96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne)
The 96th Civil Affairs Battalion is the only active Army civil affairs unit. It is readily available to deploy and provides primarily tactical support. It is both a contingency force, and a Special Operations Force. The 96th has five companies and a headquarters element. Each company has a displaced-persons/refugee/evacuee team. The battalion as a whole has teams that concentrate on civil supply, displaced persons, refugee/evacuees, public safety and public health.
Civil affairs units help military commanders by working with civil authorities and civilian populations in the commander's area of operations to lessen the impact of military operations on them during peace, contingency operations and declared war. Civil Affairs forces support activities of both conventional and special operations forces, and are capable of assisting and supporting the civil administration in the area of operations.
Civil affairs specialists can quickly and systematically identify critical requirements needed by local citizens in war or disaster situations. They can also locate civil resources to support military operations, help minimize civilian interference with operations, support national assistance activities, plan and execute non-combatant evacuation, support counter-drug operations, and establish and maintain liaison or dialogue with civilian aid agencies and civilian commercial and private organizations.
In support of special operations, these culturally-oriented, linguistically-capable soldiers may also be tasked to provide functional expertise for foreign internal defense operations, unconventional warfare operations and direct action missions.
The functional structure of civil affairs forces and their expertise, training, and orientation provide a capability for emergency coordination and administration where political-economic structures have been incapacitated. They can help plan U.S. government interagency procedures for national or regional emergencies. They can assist civil-military planning and military support operations for theater commanders in chief. Additionally, they can coordinate military resources to support government operations, emergency actions and humanitarian assistance from natural, man-made, or war-related causes.
The 96th Civil Affairs Battalion has a wide variety of missions. Each unit has specialized teams to: prevent civilian interference with tactical operations, assist tactical commanders in discharging their responsibilities toward the civilian population, provide liaison with civilian governmental agencies, cope with monuments and captured art and archives, help restore a friendly nation's legal or economic system and a host of other functions such as fighting famine, disease and death, feeding innocent victims of destruction, protecting the legal rights of the destitute and ensuring continued education of the young.
The 96th is capable of rapidly deploying one of its five regionally aligned CA companies to meet the initial CA support requirement, with transition to Reserve Components units beginning as soon as mobilization permits. Oftentimes, the 96th CAB (A) is used as a "quick fix" to provide assessments or other general civil affairs support until the appropriate specialist teams from the reserves are activated and deployed. The RC civil affairs units have functional specialties, with the unit's soldiers being assigned to functional teams.
Personnel from the 96th make up four percent of United States civil affairs forces. The remaining 96 percent come from other units in the reserve component such as the 351st, 352nd and 353rd CA Commands and the 361st and 358th CA Brigades.
In March 1986, the 96th officially became an airborne unit. It is stationed at Fort Bragg and has performed civil affairs missions throughout the world. Its performance in Grenada during Operation URGENT FURY and in Panama during Operation JUST CAUSE were classics of the constructive use of this scarce asset. They were also the first Civil Affairs unit to be sent to Saudi Arabia in August 1990 for Operation Desert Shield. Their planning assistance and host nation support operations were invaluable aids to preparing the theater support structure to sustain the largest and fastest U.S. Army deployment since WW II.
An element of the 96th CA Battalion (Airborne) deployed from Fort Bragg, NC, to assist in the Provide Comfort humanitarian relief operation.
Personnel from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne) deployed to the east African nation of Kenya in June 1998, supporting two missions. The four-man Tactical Support Team 33 of Company C was assisted by six members of the 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion, Greensboro, N.C. The civil affairs soldiers participated in Natural Fire '98, a Joint Chiefs of Staff exercise involving Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as conducting disaster management training with the Kenyan government.
