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MacDill's coalition village detailedBy PAUL DE LA GARZA
© St. Petersburg Times, WASHINGTON -- Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the existence Monday of a "coalition village" at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa designed to help U.S. military strategists fight the war on terrorism. Known officially as the Coalition Coordination Center, the facility is operated by the U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which is directing the war in Afghanistan. CENTCOM created the center, a conglomeration of foreign military personnel, in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, who is familiar with the operation. A cluster of 50 to 100 trailers on a CENTCOM parking lot, the center includes military officers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Qatar, Turkey, Belgium and Canada. CENTCOM declined to talk about the operation for a story published Saturday in the St. Petersburg Times. Fearing a political backlash, the majority of participants did not want to be identified. On Saturday, however, witnesses say the various countries began flying their flags at the coalition village, as the Coalition Coordination Center is known informally on base. At a Pentagon news conference Monday, Myers was asked about the center and the contribution to the war effort by the coalition partners. He answered immediately. "What they're doing down there is coordinating those other countries that have volunteered support, and those aren't the only countries, by the way, but they're the ones that apply primarily to the Central Command area of responsibility," Myers said. "And what they're doing down there is coordinating their contributions, and it can range all the way from a war-fighting contribution to some sort of support contribution in terms of logistics, to chemical and biological units that could go forward and help protect other forces that are forward-deployed in the Gulf. It's the entire gamut. "To do that," Myers said, "I might add that if you've seen the list, that we have several Muslim countries, as well as some other allies in the region and outside the region." CENTCOM's area of responsibility covers Egypt to Turkmenistan. Though it handles the Middle East, CENTCOM is based in Tampa because the United States has never found a politically acceptable headquarters in the region.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
