United States Central Command
The United States Central Command is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the U.S. Department of Defense. It was established in 1983, taking over the previous responsibilities of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force.
Its area of responsibility includes the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of South Asia. The command has been the main American presence in many military operations, including the Persian Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the war in Afghanistan, as well as the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011., CENTCOM forces were deployed primarily in Afghanistan under the auspices of Operation Freedom's Sentinel, which was itself part of NATO's Resolute Support Mission, and in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve since 2014 in supporting and advise-and-assist roles.
, CENTCOM's commander is Admiral Brad Cooper, U.S. Navy. Two of the last three United States secretaries of defense – Lloyd Austin and James Mattis, both of whom required congressional waivers to be confirmed – were recent CENTCOM commanders.
Of all seven American regional unified combatant commands, CENTCOM is among four that are headquartered outside their area of operations. CENTCOM's main headquarters is located at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida. A forward headquarters was established in 2002 at Camp As Sayliyah in Doha, Qatar, which in 2009 transitioned to a forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
In January 2021, Israel became the 21st country of the CENTCOM AOR, added to another 20 nations including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
History
The command was established on 1 January 1983. As its name implies, CENTCOM covers the "central" area of the globe located between then European and Pacific Commands. When the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan underlined the need to strengthen the U.S. presence in the region, President Jimmy Carter established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force in March 1980. Steps were taken to transform the RDJTF into a permanent unified command over a two-year period. The first step was to make the RDJTF independent of U.S. Readiness Command, followed by the activation of CENTCOM in January 1983.The command was configured to fight both the Soviets if necessary, and assure other U.S. interests in the area. In 1980, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Iran, beginning the Iran–Iraq War. The war risked interruptions to the oil supply route out of the Persian Gulf/Arabian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. Developments like Iranian mining operations in the Gulf led to CENTCOM's first combat operations. On 17 May 1987,, conducting operations in the Persian Gulf, was struck by Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft, resulting in 37 casualties. Soon afterward, as part of what became known as the "Tanker War", the Federal government of the United States reflagged and renamed 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers. In Operation Earnest Will, these tankers were escorted by USCENTCOM's Middle East Force through the Persian Gulf to Kuwait and back through the Strait of Hormuz.
By late 1988, the regional strategy still largely focused on the potential threat of a massive Soviet invasion of Iran. Exercise Internal Look has been one of CENTCOM's primary planning events. It had frequently been used to train CENTCOM to be ready to defend the Zagros Mountains from a Soviet attack and was held annually.
In autumn 1989, the main CENTCOM contingency plan, OPLAN 1002-88, assumed a Soviet attack through Iran to the Persian Gulf. The plan called for five-and-two-thirds US divisions to deploy, mostly light and heavy forces at something less than full strength. The original plan called for these five-and-two-thirds divisions to march from the Persian Gulf to the Zagros Mountains and prevent the Soviet Ground Forces from seizing the Iranian oil fields.
After 1990, General Norman Schwarzkopf reoriented CENTCOM's planning to fend off a threat from Iraq, and Internal Look moved to a biennial schedule. There was a notable similarity between the 1990 Internal Look exercise scripts and the real-world movement of Iraqi forces which culminated in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait during the final days of the exercise. U.S. President George Bush responded quickly. A timely deployment of forces and the formation of a coalition deterred Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia, and the command began to focus on the liberation of Kuwait. The buildup of forces continued, reinforced by United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, which called for Iraqi forces to leave Kuwait. On 17 January 1991, U.S. and coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm with a massive air interdiction campaign, which prepared the theater for a coalition ground assault. The primary coalition objective, the liberation of Kuwait, was achieved on 27 February, and the next morning a ceasefire was declared, just one hundred hours after the commencement of the ground campaign.
The end of formal hostilities did not bring the end of difficulties with Iraq. Operation Provide Comfort, implemented to provide humanitarian assistance to the Kurds and enforce a "no-fly" zone in Iraq, north of the 36th parallel, began in April 1991. In August 1992, Operation Southern Watch began in response to Saddam's noncompliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 condemning his brutal repression of Iraqi civilians in southeastern Iraq. Under the command and control of Joint Task Force Southwest Asia, coalition forces in this operation enforced a no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel. In January 1997, Operation Northern Watch replaced Provide Comfort, with a focus on enforcing the northern no-fly zone. Throughout the decade, CENTCOM carried out a string of operationsVigilant Warrior, Vigilant Sentinel, Desert Strike, Desert Thunder, and Desert Foxto try to coerce Saddam into greater compliance with U.S. wishes.
