On Aug. 8, U.S. aircraft began attacking Islamic State positions in Iraq. On Sept. 23, U.S. and coalition aircraft began attacking the jihadi group in Syria.
So far, the operation is unnamed.
I aim to change that and am declaring Operation Name That Operation is now underway.
Typically, for an operation run out of U.S. Central Command, a group of folks over there would pick a couple of names, mull them over and send them up to the Pentagon, says Army Sgt. 1st Class Sheryl Lawry, a Centcom spokeswoman.
That’s what happened, for instance, before the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March of 2003.
There are a number of factors that have to be taken into account, like the region and cultural sensibilities, says Lawry.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon’s spokesman, offered a few more details about the process, and the lack of a name, at his press conference Friday morning.
Unlike OIF and Operation Enduring Freedom, the battle against Islamic State wasn’t mapped out ahead of time, it kind of popped up like one of those storms in the Gulf. But the naming process is underway, Kirby said.
So what’s in a name?
“We believe that the mission now has grown to an extent, to a scope, where perhaps it’s feasible to take a look at naming it, putting a structure around it that can allow for, you know, more dedicated staffing, resourcing, command and control, organization and resources,” Kirby told reporters.
But why wait?
If you want to suggest a name for the battle against Islamic State, contact Operation Name That Operation, c/o haltman@tampatrib.com.
The winner, chosen by a select committee of operation naming experts — led by me of course — will receive a book from my vast collection of military missives. I’ll also pass the winning entry along to Centcom.
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On a more serious note, it’s not often that someone I write about has their life threatened by Islamic State.
But that’s the case with a Swiss humanitarian aid worker named Oscar Bergamin, who is president of Ash-Sham CARE, a Swiss relief organization.
I briefly mentioned Bergamin in a story I wrote about a Twitter campaign to get Centcom to bomb Islamic State targets moving on the Kurdish town of Kobane, northeast of Aleppo along the Turkish border. Bergamin had offered up a Tweet with the location of jihadi bunkers.
A few days later, I saw a Tweet from Mother Jones, with a link to their story that Bergamin, 50, had been threatened by Islamic State for the bunker Tweet.
So I reached out to him to find out how he was doing and why he sent that Tweet.
What follows is our email exchange, edited slightly for language because English is not Bergamin’s native tongue.
Q: How long have you been in Syria?
Answer: I have been working in Syria before the violence started in 2009 and 2010 for export of goods. I love Syria as a lot of people do.
Q: Why did you decide to go there? Answer: I wanted to know exactly about the situation in the hospitals so I went into Syria by myself. In Manbij I even visited the ISIS headquarters in July 2013. I was presented there by people from Manbij as Hajji Assadullah, a Swiss Muslim, looking for opportunities to help in a humanitarian way. In September when I was invited to “Re-Assessments of the Arab Springs” at the University of Manchester in Great Britain, I warned the audience about ISIS. I spoke about my observations in the area and warned of the growing of this group. Until that time there hadn’t been beheadings. ISIS was occupied with warfare and security topics, not with the length of the women’s skirts. In Manbij I heard about the existence of two German jihadists and in Jarabulus there were a Pakistani and an Afghan with German passports. Swiss journalists were always asking me about Swiss joining ISIS, but I never heard about or met such guys. It distracted me that nobody of the media was interested in the current humanitarian information. They were just hunting jihadists.
Q: How has the situation changed since Islamic State began to expand its operations and again as the U.S. began bombing first in Iraq and then in Syria? Answer: We supplied warm meals to 10,000 refugees in Jarabulus (Northern Syria) in four Camps under ISIS. We were just tolerated. They asked us ‘you want to make a project?”’ And I said ‘no, we are not doing any projects, we are just supplying food.’ Obviously they have been warned by commanders into higher ranks about the word ‘project’. In January after an uprising against ISIS in Jarabulus there was a massacre and since then the border station is closed.
Q: What is the situation on the ground there now? Answer: Well as soon as it was clear that there would be airstrikes, I left Syria. There are daily changing coalitions on the ground so we can only trust our friends there who are not involved in the fighting.
Q: What was your goal in sending out the tweets you sent out with the target locations? Answer: Locations? No there was only one very well-known and for sure not secret location I Tweeted. Just one tweet. At that moment I was following the tweets from Kobane — in Arabic called Ayn al Arab — where a colleague Tweeted between a lot of others, starting with “@CENTOM…” My Tweet was just one of hundreds, and actually it was an answer on another one. I joked that I have this “fff… bunker” still in front of me. The answer was: ‘take a video when it gets hit’ and then I send my infamous Tweet. I spent a lot of times close to Jarabulus at the Euphrates and this bunker is just on the other side. You can see it from kilometers. So there is no secret target; it’s just as if I presented the secret position of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Q: How did you find out you were being threatened and what was the nature of the threat? Answer: I think ISIS and Jabhat al Nusra have been waiting for a ‘chance’ like this Tweet to justify what they are doing. After the airstrike on the Khorasan Group near Aleppo I think they were searching for a scapegoat; and found me – by the way almost 18 hours after I send this tweet.
Q: How serious do you take the threat and have you taken any precautions? If so, what? Answer: Well, a threat is a threat and I have to be cautious. That’s it. I have no fear. We will go on with our work. In Syria, nowhere else.
Q: Has there been any reaction from Centcom or anyone else in the U.S. military, State Department or any other governmental or non-government agency? Answer: Nobody, except the press, has showed interest … and actually I never expected one. My Tweet was just a bad joke in another context. I faced this ISIS one year long and nobody did something against it, the world was just looking. You can`t reach (refugee camps) and during a lot of airstrikes out of a feeling of hopelessness and despair I wrote ‘Just blew it up.’ Every humanitarian has such experiences. Nobody can be silent.
Q: What has been the reaction from the NGO/humanitarian community and were you surprised by that? Answer: No, I didn’t get any reactions until now. By the way I wonder where they are as there are almost no western aid workers left in Syria, probably the Tampa (Tribune) article has been shaking up this international humanitarian community (who was not present at all in Syria beside of some) that they also should rethink their policy. Nobody can tell me that an aid worker can be ‘neutral’ or impartial regarding a group who executes innocent civilians, hundreds of soldiers in underwear or kidnapping women to sell them on a slave market and behead opponents.
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The Pentagon announced the deaths of two soldiers supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Maj. Jonathan D. Walker, 44, of Merriam, Kansas, died Oct. 1, in Dohar, Qatar, of a non-combat-related incident at Camp As Sayliyah. The incident is under investigation. He was assigned to the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Sgt. 1st Class Andrew T. Weathers, 30, of DeRidder, Louisiana, died Sept. 30, at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, from wounds sustained when the enemy attacked his unit with small arms fire Sept. 28, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.
There have now been 2,339 U.S. troop deaths in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the nation’s longest war.
Sadly, there is a new category I have to add.
Marine Cpl. Jordan L. Spears, 21, of Memphis, Indiana, was presumed lost at sea after he and another Marine bailed out of an MV-22 Osprey on Oct 1, following problems during the takeoff from the deck of USS Making Island. The other Marine is safe.
Spears is the first casualty in the unnamed operation against Islamic State.