Mission horn of Africa

Soldiers Magazine, August, 2005 by Heike Hasenauer

FIFTY miles west of Djibouti City, the capital of Africa's Republic of Djibouti, lies one of the hottest places on the planet, and the lowest point in Africa.

At 515 feet below sea level, Lake Assal--at the top of the Great Rift Valley--is said to be the most concentrated body of saline water in the world.

"It's probably the only notable place to see in Djibouti in j a day," said Bruno Pardigon, the owner of Agence Dolphine Excursion, a local travel agency in Djibouti City. "Every other place requires a trip by boat."

Bordering the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea on the east, Djibouti is a country of vast wastelands, where water is like gold and people depend largely on their livestock for their livelihoods.

Many Soldiers who serve as part of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa say they didn't even know where the country was or why U.S. forces were assigned there until shortly after they arrived. And few had any idea of what the place would be like.

Many are immediately struck by the scorching heat, which they say tops 120 degrees in the summer. Others are taken aback by the region's extreme poverty and some of its more unusual customs, among them the chewing of "qat" or "khat," a leafy green plant that is a mild stimulant.

Khat is such a significant part of life here, in fact, that "Djibouti City has the only prison system where prisoners can check themselves out for khat time and check themselves back in by 5 p.m.," said Chief Petty Officer Darren Runge, a Navy chaplain assistant who helps provide religious services to members of the task force who live at Camp Lemonier, the task force's base of operations.

The U.S. Task Force

Some 1,600 members of the CJTF-HOA--composed of U.S. service members from all branches, plus coalition staff officers from various African nations, Great Britain, France, South Korea and Romania--live at the camp, a former French Foreign Legion post, said task force commander Marine Maj. Gen. Samuel Helland.

The number includes some 275 employees of Kellogg, Brown and Root, who provide combat-service support to the camp.

About 400 Soldiers--active-duty, Reserve and National Guard--compose the bulk of the force, Helland said.

An important participant in Operation Enduring Freedom, the CJTF-HOA was formed when a group of Marines from the 2nd Marine Division set up headquarters in November 2002 to oversee counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa for U.S. Central Command, Helland said.

CJTF-HOA Duties

Today, the combined staff continues its work to counter terrorist operations in the HOA region, which in the CJTF-HOA mission includes the total airspace and land areas of Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia in Africa, and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Helland said.

"We're working to create a more stable environment in the host nations and establish trust, confidence and credibility with the people here," Helland said.

It's no mean feat, considering that the HOA-area is roughly 500 percent larger than the land areas of Iraq and Afghanistan combined, CJTF-HOA officials said. And half of its 659 million inhabitants are unemployed.

By working with internal-development organizations and through civil cooperation, the task force has drilled wells and fixed roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. "We've even repaired mosques," Helland said.

U.S. forces also visit orphanages in Djibouti to foster friendships with caregivers and children. At the same time, the service members fill voids left from leaving their own children thousands of miles away in America.

Civil-affairs teams travel from Camp Lemonier to villages across the region to assess the needs of the local populations and pave the way for visits by U.S. engineers and military medical and veterinary teams.

CPT Rebecca Farrell, deputy staff judge advocate for the CJTF-HOA, advises commanders on the types of funds they can use to perform certain missions and whether a particular project meets the criteria for a humanitarian-aid project, she said.

While engineers drill wells to provide clean drinking water in a region where most of the available water is contaminated, the medical-veterinary teams provide much-needed medicines and vaccinations, both for people and animals.

Still other Soldiers conduct invaluable military-to-military training, which includes counterterrorism training, Helland said.

The task force is contributing to regional stability by training host-nation armies to better protect their borders and coastal areas against potential terrorists, and by providing medical and veterinary care to villages throughout the HOA, said LTC Chris Burns, a special operations plans officer and a member of the Rhode Island National Guard.

In the military-to-military training, "Soldiers from the Army's 3rd and 5th Special Operations Groups--and Navy and Air Force special-operations personnel--work within the CJTF-HOA area to train host-nation armies to deter, detect and destroy al Qaeda factions," Burns said.