His Bio (pdf)
Posted on 08/19/2005 9:49:29 PM PDT by Straight Vermonter
JIM Molan is the unsung hero of Australia's Iraq war, the man who made Iraq's first free national election happen. From his Baghdad operations centre deep inside Saddam Hussein's main palace, the major general planned and ran the coalition's huge hi-tech counter-insurgency operation in Iraq.
He has directed the largest and most modern military force in the world - the 140,000 strong multinational force in Iraq (MNF-I) together with the growing Iraqi army of 130,000. These forces are fighting the most intense military conflict of the early 21st century.
On behalf of his coalition commander, George Casey, a US general, he eventually ran all military and many non-military operations at the strategic level for all forces, Iraqi and coalition, across Iraq, including the bitter fighting last year for Najaf, Fallujah and Samarra. He endured rocket, mortar and machinegun attacks and had any number of close shaves.
Thanks in large part to his expert Special Air Service and US bodyguards as well as great good fortune, he came home without a scratch.
Earlier this year John Negroponte, then the US ambassador to Iraq and now the US's most senior intelligence official, wrote to John Howard about the contribution Molan had made to the coalition effort in Iraq. Negroponte told the PM that Molan's work in running the Iraqi elections was of such importance that he had "made history and helped reshape the Middle East".
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld awarded him the US Legion of Merit. Casey, in a letter to Peter Cosgrove, the then chief of the Australian Defence Force, said Molan had been "absolutely critical" to his mission, adding that his performance and strategic vision had been brilliant.
On his second last day in Baghdad at the end of his year long assignment, a group of senior Iraqi civilian officials came to Molan's office for a farewell morning tea. They included national electoral commission officials, as well as senior defence, interior ministry and intelligence bureaucrats.
"For the first time in a year we just sat and talked. No business. They were relaxed," Molan recounts.
For the January 30 election the Iraqi interim government printed 20 million numbered ballot papers and distributed 14 million, of which more than eightmillion went into ballot boxes on polling day.
"The first eight numbered ballot papers they kept for the eight independent electoral commissioners," Molan says. "The ninth they gave to me."
No Australian soldier has experienced at first hand more of the violent, unpredictable counterinsurgency war that characterises Iraq or the day-to-day politically charged machinations of the US military command in Iraq than Molan. A "cautious optimist" about developments in Iraq, he acknowledges the raging insurgency cannot be defeated simply by military might. Political transformation and economic reconstruction are crucial.
"Military success is only a very small part of the game," he says. "Nothing is guaranteed. The insurgency is being confronted on the basis that it can only be defeated on a broad policy front."
His experience has given him unique insights into advanced 21st-century warfare as practised by the US and its close allies and how rapidly evolving communications technology is changing battlefield command.
Only last week he returned from Bavaria, in southern Germany, where, playing the role of Casey, he helped run the final exercises of the US Army's 130,000-strong Fifth Corps about to deploy to Iraq.
When the lean, tough, 195cm Molan landed in Baghdad in April last year, it marked the beginning of the toughest assignment of his military career. He had just three weeks to prepare.
As a young lieutenant he witnessed the birth of Papua New Guinea in 1975. Then, as a senior military officer, he witnessed Indonesia's chaos following the fall of Suharto and East Timor's vote for independence in 1999. But nothing quite prepared him for the scale of the war being fought from Baghdad's green zone. "I wouldn't say I was surprised at the level of the insurgency," he says. "I had no preconceived ideas."
Under his direction in the operations area of coalition headquarters were 315 staff officers, including 24 colonels. But first he had to prove that he could command. "That was the toughest HQ I have ever been in," he says.
"You had to get in there and fight to do the job. If you don't fight, the issues are so important that people will walk over you."
Molan's first four months in Iraq were focused on protecting the country's energy infrastructure and maintaining oil exports. At the time he arrived the coalition was engaged in intense fighting around Fallujah and Najaf. Insurgent attacks had multiplied and focused on energy infrastructure cutting vital roads and bridges.
