Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

19 July 2004

AFGHANISTAN

• According to the Washington Post, July 17, NATO is planning to reinforce its 6,500-member international peacekeeping force with two units equipped to move quickly to troubled spots. Each new unit, NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer reportedly said in an interview at NATO Headquarters Friday, will have about 1,000 soldiers, with one of the units deployed on the north side of the Hindu Kush mountain range and the other to the south. He was quoted saying: “For the elections, we’ll bring in extra forces to have a quick reaction force … so when things go wrong, you can move forces quickly in-theater .” He also allegedly said Spain had agreed to provide one of the two “rapid reaction” units and the second would likely come from NATO reserve forces on duty in Europe. The plan, continues the article, also calls for two additional battalions with about 1,000 members each and a brigade-level headquarters to wait in reserve at bases in Europe and be ready to be quickly deployed if needed. The additional troops, the NATO Secretary General reportedly pointed out, would not amount to a permanent increase in force levels in the country, but would go strictly to secure the presidential elections set for October 9, staying no more than eight weeks and the rapid reaction forces would return in the spring, when parliamentary elections are scheduled.

OLYMPICS

• Tens of thousands of law enforcement and military personnel were on high-level readiness Sunday before full-scale Olympic security measures are enforced in the country, reported the San Francisco Chronicle, July 18. Security already has been heightened in Athens since July 1 when about 11,000 police officers and others began moving into Olympic venues and facilities in the first stage of the “lock down” process, observed the paper, and in the second and last phase - which is expected to start on Tuesday - about 70,000 police, soldiers and other forces are expected to be deployed around Olympic venues, ports and other sensitive locations in the country. On Saturday, adds the daily, a senior official with the American-led consortium setting up a multimillion-dollar security network for the Olympics said there has been progress in completing the project. A seven-nation task force, including the U.S. and Britain, is assisting with security and NATO also will help safeguard the Olympics, supplying radar planes, ships and an anti-chemical warfare unit, concludes the article. In a similar vein, USA Today observes that another security front, in addition to the mentioned measures adopted and implemented to secure the Olympics, is quietly watched over by a French executive armed with only a clipboard and flow charts. His foes, says the paper, include distant hackers, invisible computer viruses, code-burrowing worms and the Trojan horses of the cyber age. “We can’t let our guard down for even a moment,” allegedly said Claude Phillips, program director for major events at Atos Origin, a Paris-based technology firm that first took over Olympic data services at Salt lake City in 2002.

NATO-LATVIA

• AFP wrote, July 16, that Latvia is to host part of a coordinated program of military exercises bringing together forces from the U.S. and 17 other countries from Tuesday, according to a defense ministry spokesman. The exercise, called Rescuer/Medceur 2004, will also be taking place in neighboring Lithuania and in Bulgaria. The Latvian part of the exercise would be held at a military base in Aluksne, in the east of the country. The aim of the exercise, which is part of the Partnership for Peace Program, added the dispatch, was “to promote cooperation among representatives of different countries when dealing with different crises situations. Some 2,000 soldiers and civilians, concludes the report, will take part in the exercise from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, U.S., Germany, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.