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WASHINGTON, D.C., 

Jul 15, 2008 — During a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform July 15, 2008, U.S. Africa Command officials and other witnesses testified on AFRICOM's progress, roles, and its intention to partner with African nations and the international community.

Following is the transcript:

Witnesses:

Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense

Ambassador Mary C. Yates, Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Activities, U.S. Africa Command

Major General Michael A. Snodgrass,
Chief of Staff, U.S. Africa Command

Lauren Ploch, Analyst in African Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division, Congressional Research Service

John Penleton, Director, Force Structure and Defense Planning Issues, Government Accountability Office


REPRESENTATIVE JOHN TIERNEY (D-MA): (Sounds gavel.) A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing entitled "AFRICOM: Rationales, Roles and Progress on the Eve of Operations" will come to order.

Good morning. I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here to testify this morning.

Today we're going to have some oversight of the United States military's newest combatant command, AFRICOM. With this hearing, the subcommittee's first public discussion of this important topic represents a yearlong, bipartisan investigation that included asking the Government Accountability Office to analyze the stand-up of the AFRICOM, which is to reach full operating capability just a few short months from now, by the end of September 30th, 2008, as we understand it.

I want to thank Ranking Member Shays and Mr. Turner and their staff for joining us in this important effort.

And today we essentially ask the question, what is AFRICOM? One might think that should be a fairly simple, straightforward question, but as it turns out, it's not necessarily so. The General (sic) Accountability Office's testimony includes an interesting passage, and I quote: "State Department officials said that they had difficulty responding to African concerns about AFRICOM because of their own confusion over AFRICOM's intended mission and goals." Today's hearing attempts for policymakers, for the American public and even for our own government representatives throughout Africa to try to bring some clarity here or at least to ask the right questions.

What is clear is that AFRICOM will bring three existing military commands with responsibilities for parts of Africa into one Africa-centric command. AFRICOM's geographic jurisdiction has been carved from CENTCOM, which focused on the Horn of Africa and other eastern regions of the continent; the U.S. Pacific Command, which focused on Madagascar; and the U.S.-European Command, EUCOM, which focused on Western and Southern Africa. As a result, AFRICOM will oversee U.S. military relationships, activities and interests throughout Africa with the sole exception of Egypt, which will remain under the auspices of CENTCOM.

Significant government initiatives such as the establishment of a new combatant command raise important congressional oversight questions --for example, about the continuity of operations, the "right-sizing" necessary infrastructure and personnel and the sound stewardship of taxpayer funds, and we'll explore these issues at today's hearing. But AFRICOM represents additional questions during a post-Cold War, post-9/11 environment in which we continue to grapple with the asymmetric threats of terrorism and potential breeding grounds in ungoverned spaces.

We also have a continent that too often has been wracked by poverty, disease and war. In fact, Africa includes more than two-thirds of all the world's HIV-positive population including some militaries with rates as high as an estimated 50 percent. Last November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a remarkable lecture in which he recognized that, and I quote: "These new threats require our government to operate as a whole differently, to act with unity, agility and creativity, and they will require considerably more resources devoted to America's non-military instruments of power."

Early administration rhetoric envisioned AFRICOM as a transformational experiment providing a whole-of-government, interagency approach to U.S. national security strategy. Some of this initial vision remains, including adding a State Department Foreign Service officer as one of the two deputy commanders. We'll hear from Ambassador Yates in just a few moments.

However, and this is something we will also explore in today's hearing, it appears that ambitions for AFRICOM have been scaled back apparently because of concerns by the State Department, USAID and others about our military lead in areas of diplomacy and international development, and two, African governments' neocolonial concerns about a prominent U.S. military presence on the continent, and three, nongovernmental organizations' concerns about the potential militarization of foreign aid and humanitarian assistance.

So with that backdrop in mind, AFRICOM presents a number of additional oversight questions, some of which are AFRICOM-specific and some of which point to broader fundamental questions of how the United States should organize itself to maximize our foreign policy and national security interests. In the spirit of constructive oversight, I want to highlight a few of these questions that will be on our minds as we begin to hear from the panel of dedicated public servants from both the executive and the legislative branches of government.

What is the strategic vision driving the creation of AFRICOM? How has that vision evolved over time? Who will be at the table as this vision continues to be developed? What are the current and future missions planned for AFRICOM? Some refer to AFRICOM as a combatant command-plus --what's the plus? What type of soft-power mandate does AFRICOM have? What kinds of so-called phase zero operations --that is, those aimed at building and maintaining a stable security environment --will AFRICOM undertake? What is the status and plan for interagency staffing in AFRICOM? Where will it be in October of this year and what is the ultimate goal?

How will the interagency work with AFRICOM as well as among AFRICOM, State Department, USAID and other governmental departments and the various bilateral embassy county teams throughout Africa? What are AFRICOM's future plans for the United States military footprint in Africa? How is AFRICOM going to interact with nongovernmental organizations that are involved in humanitarian and development work, and how will AFRICOM interact with Africans and American nations themselves?

And one final question that really goes to the colleagues as much as to our panel: To the extent that AFRICOM is not going to be or is simply not the right model for a whole-of-government approach to national security strategy, what is the right model, platform and government structure required to achieve that unity, agility and creativity echoed recently by Secretary Gates?

I look forward to our discussion and now I invite Mr. Turner to provide his opening remarks.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL TURNER (R-OH): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chairman Tierney, for holding this important hearing on AFRICOM, the newest U.S. command.

With the concurrence of the chairman, I'd like to submit Ranking Member Shays' opening statement and extending --

REP. TIERNEY: Without objection.

REP. TURNER: I appreciate your interest in the issues associated with this command as well as your commitment to see it succeed. Your letter, co-authored by Ranking Member Shays, requesting a bipartisan study from the Governmental (sic) Accountability Office to examine AFRICOM clearly substantiates your interest and your commitment, and we thank you for that.

It is my understanding that AFRICOM is scheduled to execute its first goal, which is to become fully operational on October 1st, 2008. Today's hearing is particularly timely as we outline the challenges associated with its stand-up and formulate a way to ensure its success.

Today we find ourselves just two months shy of this initial goal. Looking back, it's been just shy of a year and a half since President Bush announced the creation of AFRICOM in February 2007, and during this time the House has received just one hearing on the status of AFRICOM, eight months ago in November of 2007, when the Armed Services Committee received the AFRICOM commander and senior administration officials from the Defense and State departments. Since that time, members have had to rely on bits and pieces of information and have been repeatedly advised by administration officials that it is too premature to tell how AFRICOM is performing and far too early to pass judgment on AFRICOM's performance.

Although I agree with the latter assessment, I cannot concur with the former conclusion. At this juncture, just two months before AFRICOM is set to proclaim itself functioning at full operational capacity, the House would be remiss if we did not ask tough questions.

Now let me start by framing some of the most important issues before us today. What is this mission of AFRICOM? Since the inception of an idea a year and a half ago to now, just two months shy of its full operational capacity, has the mission of this combat command changed? Second, are we addressing the key immediate concerns necessary to support this mission? Is the structure that was originally conceived actually working? Are the military and State Department roles properly balanced and allocated? In terms of manning, are the required agencies actually providing the personnel? Are the current combat commands and other associated agencies complying with mandates to turn over existing missions as planned? Is AFRICOM receiving the necessary support from the interagency process from the necessary funding authorities? In particular, are any of these immediate structural challenges issues for Congress and the executive branch?

I realize that these are numerous questions, but it is our constitutional duty as members of Congress to ask what we can do right before this command becomes fully operational and we find ourselves too far along in the process asking what we did wrong.

On this note, let me close by saying I hope that today we can hear a clear mission statement. I also look forward to hearing how the witnesses describe AFRICOM's ability so far to manage the critical internal challenges required to ensure that we address the greater challenges for which this command was created. It is in our nation's best interests to bring together its key interagency actors across a spectrum of economic, diplomatic and military resources to help African nations build the necessary infrastructure and capacity to prevent whole countries from descending into ungoverned spaces where innocent people suffer and terror organizations thrive.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to hearing from each of our witnesses today and I yield back.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you very much.

The subcommittee will now receive testimony from the witnesses before us today. I'd like to briefly introduce them.

Ms. Theresa Whelan serves in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as deputy assistant secretary for African affairs. Commencing her career with the Defense Department as an Africa analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, she moved on to serve as director to the Office of African Affairs, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and as the NATO team chief on the Balkan Task Force through the Kosovo crisis.

Ms. Whelan, thank you for being here today.

Ambassador Mary C. Yates is the deputy to the commander for civil-military activities of the United States Africa Command. She is a senior U.S. diplomat who has served as ambassador to Burundi and Ghana and as a foreign policy adviser to the United States European Command, which traditionally held responsibility for much of Africa.

Ambassador, we look forward to hearing more about your unique position with AFRICOM.

Major General Michael A. Snodgrass --General Snodgrass is the chief of staff for AFRICOM. He is responsible for the operation of the command's joint and interagency staff. He's a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and has flown over 200 hours in combat, including more than 100 missions over Iraq from 1996 to 2000 as both a squadron commander and commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Group at Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait.

General, thank you for your service and thank you for being here today.

Ms. Lauren Ploch --"Ploch"? --not bad, first shot --is an analyst in African affairs for the Congressional Research Service. She has managed democratic support initiatives for a number of programs for USAID, the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. She served previously as a legislative assistant in the United States Senate.

So thank you for being with us today. We appreciate your testimony as well.

And Mr. John Pendleton is the director of force structure and defense planning issues in the Defense Capabilities and Management Team with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In his position, he has overseen a number of defense-related programs, including efforts to improve care in the wake of the Walter Reed scandal --and we thank you for that --the military response to Hurricane Katrina, the examinations of military readiness. Mr. Pendleton also teaches and a member of the GAO's adjunct faculty and is a national recruiter.

I also want to thank members of his team, namely Robert L. Repasky, Tim Burke, Leigh Caraher, Grace Coleman, Taylor Matheson (sp), Lonnie McAllister (sp) and Amber Simco for the hard work and dedication that everybody put into the project. We appreciate it.

The subcommittee thanks all of you for being with us today. I want to especially thank you for your continued service to our country, each and every one of you. Your experience and firsthand knowledge of the topics before us today, we're all confident, are going to help us understand as we move forward in our role.

It's the policy of this subcommittee to swear you in before you testify, so I ask you to please stand and raise your right hands, and if there's any person that's going to assist you in your testimony, we ask that they also stand and raise their hand.

(Witnesses are sworn in.)

It is also our practice, for those who may not have testified before this committee before, that your written statements in their entirety will be put in the record. So to try to keep your remarks as close to five minutes as possible, we ask that you summarize those remarks that extend --I noticed some of them were rather brief anyway, probably well within the five minutes. We'll be as lenient as we can but at some point we'll want to get the questioning and answering in and we would like to try to get you through this hearing before a vote starts so that we don't unduly keep you waiting around for the morning.

So let's start with Ms. Whelan. If you're prepared, we're ready to hear your testimony.

THERESA WHELAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the U.S. Africa Command. Let me briefly summarize what has already been submitted to you in my written testimony.

Stability and prosperity in Africa are important to the long-term interests of the United States because a secure and stable, healthy and more prosperous Africa will contribute to global security and a stronger world economy. Many of Africa's security challenges are not limited to conventional state-on-state conflicts, although those still do exist, but are multinational and transnational in nature. African governments and institutions are turning to collective security mechanisms to address these challenges and our engagement with Africa needs to reflect these African innovations at the regional level, in addition to our traditional bilateral defense and military relationships.

U.S. Africa Command represents an opportunity to strengthen and expand U.S. and African security relationships in such a way that our combined efforts can help generate more indigenous and therefore more sustainable peace and security on the continent. USAFRICOM is also a manifestation of how DOD is innovating to transform its ability institutionally to meet the challenges of the new global security environment. USAFRICOM's military engagement on the African continent will remain primarily focused on building security partnership capacities, conducting theater security cooperation, building important counterterrorism skills and, as appropriate, supporting U.S. government agencies in implementing other programs to promote regional stability.

We expect USAFRICOM will allow DOD civilian and military leaders to take a more holistic and operationally efficient approach to the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead as Africa's multilateral institutions, such as the African Union and the regional economic communities, figure more prominently in African security affairs.

USAFRICOM is an innovative command in several ways.

First, unlike traditional unified commands, its primary focus will be on building African regional security and crisis response capacity.

USAFRICOM will promote greater security ties between the United States and Africa, providing new opportunities to enhance our bilateral military relationships and strengthen the capacities of Africa's regional and sub-regional organizations.

Second, USAFRICOM will include a significant and carefully selected number of representatives from other U.S. agencies within its staff, including officers from the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A variety of agencies have existing bilateral relationships and programs with African governments. Many of these programs are complementary to or intersect DOD defense and military-related programs. Officers embedded in the command from these agencies will be able to contribute their knowledge and expertise to the command, so that USAFRICOM will be more effective in supporting peacekeeping capacity and the broader security sector and, when appropriate, supporting other U.S. government agencies and African governments in humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

Third, USAFRICOM, currently in Stuttgart, Germany, is a staff headquarters, not a troop headquarters. Once fully staffed, it will be made up of roughly one half civilian and one half military personnel, with a commander who has both a military and a civilian deputy.