"As I arrived, five bridges were blown that cut the entire MNF-I off," he says. "That won't happen again. We were running short of fuel. It was an incredible period of time -- April 04 was an incredible fight from beginning to end."
Molan set out to create new mechanisms to co-ordinate and improve the security of vital infrastructure, setting up monitoring, security, repair, ministerial liaison, contracting and command organisations.
In April and May last year the battle to protect Iraq's already degraded power grid hung in the balance. On three occasions the power in Baghdad was virtually cut off and sewage and water were not being pumped. At one stage the coalition was running about 800 fuel trucks per day into Iraq to cope after attacks on refinery capacity squeezed petrol supplies.
"We were being extraordinarily defeated on the infrastructure side when I first arrived," Molan says. "When I took over we were down to three or four hours a day of power in Baghdad [it's now about 12] and the bad guys were going out and blowing any pipes they wanted."
At one stage Molan employed giant C17 aircraft direct from California to fly in repair towers for the electricity network. Special dedicated repair teams, protected by security forces, worked around the clock.
Insurgent forces did not just blow up powerlines, oil pipelines and railways. They bombed, kidnapped and executed Iraqi energy officials. Earlier this year Molan convinced the new Iraqi Government to create a dedicated armed force consisting of 18 mobile battalions and support units to protect strategic infrastucture. Oil revenues have steadily climbed.
Those who attended his weekly infrastructure security planning meetings inside the US embassy compound were often in great personal danger. On the third such get-together a British adviser to the Iraqi oil ministry and his driver were killed by a magnetic bomb detonated under their car en route to the meeting.
At the same time Molan's army petroleum engineers were blown off the road by a bomb on the notorious Route Irish, the main highway from central Baghdad to the airport and the huge US base at Camp Victory. On top of this, the newly appointed head of the electricity security force, an Iraqi colonel, was arrested just before the meeting as a suspected insurgent.
"What we avoided was the insurgents turning the lights off in Baghdad, which would have put incredible pressure on the interim and transitional governments," Molan says.
In Baghdad, Molan worked in what is most certainly the highest technology military headquarters in the world. Inside his command post, 80 operators could receive battlefield information, including live video, from across Iraq from the full range of intelligence sources. They included dozens of unmanned aerial vehicles gathering tactical intelligence as well as imagery from surveillance satellites. The night before the January 30 election, Molan's staff were watching full-motion video on their operation's centre screens and noticed a small group of insurgents preparing to fire a pair of 127mm rockets. As they worked feverishly to figure out the location of the group and the probable target, the rockets were launched.
"After about 20 seconds they hit the room next to where I was standing," Molan says. Neither rocket exploded but in the room at the time were 40 people, and two US military personnel were killed.
"Had they gone off they would have killed everyone in that room and probably burst through the wall into the operations room," he says.
Molan could see in real time much of what was going on in the five most heavily contested provinces, known as the Sunni triangle: Al Anbar, Nineveh, Salahdin, Baghdad and Babil.
"The technology of war is revolutionary compared [with] what we were doing a decade ago," Molan says. "It gives commanders the ability to talk to each other and that, in my view, is the key to the use of technology. It must never replace human beings talking to each other."
Molan, who planned and directed last November's offensive by coalition forces in Fallujah, says hi-tech intelligence has not replaced the necessity for the "appallingly bloody close combat that occurs". Neither does it make up for the coalition's publicly acknowledged deficiency in human intelligence sources from inside the Sunni-led insurgency and jihadist groups, such as that run by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Asked about the widespread criticism that accompanied the attack on Fallujah and the heavy destruction in the city, Molan is unapologetic: "If the Iraqi interim government under [Iyad] Allawi had not conducted operations in Fallujah, the elections would not have occurred. Removal of the safe haven that Fallujah had become was essential to the successful conduct of the elections. That's it.
"The insurgents, with the exception of Fallujah, have not controlled one city. Najaf is a success story. Now there are around 150,000 people in Fallujah. Two brigades of Iraqi forces are running security in the city."
Al-Zarqawi, he observes, is a great user of internet technology but has almost no support among ordinary Iraqis. Foreign fighters make up probably less than 5 per cent of the insurgents, according to the coalition.
