General Wardsays he wants African officers as advisers to improve communicationsand help his staff understand the implications of things they areplanning to do.
"I clearly would envision, down the road, atsome point in time, a capacity to receive liaison officers so that wecan have a closer connection to those with whom we're partnering," hesaid.
That kind of connection and understanding were missinglast year when Africa Command was announced. Many African leaders,editorial writers and ordinary citizens expressed concerns about whatthey thought was a plan to station more U.S. forces in Africa, and tomilitarize U.S. policy toward the continent.
General Ward andother U.S. officials have spent a lot of time explaining that thecommand is just a reorganization of what the U.S. military is doing nowon the continent, with the hope it will be able to do more with a wholeorganization focused on the effort. The controversy derailed plans toestablish AFRICOM's headquarters in Africa this year.
"Thatdebate about a presence elsewhere was a debate that, quite frankly,wasn't helping us get on with that initial requirement of standing upand building the command," he added.
General Ward says hisheadquarters will remain in Germany for now, near the U.S. EuropeanCommand headquarters, which has been the main U.S. command for Africa. On October 1, General Ward and his growing staff will take fullresponsibility for U.S. military engagement with Africa - mainlytraining, counter-terrorism and humanitarian activities, and supportfor African Union military operations. He says they can manage thatactivity from Germany, at least for a while. And he notes that theUnited States already has a large facility in Djibouti and smalloffices throughout the continent that will come under his command.
"Wewill inherit a substantial presence that already exists on thecontinent," he noted. "So it's not as if there's no presence on thecontinent, in the form of our security assistance offices, some ofwhich have already put on the U.S. Africa Command patch."
U.S.officials say any expansion of the U.S. military presence in Africawill be in the form of offices, not military bases. Indeed, AFRICOMwill not have any operational troops permanently assigned, other thanthose in Djibouti. In addition, one of General Ward's two deputies isa State Department diplomat, and 50 members of the staff of about 1,300will be civilians from several U.S. government agencies. The idea isto take an inter-agency approach to helping solve Africa's problems.
Thathas led to some concern about whether the command will be able toconduct any combat operations that may be necessary, as other U.S.regional commands do. General Ward is not among those who areconcerned.
"We will have a staff that will be capable of doingthat work," he explained. "And where there are requirements we mayhave that are not resident in the command, then through the standardrequest for forces process, that's how we'll do it. I'm not at allconcerned about that. Our components come on line at different states,but there are strategies in place to account for that."
GeneralWard's command will be responsible for all U.S. military activity inAfrica, except for Egypt, which will continue to be part of CentralCommand's responsibility.
The general says he is still indiscussions with Central Command about exactly where to put theborderline between the two commands' responsibilities in the IndianOcean. Central Command's naval forces have been involved inanti-piracy and counter-terrorism operations off the coast of Somalia,and the general says it has not yet been determined which command willhandle those operations after October 1.
"We have enough, I think, agility in our system to, however that's determined, we'll make it work," he said.
AfricaCommand is slowly taking on responsibilities as it builds its staff inGermany. Officials say it will take on its full responsibilities onschedule October 1. But General Ward says he has not decided whetherto hold a big military ceremony to mark the occasion. He says hedoesn't want to create another opportunity for misunderstanding amongthe people the command was created to work with.