While Balkans summers were pleasant, winters concentrated survival skills not only in chilly barracks but also negotiating snow-bound roads and icy tracks through woods with the ever-present threat of ambush. By Grapple 3, the Corps presence had increased to twenty NCOs supporting two battle groups and the UN Protection Force. On 14 December 1995, the Dayton Peace Accord ended hostilities and the deployment of the Protection Force but it generated mass refugee movement from Serbia into Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such was the tension that the NATO-led Implementation Force was formed to enforce the Accords under command of Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps at Sarajevo. Six days later, 4 Armoured Brigade, which was already with the United Nation Protection Force transferred from Grapple to Operation Resolute as the advance guard for HQ 3rd Division destined to control the Multi National Division (South West) at Gornji Vakuf. The Allied Counter-Intelligence Unit was reinforced from 2 Military Intelligence Battalion and the Joint Field Interrogation Unit strengthened by the Joint Interrogation Wing and the Defence Debriefing Team to cater for the importance of Human Intelligence. The United Kingdom National Intelligence Cell provided Signals Intelligence with a mix of Operators Military Intelligence and Signals Analysts, mainly from 9 Signal Regiment in Cyprus working in 12-hour shifts and progressing from Land Rovers to frame tents in a barracks in the suburbs of Sarajevo to box bodied lorries and finally Corimec prefabricated buildings. By 1998, the ground around their position had been de-mined and they had built a bar, the ‘Flatulent Pheasant’. Administering Intelligence Corps was the Military Intelligence Co-ordinating Desk, initially manned by Intelligence and Security Group (V), yet again demonstrating its importance to the Corps.
The deployment of HQ 3rd Division led to reinforcements of Regulars and also Reservists from 3 MiIitary Intelligence Company (V) supporting the Headquarters Intelligence section, the Field Security section assembled from 92 Security Section and Brigade Intelligence Sections. Company Headquarters was in a former metal factory at Banja Luka. Several NCOs supported battle groups in Croatia and western Bosnia as ‘intelligence liaison officers’, for instance Sergeants Carl Hewitt and Andy Mace with a Dutch battalion. When HQ 1st Armoured Division rotated with 3rd Division in June 1996 and brought 1 Mechanised Brigade, for the first time in Corps history, there was the wholesale rotation when 1 Military Intelligence Company relieved 3 Military Intelligence Company (V). By the early autumn, of the 106 soldiers in 1 Military Intelligence Battalion, all but twenty-two had served in Bosnia and of those, all but eight were due for deployment before Christmas. In July, the Allied Counter-Intelligence Unit and the Interrogation Unit were absorbed into the Allied Military Intelligence Battalion and based with Headquarters Rapid Reaction Corps at the Jadran Hotel in south-west Sarajavo. Its 200 all ranks originating from eleven nations, of which 115 were Regular and Reservist Intelligence Corps. In Croatia, 2 Company, commanded by a Dutch major, was widely envied because it was based in an excellent hotel. Meanwhile, 3 Company, supporting HQ Multi National Division (South West), was commanded by an American major and 4 Company at Tuzla airfield had the benefit of a large US PX complex.
The Strategic Defence Review published after the Labour Government came to power in 1997 focused on the principles that the Armed Forces must be able to:
• Respond to a major international crisis which might require a military resolution.
• Retain the ability to deploy a brigade.
• Mount low intensity operations.
• Retain the ability to mount pre-Options for Change operation as part of a NATO collective deployment
In response, the Army formed two deployable divisions, 1st Armoured in Germany and 3rd Division in the United Kingdom. The addition of 16 Air Assault Brigade gave a deployable force of three armoured brigades, three mechanised infantry brigades and one airmobile brigade, each supported by Intelligence Corps assets. In addition, the Corps provided other back-up including support to HQ Land, Permanent Joint HQ at Northwood, the Ministry of Defence and the Joint Rapid Reaction Force providing a Brigade-sized force at short notice and 3 Commando Brigade.
