It's Not Nice and Neat

Today's military operations are not like the ones the services traditionally have trained to execute. But when "something" has to be done, U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, and airmen answer the call. General Zinni, the Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force, who led a seven-nation combined task force during Operation United Shield—the withdrawal of U.N. forces from Somalia—provided insights to this new world in his address at the most recent Naval Institute Annual Meeting and Annapolis Seminar.

First, I would like to talk a little bit about Operation United Shield, which should interest you because it primarily involved a naval force, and its success stemmed both from the training and the capabilities that naval forces bring to these kinds of operations. Then I would like to expand a bit more into the nature of these operations and what I think that means for the future.

United Shield was born sometime around last August, when the United Nations realized it was going to have a hard time extracting itself from Somalia and asked the United States to help. Several nations agreed to partici­pate—with the largest force contributions coming from Italy—but all wanted U.S. leadership and involvement.

The situation required that the withdrawal be amphibi­ous. There was no other way that the rear-guard forces of the United Nations—the Pakistani and the Bangladeshi units—could have been extracted safely. The threat to the airfield—not only from the militias of the warlords, but also from the bandits who roam the streets of Mogadishu and fight each other and anybody else in their way—was too high.

The planning began in New York City. We sent a plan­ning team from the U.S. Central Command, which worked with the contributing nations, with the United Nations headquarters, and the United Nations forces in the field. A planning team also went into Mogadishu in January 1995 to work directly with General Aboo, the four-star Malaysian commander of the UNOSOM [United Nations Operation in Somalia] forces.

Our task force took station off the Somali coast near Mogadishu on 8 February. We were in position three weeks before we landed to set up the final protective perimeter for the U.N. forces. Before the landing, I went into Mogadishu and met with the warlords—five of them, including Mohammed FaraHassan Adid. I think you may have read about him. I’ve known General Adid for years.

General Adid, Ali Madi, and several others owned the militias and the turf around the port and airfield. I was interested in several things:

► To find out what their intentions were.

► To secure their cooperation, if possible.

► To warn them of what would happen if they didn’t co­operate—making sure they understood that what was com­ing in was not just another U.N. force, but this time a U.S.-led coalition, and that the rules of engagement would allow us to protect ourselves and take care of any threats.

► To make sure that they weren’t deluded by any notion that anything less than an overpowering force was over the horizon, ready to come in.

In meeting with them, I found mixed feelings about the operation. Many of the faction leaders were feeling good about the U.S. forces returning; some even wanted us to stay longer. Obviously, that wasn’t in the cards. General Adid, on the other hand, felt this was not good—that the return of U.S. or other foreign troops would not be well received by his people and would present difficulties for him. But he promised me that he would cooperate, and there wouldn’t be any interference.

All the time I had known General Adid, he’d never lied to me; my dealings with him always had been straight­forward. I was confident that he would not interfere—nor would any of his militia. But I wasn’t as confident that he would prevent bandits and rogue elements from interfer­ing on the turf that he controlled. On the other hand, I was certain that the other faction leaders would police their neighborhoods.

As things turned out, all the faction leaders cooperated, even to the point of helping control some of the looters and bandits as best they could while we were ashore. We felt that our worst problem would be looters, demonstra­tors, and the bandits who roamed the streets—who are much like street gangs here, but far more heavily armed and much more aggressive. And they, in fact, turned out to be the problem.

We spent a lot of time in the first three weeks there Preparing the battlefield—not only in the physical sense of the engineers preparing our positions and our barbed wire but also in working with the U.N. units that I would have under my tactical control. We cooperated in devel­oping a plan for some very tricky tactical movements.

We conducted nine tactical evolutions or operations ashore. These are the most complex of operations—am­phibious landings, relief-in-­place of one force by another from a different country, withdrawal under pressure, and amphibious withdrawal under pressure.

We did seven of these to­tally at night; two were a mix of day and night. We made two landings at night; we withdrew under fire at night, back to our ships. The Pakistanis withdrew back through our lines in the middle of the night. We relieved the Bangladeshi force at the port, and we relieved the Italians in place on the next-to-the-last night during the hours of darkness. We conducted a noncombatant evacuation of UNOSOM civilian employees, media personnel, and refugees—some Ethiopian Christians who had stowed away on a ship and were left at the port, living in tetra­hedrons at the water’s edge made themselves known to us as we were getting ready to leave. They would have been goners if the Somalis—their ancient enemies—had caught them. So we took them out of there and back to Mombasa.

