RAND: Army Can Boost Mission Success by Better Managing Environmental Considerations

By better managing environmental issues during deployments, U.S. Army units can gain tactical and strategic advantages that will help in combat and post-conflict operations, and boost overall mission success, according to a recent RAND Corporation study.

The study finds that commanders have not usually given environmental concerns high priority during planning, despite the effect environmental conditions can have on troop health, safety and security, and the importance they have for the local population.

Researchers recommend that Army leaders give more weight to strategic, operational and tactical aspects of environmental considerations during planning and operations, and develop comprehensive standards and best practices to address environmental issues during contingencies, an announcement of the study says.

This is consistent with the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine, which highlights the importance of environmental improvements (especially sewage, water and trash) to gain support of the local population.

U.S. experience in Iraq suggests that providing clean water, electricity, sewage and trash management can tip the balance between the local residents supporting the U.S. mission or the insurgency, according to the study. Public opinion surveys suggest that Iraqis care about these issues almost as much as security.

Environmental considerations encompass anything related to the environment that affects the planning and execution of military operations or is affected by those operations. They include (but are not limited to) clean water, sewage-related infrastructure, soldier health, compliance with environmental laws, sustainability, protection of historical and cultural sites, and management of agricultural and natural resources.

“Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of environmental considerations is the role that they can play in achieving U.S. national objectives in counterinsurgency and stability operations,” says report co-author David Mosher, a researcher at RAND, a non-profit research organization.

In countries where environmental conditions and infrastructure are severely degraded, clean drinking water, effective sewage and trash systems, and viable farmland are crucial to local inhabitants. Providing these things can influence whether inhabitants support the local government and U.S. goals and objectives.

“Commanders and planners can take steps in the combat phase to preserve existing environmental infrastructure and resources that will be vital once combat has ended,” Mosher says. “Determining what to preserve will demand that leaders and planners take a strategic view of the operation, including what the end result ought to be.”

The Army also can have a positive influence on the environment. In operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans, U.S. soldiers have helped to build wells, sewage treatment plants and other water infrastructure systems, which were beneficial to both U.S. soldiers and local communities, said report co-author Beth Lachman.

In Iraq, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is helping to restore the Mesopotamian Marshlands that are significant to both regional and migratory bird species, and the local economy.

Environmental issues can also affect soldier health and safety, the costs of an operation, the logistical burden of supporting forces, and diplomatic relations. The study finds that long deployments and extended post-conflict operations like those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans expose U.S. forces to a variety of environmental problems. At one base camp in Afghanistan, legacy pollution problems caused short-term respiratory illnesses for U.S. soldiers until the problem was identified and addressed.

The relationship between the Army and the environment is a two-way street, according to the study. On the one hand, soldiers and operations affect the environment; on the other, the environment affects soldiers and operations, especially because many contingency operations are often conducted in locations that have significant legacy pollution and other environmental problems, according to study authors.

The study finds that base camps raise a host of environmental issues. In most contingencies over the last 20 years, U.S. forces have remained in theater much longer than expected. As a result, base camps that were hastily constructed for temporary use are occupied for many years and often have inadequate environmental systems and procedures, such as insufficient waste management.

Pollution from base camps can affect relations with locals, cause health problems for soldiers, and require costly cleanup efforts. The authors state that Army leaders should anticipate longer stays and design and build base camps accordingly, RAND says.

Operations that require less fuel, water and other resources, and produce less waste, will reduce the logistics burden. A well-designed, efficient base camp can reduce the resources required to sustain it and free logistics assets to support U.S. troops or reduce the number of convoys that must travel along dangerous roads, the report finds.

Environmental conditions can also extend beyond national borders because air and water pollution may travel great distances, affecting diplomatic relations with countries that could be crucial to the mission's success.

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U.S. Civilian Translator Sentenced for Offering Bribes

A former U.S. Army civilian translator was sentenced to three years in prison for attempting to bribe a senior Iraqi police official in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher and U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor of the District of Columbia announced.

Faheem Mousa Salam, 29, of Livonia, Mich., a U.S. citizen, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Judge Richard Leon.