In the Balkans, the Kosovar Albanians were subjected to systematic Serbian harassment, however hopes of protection under the Dayton Accord was largely ignored by the international community. In November 1997, retaliation by the Kosovo Liberation Army sparked a disproportionate Serbian torched earth response. In December, the Implementation Force was rebranded the Stabilisation Force. In January 1998, Corporal Lee Marshall, an Army Air Corps transferee posted to 25 Military Intelligence Section, was deployed to 6 Czech Mechanised Battle Group as the intelligence liaison officer when a Mi-8 Hook helicopter in which he was conducting a regular reconnaissance, crashed soon after take-off. Marshall triaged his fellow passengers and found that two had serious injuries. While medics prepared them for transfer to hospital, Marshall stabilised a Czech captain with chest injuries. Several weeks later, he was the centre of media attention when the Czech Minister of Defence presented him with the ‘For Injury’ award, probably the only Intelligence Corps recipient.
By October, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke negotiated the deployment of 2,000 monitors into Kosovo under Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe but they proved no more effective than the peacekeepers in Bosnia. International pressure failed to convince Kosovo and Serbia to resolve their differences and when the monitors were withdrawn in late March, the herding by Serbian forces of a million people from Kosovo into Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro led to NATO aircraft bombing military targets in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo. With the region facing a grave humanitarian crisis, Kosovo Force was formed in June as part of the US-led Operation Joint Guardian under Security Mandate Resolution 1244 for NATO to neutralize Serbian aggression, demilitarize the Kosovo Liberation Army and support the international humanitarian effort. Operation Agricola was the British contribution. On 12 June 1999, 5 Airborne Brigade, accompanied by 41 (Parachute) Military Intelligence Section, advanced through booby-trapped road tunnels and seized the Kacanik defile as a prelude to establishing a secure environment in Kosovo. The Intelligence Corps contribution to the rotating British brigades, to NATO, to multi national task forces and to the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Task Force was significant with Slim Lines outside Pristina providing accommodation and venues for countless conferences. On Agricola VI, the SO3 Counter-intelligence was filled by a RAF Provost officer, who, by default, also commanded the Field Security Detachment. Not for the first time in the Corps history did inter-Services cultures cause a problem until it was agreed that the RAF Police Warrant Cards issued to the detachment would not be used during counter-intelligence and protective security operations. In August 2005, NATO restructured Kosovo Force to five task forces to give it greater flexibility.
The fifteen years that British forces were in Bosnia reminded successive governments that predicting the length of military campaigns is dangerous. Elsewhere an Intelligence Corps detachment joined the Australian-led International Force in September 1999 after Indonesia had rejected the East Timor vote for independence.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Coalition Operations 2000–2010
Over-qualification of judgments is not helpful to commanders and should be avoided
Paul Crick
Throughout the 1990s, as Iraq was accused of developing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Coalition air forces maintained pressure on the country. The 9/11 attacks then saw President George Bush (junior) launch the global War on Terror against regimes and organizations identified as associated with international terrorism. Top of the target list was Osama bin Laden.
Forming the Islamist Al-Qaeda in 1988, he squeezed influential Saudis to finance the Mujahideen fighting the Marxist Afghan government that had seized power after the Soviet Army had withdrawn in 1989. The rejection by Saudi Arabia of his offer to help eject the Iraqis from Kuwait in 1990 and then Saudi Arabia permitting Western forces to enter the country led to him claiming that the ‘inf
idel’ presence insulted the sacred mosques of Mecca and Medina. Banished to Sudan, his vow to attack the US and its allies saw him expelled and move to Afghanistan, a country that had largely resisted invasion since Alexander the Great and was now governed by the Taliban, which had overthrown the government in 1993. The Taliban is a fundamentalist politico-religious Islamic organization that emerged in the early 1990s in religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan and was introducing its fundamentalist brand to Afghanistan. By 1996, US intelligence believed that bin Laden was sheltering with the Taliban.
With a new international focus, Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon introduced a New Chapter to the Strategic Defence Review that acknowledged the need for intelligence:
We need to look further into how we should allocate the investment which is needed, including, for example, to intelligence gathering, network-centric capability, including enhanced strike and Special Forces capabilities and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, improved mobility and fire power for more rapidly deployable lighter forces, temporary deployed accommodation for troops, and night operations.