The deputy to the commander for civil military affairs --the DCMA --is a Senior Foreign Service officer from the Department of State. The leadership of a State Department officer at this senior level will also enhance USAFRICOM's ability to support such State Department-funded endeavors as the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program, a mainstay of the U.S. effort to build peace support operations and capacity in Africa.

Fourth, recognizing that USAFRICOM's focus is on war prevention rather than war fighting, following Sun Tzu's timeless advice, the inner workings of the command have been organized to best position it for theater security cooperation activities and the flexibility needed to prevent problems from becoming crises and crises from becoming catastrophes.

There are many misconceptions about what USAFRICOM will look like and what it will do. Some believe that we are establishing USAFRICOM solely to fight terrorism or to secure oil resources or to discourage China. These are misperceptions. Violent extremism is a cause for concern and needs to be addressed, but this is not AFRICOM's singular mission.

Natural resources such as oil represent Africa's current and future wealth, but all we seek is a fair market environment where all can fairly compete and benefit along with other participants in the global market.

Some have raised the concern that USAFRICOM will take control of security issues that are the responsibility of the Africans themselves. Our intent is quite the contrary. The purpose of USAFRICOM is to encourage and support African leadership and initiative, not to compete with it or discourage it.

U.S. security is enhanced when African nations themselves endeavor to successfully address or resolve emergent security issues before they become so serious that they require considerable international resources and intervention to resolve.

Finally, there are fears that USAFRICOM represents a militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and that USAFRICOM will somehow become the lead U.S. government interlocutor with Africa. This fear is unfounded. USAFRICOM will support, not shape, U.S. foreign policy on the continent. The secretary of State remains the chief foreign policy adviser to the president, and the secretary of Defense remains the chief adviser on defense matters. Chiefs of mission authorities will remain as they are, as will authorities pertaining to combatant commanders.

The establishment of USAFRICOM and the participation of State, USAID and other U.S. agencies demonstrates the importance the U.S. government places on strengthening ties with Africa. With USAFRICOM, the United States will be working in partnership with Africans to foster an environment of security and peace, an environment that will enable Africans themselves to further strengthen their democracies, institutionalize respect for human rights, pursue economic prosperity and build effective regional institutions. A more stable Africa serves the goal of helping to foster a more stable global environment.

Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Chairman, and for your attention, and I look forward to your questions.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Ms. Whelan.

Ambassador Yates?

AMBASSADOR MARCY C. YATES: Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, for the opportunity to address this committee on the establishment of the United States Africa Command, USAFRICOM, especially its interagency component.

As senior leaders of AFRICOM, we are deeply involved in the building of the command into an effective interagency team in support of U.S. government policy, to assist the continent of Africa and its island nations in establishing and maintaining their own security and stability. Thus far, the level of participation in USAFRICOM from across the United States government has been excellent, and we look forward to discussing in detail the nature of this participation.

As we assess the security challenges facing the continent of Africa and its island nations such as terrorism, enduring conflicts, trafficking, poverty and natural disasters --few are purely military in nature.

Throughout Africa, security and development are intertwined and equally vital in helping the Africans achieve their goals. This is one area where we and our African partners are in strong agreement.

In the United States, we have a clear dividing line between issues that belong within the realm of the military and those that belong with other security organizations such as the police, border security, customs and immigration, emergency response, et cetera. For many African nations, the greatest threats are internal, and we should not expect that Africans organize their security apparati the same way that we do in the United States.

Our primary military threats --terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and the like --are external. In addition, certain capabilities that we find in our military --counterterrorism, for example --reside in non-military ministries in Africa. Therefore, building security capacity in Africa presents a broader challenge. We must build this capacity as an interagency team, one that works with mutual trust, confidence and support. Those activities we undertake must have positive effects on the activities of others. And we need to be informed of the totality of the security environment.

When assisting in non-military activities like humanitarian assistance, we will do it in support of other U.S. government agencies, so we ensure we meet their requirements and achieve their desired effects.

The USAFRICOM mission is, and I quote: "The United States Africa Command, in concert with other U.S. government agencies and international partners, conducts sustained security engagement through military-to-military programs, military-sponsored activities, and other military operations as directed, to promote a stable and secure African environment in support of U.S. foreign policy," end quote.

We would like to highlight three key elements of this mission statement.

First: "in concert with other U.S. government agencies and international partners." This emphasizes our role as the military component within the context of the broader U.S. government effort. We will conduct all of our activities as part of the interagency team.

Secondly: "sustained security engagement." At USAFRICOM, we have committed ourselves to the delivery of effective security assistance programs and ensuring the programs achieve their desired effect in the long run.

And thirdly: "in support of U.S. foreign policy." Our efforts represent the security dimension of the foreign policy set forth by the Department of State. USAFRICOM does not make U.S. foreign policy.

In building the command, we determined that it was very important to have within the headquarters relevant subject-matter expertise from the broader security and development domain. These experts would be integrated into the development and planning stages of our activities. Identifying these staff positions and placing them appropriately throughout the command has been a deliberate process that is progressing well, through the full support --and with the full support of U.S. government agencies.

By employing permanent and temporary interagency personnel and through increased partnerships with key agencies across the U.S. government, our capabilities as an interagency command are growing. These partnerships are vital to U.S. Africa Command's mission accomplishment.

USAFRICOM will contribute to the harmonization of U.S. government efforts to maximize the effectiveness of our nation's resources being dedicated to Africa. In doing so we add value to the U.S. government programs already under way on the continent and expect to develop and implement more effective programs in the future.

And finally, on 30 September 2008, USAFRICOM will become the sixth geographic combatant command in the Department of Defense. We anticipate the USAFRICOM interagency team will foster closer collaboration with the U.S. government and more effective military-to-military partnerships with the African nations that will bring greater stability and enhance security capacity.

We are a listening, growing and developing organization dedicated to partnering with African governments, African security organizations and the international community to achieve the U.S. security goals by helping the people of Africa achieve the goals that they have set for themselves.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the honor of appearing, and I look forward to your questions.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Ambassador.

General, I understand you're playing the strong, silent type here at the opening section

MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL A. SNODGRASS: That's correct.

REP. TIERNEY: Okay. (Laughs.) That works for us.

Ms. Ploch?

LAUREN PLOCH: Chairman Tierney and distinguished members of the House subcommittee, my name is Lauren Ploch and I'm an analyst in African affairs with CRS.

I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to testify today on AFRICOM. I'll try to explore a few of your questions on the AFRICOM's creation and its mission.

The Bush administration created AFRICOM in part to address concerns over DOD's division of responsibility for Africa among three geographic combatant commands. The establishment of AFRICOM also reflects an evolution in perceptions of U.S. strategic interests in Africa.

U.S. military focus on the continent has historically been sporadic, and just over a decade ago DOD publicly declared that it saw very little traditional strategic interest in Africa. The 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa are considered by many analysts to be a turning point in U.S. strategic policy towards the region.

U.S. security strategy towards Africa now appears to be focused towards protecting trade interests, reducing armed conflict and countering proliferation and counter --and terrorism.

The inability of African governments to adequately police the region's waters has allowed illicit trafficking through the region and has opened maritime, commerce and offshore oil production to the threat of piracy and sabotage. U.S. naval operations in African waters has increased in recent years, as have efforts to increase the capacity of African navies to enforce maritime laws.

Conflict and instability in parts of Africa have undermined economic, political and social development across the continent. Instability in Africa has demanded substantial humanitarian and defense resources from the international community, and the United States and other donor countries have acknowledged the potential cost-effectiveness of enhancing the capabilities of African forces to participate in peace operations.

One of the most significant efforts to upgrade African peacekeeping capability is the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program, or ACOTA, a State Department-led effort that has trained over 60,000 African peacekeepers with U.S. military assistance since 2002.

Terrorist attacks in East and North Africa in the last decade have highlighted the threat of extremism in the region. In response, the administration has developed a number of initiatives to strengthen regional counterterrorism capabilities and to discredit terrorist ideology. The State Department's Trans Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership, or TSCTP, has a significant U.S. military component which AFRICOM will take responsibility for this fall.

The military component is designed to support complementary USAID activities in West and North African countries bordering the vast Sahara Desert.

On the other side of the continent is the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, or CJTF-HOA, which was created in 2002 to focus on counterterrorism activities in East Africa. CJTF-HOA personnel now not only collect intelligence and train regional forces on counterterrorism, they also serve as advisors to peace operations, maintain critical maritime access to Red Sea routes, and support disaster relief efforts. CJTF-HOA also conducts targeted humanitarian operations as part of an effort to win hearts and minds.

AFRICOM's billing as an innovative DOD approach to meeting U.S. security goals has put AFRICOM under increased scrutiny. Although the precise wording of AFRICOM's mission statement has evolved since the command was first announced, the lasting premise behind AFRICOM's establishment, according to its creators, is that stable and secure states would be more capable of deterring terrorism, crime and proliferation. Building partnership capacity is a key component of this approach and has been at the forefront of U.S. military strategy in Africa in recent years.

As such, the mission of AFRICOM might be most closely compared to that of SOUTHCOM. Both commands are expected to supervise an array of operations that relate to U.S. strategic interests but are not necessary combat-related, unlike EUCOM, CENTCOM and PACOM, which have traditionally been more focused on preparing for potential war fighting.

Given its prescribed mission, some DOD officials have referred to AFRICOM as a combatant command-plus. This implies that the command would have all the roles and responsibilities of a traditional combatant command, including the ability to conduct military operations, but would also include a broader soft-power mandate.

Some argue that this reflects an evolution in DOD strategy. Traditionally focused on fighting and winning wars, defense strategy now also looks at conflict prevention. One DOD official has suggested that the U.S. government could consider AFRICOM a success if it keeps American troops out of Africa for the next 50 years.

The prospect that DOD will focus less on fighting wars and more on preventing them engenders mixed feelings in some U.S. government circles. While many in the State Department and USAID welcome the ability of DOD to leverage resources and to organize complex operations, there is also concern that the military may overestimate its capabilities as well as its diplomatic role in Africa or pursue activities that are not a core part of its mandate. Some argue that the unequal allocation of resources between the departments of Defense, State and USAID hinder their ability to act as equal partners and could lead to the militarization of development and diplomacy. Others have expressed concerns over potential turf wars between the departments that could undermine the effectiveness of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.

DOD's effort to incorporate in an unprecedented number of civilian personnel in AFRICOM seems to reflect an acknowledgment that the U.S. military cannot prevent conflicts in Africa without a more holistic approach, but creating these civilian billets is one thing and staffing them is another. The State Department has requested funding to increase the number of diplomatic and development personnel at State and USAID to allow the agencies to focus greater effort on meeting national security goals. The secretary of Defense has advocated on behalf of the civilian agencies, emphasizing that the State Department is critically understaffed. AFRICOM's ability to address interagency concerns collaboratively within its organizational structure and its ability to address the concerns of its African partners within the context of its operations will be critical to its ability to promote peace and stability on the continent.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you. You did well to get all that in. (Laughter.)

Mr. Pendleton, I was thinking as I was introducing you and all your staff of that commercial about the network, you know, having the network with you on that. (Laughter.) And I'm sure all of the witnesses have a good network behind them, and we're happy to recognize yours as well. Would you please give us your testimony?

MR. PENDLETON: Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. They're the brains of the operation. (Laughter.)

REP. TIERNEY: (Inaudible.)

JOHN PENDLETON: (Laughs.) Members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today to support the subcommittee in its oversight of DOD's efforts to establish a new military command focused on stability and security in Africa.

My statement today will describe the efforts to establish AFRICOM, as well as challenges that the command faces as it moves forward. Please note that our findings are preliminary. Our work continues, and we will publish a report later this year.

AFRICOM's efforts to reach agreement among stakeholders on its mission reveals concerns about what the military's role would ultimately be in Africa. Concerns arose that the creation of AFRICOM can blur traditional boundaries between diplomacy, development and defense and in effect militarize U.S. foreign policy. AFRICOM has been increasingly sensitive to these concerns and is emphasizing its role as one of support, as you heard earlier.

Currently, AFRICOM is focused on transferring existing activities from the European, Central and Pacific Command, and by October, AFRICOM plans to have assumed all existing missions. However, it will not yet be a mature command, one that will be taking on significant new missions or activities, at least not right away.

Now let's turn to staffing the command. By October, DOD anticipates that we'll have about 980 personnel assigned to AFRICOM, which is actually about three-quarters of the 1,300 that they ultimately envision for the command.

But staffing AFRICOM headquarters is only part of the personnel story. Geographic combatant commands like AFRICOM are typically supported by component commands from the four military services and the Special Operations Command. This means creation of five new headquarters, and each of these new component commands will need a hundred, up to 400 people. And this is going to put further strain on already-stretched military personnel systems.

The command will have some interagency participation at the outset. AFRICOM projects that it will have 13 personnel in place from outside DOD by October, and certainly some of those personnel are going to be in key positions, such as Ambassador Yates, who is here with us today and she is serving as one of two co-equal deputies to the commander. These 13 positions will, however, represent just 1 percent of the command staff --I think that's on the boards on the end now. And that's far less than was anticipated for a command that was originally described by some as going to be interagency from the ground up.

Now there were never hard targets for interagency participation. Some early DOD estimates were that it could be up to a quarter of folks coming from outside DOD. In the near term, AFRICOM has set a target for 52 interagency positions, which would represent about 4 percent of the command, but it's still uncertain when these personnel are going to come on board, and much has to be worked out. And DOD also told us that the number is still under review. What is clear to us is that for the foreseeable future, AFRICOM will be predominantly a DOD command.

