European Stars and Stripes
May 8, 2000
Pg. 3Northern Watch Keeps Tight Reins On Iraq
By Terry Boyd, Turkey bureau
ADANA, Turkey -All U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Bob DuLaney is saying is give containment a chance. Operation Northern Watch and the preceding decade of United Nations-mandated, U.S.-led no-fly missions have weakened Iraq and someday Saddam Hussein will fall, DuLaney says. He just doesn't say, "someday soon."
The new commander of the Combined Task Force -U.S. and British - planes flying sorties from Incirlik Air Base in south-central Turkey, DuLaney preaches two things: patience and an unwavering faith that U.S. air power will prevail.
In a recent interview, he said his assignment is simple: "No Iraqi fighters across the 36th parallel. I have every right to be there, at least in the U.S. mind."
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein disagrees vehemently. In December 1998, Saddam declared no-fly zones - created in 1991 to protect rebelling Iraqi minorities -a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. He then escalated confrontations with task force planes in the north. In response, allied planes began striking Iraqi targets in what officials describe as a tit-for-tat de facto war.
DuLaney said he sees parallels between the operation and the Cold War policy of containing the Soviet Union. In the same way Western nations contained the Soviet bloc politically and militarily until it collapsed, the U.N. must contain Saddam with sanctions and retaliatory, punitive strikes until he backs down or goes away, DuLaney said.
"I'll tell you, containment works. I spent my whole career containing [Communism]," said DuLaney, who's official Air Force biography is heavy with weapons and tactics assignments and operational commands in Japan and Korea.
Last October, DuLaney replaced Brig. Gen. David Deptula, the architect of Desert Wind, the air-assault phase of the Gulf War. DuLaney will not discuss the politics of the operation. He is, he said, simply the U.N's hammer on the Iraqi nail: "I execute [U.N. and U.S. State Department] policy. I'm proud to execute it. I think it's a good mission."
For the most part, observers outside the operation have to take the Texan's word that it's a good mission. All DuLaney is willing to reveal is that intelligence shows Iraqi minorities are flourishing under the operation's protection. Neither he nor anyone else in the know will quantify the damage, if any, the mission has done to Saddam's overall military capabilities. In fact, there is less information available since DuLaney replaced Deptula.
Before DuLaney took command, the operation's Web site - www.eucom.mil/operations/onw/ index.htm - listed the time of Iraqi attacks and its responses, as well as the munitions its jets dropped. At his direction, Air Force public affairs no longer includes that information. DuLaney bristles at the suggestion that Defense Department policies and the closed Turkish base effectively shut off any meaningful oversight. The press, he said, is only interested in bad news, and there just isn't any from his operation: "Why does it have to be bad news for [the media] to cover ONW?"
Indeed, the news has been almost unbelievably good over nine years. The task force has not lost a plane or pilot to Saddam's air-defense forces or to mechanical failure, despite flying as many as 40,000 sorties just since the December 1998 flare-up. When Stars and Stripes asked to interview operation troops on base, officials arranged a single interview with a crew chief for an F-15C fighter-bomber, and the conversation was monitored by two public affairs officers.
Senior Airman Charles Cull, 28, with the 27th Fighter Wing, said overall morale is good, and that the workday is shorter than at his home base of Langley Air Base, Va. When his crew sends out its plane, "I know it's going to come back," he said.
The only glitch is slow re-supply of parts for his 14-year-old aircraft, according to Cull. Air Force personnel interviewed off base echoed Cull's remarks that morale is high, though many complained about Turkey's strict base rules, including an 11 p.m. curfew. Jeffrey Lewis, a research associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the mission appears to be going pretty much as designed.
"Given the crate of lemons he's been given, [DuLaney] is making pretty good lemonade" in that the operation continues to harass Saddam without taking casualties, Lewis said.
But it is unlikely, Lewis said, given Iraq's vast oil reserves and other sources of illegal income, that no-fly zones or sanctions will bring on Saddam's collapse.