The 1990s also brought significant challenges in Somalia as well as from the growing threat of regional terrorism. To prevent widespread starvation as the Somali Civil War continued, CENTCOM began Operation Provide Relief in 1992 to supply humanitarian assistance to Somalia and northeastern Kenya. CENTCOM's Operation Restore Hope supported United Nations Security Council Resolution 794 and a multinational Unified Task Force, which provided security until the U.N. created UNOSOM II in May 1993. In spite of some UNOSOM II success in the countryside, the situation in Mogadishu worsened, and the significant casualties of the Battle of Mogadishu ultimately led President Bill Clinton to order the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Somalia.
Throughout the 1990s, following the Gulf War, terrorist attacks had a major impact on CENTCOM forces. Faced with attacks such as the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 American airmen, the command launched Operation Desert Focus, designed to relocate U.S. installations to more defensible locations, reduce the U.S. forward "footprint" by eliminating nonessential billets, and return dependents to the United States. In 1998 terrorists attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 250 persons, including 12 Americans. The October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, resulting in the deaths of 17 U.S. sailors, was linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida organization.
From April to July 1999, CENTCOM conducted Exercise Desert Crossing 1999, centered on the scenario of Saddam Hussein being ousted as Iraq's dictator. It was held in the offices of Booz Allen Hamilton in McLean, Virginia. The exercise concluded that unless measures were taken, "fragmentation and chaos" would ensue after Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
The September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC led President George W. Bush to declare a war against international terrorism. CENTCOM soon launched Operation Enduring Freedom to expel the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which was harboring Al Qaida terrorists and hosting terrorist training camps.
Exercise Internal Look has been employed for explicit war planning on at least two occasions: Internal Look '90, which dealt with a threat from Iraq, and Internal Look '03, which was used to plan what became Operation Iraqi Freedom - the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq, which began on 19 March 2003. In the process, the existing operations plan, OPLAN 1003–98, aka 1003V, which had called for 500,000 troops for the invasion and control of Iraq, was radically slimmed down.
Following the defeat of both the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, CENTCOM remained controlling the U.S. forces deployed there. U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2010 ; and were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2021.
Beginning in October 2002, CENTCOM conducted operations in the Horn of Africa. Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa was established to carry these activities out. These operations involved a series of Special Operations Forces raids, humanitarian assistance, consequence management, and a variety of civic action programs.
The command has also remained poised to provide disaster relief throughout the region; its most recent significant relief operations have been a response to the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, and the large-scale evacuation of American citizens from Lebanon in 2006.
File:YPG and US army Hassaka 1-5-2017.jpg|thumb|U.S. armored vehicle in Al-Hasakah, Syria, May 2017
On 1 October 2008, the Department of Defense transferred responsibility for Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia to the newly established Africa Command. Egypt, home to Exercise Bright Star, the Department of Defense's largest reoccurring military exercise, remained in the CENTCOM Area of Responsibility. On 15 January 2021, responsibility for Israel was transferred from Europe Command to CENTCOM.
In January 2015, CENTCOM's Twitter feed was reported to have been hacked on 11 January by ISIS sympathizers. This situation lasted for less than one hour; no classified information was posted and "none of the information posted came from CENTCOM's server or social media sites"; however, some of the slides came from the federally funded Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In August 2015, intelligence analysts working for CENTCOM complained to the media, alleging that CENTCOM's senior leadership was altering or distorting intelligence reports on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In February 2017, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Defense completed its investigation and cleared the senior leadership of CENTCOM, concluding that "allegations of intelligence being intentionally altered, delayed or suppressed by top CENTCOM officials from mid-2014 to mid-2015 were largely unsubstantiated."
In January 2018, Turkey urged the United States to remove its troops from Syrian city of Manbij, saying that otherwise they might come under attack from Turkish troops; however, former CENTCOM commander Joseph Votel confirmed an American commitment to keeping troops in Manbij. In 2019, the Iranian government designated Central Command a terrorist organization after the Trump administration branded Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with the same label.