Finally, location--for now, AFRICOM plans to have its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM describes the location in Stuttgart as interim, and the cost to renovate facilities there has been over $80 million or so thus far, and I think it will probably go some higher.

But these are just startup costs. The full cost to support AFRICOM and its components could be considerably more over time, but the total amount is still unknown. For example, should the command stay in Stuttgart, AFRICOM has indicated it will need a modern command and control center there that would allow them to coordinate operations. No such center or facility currently exists at Kelley Barracks. In addition, as the military services stand up their component commands in Germany or Italy or elsewhere, Congress can expect additional requests for funding.

Finally, the question of how AFRICOM will achieve physical presence in Africa is still open. This has significant cost implications potentially. Initially, DOD envisioned an approach that would have placed part of its headquarters in Africa but was confronted by concerns from both U.S. agencies and African partners. In the short term, AFRICOM plans to leverage existing relationship while it looks at options.

In sum, Mr. Chairman, AFRICOM has certainly made some progress, but many daunting challenges remain. Two key precepts of the command --one, that it have significant interagency participation and, two, would be physically located in Africa to engage partners there --will not be realized in the near term. The difficulties encountered in sorting out the military's role, staffing the command and establishing a presence in Africa reveal deeper cultural and structural issues within the U.S. government. Ultimately, billions of dollars are at stake, though, so sustained attention will be needed to ensure that mounting investments pay off.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement, and I would certainly be happy to answer any questions.

REP. TIERNEY: Well, thank you, Mr. Pendleton.

Thank all of you for your testimony.

We'll start with the questioning now if we can on that. And I think the first thing that pops up to our minds on this is that there's no general disagreement with the concept that we may have gotten things wrong in the president's so-called global war on terror. I mean, I think he got the name wrong and he got the concept wrong and most everything else wrong, but, you know, there's nothing inherently wrong about the idea that leading with the military, making everything military-dominant may not be the way to approach our situation here and that we have to use some smart power. We've had a lot of testimony from people about smart power, which is to be a balance or mix of military power and other softer-power approaches.

But I think --you know, it looks to us like we're leading, you know, with the military here. It looks like we're putting an outpost in Africa, and I wonder how we'd feel if China went over and put an outpost in Africa or Russia or France or any other country went over and just decided that they're going to just take their military and go over into Africa, set up an outpost, and why that wouldn't be perceived to look like somebody's going over to protect their interests as opposed to somebody else's.

Let me rephrase the question this way --and I took some time to write it down, so I hope you'll bear with me on that. AFRICOM is essentially continuing Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans-Sahara and the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. Both of them exist primarily to combat extremist terrorism in their respective regions --Sahel in the Sahara and the Horn of Africa. They relied heavily on Special Operations Command Europe in the first and also on the special operations in the Somalia area on the second, and there were reports SOCEUR took part in the offensive actions, not just supported it, and some similar concerns about CENTCOM when it came to Somalia.

So if it's true that African security is simply not tied solely to global war on terror-framed policies --in its essence, Africa's true security priorities are hunger, disease, internecine warfare, oppressive regimes and crushing poverty. Isn't using the OEF-TS and the CJTF-HOA as model programs for AFRICOM a contradiction to the AFRICOM-stated goals. In other words, isn't it leading with the high power and not with the smart-power aspect of that? It seems to me that exhibits an incredible gulf between our rhetoric and our action, it seems to me it is going to engender a lot of resentment by people there, and I'm just curious why don't we lead with an effort that is not primarily military led? I see the role for the military there, but why don't we lead with more diplomacy with State, with USAID, with cooperation with NGOs, with international cooperation on the security matters on that and have a military there?

So, General, I'll start with you because you rank, and you've had a rest and then we'll move on from there. (Laughter.)

GEN. SNODGRASS: Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. It's nice to be here with you today.

A couple of comments on your question: The premise that we are leading with OEF-Trans-Sahel, which is a subset of a State Department program and with JTF-HOA in the construction of the command, I think does not accurately reflect all the other things that we are doing, which in fact, in the subsequent part of your question you mentioned. All of those pieces and parts that are making up the command today that we are in the process of building that have to do with what we traditionally believe soft power to be are in fact the lead of the command. Now, the fact is that because we are a military organization and we have been given an area that we will have accountability for the activities that occur within that area means that OEF-Trans-Sahel and HOA will be a part of the command's responsibility. So they will come to us.

One of the reasons that we are standing up to command, as was noted earlier, is to consolidate the efforts of three different combatant commands under one organization, one staff and one leader who can then focus the military aspects, which would assist the African nations in their military security issues as well as support other agencies of the United States government. But I don't believe that we are really leading with OEF-TS and JTF-HOA. Now --and that's not to say we're not focused on them, because they're important, and there are people out there on the continent doing good work, spending money that the Unites States' taxpayers have given us to do that work, and we need to focus on them.

REP. TIERNEY: Here's my issue with that --if our primary goal is to help Africa and its needs and its needs are the ones that I cited --I mean, clearly, if you go around and ask African leaders which members (are done ?) and you look at experts' testimony, it's hunger, disease, internecine warfare, oppressive regimes and crushing poverty. If those are the primary things that Africa needs help with, those are not military-focused items, all right.

So the question really becomes, then what the heck are we doing sending --AFRICOM is a military-led group over there to lead up this charge. Why wouldn't somebody who has responsibility for all of those things be in the lead and have the military play its usual role of support in another way instead of setting up a command structure in another continent, as far as I know uninvited, and go on on that basis? Why wouldn't somebody perceive that as a military presence that probably just goes beyond what they see their needs as? It looks like you're going over there to protect oil and fight terrorists, the same misguided way that we fought terrorists in other places, by lumping them all in one basket and thinking they're all al Qaeda.

GEN. SNODGRASS: Where other agencies have the lead today, they'll continue to have the lead, and we'll support them.

REP. TIERNEY: Do you agree with me, General, that it looks like AFRICOM is a military outfit? Isn't it a military outfit?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Yes, sir, it is military. We're part of Department of Defense.

REP. TIERNEY: So that's --I mean, why wouldn't people think that that's a hard thing to reconcile with your statement that where other groups have the lead, they're going to have the lead, but we're going to have like 13 of them and, you know, a thousand of the others over there? I mean, who's going to buy that?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, we'll have to prove that through our actions. And as we build these programs, we are focused very, very clearly on the issues and the perceptions, and sometimes the issues and the perceptions are different. And we're fighting perception right now. But we intend to not do what you are concerned about.

REP. TIERNEY: Okay. Well, when I look at the mission --Ambassador Yates, you cited the mission there --it looks pretty military-centric --military-to-military programs, military-sponsored activities and other military operations --boom boom boom. You know, I think somebody reading that is going to say, like

AMB. YATES: If I can just jump in, Mr. Chairman. The mission statement, even though it is very brief and some say possibly too pithy, was a long work in progress with a lot of consideration. When General Ward was confirmed, he had 60 days to examine what the transition team had produced as a framework.

And we went to an off-site, and we spent two days looking at this, especially because we were going to be a different kind of combatant command with the interagency involvement. And at first, we looked at security with a much wider aperture, and then we brought it back and (Theresa Whelan ?) helped worked here in Washington in the interagency, and there was an interagency review of it.

And there was a lot of concern --and I think at that time, too, in the press --that this new command was going to be straying in other agencies' lanes. And so what we said was, we believe that working with the militaries --and I'm going to digress on this answer because it was when Mike was speaking --having spent almost 20 years on the continent, security is so important exactly so we can address those other problems of disease and poverty. Because if you're in an area where conflict takes over, those problems just

REP. TIERNEY: I think we all get that, Ambassador. I think the problem is, you know, what's leading here and what's going on. If I can interject, I think you made your point, unless you feel like you haven't.

AMB. YATES: Oh, no, that's fine.

REP. TIERNEY: And I appreciate that.

But can any one of you tell me of another country that's set up a forward base like we're attempting to set up here? Is China going to have a China command in Africa? Is Russia going to have a Russia command? Is France or Great Britain or Germany going to have a command in Africa?

Ms. Whelan?

MS. WHELAN: Mr. Chairman, I think it's fairly well recognized that France actually does have military facilities on the continent in a number of countries, and the Chinese and the Russians have long had significant presences on the continent.

REP. TIERNEY: Military?

MS. WHELAN: Yes, sir. The Chinese and Russian advisers and support personnel have been providing technical advice and support --and large numbers of them --to a number of countries in Africa for a number of years. Those numbers have ebbed and flowed, depending upon

REP. TIERNEY: What's the largest of the number of Chinese in any one location that you think in terms of advisers or a command of some sort?

MS. WHELAN: Mr. Chairman, I'll have to take that question. I would not want to give you

REP. TIERNEY: Well, give me your best ballpark, though, I mean, because you obviously have something in mind here. Are we talking thousands, 100, 50?

MS. WHELAN: Oh, no. We're not talking thousands. We're probably talking in the hundreds in some places where there are larger Chinese links and presences. The same was true for the Russians, less so now as Russia has drawn back

REP. TIERNEY: So they have a presence of 100 or so people at a given time in one location as advisers. I keep thinking of how you equate that as what we're attempting to do here, right?

MS. WHELAN: Well, I don't --I guess, Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure of your question.

REP. TIERNEY: Well, let me make it --I'll make it clearer because I don't think it's that difficult.

MS. WHELAN: Okay, thank you very much, sir.

REP. TIERNEY: We're proposing to set up a central command in Africa. Part of that eventually is going to be that the Army's going to set up a command. The Navy may set one up. The Air Force may set one up. The Special Operations may, you know, have a part of that. You're going to have well over 1,500 to several thousand people there on that, a good number of them who are going to be military, right, at least

MS. WHELAN: No, sir. I'm not sure where that information is coming from. The AFRICOM headquarters itself will be roughly 1,300 max personnel.

REP. TIERNEY: Forever. That's it --you're committing to that now?

MS. WHELAN: The headquarters number is currently fixed according to a joint manning document that has been approved by the secretary at 1,300 personnel. The majority of those personnel were never intended to be deployed onto the continent. They will always remain off the continent. We did intend to have a headquarters presence on the continent because the continent is such a vast place --5,000 kilometers wide, 5,000 kilometers long. In order to be effective in supporting our African partners, physical location or being proximate to them was important just to cover the tyranny of distance.

We do have a presence that has been established by Central Command, a forward operating site at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. That is probably the only such presence that we will ever see like that on the continent. That presence right now is about 1,500 personnel. That includes contractors and a whole host of other

REP. TIERNEY: And there won't be any other regional military offices at all?

MS. WHELAN: There will be nothing like the forward operating site in CJTF-HOA in Djibouti. We do expect that, as I said, in order to be effective on the continent and to be able to engage with our African partners and support them that AFRICOM will have to have some staff personnel who spend the majority of their time on the continent interfacing with the other countries. But staff personnel are very different --as you know well, Congressman, and

REP. TIERNEY: So what I'm hearing you say is that maybe staffers don't go someplace as advisers and work with a particular country's personnel --(crosstalk) --they won't be setting up other regional bases or forts or putting up --

MS. WHELAN: We will not be --there is no intent to put forward bases on the continent. As you well know, sir, the Defense Department is currently engaged in a withdrawal of a large percentage of our forces that have been deployed overseas. Witness Germany and some of the other places where we are actually drawing down. We have no intention of reversing that in the case of Africa. The whole purpose of the command was to make DOD more effective and efficient in conducting its missions in Africa rather than dividing those up among three different commands that were distracted by other high priorities in other regions. We recognize that the current strategic circumstances in the world were such that we couldn't deal with Africa as a secondary, tertiary issue or an afterthought within the Department of Defense.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you.

My time is up. I want to come back at some point in time, I think, and discuss the one-time planned intention of putting the command in Africa itself and see where we are on that. But we'll come to that a little later.

Mr. Turner, I'm sorry to be cutting into your time.

REP. TURNER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Part of the questions that everyone has and part of the struggle that comes through in your answers is this issue of not what our goals and objectives because those are fairly clear of the importance of Africa and the interest in the United States of being a partner. But there is a perception problem in what the total mission will be and how the relationship will be in the countries in Africa that overlays all of the questions that you're receiving today. It's not just Congress that is concerned with what you're doing in Africa; Africa is concerned with what's happening in Africa and what we're doing with the AFRICOM.

And the chairman and I were just talking in the beginning of this hearing of, you know, part of the concern --and Ambassador Yates, you were talking about the issue of how it's communicated.

And General, you were doing the same.

And it's unavoidable that that leads you straight to the name of what this is, you know, AFRICOM, DOD's newest combatant command. As a calling card, it begins the process of, is DOD being in command and over an area that I'm certain has a certain level of offense because that is not usually the calling card that one has as they entertain partnership -- command.

I'd like, if you would, to speak a little bit about that for a moment and how the reception is occurring as a result of our internal lexicon of having this being named AFRICOM and also the issue of, as the chairman was saying --I'm very interested in this issue of where the headquarters is to be located. In one of the materials that we have, it indicated only one country had come forward with a willingness, but in fact, it's even quite the opposite. You could write the sentence that several countries are adamantly opposed, both to their own hosting and to the hosting by other countries. And if you could talk about that a little bit, because that is the (entrant ?) issue before we get down to execution.

