|
Admiral
Sir Michael Boyce and
General Tommy Franks in their
meeting in the UK Chiefs
of Staff Room
(Click
here for hi-res version)
|
|
Admiral
Sir Michael Boyce and
General Tommy Franks at the
short Press Conference afterwards
|
General Tommy Franks, Commander
in Chief of the US Central Command, visited London on
26 April for discussions with Admiral Sir Michael Boyce,
the Chief of the Defence Staff, and his fellow Chiefs
of Staff. Afterwards, General Franks, accompanied by
CDS and Rear Admiral Quigley USN, gave a brief press
conference at the Old War Office, Ministry of Defence.
Boyce:
Welcome ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure
to have General Franks visiting us here in London. He
has a schedule that is obviously incredibly tight, and
huge reponsibilities. The reason I am particularly delighted
to see him today is that we have a very long history
in our armed forces of working very closely alongside
our American friends. And this has been exemplified
by what has been going on in the Afghanistan theatre
over the last four or five months or so. And on the
land and in the air and on the sea, everything that
I have experienced in my forty years in the Navy and
in the Armed Forces has been brought out there: we are
working very closely together and we have had people
also in General Frank's headquarters, and the various
headquarters associated with this campaign, where again
we have had the most effective liaison. We know each
other anyway, we have seen each other from time to time,
speak frequently, and so to have General Franks come
here giving the opportunity to give some of my staff
the opportunity to talk to him and get some of his views,
has been enormously helpful today, but I guess there
haven't been any great surprises because we do talk
very regularly, we are in each other's minds, but its
always good to come face to face. [Inaudible] General?
Franks:
[Inaudible] I have had the chance this morning to be
with Admiral Sir Michael Boyce. I was thinking as we
came down the hall, I mentioned to him that it was a
bit of a lesson for me, because I have on behalf of
my country responsibility for only 25 nations, and he
has responsibility for forces around the world. And
I started thinking about the relationship that we have
had since the Afghanistan operation started to be sure,
but then I also thought about other occasions where
we have met and had the chance to serve together in
our Armed Forces over my time in the Service. So I am
right now on the last day of about six or seven day
visit through the region, came back through London in
order to have the chance to meet with Sir Michael and
his staff. It's been a very good session, very frank,
free, open dialogue. I am honoured to be here and I
appreciate Sir very much that you take the time to see
me and with that we'll take the questions.
Q:
Could I ask you, although there's no political decision,
are you making contingency plans for any possible military
action in Iraq?
Franks:
I will tell you at this point that I don't think decisions
have been made, certainly in my own country, about future
operations in Iraq. What we have done is we have started
to talk together, to think about where we are today
with Saddam Hussein's regime and I think policy level
discussions will continue both in Washington and in
London, and we will wait to see what decisions may be
made ats ome point in the future.
Q:
On Afghanistan, General, it looks increasingly clear
that many of the people that you want are probably located
in Pakistan, rather than actually in Afghanistan itself.
[Inaudible] Do you really see a reasonable chance of
getting to grips with senior Al Qaida and Taliban figures
who are widely reported to be based in that country?
Franks:
I think without doubt that at some point in the future,
the leadership of the terror networks with global reach,
Al Qaida among them, will be brought to justice. I think,
as I remind myself every day, that we have more than
thirty nations represented at my headquarters, in Tampa,
Florida, with liaison cells, and Pakistan is one of
those nations, interestingly, that is represented there.
I met with President Musharraf and a good many Pakistani
officials very early in this operation, and I have met
with him several times since. Their cooperation is terrific.
I think what we recognise is the situation that President
Musharraf sees himself inside his own country and what
we are going to do is to continue to cooperate. I think
we have not seen a suggestion of unilateral operations
being conducted inside Pakistan by any nation member
of our coalition. The secret for us is to continue to
cooperate and surely the problems that we find in Pakistan
will be rooted out.
Q:
Is there any sense in which you are likely soon to reach
a point of diminishing return in the operation in Afghanistan?
There seems to be a very fine line between tribesmen
who may or may not have supported the Taliban in the
past, and just local people who don't like the intrusion
of foreign military presence and more and more we get
the sense of the sporadic nature of some of the military
action levelled against the coalition forces. There
does seem to be this local disgruntlement or criminal
activities or whatever. Can you see any end point to
the operation; the phase of the operation in Afghanistan?
Franks:
I think what we see in Afghanistan is the character
of Afghanistan as it has been for a great many years.
We continue to operate with the Interim Administration
in Afghanistan of Chairman Karzai. We are going to continue
those operations through the Loya Jirga process and
then with the transitional government. And so if you
ask do we see fractious behaviour inside Afghanistan,
the answer is of course we do. If you ask do we sense
that we've reached a point of diminishing return, I
don't think so at all. I think that the Afghan people
remain very committed to get out from under the foot
of these terrorist organisations that have in fact been
running Afghanistan for quite a number of years. And
that has not made the Afghan people all too happy. So
we'll continue to see the difficulties that we have
seen in the past in Afghanistan, and in fact I think
it's been said that we would expect to have the remnants
of Al Qaida, will try to regroup themselves, we would
expect to see some difficulty in that country. But I
think the vision for the future in terms of providing
the people of Afghanistan an opportunity to run their
own lives and to run their own country, is something
that's desirable, and we'll continue to work for that.
Q:
General Franks, if I could follow that question by asking
you to describe the nature of the kind of encounter,
the kind of fighting that's going on now; have these
moved away from large-scale encounters, is air power
less necessary now, are we seeing the kind of sporadic
episode that's just been alluded to, sometimes in civilian
areas?. Can you describe what is going on?
