Special Operations.Com

Operation Guardian Retrieval

Congo and Zaire

17 March - 5 June 1997

Overview

Following factional fighting in Rwanda and the successful gains by Tutsi rebels many Hutus fled in mass into Eastern Zaire. This large exodus resulted in massive refugee camps in Eastern Zaire creating regions of instability and increased tensions. Many non-government organizations (NGO) and private volunteer organizations (PVO) were working in these camps to ease the suffering of the refugees. Continued fighting between the various factions lead to the looting and pilfering of many villages in eastern Zaire endangering those US citizens working with the NGO/PVO. With the increasingly uncertain hostile environment preparations were made for the US Army Southern European Task Force (SETAF) to establish a Joint Task Force Headquarters for the evacuation of US citizens from Zaire.

Noncombatant evacuation operations (NEO) are conducted to support the Department of State (DOS) in evacuating noncombatants and nonessential military personnel from locations in a foreign nation to an appropriate safe haven and/or the United States. NEO are a cooperative effort between the DOS, the JTF and possibly the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The country team and the military component conducting the operation must be fully integrated. Occasionally, as SETAF discovered the Embassy team may have limited experience with its role in a NEO and will quite possibly look for clarity and guidance from the Joint Task Force. The JTF may have to produce a plan for the integration of the embassy team, define the team roles and responsibilities and convince the embassy staff on the desirability of these roles.

The SETAF JTF had to be careful in giving guidance and building the plan, always keeping the team informed and avoiding any implications of seeming to “take over” or to drive the Department of State process too hard. The end result was a plan with clear roles and responsibilities for the country team, agreed to by all parties and rehearsed to various degrees.

The plan developed by the JTF and the Country team placed DOS representatives in 4 locations to support the NEO and are related in the event that another JTF must take such an active role in NEO planning. These locations are shared below:

1. The first, but least critical placement of DOS representatives was at the site where evacuees arrived from “in country”. The DOS representative wearing American clothes and carrying the US flag provided a recognition point for American citizens and gave what initial comfort was possible.
2. The second DOS representative was at location used to separate US citizens from other nationalities and forwarding all personnel to their respective countries evacuation processing center.
3. At the Evacuation Control Center (ECC) there were two senior DOS representatives conducting careful checks of passports and other documents to confirm or deny whether people were official evacuees. The official evacuees were provided Transportation Letters authorizing onward movements to safe havens. The ECC was a critical location for DOS representation.
4. The most critical location for DOS representation was at the interface between evacuees moving by plane to the safe haven and the airlines at the airport and the DOS chartered aircraft to take people out of country. The 2 DOS representatives, assisted by US Marines, accounted for all personnel as they moved to the airplane and assisted at the civilian ticket counter lending assistance to evacuees in making commercial arrangements.

The Role of U.S. Special Operations Forces

From 19 March to 14 April 97, Pave Lows from the 21st Special Operations Squadron (21 SOS) were deployed to Gabon. We were in Brazzaville Congo. The NEO never happened from Kinshasa Zaire to Brazzaville. On 19 March a 18-man assessment team was deployed from SOCEUR to Brazzaville to assess the situation this was done using a suite at a civilian hotel located on the banks of the Congo River on the Brazaville side. One important role for the team was to find a way to evacuate the Americans by RIB boat from the Ambassadors residence in Zaire to the U.S. embassy in Brazzaville - that was figured out easily. The next task was to find a way to evac them if the ball dropped "right now". The team located two large ferrys on the Congo side, as well as a Boston Whaler and various other boats at the Ambassador's residence on the Brazzaville side which were slated for use if needed. The ferrys were 50 meters each and could carry 400 passengers each.  As the JSOTF only had to evacuate 1,000 American and Canadian citizens, and the river was only 2 miles wide, the evac could be accomplished if every one was in place in under 3 hours. This became the plan that would be used if it was going to happen. When this plan was finalized the Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) had been formed, SOCEUR under Gen. Lambert and CTAFF commander Gen. Smith. It took approximately three days to convince Gen. Smith that a Navy SEAL and Special Boat Unit (SBU) package was needed here, and not a lot of helos. The drop zones (DZ) on both sides needed clearing, however it was decided that clearing the DZ's could very well have started hostilities.

Web Sites

Joint Tactical Communications - Operation Guardian Retrieval (1.44M; slides in MS PowerPoint 8)

Final preparations are made on an MH-53J Pave Low III helicopter just prior to its loading into the belly of a C-5 Galaxy headed for Libreville, Gabon, as part of the enabling force to support Operation Guardian Retrieval. (Air Force photos by Tech. Sgt. Jim Greeley)