AMB. YATES: Congressman Turner, I'm going to start because you first posited vis---vis the Africans, and I feel very comfortable in that zone.

And also, the word "command," which was one of the words that seemed most offensive when we started our dialogue and consultation after General Ward was confirmed as the commander --it is a lexicon established by the Department of Defense. It is worldwide, and that is the mission of the Department of Defense is to defend the United States of America.

So that discussion aside, we were left with the challenge --General Ward and the team that came on board in October --of beginning yet again the dialogue with the Africans to convince them of what we really were setting out to do and explain to them. It also is rather confusing to them to talk about interagency, because that's just not something that they either understand or really care deeply about. But what I can tell you from doing this since October, traveling to the continent with some frequency, often with my co-deputy --which there's a message there, as well, you know, to go have a three-star admiral and myself meeting, talking with defense colleges and CHoDs and MoDs [chiefs of defense and ministers of defense].

There has been a big change in the attitude of the Africans because we've been listening to them, and General Ward leads by that. When they understand that we're going to be about deeds and we really do want to work closely with them in stronger security programs --and we frequently use the example of the African Partnership Station, the Navy component of the European Command had planned in the last few years, but it's such a perfect example of what we can develop into, of having a number of nations in West Africa have repeated engagement, do training with the African nations coming on board.

So this is what we have learned by going and having the dialogue with the Africans is, these terms that at first seem --and labels --that seem so offensive, once they understand more what we really plan to accomplish and why we believe the interagency approach or having the soft-power approach --I am quite amazed at the change in the point of view.

And I will close by saying that in May, I was back at the African Union and I addressed 44 permanent members from nations all over Africa and their questions, Congressman, were not about, well, why is it called this and are you coming to dominate? You know, they said, well, what are you really going to do to help us on our civil disasters? You know, what can you really help us as far as communicating country to country with our militaries as we stand up the African standby forces?

So I truly believe that we are making progress in our communication. Thank you.

MS. WHELAN: I can elaborate a little bit if you would like, Congressman. Just to add on to what Ambassador Yates said, most recently, I have co-chaired our bilateral defense working groups with the countries of Morocco and Tunisia. We had very positive interactions with them, and they are very eager to continue our mil-to-mil engagement and also to actually increase our mil-to-mil engagement, and I think they view the Defense Department's greater focus on Africa to include them as a very positive thing.

Additionally, I recently spoke in front of a group of 70 African students attending a French course in Paris, and my experience with those 70 African students was very similar to Ambassador Yates' experience in the AU. The questions that we were getting were not hostile or suspicious; rather, they were more questions along the lines of how can the United States help Africa address particular security issues? Each student had different security issues that they were most interested in, depending on what part of the continent that they came from.

So I think that the response coming from the majority of countries in Africa is actually quite positive and looking forward to continuing and expanding our existing mil-to-mil relations.

One other piece of information that I would note is, just to clarify the record, there is only one country that has come forward and come out publicly with their interest in hosting an element of the U.S. command. There are actually seven countries that have communicated to us through diplomatic channels and privately that they would be interested in talking to us about possibly hosting some element of this new U.S. command. Thank you.

REP. TURNER: Thank you.

I'm uncertain what portion of the record you wanted to correct, but is it not true that there are countries that have publicly come out and said no?

MS. WHELAN: No, I'm sorry, there have been countries that have publicly come out and said that no, they would not

REP. TURNER: I just wanted to make certain that that wasn't the portion of the record that you were trying to correct

MS. WHELAN: No, I wasn't correcting that portion. I was just correcting the portion in which it was stated that there was only one country that has said yes, and I don't believe that it was modified by saying there is only one country that has publicly said yes. So I just wanted to note that there are seven countries that have come out and expressed an interest. One of the seven has come out publicly. There are countries that have come out publicly and said no, we wouldn't want the command there, but I would also note that we have had no discussions with any countries or even asked any countries whether or not they would want the command there. These statements that they've made, either positive or negative, have been of their own volition, after no prompting from us.

REP. TURNER: Well, I appreciate your interpretation of yes. I'll wait until public is yes, and then I'll consider that yes.

I did have one other question, if I could just follow up, and then I'm going to be leaving.

You had talked about the troops that are in Africa and whether or not there will be forward operating bases and troops. Could you speak for just a moment --perhaps, General, it's best directed to you. We will have troops in Africa; we do have troops in Africa. I know I've been in Kenya with our Navy SEALs. Could you describe for just a moment the presence of troops there and their relationship to AFRICOM?

GEN. SNODGRASS: I will go back to what Ms. Whelan said about JTF-HOA. If 1,500 is the right number --we'll make sure we get you the correct number of the actual troops, the military members that are there. There are a relatively small number of OEF-Trans-Sahel military members. We have military in 12 different embassies of the 53 nations that will come under AFRICOM's purview as part of the embassy country teams.

And quite frankly, throughout the year we have literally hundreds of engagements that go on with temporary activity on the continent of Africa, military-to-military contacts, predominantly led by our NCOs that are down there trying to professionalize these African militaries. And that is an ongoing activity; it's been going on for a long time and we're just going to absorb it into the command.

REP. TURNER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you.

With my colleagues' grace here, I'm going to just ask --Ms. Whelan, I want to clarify one other thing on that. We had talked in our conversation about Djibouti being about 1,500 people, whatever, and that being there but no intention of housing other people other than advisers here or there. And I understand what the general just said about people going out for training missions. What are these elements that seven different countries are willing to detain?

MS. WHELAN: This was early on in our discussion when we talked about having --and its elements are staff presence --but early on in our discussions we talked about having an AFRICOM headquarters presence on the continent and these countries approached us and said if you are interested in placing something in Africa, we would be interested in talking to you about it. And that was

REP. TIERNEY: Would that have replaced what's in Djibouti or been in addition to it?

MS. WHELAN: No, Congressman, it would not. Whatever we would be looking at would be in addition. The Djibouti facility is an established facility and we have an agreement with the Djiboutians for the next five years with rollover options.

REP. TIERNEY: So these seven people were at that point contending for or expressing interest in what at that time may have been the singular AFRICOM command center?

MS. WHELAN: They were expressing interest in having this command have a presence in their country. They didn't articulate what it was that they thought that we were going to put there

REP. TIERNEY: Well, you knew what it was. You intended one command presence, right?

MS. WHELAN: No --We did not.

REP. TIERNEY: Oh, all right. Well, that's what I'm trying to get at. That's the impression I was left after your last conversation. So how many command presences were you anticipating?

MS. WHELAN: We were looking at the continent and we were looking at what might be optimal ways to arrange ourselves on the continent, and given the size of the continent, we anticipated that it would probably be best that there not be a single location and that there be what we were referring to as a distributed presence in the continent, again to

REP. TIERNEY: How many distributions would you be contemplating?

MS. WHELAN: We were looking anywhere in the neighborhood of three or potentially four.

REP. TIERNEY: All right. And how large would each of those distributed presences be?

MS. WHELAN: We had not gone to that level of granularity in terms of detail. They were just notional, based on geographic location and on ease of travel and movement within a certain geographic radius from the location.

REP. TIERNEY: And what kinds of physical structures would one of those facilities have envisioned?

MS. WHELAN: We had not gotten into detail on that. Because they were staff presences, we were expecting the physical structure to be fairly modest. We were not expecting anything really outside of the type of physical structure that our embassies currently utilize on the continent. Obviously we would have to maintain force protection requirements, et cetera. But we never really went into any detail on that because other things came to the fore in terms of priorities that had to be addressed in terms of building the command. But those were notional ideas.

Our objective all along was to ensure that whatever footprint that we had on the continent was small and was optimized to provide value added to whatever it was that we were doing on the continent in partnership with the countries. We also vowed that we were not going to go anyplace that we were not welcomed or wanted, so there was no intention of imposing ourselves on any country that was not interested in having a small U.S. military presence.

REP. TIERNEY: You're recognized for five minutes.

REPRESENTATIVE PETER WELCH (D-VT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the panel.

Mr. Pendleton, what's the budget, if you know, for the AFRICOM component?

MR. PENDLETON: It's still in development. I think they've funded it more or less out of hide, as the military says, so far. Some of the early numbers we've seen going out from fiscal year '10 to '15 I think is in the range of around $2 billion to operate the command headquarters.

However, the CJTF-HOA operation as well as some plans to improve some of the forward sites is probably going to add another couple of billion; that's going to come in out of the supplemental probably into the base budget if things go as it looks like. So that's --round figure's ($)4 billion; now that's exclusive of an intel fusion center, you know, building new command centers or whatever you might need to do for components, a lot yet unknown with that. That's just sort of a flag, I think.

REP. WELCH: Okay. What's the comparable budget for U.S. Department of State in Africa?

MR. PENDLETON: I might --I don't know.

REP. WELCH: Anybody know that?

AMB. YATES: I'm sorry, I don't have that answer.

REP. WELCH: Is it 10 percent, 5 percent, 20 percent?

MR. PENDLETON: I've seen figures that we spend ($)9 billion or so in Africa as a government, but that's about all I can come with off the top of my head.

REP. WELCH: How about USAID? Do you know how much we spend on that?

MR. PENDLETON: Not really in the scope of my work right now.

REP. WELCH: Okay.

MR. PENDLETON: We can certainly find out for you.

REP. WELCH: All right. I'd be interested.

General, tell me specifically, if we have --if AFRICOM is implemented as intended, what three constructive things would it be able to do to help the situation stabilize in Zimbabwe, and how would you foresee that?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, I'll pass that to Ms. Whelan, because that's a policy decision by the government. If we were tasked as a military to go to a country to provide support, we'd look at what that mission was and develop a game plan for it. But that's really a policy decision.

REP. WELCH: Well, let me ask you about Darfur. What concrete things would AFRICOM be able to do to help alleviate the suffering in Darfur?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, we would do whatever we were told to do by the national command authority, and it really depends on what the mission is. When you say "really suffering," that's relatively broad. There are many, many, many things that we can do that we would do in concert with other agencies and activities, but quite frankly, I can't really answer that question.

REP. WELCH: No, but that's what I'm asking is what concretely specific things would be done, and you're telling me you can't tell me that right now. Let me

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, when we get a mission then we could tell you what we could do to achieve that mission.

REP. WELCH: Okay. What does the --how do you define the national security threats that exist to the United States in Africa? What are the three top threats that you would define?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, I believe that it's widely agreed that terrorism is a threat to our national security and

REP. WELCH: Terrorism.

GEN. SNODGRASS: --the foreign fighter flow from Northern Africa into areas where we are engaged militarily.

REP. WELCH: So terrorism is one.

GEN. SNODGRASS: Yes, sir, I believe that is one. I think that the economic prosperity and the stability of the governments of Africa is in our national interest --my personal view. That's my personal opinion.

REP. WELCH: I agree with that. Anything

GEN. SNODGRASS: And you're looking for a third national security interest?

REP. WELCH: Mm-hmm.

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, I think that it is beneficial for the United States to have as many friends as possible. I think that our role as a leader in the world doesn't mean that we don't go anywhere or do anything without our friends, and as much as we can help to contribute to that from our piece of the pie, we should.

REP. WELCH: Thank you.

Ambassador Yates, what concrete things would the implementation of the AFRICOM program be able to do, just as an example, in Zimbabwe?

AMB. YATES: The discussion of whether we're going to talk about Zimbabwe or Sudan or Kenya --which there was a lot of talk at the turn of the year after the elections there, and there were articles in the paper here about, well, what is AFRICOM going to do about this --we go back to exactly what General Snodgrass said is: There is a national security mechanism here, the interagency that functions here and makes the decision about what our priorities should be, and quite clearly Assistant Secretary Frazer at the Department of State had the lead on Kenya, you know, and they went to the interagency and made decisions.

If the decision would have been taken by the interagency that a military command --at that point it would have been the Central Command --if it was somewhere other sub-Saharan in Africa, it would have been the European Command --to implement a decision of our national policy, our foreign policy, then that's exactly what we would do.

But we hope with the new command, because as we sit in meetings and making decisions about programs and are planning, we already have USAID, we have State Department, we have a Treasury person, we have people from [the Department of] Energy interested in coming. We have the Coast Guard. So we are already better informing what plan it would be.

Specifically on Zimbabwe, I think the decision has to be taken by our policymakers as to what the intervention would be.

I can say separately from that is we are working hard with the Southern African Development Commission --Community, SADC, because working with the other nations of South Africa and their militaries is important, but that is also a challenge to work

REP. WELCH: I apologize. I just --I have a preference for defining a problem and then creating the organizational structure around the goal of solving the problem. And what I heard from the witnesses so far is the establishment of a process that's in search of a problem, with the exception of the general's comment that terrorism is, as I agree, a threat to the United States.

And there's no one who disagrees about the importance and value of coordination. I think there is a lot of question as to what very specifically and concretely is the mission that the organization is going to pursue. So I think that's where a lot of the doubt is. If we have a military mission, which obviously dealing with terrorism is, that's a job that the military does better than anybody else.

So far we've had one country that's invited us in militarily. Is that right, Ms. Whelan, publicly?

MS. WHELAN: Publicly, Congressman, yes, one country publicly.

REP. WELCH: All right. And how many countries --Mr. Turner had asked how many countries have invited us not to come in militarily?

MS. WHELAN: Publicly? One, two, three --three. Four, excuse me --four.

