Bowing to heavy television-inspired domestic pressure and a one-day blitzkrieg of personal calls from Prime Minister Major of Great Britain, President Mitterrand of France, President Ozal of Turkey, and Chancellor Kohl of West Germany, Bush acquiesced and committed the U.S. to an airdrop emergency aid operation (Bush j: 273). This international pressure may have been a coordinated campaign, as each of the European leaders called President Bush on 4 April with essentially the same message. Only six days after Bush declared the U.S. would not intervene in the Iraqi civil war, he committed U.S. forces to stop the slaughter.

IMMEDIATE RELIEF EFFORTS

Operation PROVIDE COMFORT began on 5 April 1991, after President Bush assigned the Department of Defense the mission of providing humanitarian relief to the Kurdish civilians who had fled into the mountains of northern Iraq and southern Turkey. Within 24 hours of the order to the U.S. European Command, the first military units arrived at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. Within 36 hours, the U.S. Air Force made its first airdrop of supplies, a total of 27 tons, near several Kurdish refugee camps (Allardice: 1). The primary missions in Northern Iraq consisted of air drop of relief supplies; air cover for security forces; enforcing a no-fly restriction on [all] Iraqi aircraft north of 36 degrees latitude; continuous aerial reconnaissance to include frequent photo reconnaissance; aerial resupply; and troop transport. Most of the air force elements employed in this effort had just returned to their home units from Incirlik, where they had been deployed for the air campaign in northern Iraq that supported DESERT STORM. This experience proved to be the key to immediate operations, as the initial Air Tasking Order, flight routes, and procedures were all derived from the prior operation.' The effort quickly became a combined operation, as military forces from the U.S., Britain, France and Turkey set about delivering emergency aid (Bush j: 273).

A Change in Plans

Although the air drop program successfully delivered tons of emergency supplies, it quickly became viewed as a "drop-in-the-bucket" in comparison to what was needed. Secretary of State James Baker needed only seven

The author was deployed to the Combined Task Force for PROVIDE COMFORT, where he was Intelligence-Imagery Officer.

minutes in a Kurdish refugee camp during a 7-9 April 1991 fact-finding visit to Turkey to see that full-scale intervention was necessary (Schorr 22). Declaring that he had "seen examples of cruelty and human anguish that really do defy description," Baker joined Turkish Foreign Minister Alptemocin in a joint U.S.-Turkish declaration that international support was urgently needed. Baker declared:

Our relief efforts, including air drops of supplies, have begun, but they alone are not going to be enough. We cannot do this alone. We cannot do this alone with the Turkish Government. Together, we simply cannot cope with this mounting human tragedy (J. Baker: 272).

President Bush immediately directed the U.S. military to expand its mission to sustain the entire refugee population for 30 days and to establish forward ground bases and transit centers for increased efficiency of aid distribution. The most significant change in the original plan, however, came on 16 April, when Bush directed the construction of several resettlement communities in northern Iraq, inside of a security zone, in which refugees and displaced Kurds would be moved, administered, and protected from Iraqi attack by U.S., British, and French ground forces (Bush j: 273). The initial plans called for the construction of 12 camps, each with a 20,000-person capacity. But a psychological operation designed to convince many Kurds that it was safe to return to their own homes inside the security zone was successful, and the number of shelters required dropped to only four camps.

As the multinational forces attended to the Kurds' survival needs and prepared to transport them to the security zone resettlement camps in Zakho, it became apparent that the security zone needed to be enlarged to

include Al Amadiyah. On 5 May, the security zone was again extended eastward from Al Amadiyah to include the city of Suri. On 11 May, the multinational forces assigned to Joint Task Force Alpha began transporting refugees to Zakho, and on 13 May, the United Nations agreed to accept control and responsibility for the first resettlement camp in Zakho (Author's observations).

As the resettlement operation progressed, it again became apparent that a great number of refugees could be directly resettled in their homes if the security zone were increased to include the provincial capital city of Dohuk, the original home of about 250,000 refugees. On this occasion, the constantly troublesome Iraqi Army refused to withdraw its occupation force, raising the expectation of a major armed conflict between the humanitarian forces and the Iraqi Army. Although the CTF reached an agreement with the Iraqis for the inclusion of Dohuk on 22 May, the coalition forces who entered Dohuk on 25 May were greatly relieved to observe the Iraqi forces withdrawing from their newly prepared fortifications (Author's observations).