Salam was arrested on March 23, 2006 at Dulles International Airport outside Washington upon his return from Iraq, and pleaded guilty on August 4, 2006 to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Salam admitted that in January 2006, while working in Baghdad as a civilian translator for a U.S. Army subcontractor, he offered a senior Iraqi police official $60,000 in exchange for the official's assistance in facilitating the purchase of 1,000 armored vests and a sophisticated map printer for a sale price of approximately $1 million. Salam requested the official use his position with the Iraqi police force to coordinate the sale of the material to the multinational Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT), an organization designed to train the Iraqi police and border guard in Iraq.

Salam admitted that he later made final arrangements with an undercover agent of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction who was posing as a procurement officer for CPATT. Salam admitted that during the subsequent discussions with the undercover agenthe offered a separate $28,000 to $35,000 "gift" to the agent to process the contracts.

At sentencing, the government argued that Salam was motivated by greed and the prospect of financial gain, rather than any desire to provide the Iraqi troops with equipment; in fact, Salam made no attempt to check the brand names, quality or source of the vests, demonstrating that his motives were anything but altruistic, prosecutors say.


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Former DOD Contractor Sentenced in Bribery, Fraud, Money Laundering Scheme in Iraq

A former US Department of Defense (DOD) contractor was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to forfeit $3.6 million for his role in a bribery and fraud scheme involving contracts in the reconstruction of Iraq, Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the U.S. Justice Department Criminal Division announced today.

Robert Stein, 52, of Fayetteville, N.C., was sentenced today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. The judge also sentenced Stein to three years of supervised release.

Stein was arrested in Fayetteville on Nov. 14, 2005, and pleaded guilty on February 2, 2006, to being a felon in possession of a firearm, possession of machine guns, bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy in connection with a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority --South Central Region (CPA-SC) in al-Hillah, Iraq.

"Robert Stein will now spend nine years in jail for exploiting hispublic position and accepting bribes for contracts during the rebuilding ofIraq," says Fisher. "The Department of Justice will protect the integrity of the federal contracting process byaggressively prosecuting fraud, bribery and other crimes that taint missions as critical as the reconstruction of Iraq."

Stein admitted to participating in a complex bribery, fraud and money-laundering scheme while serving as the comptroller and funding officer forthe CPA-SC. From December 2003 through December 2005, Philip Bloom, a U.S. citizen who owned and operated several companies in Iraq and Romania, Bruce Hopfengardner, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, and numerous public officials, including several high-ranking U.S. Army officers, conspired to rig the bids on contracts being awarded by the CPA-SC so that all of the contracts were awarded to Bloom. In return, Bloom provided the public officials with over $1 million in cash, SUVs, sportscars, a motorcycle, jewelry, computers, business class airline tickets, liquor, future employment with Bloom, and other items of value.

In addition, Bloom laundered over $2 million in currency that Stein and his co-conspirators stole from the CPA-SC that had been designated to be used for the reconstruction of Iraq. Bloom then used his foreign bankaccounts in Iraq, Romania and Switzerland to send the stolen money to Stein, Hopfengardner and other public officials in return for the awarded contracts. In total, Bloom received over $8.6 million in rigged contracts.

During the course of the conspiracy, Stein and other co-conspiratorsstole U.S. currency and funneled those funds to Bloom in order to purchase illegal controlled weapons which they converted to their own personal use in the United States, including assault rifles, silencers, and grenade launchers.

Stein has cooperated with the government's ongoing investigation.

On March 10, 2006, co-conspirator Bloom, pleaded guilty to relatedcharges of conspiracy, bribery and money laundering in connection with thesame scheme as Stein. Bloom is scheduled to be sentenced on February 16,2007.

On August 25, 2006, co-conspirator Hopfengardner pleaded guilty to related charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering inconnection with the same scheme as Bloom and Stein.


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NEWSWEEK COVER: Black Hawk Down

At 5:14 in the evening on Friday, Jan. 19, Donna Brown was at home in Little Rock when her husband, Sergeant 1st Class John Gary Brown, called to say he was at the airfield and ready to take off on a "mission"--a code indicating that he was going into dangerous territory in Iraq and would contact her as soon as he landed. He told her how much he'd enjoyed being with her and their two children and pair of grandchildren during his recent leave. Then he had to cut the conversation short.