For the Intelligence Corps, it was a significant statement that would stabilise its future during a period when it was evaluating its history and culture in greater depth than seen before. Faced with Mr Hoon’s challenge and with the Peace Dividend overtaken by the uncertainties of insurgency and international terrorism tinged with religious fanaticism, Brigadier Peter Everson, who had taken over as Director in 2001, laid out his strategy of:
A Corps that is commanded, trained, structured and resourced appropriately to deliver MI capability to meet current and future Defence tasks.
Military operations in Afghanistan began a month after 9/11 in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom with the intention of removing bin Laden from Afghanistan and preventing Al-Qaeda from being a threat to the security of the US and its allies. The first British contingent arrived as part of Operation Veritas to assist the Afghan Transitional Authority with reconstruction. When HQ 3rd Division assumed command of the rotating new multi-national International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Operation Fingal, Intelligence Corps support to the HQ and the Kabul Brigade was considerable, if restricted by operations in Northern Ireland and the Balkans and actually getting to Afghanistan. The J2 Branch, which is the Operational Intelligence part of Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), had predicted ‘the New World Order’ in a symposium, deployed with intelligence support for UK forces and eighteen other Troop Contributing Nations, but developing the Intelligence Cycle was hindered by slow deployments with the Task Force Intelligence Section initially providing the only ‘feed’. In due course, a Force Human Intelligence Team, a UK National Intelligence Cell detachment, an electronic warfare team and 89 (Airborne) Intelligence Section, then supporting 16 Air Assault Brigade, all deployed in December. The backbone of the multi-national All Sources Analysis Cell was formed by 33 MI Section from the new 4 MI Battalion. Within days of landing at Bagram Airfield, the Field Security Detachment, so called because it had deployed under operational conditions, concluded that the force protection of HQ ISAF in a Kabul sports and social club in the city centre and opposite the US Embassy was far from ideal. The Detachment also followed the practices of its predecessors by collecting information on tribal interfaces and government and police structures, advised Afghan officials on personal survival, vetted locally-employed civilians and conducted counter-intelligence investigations. While other Contributing Nations lived in buildings, conditions for the British were rough – tents and wrecked buildings, ‘compo’ rations and twenty minute weekly phone calls to UK.
Operation Fingal was concluded in June 2002 when ISAF command was transferred to Turkey. The British contingent of 3,500 was scaled down to 300 with operations primarily directed at internal security in Kabul and supporting the UK Afghan National Army Training Team.
Sierra Leone
By 2002, civil war had devastated Sierra Leone but when the Revolutionary United Front resisted attempts by African UN peacekeepers to restore order, the Permanent Force HQ launched in Operation Palliser was to restore law and order. In addition, 2 Military Intelligence Battalion provided a detachment to support Short Term Training Team 1 training the Sierra Leone Army. A second detachment provided Force Protection, which was deeply involved with counter-intelligence when eleven Royal Irish Rangers and Sierra Leone soldier were captured by the decidedly unstable West Side Boys. A sergeant was threatened by a drug-fuelled child soldier who demanded his weapon. A third team trained the Sierra Leone Force Intelligence and Security Unit, who were issued with stable belts donated by the Intelligence Corps Association. In 2003, an officer was attached to the US-led Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa established in Djibouti as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Iraq
In 2002, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 demanded that Iraq cooperate with its Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission investigating evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. An analysis, commonly known as the ‘dodgy document’, that emerged from the Joint Intelligence Committee then made the case for war but controversy has since surrounded its credibility because it appears that Defence Intelligence Staff conclusions were ignored. In a letter to the Chilcott Inquiry examining the Iraq War, Major General Michael Laurie, Director General, Intelligence Collection in 2002, wrote:
We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment related to WMD, generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country.