We also provided a day-and-night defense of the air­field and the port.

Originally, the plan said that we would be ashore for seven to ten days—but we completed the job in 73 hours. We could have done it in 48 hours, if the ships that the United Nations contracted had been there in a more timely way and had been operated more professionally. Dealing with a drunk master and his crew when he came in to pick up U.N. forces made life interesting during the last day and the last night ashore.

In those 73 hours, we experienced 27 firefights, every­thing from snipers to individuals with rocket-propelled grenades firing at our positions. On the last night on the last beach—a place we called “the Alamo”—we were being hit by heavier fire, and we had small groups of Somalis, 12-15 strong, coming at our wire.

I’ve never appreciated an amphibious tractor any more than that final night, when we were able to continue fight­ing on the beach with our troops protected, then turn and hit the water in our armored amphibians to get back to the ship.

My own tractor didn’t quite make it all the way on its own power. It caught fire about 1,000 yards out and began to drift back toward the beach and take on water. Then the tractor that came out to tow us also lost power— and if you are a three-star general, stuck in the bottom of a tractor drifting back toward a beach full of a lot of bad guys, you begin to feel a little queasy. You’re trying to act very bravely, and what you need right then and there is just what I got—from the “trac” commander, Corporal Deskins. He stuck his head down in the troop compart­ment and said, “General, our trac is on fire. We’ve shut down the engine. We’re taking on some water. We’re drift­ing back to the beach, and we can see the bad guys. The tractor that’s trying to tow us has lost power and is drift­ing back with us. The ship is getting farther away.”

“But,” he added, “don’t worry—everything’s going to be okay.”

And I knew that was the time for a general to be a good PFC and listen to the corpo­ral—because with that kind of optimism and professionalism, I couldn’t go wrong. It took five and a half hours to get back to the ship, but Corporal Deskins finally got me there, so I was happy.

Our force consisted of 23 ships. It was made up of 16,500 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines from seven nations. We had 89 aircraft: Harrier jump jets; Italian and U.S. attack helos; and U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunships, flying out of Mombasa. With that kind of force—90% of which was naval—we were able to accomplish the mis­sion without taking a single casualty ashore. And, again, that’s not for want of the Somalis, especially the bandits! trying to inflict casualties.

This operation typifies my personal life for the past five years. It all started in the hills of Northern Iraq, with the Kurds. Next, I spent time in the 12 republics of the for­mer Soviet Union in an operation called Provide Hope, where we provided humanitarian assistance, bringing food and medicine into those areas. I also was involved in the planning for Operation Provide Promise in Bosnia, and I provided relief for the initial airlift of food and supplies into Somalia in Operation Restore Hope, then went back again with the special envoy to Somalia, Robert Oakley, on 6 October 1993, to get the prisoners out and rehabili­tate General Adid—and then back again for Operation United Shield.

My command, the I Marine Expeditionary Force, has done some things in the past five years that I’m sure you’ve heard about—things like Desert Storm and Vigi­lant Warrior, which was an alert to go back because the Iraqis were moving again. And, of course, we’ve gotten energized a couple of times over Korea. In the past five years, we’ve conducted a total of 20 real-world operations.

The author’s recent experience with Operations Other Than War—which can flare with scant warning into hot combat— dates back to Operation Provide Comfort, supporting Kurdish refugees in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq in the spring of 1991. We’ve been to places like Bangladesh, Rwanda, and Somalia. We’ve also been to Ecuador, helping build schoolhouses and providing medical and dental care in some of the remote areas of that country.

And we’ve not only been doing these kinds of things on foreign shores—we’ve also been doing them within our own borders. We have fought forest fires in Montana and Washington. I sent 1,000 Marines there last summer to fight the forest fires that were threatening some of our small towns. We sent Marines to Los Angeles during the Rodney King episode, to help quell the riots. We sent Marines for earthquake relief twice, and for flood relief in the Southeastern United States. My Marines participate every day in counter-drug operations throughout the South­western United States, and we participate in operations dealing with illegal immigrants.