"We have injured his ability to threaten his neighbors," though the cost has been diminishing overall Air Force readiness, he said.
Now, Saddam may be ready to up the ante in this long-running strategic poker game. In a deal brokered by the Russian Federation, Yugoslavia has agreed to upgrade Iraq's air defense systems, including supplying the latest version of the SA-6 anti-aircraft missile, according to STRATFOR. COM, an Austin, Texas-based intelligence analysis firm.
STRATFOR.COM says that an SA-6 may have brought down an F-117 stealth fighter during last year's Yugoslavia air campaign. DuLaney refused to discuss the operation's knowledge of any deals between Iraq and other countries. But he did say that the Iraqi defense system currently had the capability of hitting U.S. planes. He said Iraqi surface-to-air missiles could reach up to 40,000 feet, near the limit of fighter operational capability.
Lewis said Yugoslav and Iraqi military officials are not only negotiating weapons deals, they're sharing intelligence on American air tactics as well.
"It's a worrisome development in what our adversaries learn about us as we throw ourselves into these extended commitments," he said.
New task force leader secretive, optimistic
Bob DuLaney is a little bit of a complicated character, if it's OK to say that about an Air Force brigadier general. As straight a talker as any brass you're likely to meet, DuLaney also is as secretive as he believes his new job as commander of the Combined Task Force conducting Operation Northern Watch warrants.
Entering his sprawling office at Incirlik Air Base, it's very apparent that he's from Texas. The get-along- little-doggie Texas. He's decorated his office walls with major Texas kitsch - a sign that reads, "Native Texan." Barbed wire shaped into the outline of the Lone Star state. John Wayne prints. Frederic Remington bronzes of horses and cowboys decorate desks and tables.
"My wife," he said to a visitor trying to take it all in, "won't let me hang all the good stuff up at home."
At an athletic 6 feet tall and with sandy hair, the 48-year-old DuLaney is not exactly John Wayne. But he's not one of those all-hat-and-no-cattle cowboys, either. He commands 1,500 American Air Force personnel and a few hundred Brits assigned to the no-fly flights over northern Iraq. Person-to-person, DuLaney is golf-partner personable. But just as his fighter pilots keep Iraqi jets from crossing the 36th parallel, he keeps the media from crossing the line. He is indeed from Texas, but that's all he'll say about that. He has a wife and child, but he won't identify them by name or say where they live.
"I don't want to be paranoid," DuLaney said. But he said that at the most benign, there are nut cases out there with Internet access.
At the most malevolent - well, you don't make many friends in some sectors of the Arab world by bombing Iraq. He asserts that unnamed parties have threatened pilots and their families, but offers no proof. DuLaney does offer unclassified documents, information culled from foreign news sources, via the operation's director of intelligence, stating that pilots have bounties on their heads.
Iraqi ground crews reportedly would collect 5 million dinars (about $2,700) if they shoot down DuLaney or one of his men. The F-16 that DuLaney flies as an operational commander is worth 25 million dinars (about $14,000), a fortune to Iraqi air-defense crews, according to the documents. That's about all you can get out of DuLaney. That and his pilots conduct a very simple mission - reacting to Iraqi ground fire or radar contact by bombing targets in a very small space.
The area of operation "is about the size of the Nellis [bombing] range. Yeah, put that, the Nellis range," he said. "All the fighter pilots know about the Nellis range" at Nellis Air Base in the Nevada desert.
If the operational side is "simple," life for the 6,000 or so Americans and Britons crowded into base housing and a tent city is complicated. On a late April base radio program, DuLaney turned his attention to life at Incirlik Air Base, from tents flooded in a spring rain storm to international rivalries on the soccer field.
Naturally aggressive soldiers need to break up those Turk vs. Brit vs. American teams, he counseled, and compete more in the multinational spirit. "If we don't, we're going to slaughter each other," he said in conclusion. Blunt and to the point. Spoken like a Texan.
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