Molan and his team spent nearly eight months meticulously planning for Iraq's January 30 poll. Only weeks before there were still grave fears that things could go badly wrong. In the seven days before election day, coalition and Iraqi security forces were attacked about 800 times and on election day 260 times, still the highest number of attacks by insurgents since April 2003. Organising the election was a herculean logistical feat, involving difficult liaison with the Independent Election Committee and organising and training the Iraqi security forces to protect polling places. In the end not one of the 5200 polling stations was penetrated by insurgents, an achievement Molan looks back on
with pride.
Molan's working day began at 4.30am preparing for the daily battle update and ended about midnight, seven days a week. Apart from a nine-day break in Australia in the middle of his tour, he did not have a single day off. He travelled the Route Irish 120 times and also frequently ventured outside Baghdad. If road travel was considered too risky, his party would fly by helicopter, or for the longer trips, C130 Hercules aircraft.
Apart from the frequent rockets and mortar attacks (two houses next to where he was living were hit, with casualties in each) his armed convoy was subject to machinegun and rocket-propelled grenade attacks in Baghdad. On Route Irish near the airport they narrowly missed a suicide car bomb. "Once in a Blackhawk helicopter near Tikrit I was asleep and we were attacked from the road," he says. "The chopper was flying at about 10 feet [3m]. I just opened my eyes and could see this large calibre weapon blinking at us. You said to yourself, 'Am I safer on the ground or safer in the air?"'
Molan says all the attacks were random. He never felt targeted because he was an Australian but as a senior coalition soldier he was targeted all the time. "Baghdad is a big, tough town," he says. "You drive around Baghdad and someone will have a slash at you. It's easy to say: 'I am not going to travel.' But you can't know what's going on without going out and talking to people."
Weeks after leaving Baghdad, Molan still carefully tracks developments in Iraq. "The enemy that the coalition faces at the moment is a localised Sunni insurgency with jihadist and criminal involvement, always with the possibility of militias becoming active again," he says.
"There is no indication that popular support for the insurgency has spread outside of the Sunni provinces. There are some signs that even Sunni support for the struggle might be fracturing."
Despite the sea of pessimism in the media about developments in Iraq, Molan stresses where the insurgents have failed. They have failed to stop the transition to an Iraqi transitional government and failed to stop the January elections. In April last year there was only one usable Iraqi army battalion. There are now more than 100 battalions, many of which have had combat experience.
The key question is whether the US-led coalition can successfully transfer the core counterinsurgency fight to the new Iraqi Government and its security forces. How long will it take? Molan expects coalition military forces to phase down from 2006-07. But he echoes the words of caution of Casey, his former commander: Do not rush the Iraqi Government or security force to failure.
"We will [make the] transition based on the conditions," he says. "The south is pretty healthy. The Kurdish lands are secure. Two of the worst areas of Baghdad are being secured by the Iraqi security forces.
"The Government is just standing on its feet. You have to create capacity in the ministries. There's great relief that Saddam has gone. Extraordinary relief. What concerned all of us was the spirit of Iraq. Had Saddam deprived Iraqis of their spirit? Every so often we saw that no one would step up to the crease and no one would take responsibility. But once they trusted you there was incredible bravery."
You would think the defence force would want to make good use of Molan's extraordinary experience of higher command directing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. Instead, in time-honoured tradition, he has been shunted off to the Defence Materiel Organisation to help drive Australian defence exports.
Ping
bttt
His Bio (pdf)
Here's to an excellent Aussie! Cheers!
bump
No, we're really not going it alone, are we PING?
PING for Liberating IRAQ. Will post on this on my blog:
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/
Hell - do you need strokin' - I don't think so - great post!
God bless you Jim Molan for your efforts.
There still are people who are getting it right. My thanks go out to him and them.
Thanks SV.
NM1975 - you might like this one.
read later
What a great story!
We are so fortunate to have a great Ally with such capable military men!
Thanks SV and thank you Australia.
good read ping
Thanks for the ping!
ping to read later
Thanks for the ping!
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