If you talk to my counterpart, Lieutenant General Bob Johnston on the East Coast, he can give you the same list­ing of operations. The names may change, and the places may be Guantanamo and Haiti, and it may be hurricanes instead of floods and earthquakes—but he’s doing the same kinds of things.

The nature of conflict and the level of commitment have changed drastically since the Berlin Wall came down. We are now immersed in these things called Operations Other Than War. That’s a strange title, because a lot of these re­quire the application of deadly force as a defense against deadly force.

On the plane coming across country, I read something about the nature of conflict and war, and some of the changes we’re experiencing. In World War I, only 5% of the fatalities were civilian. In World War II, the figure rose to 50%. In wars and conflicts today, civilian casual­ties are moving up to 80-90%. We’ve become a lot bet­ter at not killing each other in great numbers as soldiers, but a lot worse in anticipating and dealing with the after­effects of war.

As seen in the use of land mines and other forms of in­discriminate killing, the targeting of civilians is something I’m seeing more and more frequently. War always is messy—even after it’s over. When Desert Storm ended, everybody left, and the Shiites and Kurds were left be­hind, in miserable shape. The operation we began in the hills of Kurdistan on 11 April 1991, called Provide Com­fort, still goes on today.

These kinds of operations are consuming our armed forces right now. I get called to testify on the Hill every once in a while, and the question I’ll be asked every sin­gle time is: Should the military be doing this? Whether we should or shouldn’t, I’ll tell you this—we are. We recently ran an exercise out my way called Emerald Ex­press. It searched for ways we could do these new kinds of things better: humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace enforcement, non-combatant evacuation operations—all these sorts of things that my Marine expeditionary units live with, day in and day out.

On the Hill, I was challenged a few times about why We ever get involved in this. Well, we get involved with this because we get asked to do it. Who else could do it? It’s nice to say as a Marine or a soldier or a sailor or air­man, “We don’t want to do it, that’s not what we’re here for.”

But I’ll tell you what—I’ve walked the ground and seen a lot of dead children. I’ve seen a lot of people who have starved to death or have been brutally massacred alongside a road. And something inside me says, “Maybe 1 shouldn’t be doing this, but dammit, I want to do it. I want to change something. I want to be part of making this better or trying to fix the problem.”

Now, those kinds of decisions go beyond my pay grade, but this is something we’ve had to live with for the last five years. The missions we get certainly are nontraditional—I have trained and established police forces, ju­diciary committees and judges, and prison systems; I have resettled refugees, in massive numbers, twice; I’ve nego­tiated with warlords, tribal leaders, and clan elders; I have distributed food, provided medical assistance, worried about well-baby care, and put in place obstetrical clinics; I’ve run refugee camps; and I’ve managed newspapers and run radio stations to counter misinformation attempts.

I’m an infantryman of 30 years standing. Nowhere in my infantry training did anybody prepare me for all this. I’ve been seconded to ambassadors twice in my career—once in the former Soviet Union during Operation Pro­vide Hope and once in Somalia during Operation Con­tinue Hope, where I put on civilian clothes and became an assistant to an ambassador-at-large to promote the poli­cies of our nation in that region.

We can say these things are not the matters that our armed forces should be involved in, but this is the direc­tion the new world disorder is going, and there isn’t any­body else to call upon for help. And these are the kinds of operations we have to do better. We need to learn the nontraditional tasks required to accomplish our mission.

The problem is that today’s operations don’t go down like the ones that possibly you and I have been trained to run. It’s not nice and neat—for openers, you don’t get a clean, hard mission that tells you exactly what you’re sup­posed to do. And you don’t always get an ideal enemy—another Saddam Hussein, whom you can go after because he’s mean and evil and backs a totally wrong cause. It doesn’t work that way anymore. Usually, you’re trying not to make enemies today.

And you can’t always go in with a force ideally tailored for this operation. What happens is that everybody comes running to the scene, and not necessarily with the ideal force composition. Coalitions are formed. In Operation Provide Comfort, we had the forces of 13 nations; in Re­store Hope in Somalia, the forces of 24 nations made up our combined task force; in United Shield, I had the forces, as I mentioned, of seven nations.

Always the best? No. Always exactly configured right for the operation? No. Always there to operate with the same objectives as you? No. Always completely inter­operable with your command and your way of doing busi­ness and your doctrine and your tactics and your tech­niques? No. Always technically and procedurally the same as you? No.

