military demands on the distribution system (besides our military supplies and equipment, we were handling relief supplies contributed by over thirty nations), and nobody was pulling it together. We had no central management, no prioritization, and very thin security. It was like forcing a gallon of water through a soda straw.
We could see right away that we needed to put in place a centrally designed distribution system, with forward staging bases and interim bases, where we could build up stocks of supplies which everybody could draw from.
The component commanders — Garner and Potter — fought this; each wanted to run his own logistics support. I had constant battles over this issue with them, two of my closest friends. They were shouting at me and I was shouting at them. “Don’t mess with our logistics,” they kept telling Shali. “We’re running our own show. We need our own stuff here.”
From the other direction, our logisticians were begging me to convince General Shali to form a Combined Support Command. But when I told him the logistics were going to break, and we were going to see a real disaster, he was reluctant to change the book-dictated system.
Finally, when it was totally obvious that it was either change or endure the world’s most embarrassing traffic jam, he made the decision to set up the CSC.
We opened small Humanitarian Service Support Bases (HSSB) in a “hub and spoke” system that let us stretch our reach well into Iraq. We brought down Army Brigadier Hal Burch (a USAREUR logistics commander), and he set it up.
Our unorthodox command structures eventually caught the attention of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. During a visit in May, Colin Powell, who is a very quick study, was initially impressed with how well the operation was going, but wasn’t clear how we had it all organized. The easiest way to explain that was to show him our organizational chart… The chart was of course as weird as our organization; but we had done what we could to draw the lines and links and labels according to the proper doctrinal procedures. So we had lines for “Operational Control” and for “Tactical Control” and so on. Of course, when Powell looked at the chart, he saw right through it. “Is this for real?” he asked. “Tell me the truth. What kind of control do you really have here? What are your real lines of authority? Is it Operational Control?”
“Sir,” I told him, “what we really do is HAND CON (Handshake Control). We work out our problems on the fly and shake hands on the deals. We don’t have time to do anything else.”
He laughed. He loved that. It became one of General Powell’s favorite stories.
Our relationship with the Iraqis was predictably tricky. Though the war was obviously over, the Iraqi forces in the north still presented a problem. Unlike units in the south, they had not experienced combat with superior American and Coalition power; and they were not as cowed. Later, after several units from southern Iraq were moved north, we used to watch with fascination how the southern and the northern Iraqi units reacted when our planes flew over their positions. Those who had faced us in the south during the war waved nervously and looked for cover, while the northern troops were more frequently defiant, and once in a while even fired at our planes.
The Military Coordination Center was set up to maintain contact with the Iraqi military; and an Iraqi, Brigadier General Nashwan Danoon, was assigned as our point of contact.[50] For more important meetings with General Shali, the Iraqis sent a Lieutenant General Saber from Baghdad.
As we moved the refugees back to their homes in the south, we increased the size of the Security Zone and demanded the Iraqi military pull back. They were — unsurprisingly — reluctant to do that; and on several occasions we had to threaten them. A show of force always brought compliance (we had in all sixteen incidents of hostile fire with the Iraqis[51] ).
Eventually, we decided to create a zone that allowed all 500,000 of the Kurds to return home… and we also decided to help them repair their homes and make them livable. We not only repaired much of the damage to the areas evacuated by the fleeing population, we provided services and utilities to forty-one communities until their local services could be reestablished.
At this point, we realized that wasn’t going to be enough. We just couldn’t leave them on their own. We had to make sure the Iraqis didn’t return once we pulled out.
To emphasize that point, the Iraqis massed seventeen divisions on the borders of the Security Zone we had formed. These divisions were there to block further expansion and to seal off the zone… and to convey a threatening posture toward the Kurds. As a result, we established what was called “the Green Line” as the border of the Security Zone. None of the Iraqis were allowed to pass it. Our air cover in the no-fly zone (which was larger than the Security Zone) further ensured the good behavior of the Iraqi military.
The process of moving the refugees and managing the Iraqis went through several stages. In the beginning, we agreed to allow the Iraqis a police presence in the Security Zone; but it quickly became clear that idea was a non-starter. The Iraqis’ idea of a “police presence” was the Mukhabarat — their secret police.
The Kurds were dead set against any Iraqi government presence, and the Peshmerga set about eliminating it the old-fashioned way — by killing the Mukhabarat and other Iraqi officials. Eventually, all Iraqi government presence was removed from the Security Zone.
Another agreement that didn’t work out was the protection arrangement for Saddam’s eight lavish palaces in the region. We had approved a plan that allowed the Iraqis to retain military security over the palaces; but when an Iraqi unit guarding one of them opened fire on a British Royal Marine patrol, the Marines blasted the Iraqis; and that ended the agreement.
Saddam’s private airfield at Sirsenk was turned into a logistics base for our operations. Our troops made pen sets from its black marble wall panels and passed them out “Compliments of Saddam.”
At one point, I went out to see one of the palaces. It was still under construction, occupying the top of an imposing hill; and it was massive — like a fairy-tale castle. Luxurious villas were scattered down the hillside; and water pumped up to the top flowed down the side of the hill in a system of water-falls. Underneath the hilltop castle was a vast tunnel complex. At first, we thought this may have been for WMD storage; but it turned out to be for something like a casino. It was shocking to see these grand structures in the midst of the poverty of the local population.
During the same trip, I visited the villages that had been gassed by the Iraqis in 1988… a chilling sight. They were not only empty of people, but the Iraqis had left not one stone upon another. The Kurds who’d made their homes there had asked to return; but when we did soil tests, we found dangerous toxic chemical traces that made return impossible.
The humanitarian aspects of the operation were of course its primary focus. Except for our Civil Affairs officers, this was a new experience for most of us; and it led to many coordination problems.
When the NGOs started showing up, most of them had had no experience working with us, we had had no experience working with them, and there was mutual suspicion.[52] They were all wonderful, well-meaning humanitarians; but they all seemed to think they could do their own thing without much coordination with the common effort: NGO planes would suddenly show up in our airspace demanding landing permission, unable to understand why we had a hard time accommodating them.
To minimize these problems, we established a Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC) under Civil Affairs control to coordinate with the NGOs, DART, and the UNHCR. Though friction between the military and the relief agencies continued (on a much smaller scale), the CMOC provided an excellent forum to work out the problems. EUCOM established a Civil Agency Response Element (CARE) at their headquarters that helped a great deal to sort out problems at the Unified Command and Washington levels.
In spite of our mutual problems, working with the NGOs and the various government agencies
