New Zealand's Hidden Role at the Biggest US Bombing Base in the Middle East
A recent issue of Air Force News revealed that a senior NZDF officer served
a six-month posting at the Qatar base, placing New Zealanders at the heart
of the main targeting and bombing center in that region, writes Darius
Shahtahmasebi
by Darius Shahtahmasebi
January 28th, 2020
By Darius Shahtahmasebi
Last month the coalition government declared the end of New Zealand Defence
Force deployments in Iraq. The announcement was silent, however, about the
future of another deployment of New Zealand personnel, to a U.S. military
base in the Middle East that has attracted controversy thanks to its role at
the center of a large proportion of U.S. bombing missions in the region.
The base is called the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) and it is
located at the Al-Udeid airbase in the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.
Bombing missions that have been controlled from the base - where aircraft
take off and land every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day - are implicated in large
numbers of civilian casualties.
A recent issue of Air Force News revealed that a senior air force officer,
Group Captain Shaun Sexton, served a six-month posting at the Qatar base;
placing New Zealanders at the heart of the main targeting and bombing center
in that region. The presence of New Zealand staff at the base has been kept
largely quiet by the New Zealand military before now.
Last month, the New Zealand government delivered its decision to withdraw
NZDF personnel from Iraq by next year. But what of Qatar? A spokesperson for
NZDF told the Spinoff that "NZDF personnel based in the Combined Air
Operations Center (CAOC) operate under a separate mandate to the NZDF
personnel in Iraq. This mandate has been approved until 2020." Whether they
intend to maintain the postings to the Qatar base after 2020 remains
unclear.
New Zealand Air Force News
According to information released by NZDF in response to an Official
Information Act request, there are five New Zealand personnel currently
serving at the Al-Udeid Airbase. Two of the troops coordinate air tasking in
support of the Combined Maritime Forces, Operation Inherent Resolve (Iraq
and Syria) and the Resolute Support (Afghanistan) mission. New Zealand also
has three personnel supporting intelligence functions within the U.S.
Central Command Forward Headquarters at the base.
NZDF confirmed that New Zealand personnel at the COAC work across all
regional operations, including those in Syria, where the legality of
U.S.-led operations has been thoroughly questioned (although the NZDF states
that its troops are not involved in combat operations). NZDF said that
because the way the CAOC operates, it is not practical to delineate
participation on a country-by-country basis.
The base was responsible for 8,713 airstrikes (or weapons released) in 2018,
39,577 strikes in 2017 and 30,743 in 2016 (including both manned and
unmanned aircraft).
Group Captain Shaun Sexton told Air Force magazine that "serving in the CAOC
gives an amazing perspective of what is happening in the Middle East".
He added: "You truly get a birds-eye view, allowing fascinating insight into
the politics and tensions in a key region of the world and into the
employment of military effects, especially air power."
In March 2015, a former chief of the operations division at the base, Lt Col
David Haworth, told the Associated Press that "what we are doing today would
[not] be even remotely possible without the coalition partners." This
included intelligence gathering.
According to Sexton, "most of the people serving in the CAOC are from the
United States Air Force. However, the other 15 nations in the coalition have
a huge role to play."
He continued: "The contribution they make to the fight in terms of people
and hardware is significant."
A Stuff Circuit report last year suggested that NZDF personnel had been
secretly operating at the CAOC at Al-Udeid since at least 2016.
Reports indicate that coalition aircraft flying out of the CAOC have been
responsible for anywhere between 10 percent to 20 percent of sorties flown
in Iraq and Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve. In addition, the
airbase is the "nerve center" of U.S.-led air campaigns across the region,
managing and directing air operations in not only Iraq, Syria and
Afghanistan, but in 18 other countries.
U.S. Air Force Capt. Christopher Bowser, left, and Brendon Clark of the
Royal New Zealand Air Force pose at the Combined Air and Space Operations
Center, July 2, 2018, at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. Stephanie Serrano | AP
Approximately 40 percent of all strikes in Iraq and Syria have been
delivered by the B1 Bomber, an aircraft that has only been departing from
the airbase at Al-Udeid.
The CAOC was pivotal in the U.S.-led battle to retake Mosul from ISIS
militants. During the early stages of the offensive, U.S.-led airstrikes
pounded Mosul every eight minutes.
However, an AP report found an appalling rate of civilian casualties during
the operation. It reported that some 9,000 to 11,000 civilians had died,
nearly ten times what had been previously reported in the media. This number
did not take into account dead still buried underneath the rubble.
The Qatar airbase also has undertaken a crucial role in the Syrian war. The
fight to retake ISIS's de-facto Syrian capital city of Raqqa saw the U.S.
military raze approximately 80 percent of the city to the ground
A Raqqan resident told Reuters that corpses were rotting on the street, with
cats eating their bodies. This offensive was further mired by a special BBC
report which found that the U.S. military had made a secret arrangement to
allow hundreds of ISIS commanders and fighters to escape Raqqa unscathed.
Reuters subsequently reported that the number of escaped ISIS fighters
numbered in the thousands.
The base also played a part in US P.r.esident Donald Trump's April 2018
bombing of Syrian government assets in response to an alleged chemical
weapons attack, another controversial use of force.
The NZDF spokesperson said the organization is confident its personnel on
all operations are conducting themselves in accordance with both domestic
and international legal obligations.
Feature photo | A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules at Baghdad International
Airport, Iraq, Dec. 9, 2019. Bethany E. La Ville | DVIDS
Darius Shahtahmasebi is a New Zealand-based legal and political analyst who
focuses on US foreign policy in the Middle East, Asia and Pacific region. He
is fully qualified as a lawyer in two international jurisdictions.
