, after the United States. Factoring in normal troop rotations, DPKO manages an estimated 200,000 men and women under arms.

By contrast, in 2003, the United Nations' total peacekeeping troop strength was about 40,000 personnel. Global peacekeeping was about a tenth the size it is today just 10 years ago, when just 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers were deployed.