Word: colonels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...When the funding starts to dry up, they start to get desperate," says Colonel Bill Coultrup, the Jolo-based commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force, which provides military assistance, training and intelligence assistance to Philippine forces. Coultrup's 500 men, who include Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, are spread throughout the Philippines. Inside a nondescript, windowless building at the task force's Jolo Island base, a half-dozen soldiers are studying laptops. A large screen on the wall shows the video feed from an unmanned drone cruising over potential Abu Sayyaf hideouts in the jungle...
...Causes for Concern Neither U.S. nor Philippine officials are claiming the fight is over. Abu Sayyaf members have vowed never to end their struggle and claim the group is rebuilding. Earlier this year terrorists attempted to bomb soft targets in Zamboanga city. The city's police director, Colonel Lurimer Detran, believes an attack in April, when bombs were planted at the Catholic cathedral and at a bank in the city, was definitely the work of Abu Sayyaf operatives. "We identified the suspects from composite sketches," he says. While no one was hurt in those attacks, on May 30 a bomb...
...armies. The success here may be a model for Iraqi-U.S. Army cooperation in the future, and many American commanders in the region attribute a large part of the success to "General Ali's" skill as a professional soldier. "He has been here from the beginning," says Lieutenant Colonel William Zemp, the U.S. commander of a unit that works daily with General Ali's men. "The pacification of this area is his struggle, it is his story...
...plagued by charges that many units are not fit for battle, U.S. officers say that is not the case with the 25th Brigade. "Are they ever going to maneuver and fire like American troops? If that is your yardstick, then probably not for a very long time," says Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Rohling, who is in charge of a U.S. battalion on the western side of General Ali's region. "But they are competent, they fight, and their first loyalty is to the Iraqi Army. Plus, they are far better at things like searching houses, finding hiding places and interrogating detainees...
...insurgents. Ali threw approximately 1,000 Iraqi soldiers into the battle, devised and directed their missions to clear the city, and visited the battlefronts repeatedly to provide firm leadership presence. "This was Shi'a soldiers fighting Shi'a militias, and the soldiers never wavered," says General Ali. Colonel Zemp says that while the U.S. Army provided intelligence, air support, and 150 reinforcement troops, the Iraqi Army spearheaded the effort. "The battle was General Ali's crowning achievement so far. It showed both Shi'a extremists and the people of the city that the Iraqi Army is not just the area...