Combined joint task force-horn of Africa: defense, diplomacy and development

CHIPS, April-June, 2008

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Q: Since you will be working with nongovernment organizations and charities, is the communications infrastructure sufficient to meet your needs?

Rear Adm. Greene: Great question. Our communication efforts are positive and robust. I mean this in the context of how we work within the interagency environment and how we work with the regional international organizations and how that contributes to opening doors for opportunities with nongovernmental organizations.

In particular, USAID is the conduit that is available for us to work closely with when opportunities present themselves with a nongovernmental organization. Our efforts to mature the interagency relationships and our partnering with international regional organizations and finding opportunities with non-governmentals are growing as CJTF-HOA continues to be an enduring part of our engagement effort in East Africa and the Horn of Africa.

Like every relationship, as time goes on, you see how you can increase the benefits of partnering with resources that have mutual objectives in terms of humanitarian assistance, cooperation and engagement.

Q: How do you see the balance between the two main missions of CJTF-HOA, one is the development side and the other is counter-terrorism. Do you pursue counterterrorism only through the development side? Or do you expect to be engaged in kinetic or special ops?

Brig. Gen. Holman: You used a good word--balanced. The development side, we emphasize with drilling wells and building schools. We are trying to counter terrorism in that manner. We are on a military base, and like any military base, we are able to facilitate other types of operations, but we do not have any active counterterrorism mission. That's not our lane.

Our focus is on theater security cooperation and enhancing the capability and capacity of the nations that we have relationships with and giving them the ability to provide counterterrorism support.

Rear Adm. Greene: Let me follow along with that and offer you the view as I see it. The lines of effort that we pursue go across, for example, the military-to-military training side, theater security cooperation from a regional context, and then engagement and cooperation as we look to the civil affairs. All create a greater level of understanding. We certainly are there to forge relationships and to build a partnership where the capacity and capability of our African friends can be increased in the area of security and stability.

Q: What do you see as the impact of the creation of AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command) on the effort in Djibouti? General, what sort of vibrations are you getting from the 13 countries in your AOR?

Brig. Gen. Holman: I can't speak as an expert on the different countries, but in the interactions we have had with the military side of the house, they understand the purpose of AFRICOM, and why we are using that change in management of military activities on the continent.

Since we have built relationships with them, and we interact with them on civil affairs and mil-to-mil training, we are able to have more in-depth discussions about AFRICOM. We are able to explain to them how complex our operations are when we have to interact with three different COCOMs (combatant commands).