REP. WELCH: Well, I mean, the question I have is this: I think when it comes to terrorism, if there's a threat to the United States, then the military's got to do what it's got to do, seek cooperation but not necessarily permission, but when it comes to dealing with disease and famine and these unstable governments, it's quite another matter.

How many --we've had one government that's invited us in. What military --what militaries in the African continent --I'll ask you, General, do we currently have close ties with?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, to take that from the opposite direction, there are very few militaries that we don't have ties to on the African continent. Quite frankly, we have engagements going on throughout with the exception of Zimbabwe right now, and I believe Ms. Whelan could probably answer that better, but let me give you context to my answer.

When we combined three different combatant commands' worth of efforts into one combatant command who can focus and advocate for the military-to-military assistance programs on the African continent, that is solving a problem. And I think that the establishment of our command allows us to do that.

In my previous job, I was in charge of the United States Air Force's engagement activities both in Europe and in Africa. That was a tremendously difficult task because there were 93 nations involved. The luxury of being able to focus in a particular area and to put all of your efforts into that job is what AFRICOM brings and I believe it's time that we do it.

REP. WELCH: Well, you know, there's not a debate --I don't dispute the advantage of having streamlined lines of communication and authority so you can do your job better. I think there's a big question here as to whether we're asking --we're putting more emphasis on the military than is appropriate. That's the question.

I mean, when I've asked this question to Ambassador Yates about what the specific things are that we're trying to accomplish, I didn't get an answer. With all due respect, I got a detailed process.

And I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Mr. Lynch, you're recognized for some time.

REPRESENTATIVE STEPHEN F. LYNCH (D-MA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. And I want to thank the panel for coming before us to help us with our work.

I've actually seen instances where the partnership between our military and USAID and State has actually worked out pretty well. However, I think the conditions and the situation were much different than we have, I think, in the average situation in Africa.

I know it worked very well in Afghanistan; it continues to work very well. But in that instance, the military profile being what it is, it was unavoidable. We went in there militarily first and then we brought in USAID and others to try to help with the humanitarian dimension of this. And I think there may be a few instances in Africa --I think certainly Somalia, I think, having gone to Darfur recently --I think there are some situations where if we're going in with USAID I think it would be a good idea to have some level of military protection with those folks.

But again, that's a very slim minority of situations, I think, that --and it doesn't --I tend to agree with the chairman that for us to adopt a policy and go in there with a frontal presentation of military force, I think it's a projection that we probably don't want to make in that way on this continent at this time.

Let me ask, one of the problems I also saw when there was a partnership between DOD and USAID is that --and I heard complaints from the USAID people --is that there was also a contracting-out process that was going on within USAID. So it wasn't our government doing a lot of this humanitarian effort. What they would do is they would --the administration is subcontracting out all the humanitarian stuff to individual contractors. And a couple things it does, it relinquishes a certain amount of control that we have, and also, those private contractors are not necessarily the face of the United States.

And I'm just thinking, Ambassador and General, you know, is that the model that we're anticipating for AFRICOM? Are we going to have the military doing --you know, the United States doing the military part of this and we're going to have some contractor doing the humanitarian part of this? Is that the model --I know it saves money, but you know, it doesn't necessarily accomplish the mission that I think we should be doing.

AMB. YATES: Congressman Lynch, thank you. Let me just respond briefly.

You know, in Africa each embassy has a country team headed by an ambassador. And we almost all have USAID missions; we have a defense attache. And so what our job is in that country is to prioritize the U.S. government policies and priorities and figure out how they're all going to work together.

That exists and has existed for a long time, and you know, I always enjoyed finding out what resources DOD could bring to that table. Obviously, USAID had more money, almost always, for the missions, for the bilateral missions and what you were implementing, whether it was going to be working on capacity building or health problems or education problems.

So what we believe can happen by this new structure is DOD resources --and sometimes they're not in actual funding that would flow into the same kind of programs --they are going to be working with the military, but they also will be looking for opportunities where a crisis is happening, whether it is a natural disaster or whatever, where within that country team we can get the advice and decide the program and how we can more effectively integrate what the military is going to do.

So I think there is a misperception to think that --I mean, USAID is there, and they're not working with or without any military assistance --I mean, or protection, if that's what you were implying in the beginning of it. And almost all USAID work --and even U.S. military humanitarian assistance --we work with NGOs on the ground. These are not contractors; these are our NGO partners. Sometimes they're African NGOs; other times they are international NGOs, because they live and work there and they know exactly how to implement the programs.

So to me what I see the value added of this campaign of what we're building --and we're just in the building phase --is to be able to inform the decisions of how we can use the money that is allocated by the U.S. Congress to more effectively bring about peace and security and stability in those nations through the country teams and the programs that already exist.

REP. LYNCH: General?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, if I could, two real-world examples that are going on today of our engagement with the Africans. There is an exercise that's called African Endeavor. EUCOM is running African Endeavor as we speak. We have invited I think the number is 28 different nations of Africa to participate in the country of Nigeria in this exercise. It is a command and control exercise where we train African militaries on how to produce and distribute command orders the way that we do it in the United States. It is a very beneficial and the most widely participated exercise across the board in Africa.

The other is a MEDFLAG that we're doing. It's a medical opportunity that we give --this time it's in Bamako, Mali. In Mali right now we have medical experts on the ground training African med techs on tactics and procedures that we use in the field, in the medical field. We do this with construction, we do it with finance people, we do it with maintenance people. This is the kind of interaction that AFRICOM brings: military-to-military contacts that help them to be better militarily to provide for their own internal security.

REP. LYNCH: Okay, thank you. I yield back.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Ms. McCollum, you're recognized for five minutes or more.

REPRESENTATIVE BETTY MCCOLLUM (D-MN): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Let me first say that the work that all of you do is very important. But the roles that you have are very different, and what I'm going to do is just take a second and kind of read the way this is being described in journals and papers and --that we get here.

This is --I want to give you the --excuse me. This is from the Center for American Progress. "With other regional combat commands, AFRICOM will have responsibility for U.S. military operations and particular areas of responsibility." It goes on and says: "Yet it is distinguished from other regional commands because its primary mission will be conducting non-military operations rather than counteracting threats to the United States' interests in Africa by preparing and engaging in combat. AFRICOM will attempt to promote stability through humanitarian operations."

And then it goes on to say, "The State Department and USAID will be imbedded in its command structure to help direct humanitarian operations across" --now, these aren't your words, but this is why you're getting some of these questions, okay? --that they'll do outreach to other U.S. government agencies.

Finally, "In 2005 USAID established the office of military affairs to strengthen its institutional relationship with the Defense Department." My gosh, USAID had to come up with an office of military affairs to talk to the Defense Department, which means that something has gone awry.

I want to just pick out one other point and then I'm going to come to a question. This is from a CRS report: "The involvement of the United States government agencies in the DOD planning department" --planning processes to do with AFRICOM --"interagency coordination of the U.S. security policy involves a variety of offices and actors in Washington, D.C.," and it goes on to list them all.

"The Bush administration has noted a proposal for the new command that represents an evolution in the involvement. This evolution" --and I will --this is from your testimony, Ms. Whelan --"AFRICOM will include significant and carefully selected number of representatives from other U.S. agencies within its staff, including officers from the State Department, the USAID," and you go on and on and talk about NGOs.

I don't disagree that having three parts of the military organization being responsible for Africa is not an efficient way for the military to plan. I don't have a problem with the military realigning itself that way. I just came back from Algeria and Tunisia and meeting with the country teams there and asking other ambassadors from other parts of the world --our ambassadors --you know, does the DOD footprint and the State Department footprint, should they align? Should they complement one another so that there is great communication going on between the two organizations, the Department of State and the Department of Defense? "Oh, yeah."

"Are they aligned?"

"Nope, but they should be, ma'am." That's what I heard from everyone.

I have no dispute with that, but what we're hearing with AFRICOM is that the military is going to take the lead and USAID and State and the rest aren't complementing, aren't equal, but somehow or another are going to be reporting because everything is being placed underneath AFRICOM.

When you say AFRICOM's ahead and everybody falls in, you know, underneath it, my question then becomes, what role does an ambassador have in a country if there's AFRICOM? So could someone please make it crystal clear, or if you can't, I think we have a real problem here in the way that we are starting to blend the role of the military and the role of the State Department. They should complement one another, but there should be no confusion, there should be a very bright line.

MS. WHELAN: Congresswoman, I couldn't agree with you more, and this is something that we have been trying to emphasize repeatedly in the last 18 months, that I have personally tried to emphasize in every public speaking engagement, whether it's with Africans, whether it's with your staffers, whether it's up here on Capitol Hill or anywhere else.

Apparently I am not articulate enough to get the message across, but for the record, Africa Command is a Defense Department organization. It is a Defense Department organizational realignment done because the Defense Department recognized that its organizational structure was suboptimal in order --in terms of accomplishing the missions that it needed to accomplish vis---vis Africa and the current global security environment.

It was also suboptimal in terms of improving the interface with our colleagues and other U.S. departments and agencies, and so DOD undertook to transform itself. As part of that transformation we recognized that it would be better if at working levels DOD was able to communicate more early and more often with their professional colleagues at other U.S. government agencies. And so we sought to make the command structure friendly to this kind of communication, not just through liaison relationships but through hopefully importing knowledge --not authority --but importing knowledge from these other government agencies to help inform DOD personnel in AFRICOM as they were developing DOD plans for DOD activities related to DOD missions on the continent in terms of our military relationships.

REP. MCCOLLUM: Then let me ask you whether or not you agree or disagree with the statement that I'm going to read, and I quote from this document from the Center for American Progress. Quote, "Yet it is distinguished from other" --AFRICOM --"from other regional commands because its primary mission will be conducting non-military operations."

MS. WHELAN: I totally and completely disagree.

REP. MCCOLLUM: Thank you. Anybody?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Ms. McCollum.

I'm more and more struck by your testimony, Ms. Whelan. You intended --in one statement in your written testimony you wrote, "The intent is not for DOD generally or for U.S. AFRICOM at the operational level to assume the lead in areas where State and/or USAID have clear lines of authority as well as the comparative advantages to lead."

Then in your written testimony you noted that AFRICOM's primary mission is, and I quote, "conflict prevention." Elsewhere you note that AFRICOM's focus is on war prevention and preventing problems from becoming crises. Sounds to me like that's more of a diplomatic mission than a military mission, and I think that's where some of the confusion comes in. And on that basis

MS. WHELAN: Congressman, may I take a moment?

REP. TIERNEY: Yeah, go ahead. Sure.

MS. WHELAN: Thank you. Conflict prevention, crisis prevention --there are --you're absolutely right, I could not agree more that the lead in those areas is a diplomatic lead, no question about it. However, DOD, Defense, has a role to play as a supporting actor in that. And so when we say that AFRICOM will be focusing on conflict prevention and crisis prevention and preventing problems from becoming conflicts, et cetera, et cetera, you have the words, we are saying that in the context of working on DOD's slice of the pie.

What we are saying is that we are making that our primary focus. Instead of our primary focus being on practicing on how we're going to respond when the six-alarm fire goes off, we are instead going to --and not to say that we wouldn't be able to respond when the six alarms go off --but we are instead refocusing ourselves and saying it is very important for us --it is not a secondary task --but it is very important for us to work with African militaries and help them prepare to address security problems in their countries in ways that respect human rights, the laws of war, et cetera, et cetera. So that's our slice of the conflict prevention.

REP. TIERNEY: I get it.

MS. WHELAN: We're not trying to take over

REP. TIERNEY: No, no, I get it.

MS. WHELAN: --someone else's slice.

REP. TIERNEY: I get it.

MS. WHELAN: That's the context.

REP. TIERNEY: I think many of us get it. I think what we don't get is we have the tail wagging the dog here. If the military's role was mostly supportive in these areas and if we really are believing our rhetoric to Africa and others that we really want to do the things that address their problems --hunger prevention, disease and all of that --then why are we leading --why do we put the military in charge of all of that even though they're just a supportive role in most of those diplomatic and aid in development areas? Why don't have a United States strategy that deals with all of those areas and gives the military their slice of it but not necessarily the lead in all of that?

And then I think that's probably not your answer to make. You can give a shot if you want, but

MS. WHELAN: Well, all I would say, sir, is that certainly the Defense Department was simply looking at its slice, and we realized that we were not doing our job very well.

REP. TIERNEY: I understand. And I think --just to help you out a little bit --me too, I think that Secretary Gates got this long before the rest of the administration got it, and it was a vacuum and he stepped in. And to his credit, he saw that everything isn't --like whack-a-mole, someone sticks his head up, you punch it militarily --that you need a broader perspective.

I think --and you don't need to answer this --I think the problem is the rest of this administration was sound asleep. Congress takes some responsibility for that too in developing a national security posture and an international posture that has a lot broader rationale than just military and then assigning everybody to the proper role, so the military stepped in to fill the vacuum. And I think what we're questioning here, some of us are, is that the proper lead entity on this or is all the roles that you say for the military truly there, but not necessarily should they be the lead organization in this broader perspective. And those are the things we'll flush out.

MS. WHELAN: Well

REP. TIERNEY: Mr. Shays?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, could I add something to this discussion before we go on

REP. TIERNEY: Sure.