She began to worry when he didn't call or e-mail on Saturday, but told herself he was probably still on duty and couldn't get to a phone or computer. The solemn visit from the Army's casualty assistance officers that Monday came as a surprise, she tells Newsweek in the February 5 cover story, "Black Hawk Down" (on newsstands Monday, January 29).

An international reporting team--including Baghdad Bureau Chief Babak Dehghanpisheh, Miami Bureau Chief Arian Campo-Flores, senior White House correspondent Richard Wolffe and national correspondent Dan Ephron--reports on the lives of Brown, and 11 other soldiers killed in the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq.

Combined, the 12 left behind 34 children and at least a dozen grandchildren. Newsweek looks at what their deaths say about the human cost of the Iraq war.

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National Press Club Defends Subpoenaed Reporters

The National Press Club announced its opposition to the U.S. Army's subpoenas of Oakland, Calif., freelance journalist Sarah Olson and Honolulu Star Bulletin reporter Gregg Kakesako.

The subpoenas call for the reporters to testify at the Feb. 5 court martial of Army Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy to Iraq and made several disparaging remarks about the conduct of the war. A petition calling for the dismissal of the subpoena has been posted online.

"The National Press Club vehemently opposes any effort to subpoena reporters over their work," says NPC President Jerry Zremski, Washington bureau chief for The Buffalo News. "Subpoenaing reporters in an effort to make the prosecution's case -- particularly when the charge involves free speech issues -- is abhorrent and grossly perverts the foundation of press freedom this nation is built on."

The National Press Club, founded in 1908, has more than 3,700 members in Washington, D.C., and worldwide. Widely known for its Speaker Luncheon Series, televised by C-SPAN, and its public forums for visiting heads of state, the NPC also is Washington's most frequently used venue for news conferences. The NPC conducts an aggressive program of professional education for journalists, funds scholarships for journalism students ofcolor, and operates the nation's only non-academic research library for journalists. Advocacy of a free press is one of the club's central missions.


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NEWSWEEK: Army Ex-Vice Chief Knew That 'We Were in Deep S---'

Gen. Jack Keane, former Army vice chief of staff, was stepping down just as the insurgency in Iraq started in late spring 2003.

"I went to Iraq in June, looked at it and I knew we werein deep s---," Keane tells Newsweek. "I was going out the door. I felt frustrated. Frustrated with the situation, frustrated with myself andeverything else. And somewhat guilty because I knew how ill prepared the Army was to deal with it."

But Keane gave no public warnings. In Newsweek's January 22 issue (on newsstands Monday, January 15), national security correspondent John Barry and Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas report on why, to date, the military has received little criticism for its actions in Iraq despite all of the recriminations over the situation there--and why some in the armed forces now feel that the top brass should share the blame.

"Everyone recognizes that we made mistakes," says Keane. "The harder part is what to learn from them."

Now, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus has been chosen to find a better way in Iraq. For the past 14 months, Petraeus has supervised the writing of the Army's new field manual on counterinsurgency warfare, FM 3-24. Petraeus is a resourceful, imaginative commander who has shown an ability to adapt to rude surprises, write Barry and Thomas. But he will need to be creative, and he may need to do what generals do not like to do: tell the president that he's wrong, that Iraq cannot be won by more force, that the time has come to pull back. Even Petraeus's own strategy may have been overrun byevents.

"It's ironic," says one of the drafters of the new counterinsurgency manual. "We've finished the counterinsurgency manual just as Iraq looks like it's heading for civil war. We don't have a doctrine for that."

Part of the problem, report Barry and Thomas, was the lack of such a counterinsurgency plan after the invasion. When Gen. George Casey arrived at Baghdad headquarters as the commander of U.S.-led coalition forces, he asked his staff to set up a meeting with the HQ's counterinsurgency team. "His request was met with silence," reports retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a gulf-war veteran and author of an admired study of combat organization. (There was no such staff or counterinsurgency plan.)