On 6 June, the last mountain refugee camp was emptied and the displaced population was successfully transported to the Security Zone. The next day, the CTF transferred all relief operations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and on 8 June, the phased redeployment of humanitarian forces began. Operation PROVIDE COMFORT II began on 15 July, as a force of about 5,000 personnel from 6 coalition countries remained at Incirlik Air Base to deter Iraqi aggression against the resettled Kurds. Aerial reconnaissance and armed flights continued over northern Iraq during this phase.

Intelligence Support for Emergency Airdrop Operations

Planning for the humanitarian intervention operation was done entirely "on the fly," as there had been no anticipation that the U.S. would become involved in any relief efforts (Fishel: viii). The main intelligence problem for the initial mission was determining locations, numbers, and conditions of the refugees. Essentially an air mission, the intelligence staff was drawn from the Headquarters U.S. Air Forces Europe Directorate for Intelligence. This intelligence staff deployed from Ramstein Air Base on 6 April with an initial list of refugee camps, provided by British intelligence and U.S. imaging satellites, that guided the U.S. Air Force's first airdrops

(Branch). Satellite and U-2R imagery, both of which were produced in Germany, were provided in hardcopy form to aircrews with appropriate drop zones annotated.

Besides the standard intelligence requirements for an air-drop mission, this operation required intelligence on the culture, customs, politics, lifestyle habits, and history of the Kurds. The condition and needs of the refugees could not be ascertained, however, until U.S. Special Forces personnel entered the camps and provided direct operational intelligence reporting (Branch). This information was not only extremely important for the forces in direct contact with the refugees and the planners who shaped decisions, but also to the psychological operations elements after the mission expanded.

A New Ballgame

On 16 April, President Bush's order to resettle the Kurdish refugees greatly expanded the ground mission and brought a corresponding change in emphasis in intelligence tasking. Already enroute to the NATO base at Incirlik, Turkey, to "sort out the issue with respect to the Army role in the refugee crisis," General Shalikashvili arrived at virtually the same time that President Bush announced that the U.S. with Britain and France would create a security zone in northern Iraq and a multinational military force would protect the refugees and stay until the UN was operational in the area (Fishel: 52). As the new commander of the now-Combined Task Force PROVIDE COMFORT, Shalikashvili directed the establishment of ground bases and the deployment of over 10,000 multinational ground forces into northern Iraq. Although most of the forces that entered Iraq maintained unit and national integrity, the headquarters staffs were fully integrated. Indeed, the chain of command within the intelligence staff was populated with field grade British Army intelligence officers who directly supervised company grade U.S. officers.

Central to the operation were two subordinate forward-deployed task forces, Alpha and Bravo. JTF Alpha had the mission of finding, caring for, and persuading the refugees to come down from the mountains. Located in Silopi, in the Turkish mountains near the Iraqi border, this task force consisted primarily of U.S. Special Forces personnel. JTF Bravo had the mission of establishing and securing temporary camps as close to the major cities that were home to the refugees as possible. Located in the city of Zakho, in northern Iraq, this task force consisted of a wide range of U.S.

and allied military specialists. Rounding out the operational customers of the CTF PROVIDE COMFORT Intelligence Staff, the CTF included an air forces element which included all helicopters, except for Marine aircraft. This element was designated AFFOR and was collocated at Incirlik with the CTF.

An unusual element of the operation was the close working relationship between the military and the civilian aid organizations. Civilian involvement had profound ramifications for intelligence support. Although all of the coalition nations were intelligence-sharing allies, the issue of sharing classified intelligence information was a problem when the personnel from non-governmental agencies increased participation. As civilian participation grew, the use of satellite imagery dwindled drastically. The phrase, “if I can't show it, then I can't use it, so don't send it" became the guideline for intelligence production in support of operational-level requirements. The CTF Intelligence Staff did have, however, full authority to show but not release any imagery they felt necessary for mission

accomplishment (Branch).

Support to Operating Forces

The initial problem that General Shalikashvili faced was to stop the 1,000-deaths per day casualty rate and stabilize the refugees' situation from one of panic and chaos. The major problems encountered in the mountain camps were:

polluted water supplies, poor sanitation, diarrhoeal disease, poor rubbish disposal, inadequate tents with large numbers of refugees still living in crowded conditions in animal stables, and the scarcity of drugs and supplies (H. Palmer: 303).

While field-validated operational reports satisfied the requirement for refugee condition and needs assessments, imagery interpreters of satellite and U-2R aerial reconnaissance film ensured that all refugee sites had been located. Signals intelligence played virtually no role in the effort to locate either the Kurds or the Iraqis.

A serious intelligence shortfall initially hindered the ground transportation of supplies and refugees: the shortage of maps. While the air operations could rely on the residual maps from the air campaign at the end of DESERT STORM, there had been no requirement for maps that supported