File: aacwr_31.txt
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Total Pages: 49

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training for units not deployed. Incirlik was one of two bases USAFE used for weapons training deployments. The relief operation led the command to cancel the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing's WTD to Incirlik and to shift the 48th Tactical Fighter wing's WTD to Zaragoza.

The command continued to grapple with these and similar problems throughout the rest of the Year, as it supported Provide Comfort 1I. Six countries (the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) provided residual air and ground forces to deter the Iraqis from attacking the Kurds. Initial expectations were the operation would be over soon, because the Turks extended it only until 30 September. They agreed to consider one 90-day extension, granted it, and extended Provide Comfort again in December for six months. (The battalion task, force left in September and October.)

Despite Provide Comfort's demonstrated success, some of the Bush administration's initial caution had proven justified. The CTF had not been drawn into an Iraqi civil war, but only because the Kurds and Shi'a had proved too weak to make a fight of it. There had been, mercifully, few U.S. casualties (4 non-combat fatalities and 254 injured since the operation had begun). But once in, the CTF--including over a thousand men and women from USAFE--had found it impossible to leave. Saving the Kurdish refugees from exposure and starvation had been achieved in fairly short order. Having saved them, the CTF could not then abandon them to the Iraqis. A residual force had to remain. Barring some change in the Iraqi regime, that mission seemed likely to continue indefinitely.

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