GEN. SNODGRASS: --for Congresswoman McCollum? As someone who has commanded a base in a foreign country and worked with Ambassador Leroco (ph) and his country team on a daily basis, as someone who has basically built the engagement program for United States Air Forces Europe and Eastern Europe and Africa and now as a member of a brand new team, let me make a couple points.

First off, nothing happens in those countries without the ambassador saying they want to do it. We may come up with some ideas, and we'll take them to the country teams and the ambassadors, but unless they say go, nothing happens. Once they say go, we have a role to play in many, many activities.

As a practical exercise in building our staff right now, we're going through a humanitarian disaster relief scenario. Part of that scenario is the ambassador and the country team asking for assistance on behalf of a country. Now, we have a person named Angela; Angela is the OFDA rep, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Angela sits in our operation center, which is a converted chapel, because that's all the space that we have.

Angela basically stands up, lectures, educates, guides, counsels the entire staff as we are trying to formulate how we would supply the DOD part of humanitarian disaster assistance that OFDA is the lead for for our government. But she's right there; she's integrated with the staff. And then we put together the game plan; we go to our ambassador and say here's what we think we can do to help, and we have that discussion. And then once we're given the approval, we press forward. That's how AFRICOM is going about solving our piece of those problems.

REP. TIERNEY: Well, in line with that, then, General, Senator Feingold asked at a particular hearing whether or not lethal force or actual force of any kind would require approval by the relevant ambassador.

Ms. Whelan, you answered no, that the ambassador's signoff is not required. When the senator asked you to elaborate on the response, you said how will the United States --he asked, how will the United States government maintain chief of mission authority if no ambassadorial approval is needed for the use of lethal force by the U.S. military within the relevant country? I think that's the question that we have for you today.

MS. WHELAN: Congressman, I think it's important to understand that in context. The use of lethal force is only authorized under an execution order which has been signed by the secretary of Defense in his role as part of the national command authority with the president --taking direction from the president.

Execution orders are coordinated with the State Department and the National Security Council before they are issued, so no execution order is ever issued without the State Department actually having already coordinated on it. And so therefore the ambassador has his input into that execute order before it's signed.

REP. TIERNEY: Would that that were 100 percent true, but we've had reports of ambassadors not even aware that there were military personnel in their country. And that's the problem on that. That's why we raise that issue.

Mr. Shays?

REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R-CT): Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for having this hearing and my colleagues for participating in it. I don't feel I have a dog in this fight --in other words, I haven't formed my own opinion. But I do react sometimes to what I hear, and then I take the other side, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's where I'm at. I just feel like I need someone to help sort this out.

The way I look at it is the Department of Defense could set up an AFRICOM model and include no one from State; it could just be Defense. Now, the challenge is we don't have bases much around Africa, and I suspect, being a former Peace Corps volunteer, that some of that deals with colonialism and they don't want that kind of camel's head under the tent.

But we all know that a number of countries are dysfunctional; they weren't prepared to be on their own. The colonialists didn't, you know, help them prepare for that day, they didn't want that day to happen. And we've seen countries' gross domestic product go in the opposite direction.

Africa, it seems to me, is just really unique. From my mind, I'm thinking well, hats off to DOD that they say, let's have --instead of dividing Africa into three parts, this wonderful continent, huge in resources, tremendous potential of people and resources --and I'm saying this is a new model. It's a new model; I don't think we've seen it happen anywhere else.

What's unique about what this committee does is we have oversight over State and Defense in terms of investigations and programs. So you really have a committee that really deals with both. There's a kind of irony to that. (Laughs.) You know, we have focus on State and Defense, so do you. So the fact that you haven't reached that 25 percent, that's the story, but I don't know how significant it is.

I never had a sense that somehow DOD takes over for State in Africa. We don't allow it. The ambassador is king basically in that area. What we do have around the countries are DOD people and FBI folks and so on working within State, which is kind of an interesting concept. We have, like, you know, 50 percent could be non-State people working in our embassies, which makes sense as well.

Some of the best relationships around the world have been developed by the military. When I go into France I learn more from the military about certain state issues, diplomacy issues, and it's true in other parts. So my sense is this is --given we don't have bases, there's logic to this. Otherwise I think DOD kind of floats around in mid-air. It seems to me getting involved in the non-military side is something that we've wanted our military to do, as long as it doesn't hold down our State. You know, are they mutually exclusive?

So my question to you, Ms. Ploch, is react to what I've said and tell me what you see that's positive and what you see that's negative.

MS. PLOCH: (Off mike.)

REP. SHAYS: You need your mike. You need your mike.

MS. PLOCH: Sure. There we go. We both discussed the problems posed by Africa being divided among three combatant commands. There are also problems posed by the fact that Africa up until now under EUCOM, which had 90-plus countries in its area of responsibility, half of which were African --I think 40-some, 48 [actual number is 42] --couldn't focus all of its efforts on what you've identified as the unique security challenges in Africa.

REP. SHAYS: So the first thing is you as an observer and a student of this and an expert on this see sense in the fact that we're focused on Africa from the military standpoint.

MS. PLOCH: Absolutely. You have an intelligence component and a planning component that now are focused entirely on African security challenges.

REP. SHAYS: Tell me some more positive before we get into the negatives. Is that the big positive? Is there any other positive?

MS. PLOCH: That is a --that is indeed a positive. It's a positive that you'll have a commander now coming to talk about African security challenges rather than African, European, Afghan security challenges. I think the

REP. SHAYS: Let me ask you this: Is it a positive that we're getting the Department of Defense to think in terms of soft diplomacy as well as so-called hard diplomacy? I mean, isn't that a positive as well?

MS. PLOCH: Well, I think they already have been looking at soft diplomacy. If you look at what AFRICOM is proposing to take on right now, it's activities that are already underway with EUCOM and CENTCOM. It's peacekeeping training. It's counterterrorism and insurgent training. It's training African militaries through international military education and training and foreign military financing. These are all somewhat soft-power efforts to build partnership capacity so that the African militaries can take on these African security challenges.

REP. SHAYS: Let me --that's a positive. I'm going to come to the negative in a second.

Mr. Pendleton, what are the positives? Do you agree with Ms. Ploch?

MR. PENDLETON: Yeah, I was just going to parrot what she said. I mean, focusing on Africa likely has some value, and it's within the purview of Department of Defense's authority. Whether the concept will work over time just remains to be seen.

REP. SHAYS: Is --does the fact that we really don't have bases that we can have a flagship on land present a unique challenge for AFRICOM?

MR. PENDLETON: Yeah, I would think it does. Now, we do have some locations there, warm bases and such that we can use, and we have a number of people --

REP. SHAYS: Bases you can use or bases we control that's our land --which?

MR. PENDLETON: I don't know. I'd probably have to defer to Ms. Whelan or someone on that exactly.

REP. SHAYS: General?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, the military lay-down outside of JTF-HOA consists of cooperative security locations which are a couple of shelters with desks and potentially some equipment in it.

REP. SHAYS: But no base.

GEN. SNODGRASS: No bases.

REP. SHAYS: Yeah, thank you.

Ms. Ploch --thank you, General --tell me the negatives or the concerns that --"the watch out fors."

MS. PLOCH: Sure. Well, there are a number of concerns. Obviously, we've talked about African concerns, perception that this is a neo-colonial effort. Colonial memories are still fresh on a lot of the continent, and the idea of a U.S. troop presence is very concerning for a lot of Africans. I think that the AFRICOM team has done some efforts to talk about the fact that this is a staff presence rather than

REP. SHAYS: But that suggests we're not going to have a lot of military in Africa, correct? Does it or not?

MS. PLOCH: That's my perception that we are --our troop presence is what we have in Djibouti.

REP. SHAYS: (Off mike.)

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, one of the things we discussed before you came was that we have hundreds of engagement activities that occur every year on the continent of Africa now, but those are temporary. They're not permanent presence. And if your question is about permanent presence, then the answer is

REP. SHAYS: I'm talking about permanent bases.

GEN. SNODGRASS: Yes, sir. We have no intention of building large permanent bases there.

REP. SHAYS: That's what I wanted.

Some other dangers, and then I'll relinquish the floor here --"watch out fors."

MS. PLOCH: Sure. Well, other --I don't know if you'd call it a negative, but it's something that Congress is looking at right now, and that's funding for security assistance activities and the authorities for security activities. AFRICOM has identified this is a main priority of their mission, and security systems has been traditionally led and funded by the State Department, programs like IMET and FMF and foreign military sales.

We've seen since 2006 an increasing number of programs that are DOD-led --Title 10 authorities; 1206 is one of these authorities --and this has grown significantly larger than the State Department-funded and led security assistance programs. I think it's about three times larger than IMET right now in terms of funding. So there are some questions about State Department's authority to guide those security assistance priorities that I think Congress is looking at right now.

REP. SHAYS: Let me just quickly ask the negative, do you agree? Anything to add?

MR. PENDLETON: Yeah, I think those are accurate, but I would like to provide a little bit of perspective on this. I mean, I'm a professional critic, but, I mean, this is the cart before the horse story, you know, put simply, I think.

REP. SHAYS: It's what?

MR. PENDLETON: A cart before the horse story. You know, we announced a lot of things before we worked things out. We've seen this before. I mean, at the risk of revealing my

REP. SHAYS: No, let me ask the question.

MR. PENDLETON: Yes, sir.

REP. SHAYS: You make that sound like it's a negative. What's wrong with having an objective --let me just make the question before you're shaking your head --if --and maybe I'm not understanding you --what's wrong with having an objective telling Congress this is our goal? Frankly, most of the time, they do it and don't have a plan and don't tell us their goal and we can't judge them. Here they're at least saying this is what they would like. Why is that a negative?

MR. PENDLETON: I don't think it is necessarily, except you've got to work out the details. What this reminds me of

REP. SHAYS: And that's what we're doing.

MR. PENDLETON: Absolutely. In the late '80s, during the drugs wars --again, at risk of revealing my age --what we saw was first de-confliction --because that was a very much an interagency issue as well --then coordination, and the Holy Grail is the integration. This takes time. Large-scale organizational transformations typically take five to seven years, so I think rationalizing expectations here is extremely important.

REP. SHAYS: Okay. Just one last question and that is the number that was said in this hearing was we --throughout all of Africa we only have 1,000 State Department employees? Is that --was I hearing something false or --I mean, that's a number that's easy to get. What would the number be? I mean, my God, we have almost 1,000 probably just in England in that one embassy.

AMB. YATES: I can't answer that, Congressman, the exact number, but that would not surprise me. We only have about 6,500 total all over the world, so if 1,000 were in Africa that would not surprise me, especially when we think of how many are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.

REP. SHAYS: Thank you very much all of you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. Higgins, you're recognized for five minutes.

REPRESENTATIVE BRIAN HIGGINS (D-NY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just an issue on --relative to interagency staffing, just for context, you know, we're talking about the continent of Africa and perhaps, Ambassador Yates, the number of countries included in this jurisdiction?

AMB. YATES: Congressman, the number of countries that will be in the jurisdiction of the Africa Command? If my math is correct, it will be 53. It will be every nation on the African continent and island nations with the exception of Egypt, and we'll have a special relationship with Egypt. And we as a nation don't recognize the western Sahara.

REP. HIGGINS: Where will AFRICOM be physically located?

AMB. YATES: We are --the headquarters is being built in Stuttgart, Germany and it will be there for the foreseeable future. It cannot move even to another place off the continent [of Europe] before --is it 2011, Theresa, for budgetary

MS. WHELAN: 2011.

AMB. YATES: --2011, it would not move before 2011 even off the continent [of Europe] for budgetary reasons. But we invite you all to come and visit because I think it was very interesting, Mr. Pendleton, what you said about how hard it is. I think those of who are taking on this endeavor know that this is one of the most difficult and challenging jobs that any of us have ever had, but I wouldn't be in this position as a senior State Department officer seconded to the military if I didn't believe it's something right to be doing for our nation for the future. But come visit and see what we're building.

REP. HIGGINS: I understand. It's been referenced, but just could you elaborate a little bit further about why Germany and not the continent itself?

AMB. YATES: Yes, and General Snodgrass, help me a little bit here. I was the foreign policy adviser for the European Command. And, of course, the majority of the nations are and still until October 1 are part of the European Command, the sub-Saharan African nations.

They looked around for a place for the transition team to set up after the planning team did the work here [in Washington, D.C.] at Bolling Air Force Base and it made sense because the work that was already going on --all the missions, all the theater security cooperation activities --were being directed, the majority of them, right there in Stuttgart. So that is how that came about --and Kelley Barracks had some empty, albeit not renovated, buildings that we could use.

GEN. SNODGRASS: And sir, the transfer of those activities really required physical presence. We are currently transferring over 134 missions' activities programs and exercises, of which 69 are coming from EUCOM, 50 are coming from CENTCOM and 15 are coming from the Pacific Command. The physical location of a lot of that in Stuttgart allowed us to transfer people from United States European Command directly to us without moving their families and pulling up their roots but allowing them to just come to work in a different place. That was a real benefit to us.

REP. HIGGINS: So 54 nations, excluding Egypt, based in Germany. Any of the African nations wanting AFRICOM presence in their country?

AMB. YATES: Theresa, maybe you need to take this.

But we have had this discussion, Congressman, but I think being loyal to General Ward --I feel like one thing he has really accomplished is moving the discussion away from presence on the continent and instead it is developing the relationships and nurturing the relationships with the African militaries. And he said to us, it's about deeds and actions, so when we go backwards to the discussion of any location on the continent, I don't think it is productive for the future of the command for the immediate future.