Meanwhile, the Land Manpower Establishment Review saw further rationalization as HQ Land Forces at Wilton was renamed HQ Land Command. It was supported by 473 MI Section. Land Security managed Protective Security ‘far and wide’, including units training in Canada and Kenya. Meanwhile, 3 (V) MI Battalion was earmarked for mobilization. Intelligence Corps support at the Defence Intelligence Staff increased to fifteen officers and twenty-three Intelligence Corps soldiers ranging from lieutenant colonel to lance corporals collating in the Joint Terrorist Assessment Centre and other branches. The Joint Service Signals Organisation and its field components supplied information to the Intelligence Collection Group that included Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Cell, the Defence Geographic Centre and the Joint Aeronautical and Geospatial Organisation.
In February 2003, 1 MI Brigade deployed to Kuwait in support of 1st Armoured Division as the UK Lead Component for Exercise Lucky Warrior, the precursor to Operation Telic, the proposed invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, 11 (HQ 1st Division) MI Section deployed to Camp Rhino, the British concentration area several miles north-west of Kuwait, as the lead component of the Divisional Operational Intelligence Support Group, which included the Joint Service 15 Psychological Operations Group. Based at Chicksands and parented by the Brigade, it supported operations by promoting unbiased political discussion among local populations and collected information on local life by visiting communities and delivering supplies to hospitals and schools. The UK National Intelligence Cell arrived from the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and using Collection, Co-ordination and Information Management Requirements techniques controlled Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance assets during the planning stages. The Fusion Cell became the focal point for briefings. In the Phase One forming up deployment in mid-February, as the Divisional Tactical HQ deployed into the desert, 11 MI Section was enlarged into an All Sources Intelligence Cell and was reinforced by several lance corporals who had recently passed out from Chicksands. Two sergeants completed Intelligence Cycles by drafting daily Intelligence Summaries. The Cell also practiced military drills, such as CH-47 Chinook helicopter drills and managing the intimidating down force of two spinning rotors a few yards from where they crouched. With Company HQ based with HQ Joint Force Logistics Command at the huge US base at Camp Arifjan in southern Kuwait, the FS Company divided into three sections and a counter-intelligence detachment. 2 FSS at Camp A
rifjan supervised unit security and demonstrated British aplomb by patiently waiting in long meal time queues. Meanwhile, 3 FSS ensured the security integrity of British units transiting through the British Centurion Lines in the Coyote concentration area and 5 Security Section conducted counter-intelligence operations within the Divisional Area of Operations and investigated security breaches.
As part of the Land Force Readiness Cycle, as 7 Armoured Brigade moved into Camp Rhino in early February, Brigade HQ divided into the two usual headquarters of Main and Step Up. Its 13 MI Section also split into two detachments, to support the two battle groups. Each was supported by a FS detachment. Both 16 Air Assault Brigade and 89 (Airborne) MI Section assembled in the Camp Eagle concentration area forty miles south of the border and the plan developed that the Brigade would conduct relief in place with the Americans near South Rumaylah oilfields, a warrant officer joined the 5th (US) Regimental Combat Team as the Brigade J2 Liaison Officer. The Light Electronic Warfare Troop, 14th Signal Regiment joined the Brigade Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance screen. Meanwhile, 3 Commando Brigade arrived with its joint Royal Marines and Intelligence Corps Section, which included two Field Security staff sergeants from 1 and 2 MI Battalions until they were diverted to provide Fusion management. And 245 Signal Squadron, with its capability to deploy lightweight, airportable and vehicle platforms, arrived from 14th Signal Regiment (Electronic Warfare) and joined the 1st US Marine Division for familiarization. Major General Robin Brims, commanding 1st Division, concluded that six battle winners were key to the success of Operation Telic: ‘the quality of our troops, especially the junior leadership; Challenger 2 tanks; Warrior APCs; Artillery and the cueing systems, especially Phoenix; HUMINT; and, lastly, the flexibility of our engineers’. In doing so he highlighted an intelligence product that was a fundamental operational asset of the Intelligence Corps. Human Intelligence and Joint Forward Interrogation Teams supported the Brigades, with ‘quality over quantity’ the mantra.
Sharing the Secret Page 45