Franks:
I will. I don't think I would predict what we may see
in the future in terms of large groupings of enemy forces.
I will say right now we do not see that. What we see
are smaller groups, we see groups of enemy soldiers
trying to blend in with communities if you will, we
find ourselves dealing with community leaders all over
Afghanistan every day. And the smaller contacts that
we see are frequently brought about by the Afghans telling
us, well yes there are foreigners here, and in fact
providing us the intelligence information that we use
to go after them. So that is the character of what we
see right now, and I think we are not sure whether we
will see additional Anaconda-like operations
in the future. We certainly, along with the United Kingdom,
maintain the capability to respond in that way if we
need to in future.
Q:
Do you see a specific role for the Royal Marines, or
are they going to work in coodination with the Americans
and the Canadians on the border. Is there something
specifc you have in mind for them?
Franks:
45 Commando and what we call Task Force Jacana
has in fact been engaged in, I think we might say, "Sweep
and Clear" operations in south-eastern Afghanistan.
I would not see a change to that in future. They are
very much a part of the coalition force that we see
on the ground in Afghanistan. What I wouldn't want to
do is say where you may see them employed in the future,
because I don't think you'd want to telegraph that sort
of information to the terrorists. They have played a
role in our operations there and I believe they will
continue to play a role in the future.
Q:
Uniquely perhaps, Britain has not just played a
role in the military phase of the operation in Afghanistan;
it has also been playing a leading part in the peacekeeping
side of the operation as well. There's a lot of talk
now in Washington about needing to help the reconstruction
of Afghanistan; nation-building is rather more on the
agenda than perhaps it has been before. Do you foresee
the American military perhaps taking on some of the
peacekeeping duties as well, or do you see American
forces being restricted solely to warfighting tasks?
Franks:
A good question. Difficult to say at this point. I think...
we know what we have seen in the past, and I think...
you mentioned the point, the International Security
Assistance Force with the lead nation the UK, tremendously
effective in setting a stable condition, a relatively
stable condition, around Kabul. By the way, one of the
other things that we don't see mentioned a great deal
is the work that was done in the Bonn Conference that
permitted the people of Afghanistan to identify an Interim
Administration and I think that gave us a very powerful
front end to some of the success that we've seen there.
So if you take the Bonn Conference and you take the
International Security Assistance Force, and then if
you look at [inaudible] and you think about the Tokyo
conference, you think about Geneva, you think about
these international organisations, I guess what we will
see is continued commitment by international organisations
and by the international community to assisting the
people of Afghanistan as they try to work their way
forward. Now the specific military pieces of that, I'm
not sure I know right now. I think what we are going
to do with the Enduring Freedom task force is we are
going to continue to work with our coalition partners
to rout out and do away with these terrorist networks
and pockets of small numbers that I described a minute
ago. So I won't predict exactly who will be involved
in assisting in Afghanistan, humanitarian assistance,
rebuilding infrastructure, that sort of thing. But I
will say I think the international community will remain
committed to it for the future.
Rear
Admiral Quigley: A couple more please?
Q:
If there is a decision to mount an operation in Iraq,
can America cope with what could be a large-scale operation
as well as continue on a relatively large scale in Afghanistan?
Franks:
I think that we, both from a US perspective and from
a coalition perspective, we have the capability to do
what our leadership, whether it's UK or whether it's
in the United States of America, may ask us to do. Perhaps
an indirect answer to your question, because I won't
tie that to any particular piece of geography or any
particular country. But I will say that I think the
military capacities of our countries remain up to the
tasks that we are likely to receive.
Q:
Turning if I may to the lessons that can be drawn
from the operations in Afghanistan so far, we've seen
this extraordinarily high-tech American [inaudible];
more spending planned in the future; even more fascinating
and extraordinary technologies coming on line. And yet
it seems what you really need - perhaps to some extent
what you lack - is, you know, very highly trained infantry
soldiers, of whatever kind they may be, to literally
scout around, piece by piece. Now clearly technology
has a role, but has your faith in technology, in a sense,
lessened any in the wake of the Afghan operation?
Franks:
Actually, it has not. I think technology has been a
great enabler for us over there. And with respect to
the other part of your question, I know military people,
whether it's in my own country or in a country of one
of our coalition members, will think always, as we decide
what a military operation will look like, we are going
to consider several factors. One will be the mission
that we are asked to perform; another will be the configuration
and the size of the enemy force; another will be the
terrain in which we are going to operate; another will
be the time we have available to conduct the operation.
And if we look back at the case in Afghanistan, what
we see is that each of the operations, whether it's
the operation in Mazar-e-Sharif, or Taloqan, or Kandahar,
or in Operation Anaconda, we'll see different
variables as they relate to what I've just described:
mission, enemy, troops available, and so forth. And
so each of those operations has been a bit different,
because the variables have been a bit different. And
so if we ask for overarching lessons learnt, I would
say that we have found technologies that we believe
do work very, very well for us. We have seen the most
accurate guidance systems employment that I think we
may have ever seen. We have seen the power of having
the air-ground teams, the air and ground team working
together, and we have seen what that produced. We have
seen the efficacy of certain forms of organisation being
used to accomplish certain missions, given the variables
I have just described. I think we are right now in our
infancy in appreciating the real enduring lessons from
Afghanistan. Everything that a military force ever does
in the future is not going to be Afghanistan. But what
we do want to do, coming out of Afghanistan, is learn
the lessons that give us insight into enduring principles
that may reach forward into the future. Thanks very
much.
The Ministry
of Defence is not responsible for the content or availability
of external websites.
|