REP. HIGGINS: I have no further questions. Thank you.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Higgins.

You know, maybe there's some confusion in my mind and not in others here, but I keep looking back at the testimony, and I look at CRS's report. CJTF-HOA also conducts civilian military operations throughout East Africa as part of an effort to win hearts and minds and enhance the long-term stability of the region. These civil military operations include digging wells and building and repairing schools, hospitals and roads. They're also part of the broader CENTCOM mission to counter the re-emergence of transnational terrorism. Some observers question whether some of these activities might be more appropriately coordinated by a civilian agency or nongovernmental organization than by the United States military. Are they correct in questioning that, Ms. Whelan?

MS. WHELAN: CJTF-HOA does have military engineers, military medical personnel, Seabees onboard in CJTF-HOA, and those individuals do support the U.S. government foreign policy in the Horn of Africa by conducting small projects that involve in some cases repairing a school or digging a well. These are skills that are inherent to DOD. The DOD requires their engineering skills. Having our personnel work on their skills, hone their skills while doing something that provides benefit to U.S. foreign policy and achieves the U.S. foreign policy objective seems to be a good marriage of those skills and U.S. foreign policy. All of those activities are conducted in coordination with the U.S. embassy. None of them are conducted by CJTF-HOA without having previously discussed the project with the U.S. embassy, gotten the U.S. embassy's support, and oftentimes the CJTF-HOA is actually working hand in glove with USAID in terms of USAID's overall strategy for the particular country and/or for the region.

So it's just a resource that is on hand. It's a capability that's on hand that we do need to exercise for our own defense purposes but that we can exercise in support of USAID.

REP. TIERNEY: You know, that's interesting. When we were in Afghanistan, there were military leaders there begging for that kind of support to do some of the work that was needed there for digging wells and building roads whatever, and couldn't find it. Here it is all this time in Africa, apparently, and the question would be why is it there rather than in Afghanistan? But in both cases, I think the general impression is that, you know, these are civilian-type efforts that, sure, you might supplement it with military personnel, when and as necessary or whatever, but don't we really run a paucity of people to fill those billets on the civil side? Isn't that part of our problem in Afghanistan as well as perhaps looking forward to what kind of a hat we want to wear when we go out and do these things in Africa and other (wheres ?).

We need more people familiar with agriculture, familiar with law --you know, the rule of law, familiar with engineering --all of those things to go out and do these civilian types of efforts, whether it be Afghanistan or whether it be Africa, unless we want to run the risk of being perceived that this is just another military endeavor where the United States military is coming in to protect their interests on that.

MS. WHELAN: Certainly, Congressman, I don't think anyone would disagree that if there were more civilians available with these capabilities that that would be a very good thing.

REP. TIERNEY: Ambassador, where do we stand with that? I mean, are we trying to build up that capacity? I know that we absolutely lost a lot of capacity where we outsourced a lot of work in some of those countries. In Pakistan and in Afghanistan, in particular, we outsourced a lot of work and we lost the internal in-house capacity to have those types of civilian people out there. Are we doing anything to turn that around and build those numbers?

AMB. YATES: I understand that Secretary Rice came and asked for 1,000 more positions in recent days, and I certainly fully support that. I know USAID has had a similar initiative. It still means the numbers are dwarfed in comparison to what we could use within each of those, so I support any plea to fund the positions that have been requested.

REP. TIERNEY: Well, I guess I would wonder why, if we really see this as an effort of trying to meet --I keep going back to this because it's, I think, the crux of it --what Africa's concerns are --their concerns are poverty, their concerns are hunger, their concerns are not having the rule of law, their concerns are about some of the oppressive regimes there, internecine warfare --(inaudible). If those are their concerns, it seems to me we would put together a structure on the continent to deal with those as opposed to having a military and hopefully find enough people that are trained and want to hone their skills in doing some of those things that affect those other areas on that.

And I would think that that's the kind of budget would be coming presented to Congress. "We need this many engineers. We need this many people from agricultural backgrounds. We need this many people from Commerce Department to help them set up businesses and things of that nature, this many transportation engineers and people that dig wells." All of that --and by the way, a part of our budget is we need a security apparatus as well. But what we hear is, you know, we need this large military appropriation of which we'll try to do everything. We'll try to have the military do all of those things on that. It seems to me that we're not necessarily getting it in the right order or seeing the numbers the way they ought to be broken down if our mission is really going to follow our rhetoric on that.

AMB. YATES: I don't disagree with what you're saying. I think that Secretary Gates has articulated that the same way in several major speeches that we need to get our foreign affairs agencies in balance so that we are putting forth our foreign policy with the right agencies to implement them. So

REP. TIERNEY: I hate to have him be the only one out there singing that song, though, and I think it would be nice if somebody would listen to his music and then write the script. You know, where is the budget that symbolizes something of that nature actually happening? A thousand more people is a start, but where's the larger picture? Where's the strategic analysis of where it's going? General (sic) Accountability Office --not Mr. Pendleton but others over there have reported recently there is no strategy out there, you know. And I think that's what we need. So I'm not criticizing those people before me. I respect that you have to work within the confines, but I think one of the things that is going to be problematical for all of you, there is no strategy out there that you can then pinpoint and put a budget around and lead us in this direction so the military stands up and, to their credit, tries to take on everything. I'm not sure that that's going to necessarily be in all our benefit on that, but we have a problem with billets, filling the billets for all of that. We have a problem with getting a budget that reflects what our rhetoric is. We have a problem with getting people trained in those areas.

Can somebody tell me which countries in Africa where there will be --where there are right now AFRICOM activities or where would they most likely be in the short run? Which countries are we talking about in Africa?

MS. WHELAN: Congressman, as the general said earlier, we have actually military-to-military relations with pretty much every country in Africa with the exception of the government of Sudan, currently Zimbabwe, although we actually do have an HIV/AIDS program that continues with Zimbabwe, and Eritrea. So there are programs sometimes very small in nature. The IMET program, for example, might be the only program in a given country.

REP. TIERNEY: IMET being?

MS. WHELAN: IMET, International Military Education and Training, which is a co --the budget comes from the State Department, but it is administered by the Defense Department, so AFRICOM would be a key component of that. So you might have --that might be the only activity in a country like, say, the Central African Republic, who, on the other end of the spectrum are more robust activities in active peacekeeping countries like Nigeria or Senegal or Rwanda or Kenya are. Also, we have a variety of activities with the South Africans running from medical cooperation to environmental --military environmental cooperation. So you've got this very, very wide range, but there really isn't a portion of the continent except the three countries that I mentioned where there is no U.S. military activity of some sort, even if it's just schooling.

REP TIERNEY: Is --does there exist anywhere a written strategy of the United States' efforts to help Africa address its problems? Do we have that kind of a strategic analysis anywhere, or do we have just a United States strategy for dealing with the United States' concerns of the global war on terror and oil?

MS. WHELAN: Congressman, the recent --the administration recently signed out National Security Presidential Directive 50, which was an update of the previous strategy that had been signed out in 1992, and this is the articulation of U.S. strategy towards Africa. And there are multiple components in that document, and it is not simply a security strategy. There is obviously a security component to it, but there are other components to it with regard to economic issues, development, et cetera, et cetera. So that is the overarching strategy. That is the document that we in the Defense Department reference when we develop our DOD strategies to fall within the overall U.S. government strategy.

REP. TIERNEY: And in that strategy, is AFRICOM the central administrator for all that?

MS. WHELAN: AFRICOM is --no, it is not the central administrator for NSPD 50. AFRICOM is a tool of the Department of Defense. It is actually not the only tool that the secretary has at his --that is available to him for Africa. There are other tools as well. But AFRICOM is a tool of the secretary to utilize in achieving the requirements that are articulated in that strategy with regard to maritime security, peacekeeping issues, counterterrorism, et cetera. That's --AFRICOM would play a role in those missions, but with regards to the rest of it, no, that is not AFRICOM's responsibility.

REP. TIERNEY: Ambassador, whose responsibility is it?

AMB. YATES: Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to add that NSPD-50 was signed out before AFRICOM was. I mean, I can't say envisioned, because I knew it had been talked about the idea of this single command for over 10 years, but even the planning for it. So, I mean, I think there is a question. I mean, if it took from '92 or '94 to develop for the last strategy for Africa until this strategy, it is not going --it's not going to be easy to change it to put AFRICOM in there. That would be something that will take time. So it --I mean, I don't think that we can judge the fact that AFRICOM specifically is not mentioned in NSPD-50 that we

REP. TIERNEY: Easy for you to say.

AMB. YATES: Huh?

REP. TIERNEY: Easy for you to say.

AMB. YATES: Yeah. (Laughter.)

MS. WHELAN: I would just note that strategies like NSPD-50 do not specifically direct the tools that the departments are supposed to use to achieve their goals. They provide the departments with the goals and then

REP. TIERNEY: The strategies.

MS. WHELAN: --the department that's supposed to figure out which tool is the most appropriate to achieve the goal.

REP. TIERNEY: Okay. I'm going to ask my --if they have any further questions for you.

Ms. McCollum?

REP. MCCOLLUM: I would just say thank you, Mr. Chair, for having this hearing.

And so there are --I just want to leave here being crystal clear. PRTs --they perform very important missions in development projects. They extend basic governmental services to people who live outside of a capital area --for example, Afghanistan's been brought up. But they've only been deployed in active war zones as a critical tool in conducting counterinsurgency operations in active war zones. Is it your understanding that PRTs will not be part of what the military is looking at doing in AFRICOM unless it is in an active war zone? Or are "PRTs lite" or are PRTs something like it part of the discussion that's taking place for the military and AFRICOM?

MS. WHELAN: I think the PRT is a very specialized and useful tool, and it is a tool that is designed for specific circumstances. Should the circumstances that --in which a PRT would be the most effective tool --should those circumstances arise in Africa

REP. MCCOLLUM: I gave you a definition. I said a war zone --yes or no? PRTs are currently used in war zones?

MS. WHELAN: Yes, ma'am.

REP. MCCOLLUM: We can argue the effectiveness, could they be conducted better, or whatever. My question was, are there discussions going on in AFRICOM to have something similar to PRTs or to have PRTs functioning in non-war zones? Yes or no?

MS. WHELAN: I will defer that question to my AFRICOM colleagues.

GEN. SNODGRASS: No.

REP. MCCOLLUM: Thank you.

GEN. SNODGRASS: That's the first I've heard of it. It's an interesting perspective, but no.

REP. MCCOLLUM: That's part of the confusion up here. And I'm just trying to make sure that I don't leave here confused.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you.

Mr. Higgins, Mr. Welch, Mr. Shays?

Mr. Shays?

REP. SHAYS: The only question I would ask is, is there anything that any of you would like to comment about what the others have said here just so it's part of the record? You know, in other words, anything that you want to clarify?

GEN. SNODGRASS: I would like one clarification point on the personnel numbers for the command. The number of 1,304, which includes the SOC Africa component and also all of the personnel that are U.S. military in our embassies in Africa is the fiscal year '09-funded number. The end-state number will be higher than that because we have had to go back and ask the Defense Department for additional personnel because some functions were left out of the original plan, and we're in the process of doing that right now. So I don't know what the final number is going to be. We went back and made an impassioned plea for additional people to do these functions, but my guess is it's going to be over 1,500 when it's all said and done. But we don't have a final answer on that yet, and then that discussion didn't get cleaned up from earlier today.

REP. SHAYS: Anyone else?

AMB. YATES: Just because I brought the chart of the interagency, I would like to enter it. It's one I boiled down to use --you may flash it up there. The --oh, can you not see the color?

Even though Mr. Pendleton and others have raised this small number of interagency representatives in the command, I can say from being there and welcoming each one and envisioning the next ones coming in, they're in critically and responsible positions, you know, not just mine, while still having a foreign policy adviser, but to have the senior development adviser, also to have someone in charge of outreach. You look across. They're in key leadership positions, and this is new, and this is different and it's not easy, but I think that is what's going to make a difference with this model.

REP. SHAYS: Well, you just raised a question; I want to be clear on this. Fifteen hundred --are they actually in the embassies or are they --General?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, we right now only have a small number. In our 53 embassies, there are only 12 ODCs. Also, the defense cooperation

REP. SHAYS: But do we envision bringing a whole host of people and putting them in our various embassies? Are we going to

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, I wouldn't typify it as a whole host of people. We are looking in alternatives to beef up the military presence on the country teams right now. And we're working with the department on what that plan would look like.

REP. SHAYS: So we have the traditional country teams in every embassy, and that number will increase, which will be unique to Africa as opposed to elsewhere. In other words, the country teams may be much larger in Africa than they would be in other countries?

GEN. SNODGRASS: No, sir. I think it would bring the military presence on the country teams to within sight of some of our other country teams outside of Africa, but, you know, quite frankly, the staffs on the country teams are woefully inadequate to the tasks we're giving them.

REP. SHAYS: And so is our State Department, frankly, is my sense.