They come from the Third World; they come from a world that grew up in a different doctrinal system; they come with different political motivations; they come with different rules of engagement—which makes it interest­ing when the shooting begins. And yet you’ve got to pull these kinds of forces together and get a mission ac­complished and make sure everybody goes home feeling good about what they did.

In Somalia the first time around, we had the forces of eight nations defending the airfield. Was that because that airfield was so big or so threatened? No. It was because the forces of those eight nations could go no farther than that airfield when they got off the airplane. For either po­litical or military reasons, that was about it. But they got participation points; and obviously the sense of interna­tional legitimacy that is given to you is important to some­one. It shouldn’t be discounted. So as a commander you’ve got to take all that into account.

I think that this is in our future for a while. We’re in an era of transition like those after all major wars. In this case, it was a Cold War that ended, and I cannot predict whether this will settle out with other superpowers emerg­ing or with a different kind of world order, but I can predict a lengthy stay for this period of disorder.

And it’s not only overseas. There is disorder on the do­mestic front, too. In this country, we do a lot of things that turn inward. We’re very careful, because of the laws—Posse Comitatus and others—that restrict the employment of U.S. military forces in these kinds of things. But when disasters hit or when disorder is afoot, you’ve got to show up with those who can do the job, and we have spent a lot of time involved in things that might surprise you.

Before going off for Operation United Shield, I asked for nonlethal weapon systems. On my first tour in Soma­lia, I saw that we had a hard time dealing with orches­trated demonstrations. They were used against us as a tac­tic to defeat the Western approach to handling disturbances. The Somalis knew we could not use deadly force; if we were provoked into using deadly force, it would just serve the ends of one or more of the warlords orchestrating the demonstration.

We knew that at times we would be dealing with peo­ple who are desperate. Looters, thieves, people fighting at food stations who are afraid that you won’t come tomor­row and they’ll never get another chance in line—they’re all trying to survive. And when all you have for response is a rifle and its bayonet—that’s not the answer. And I knew we’d see that again in Somalia during United Shield. That’s why I wanted to do better than we did the first time.

I wanted something that was more compassionate in the way we could handle them, and not lethal—but something that also could protect our forces. And we had a whole array of technologies out there available to us. Never once did the use of crowd-control agents put our Marines in danger—because we had the ability to go right over to deadly force at any time.

This is the way we have to be thinking now. There’s much more to it than just rifle platoons taking hills.

I gave a pitch the other day to the Retired Officers Association in Southern California, where I’m based. One of the well-decorated World War II and Korean War vets came up to me afterwards and said, “You live in a far more complex world than I did. Ours may have been greater and more vast in the combat and conflict, but it was much simpler in understanding who the bad guy was and what we had to do and the job we had to get done.”

Well, he was right. We’re just as likely to need to ne­gotiate our way through something as to fight our way through something these days. And sometimes one comes right behind the other or right before the other—so the world of military men and women today is extremely com­plex. Critical to success today are training and educa­tion, and the depth of knowledge you have about cultures, about such nonmilitary things as economics and politics and policies and the humanitarian aspects of an operation.

You no longer can be only the pure, narrow, military thinker and just worry about fires and maneuver. Fires and maneuver are just two relatively simple battlefield activ­ities that underlie a vast, ever-increasing number of other battlefield activities.

Right now, I worry more about psychological opera­tions and civil affairs than maybe I do about fires and about maneuver. When the siren goes off, I don’t know if it’s going to be Desert Storm revisited or something en­tirely different. We answer to the U.S. Central Com­mand in going back to a Desert Storm-like engagement— but we also answer to CentCom to form the joint task force for humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. I don’t know if we’re going to go back into the hills of Korea—because we answer to that unified commander on call in case there’s another conflict in Korea—or whether it’s to be another Bangladesh or another Ecuador, or whether we get on buses and go up the road to another Los Angeles riot scene or to a forest fire, or to a flood.

In looking at the full range of operations today, it’s too simple to say, “Just don’t do it,” or “We shouldn’t do it.” Somebody has to do it—that’s the problem. And all of today’s problems are not outside our borders; some­times they’re simmering inside our borders.

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