Army planners were not oblivious to the risks of a long occupation after a successful, lightning invasion. The pre-war chief of Central Command, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, says, "The thing that kept getting us was: if you go into Iraq you aregoing to inherit a broken society."

But his successor, Gen. Tommy Franks, concentrated almost entirely on the invasion--and essentially ignored postwar planning. Sens. John Warner and Carl Levin, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, respectivelym asked Franks why.

"He said hewas told to stay the hell out of it" by his civilian boss, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Levin recalls. (Franks denies this.)

Keane tells Newsweek that Franks believed that the postwar planning, known as Phase Four, was the responsibility of a different general, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the head of the tiny, understaffed Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (who in turn was soon replaced by a civilian, Ambassador Paul Bremer).

"Franks was dead wrong, and I don't believe he did this thing right, but he literally washed his hands of this Phase Four stuff," says Keane, speaking with unusual bluntness about a fellow officer. (Franks disagrees, pointing out that Garner served under him.)

In and around Baghdad, report Barry and Thomas, the Army's approach was"kinetic"; it would use firepower and brute force. Untrained incounterinsurgency, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, Lt. Gen.Ray Odierno, ordered his men to kick in doors and arrest any man who looked like an insurgent. Overflowing their cells at Abu Ghraib, the prisoners became targets of poorly trained, overwhelmed guards. The consequences toAmerica's image in Iraq--and in the Arab and Muslim worlds--were disastrous. (Odierno, who has recently gone back to Baghdad, insisted in an earlier interview with Newsweek that he had not been heavy-handed.)

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Lessons From Cold War Insurgencies Could Aid Efforts In Iraq, Afghanistan

Tactics used to battle Cold War-era insurgencies – such as offering amnesty to combatants and securing national borders – could help the United States as it confronts insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

While the insurgency in Iraq often is seen as too fragmented to be compared with past events, a review of five decades of RAND research on non-traditional warfare suggests that the current struggle in Iraq is similar in many ways to past insurgencies faced by the United States and other nations.

“The differences between past and current fights against insurgencies are overstated,” says Austin Long, author of the new RAND report. “Many insurgencies during the Cold War were fragmented, with rebel groups fighting each other as well as a central opposition force.”

Long says his review of five decades of counterinsurgency research by RAND suggests there are four lessons of particular relevance to today's ongoing battles: the proper organization of counterinsurgency efforts; the use of amnesty and reward programs; the control of national borders; and pacification of a nation's population.

Long, a doctoral candidate in securities studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviewed dozens of past RAND studies about tactics used against insurgencies in such disparate places as Vietnam, Algiers and El Salvador in order to distill lessons for today's conflicts.

His efforts included working to declassify several reports so that their lessons could be incorporated into his report, which is titled On ‘Other War' – Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research. RAND is a nonprofit research organization.

Long said that past experience shows that measuring progress against insurgents is difficult because the traditional military indicators such as movement of the front line or the number of enemy killed may be misleading. However, there are a number of best-practices in counterinsurgency operations that hold promise for the current efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Long concludes that the best organization to combat insurgencies appears to bring together political and military components into one decision-making group, which insures that the efforts of one does not undercut the progress of the other.

Some movement toward this model has occurred in both Iraq and Afghanistan with efforts called Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which include representatives from the military, the U.S. State Department, development experts and local officials. The teams work together to move forward the dual goals of improving security and developing government resources.

Long suggests these teams be expanded to create similar efforts at the regional and national levels, where they could coordinate overall efforts for counterinsurgency operations and development, as well as settling disagreements that occur at the local level.

“This type of organization helps wean military officials from thinking in terms of divisions and brigades when it comes to counterinsurgency efforts,” Long said.

Another strategy outlined in Other War involves extending amnesty to those involved in an insurgency, as well as offering rewards to people who turn in those who are involved in insurgent fighting.

Long argues that in Iraq amnesty should be offered even to insurgents who have been involved in killings, but only if the combatants agree to fully cooperate with the government and relocate away from insurgent-dominated areas.

Experiences in fighting insurgencies in places such as Malaya and Vietnam show that amnesty programs can encourage thousands of fighters to give up their arms by providing an alternative to the “fight to the finish” mindset that characterizes insurgent battles, according to the report.