Yes, anyone else before --

MS. PLOCH: I just wanted to briefly address Congressman Welch's earlier question about how AFRICOM might affect a crisis like Darfur or Zimbabwe or Somalia. It's a question I get a lot from congressional offices. And taking a step back from, of course, the longer-term preventing such conflicts and what AFRICOM might do to prevent such conflicts, what it might do to affect a current conflict, you can look at what EUCOM and CENTCOM have been doing in relation to Darfur and Somalia. They've been providing airlifts and last-minute peacekeeping training to Nigerian and Rwandan and Burundian peacekeeping forces that are deploying right now in Somalia and in Sudan. So that's certainly one aspect, of course. Another is providing security for food delivery and other humanitarian assistance.

REP. SHAYS: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. TIERNEY: There's apparently a great potential, obviously, for transnational criminality and extremists in conduct going on. Do any of you have an update on what are we doing in terms of engaging all of the stakeholders in Africa, the African nations that might surround an area where that's going on, as well as other countries with an interest in it, whether it be China or France or anybody else on that --to sort of get people to be on the same page as to what are the security needs of that region and the best way to approach them and work cooperatively with folks doing that as opposed to be seen just going in and establishing what we think ought to be the security answer there?

MS. WHELAN: Yes, Congressman, we actually maintain an active dialogue at varying levels with the African countries on the transnational issues. We have a dialogue through the African Union. We also have the dialogues with the regional economic communities, such as ECOWAS and then we have our bilateral dialogues with the individual African countries.

Everything that we are doing in Africa right now is in response to pulls, essentially, from these entities at varying levels, whether they be looking for assistance in improving their multinational operations or whether they be looking for assistance at the bilateral level to improve their ability to contribute to multinational operations.

We are in active discussions with them about what the threats are as they perceive them and also as we perceive them. We had a session just recently, a couple of months ago, out at Airlie House [in Virginia], which congressional staff were invited to attend in which we had representatives from 45 African countries come specifically to discuss the issues of current challenges, security challenges on the continent, and the African perspective on those challenges and the U.S. perspective on those challenges, and how those challenges --how our perspectives were either very similar or different, and how in those areas where they were similar we could work together more effectively.

And so this is something that is --I give you that as an example. That is not the only time we've done that. It's an ongoing process.

REP. TIERNEY: But it's a good example. And on Page 3 of your testimony, you talked about the potential for cooperative programs to guarantee Africa's security, and in that you were referring not just to African nations but I believe also to China's and to France, whatever.

MS. WHELAN: Yes, sir.

REP. TIERNEY: How are we bringing those parties into that conversation so that they don't see us as trying to just usurp control of this whole situation and making it more international in flavor?

MS. WHELAN: We --in terms of the European allies and those that have traditionally been active in Africa, we maintain a regular dialogue with them through various mechanism, again, either bilaterally or also multilaterally. We have things called the P3 with sort of the big players like France, U.K., ourselves, but we also talk to the Dutch, the Spanish, the Norwegians, the Portuguese, and working with them from their perspectives and then in places where, of course, they may have even better insights because of their historical experiences.

With regard to China, we have recently opened up a defense dialogue with China on Africa issues. We had a member of the Defense Department travel to China just a couple of months ago to give a presentation to the Chinese as part of a larger bilateral DOD-China dialogue on the Africa Command and we have issued an invitation to the Chinese to come to Washington to talk specifically about security issues in Africa. We have given them three dates. We are currently waiting for the Chinese to come back to us with a response on those dates. So that's something that we

REP. TIERNEY: I'm encouraged by that. I think that that's important, that we know what their perspective is, they know what ours is --

MS. WHELAN: Yes, sir.

REP. TIERNEY: --and that we sort of get it straight that we're trying to both agree on what is the security situation

MS. WHELAN: Yes, sir.

REP. TIERNEY: --that we all need to have happen there and what's the best way of getting it, as opposed to just imposing it and letting somebody else misinterpret it.

MS. WHELAN: One other note is that with regard to the Europeans, they have been very, very forward leaning and extremely supportive of the concept of AFRICOM, because they believe that it will improve our collective ability to coordinate more together on the security challenges in Africa. They have from the very beginning been pressing us to allow them to imbed officers into the command. We are very open to that and have told them so. We're obviously in the process of structuring the command right now, but we've gotten a great deal of enthusiasm from them so we would expect to have European officers imbedded in the command.

We have also noted in our dialogue with African countries that we would also welcome African officers being imbedded in positions in the command and not just serving in liaison roles. They have taken that on board and some of them have actually been quite interested in that prospect that we would actually open that up to them.

REP. TIERNEY: Let me, at the risk of raising your ire a little bit here --I'm not trying to do that; I just want to clarify --we have forces in Djibouti, about 1,500. Am I right? That includes Special Ops and others, or is that separate from them? Are we counting Special Ops in that number?

MS. WHELAN: They're --we have, yes, personnel in Djibouti, both staff and forces

REP. TIERNEY: Make up that 1,500?

MS. WHELAN: That make up that total of 1,500.

REP. TIERNEY: DIA personnel also make up that 1,500, or are they counted separately?

MS. WHELAN: I believe they make up part of that total, but I would need to take that for the record to make absolutely sure. But I believe they do.

REP. TIERNEY: Okay. So we have that presence, we have some intermittent groups of SEALs or Special Ops or other people training in whatever --the general mentioned that --through there. We have small number of military in the embassies --throughout which may be increased on that --and the issue of combatant command center for AFRICOM being in Africa is no longer on the table or just pushed down the road?

MS. WHELAN: I think the issue of having some AFRICOM headquarters' presence on the continent is still on the table but it is pushed down the road, because we have other things that need to be focused on

REP. TIERNEY: What about the three or four satellite offices? Are they no longer on the table, or are they also pushed down the road?

MS. WHELAN: That is pushed down the road.

REP. TIERNEY: So there is a possibility sometime of having the command center and three or four satellite presences somewhere spread throughout Africa?

MS. WHELAN: Yes, Congressman

REP. TIERNEY: It would not determine what the size is going to be, what the physical structures in the body will be, what the makeup of the personnel will be, whether it'll be DIA, Special Ops or any of that --none of that's been decided?

MS. WHELAN: Right. None of that's been decided, and what we are looking at, again, is a physical structure for the command that will optimize the command's ability to carry out its mission.

So we have some notional ideas on what might be required, but we have pushed further exploration of that issue down the road, so that we could focus on some more pressing issues towards achieving our goal of full operational capability by 1 October.

REP. TIERNEY: General, what training is in place for our military personnel to make sure that they have the kind of cultural understanding and language capacity that would make their service there more useful?

GEN. SNODGRASS: That's an excellent question, Mr. Chairman. In terms of the language capacity

REP. TIERNEY: (Inaudible.) (Laughter.)

GEN. SNODGRASS: Excellent question from the back row.

REP. TIERNEY: Yes, it was. (Laughter.)

GEN. SNODGRASS: You know better than I the struggles that all Americans have with foreign languages. And, frankly, having lived in Europe now for over four years --or actually over eight years, on separate assignments --having second language is very important.

Now, the United States military, as a reflection of our society, has those same problems. But in terms of cultural training, one of the things that we started --after I got there and with a bunch of other folks, Ambassador Yates included --was a series of processes where we identified cultural training and other kinds of professional military education that we wanted our officers to go through.

For example, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, there is a course that teaches people how to work within the embassy country team and how FMF and FMS cases actually run, so that you can understand how the country team is working through it.

We also have the African Center for Strategic Studies in our staff who put together a weeklong series of lectures by Africans who came in early in the program's stand-up, and we're going to bring them back now after a year to teach us about Africa from the Africans' perspective and talk to us about the way that Africans look at their problems, so that we can provide value for them.

We have online courses that we've identified as well as courses that we'll send people to in the United States to get a better cultural awareness of the Africans. But remember we're talking about a continent of 900 different languages and cultures and with enough geographic area that you could fit the United States, China, Western Europe, Argentina, and still have 200 million square miles remaining.

So it as an extraordinarily diverse culture that we're trying to grasp and put our hands around. But we are making efforts to do that as best we can

REP. TIERNEY: We may have to give you an extra week or two to get that together.

GEN. SNODGRASS: Another week will do it, sir. (Laughter.)

REP. TIERNEY: Well, I want to thank all of the witnesses here today. If the feedback is helpful to you at all, from my perspective --and Mr. Shays may want to add something on that --I respect what the military is doing there. I mean, I think there is obviously a security component to all of that.

That said, I'm not comfortable that the military is the right entity to be leading all the civilian aspects of this. And I'm not sure it's fair to put that on the military. I respect that the secretary --Gates has stepped forward on that, and I think his leadership is great. I'm not sure that even he intended that he was going to get stuck with the whole responsibility of it once he recognized the issue on that.

And I think I can really see clearly why others are concerned, not --because there hasn't been time to see the actions prove the rhetoric. So I think people's concern is, your presence looks very military, your mission statement looks military, all of the cooperation with other countries are military, all of that --and there's been no track record yet of any action that shows us that there really is this great civilian component to it with humanitarianism, focusing on Africa's problems.

To get to that point --I see problems with the billets, how we're going to get the people to fill those posts, and how we're going to organize them and who's going to be in charge and how we're going to make it clear that it's not the military telling them what to do in that aspect of it but those people associated with those kinds of activities taking care of their business with support from the military.

All that isn't clear for me, so I can understand how it's not clear for people in Africa or people in the NGOs or other groups that are looking at this thing. And I wish that we had a governmentwide recognition of the problem on this and then approach it on that base --I think we maybe we would not have pushed on the military to have to be the lead in all the humanitarian things as well.

And I'm not sure how we get from one point to another on that or whatever, but there's a security role there, for sure, and there's a larger role for other activities that really address Africa's concerns, certainly. I just don't think that Africans are ever going to get that message in the current structure that's there, unless we do some serious readjustment with that and increase a lot of personnel and have a budget that reflects that this is really what our mission is --the security aspect is a part of it.

REP. SHAYS: If I could?

REP. TIERNEY: Sure.

REP. SHAYS: I'd just react to say that I think this is a very helpful hearing and one in which I would suspect, Mr. Chairman, you're going to be following closely. I think you know the concerns that come from the committee, and I think the concerns that are being expressed out in --with the general public and the NGOs and so on.

But my sense is that the model has potential --given that we don't have bases in Africa, I'm struck by the fact that it's hard to have a different kind of presence and that we're almost being forced to look at something I think makes sense, and that is a collaboration. And we know that there's a goal of 25 percent, and we'll be eager to see how that unfolds, if it actually happens or not.

And this may turn out to be a really constructive effort benefiting both State and Defense and our country and Africa, or it could be something else. So I think for me the jury's still out and it will be interesting to see how you all make it work.

REP. TIERNEY: Mr. Shays, you deserve the benefit of General Snodgrass's reaction to your "25 percent"

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, the 25 percent number for the interagency is more urban legend than a goal. It was thrown out at a news conference

REP. SHAYS: So what is the number?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, we don't have a goal. Quite frankly, we are trying to bring on the interagency players who can provide value, and we're bringing them in at a pace that allows them to provide value back to

REP. SHAYS: Let me just pursue that a second, then.

GEN. SNODGRASS: Yes, sir.

REP. SHAYS: Then what that says to me is that you aren't co-opting, in one sense, State; you are basically

REP. TIERNEY: Replacing.

REP. SHAYS: --you are basically having a presence --well, sort that out. I'm sorry to extend the hearing a second

GEN. SNODGRASS: No, sir. You're right on --you're on track with this.

REP. SHAYS: Yeah.

GEN. SNODGRASS: We think we're going to get about 50 in the first year --

REP. SHAYS: Well, let me say --if you had said you were going to do none, would we even be having this hearing?

GEN. SNODGRASS: Sir, I --that's way above my pay grade. (Laughter.)

REP. TIERNEY: Can I interject for a second?

REP. SHAYS: Yes.

REP. TIERNEY: Yes, I think we probably would be having the hearing, because we'd still be looking to see whether or not the United States mission here is to help Africa with Africa's problems or to help the United States with its problems.

We say in the rhetoric that we're going in to work with Africa to resolve its issues. They don't have just military issues, so if they weren't bringing in any other groups or --doing that, then we'd have two questions. One is, why we have just military, or why do we have the military doing all those civilian functions instead of bringing in civilian people to do it? So there'd still be a lot to talk about.

REP. SHAYS: Right.

GEN. SNODGRASS: My point, sir, would be we're trying to right-size the command's interagency participation for the task that we're going to achieve and we're still learning about that as we go. But every time someone from another department comes to the command and sees what we're doing --some come very skeptical and leave very, very positive, enthusiastic about participating with the command.

REP. SHAYS: Well, let me just then make this point. I think it's nonsensical to have divided Africa up the way we did. I think it's almost an insult to the continent of Africa and its people --that said, you know, you are our miscellaneous, we're just going to fit you in with our other focus.

I like having an African focus, and I realize Africa is a huge continent with, as you point out, many cultures and languages --hundreds. But I like that part of it.

What I don't want is to have DOD co-opt the responsibilities of State. But conversely, I would love State to have a little more influence with DOD. And if that's the way it works out, then I'll be someone who will be applauding, and if it doesn't, I won't.

Thank you.

REP. TIERNEY: He's in the favored seat here. He's got it both ways. (Laughs.)

Thank every one of you. Your testimony has really been extraordinarily helpful, and I know we kept you here probably a little longer than we had intended, but we appreciate it a great deal.

Again, thank all of you for your service to your country. We don't say that just offhand; we're serious about it. And we know that you are too. So we appreciate it.

Meeting is adjourned. (Sounds gavel.)

(END)