By mid-June, the Kurds were back in their homes, and we were able to withdraw our ground forces back to Turkey. There we established a temporary base for a ground reaction force just inside the border at a town called Silopi. Though humanitarian airlift missions were no longer required, continuous combat air patrols were maintained over the Kurdish areas, and the MCC remained in the Security Zone. The ground troops left Silopi in July.

On July 24, Provide Comfort I ended and Provide Comfort II began. General Shalikashvilli returned to USAREUR, Jim Jamerson resumed command, and I went back to being the deputy. With the ground troops gone, Provide Comfort became an air operation again. Only the MCC and a CSAR capability remained on the ground.

Now that the air operations had transformed into combat patrols, and the Rules of Engagement gave only Jim Jamerson and me authority to order certain responses to Iraqi threats, Jim felt that I needed greater familiarity with air operations. I was not only thoroughly briefed, but I was taken on a flight in a two-seater F-16 to get a hands-on feel for what the pilots faced. And since we had an aircraft carrier in support, I also flew in a Navy A-6—including a series of catapult shots and traps aboard the carrier. This valuable experience served me well in future joint tours of duty.

Later, when Jamerson left and Brigadier General Glenn Profitt took command, I was asked by General Galvin to stay on to provide continuity.

I finally returned to EUCOM in November.

Provide Comfort evolved into Operation Northern Watch, and continued on for well over a decade until Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

OPERATION PROVIDE HOPE

By the end of 1991, it was becoming increasingly evident to Secretary of State Baker that the New World Order was not happening. The twelve republics that had split off from the former Soviet Union—many of them nuclear-armed—were not going to blossom painlessly into democracies and free-market economies. That much-desired outcome faced serious obstacles. Baker concluded that achieving world stability required helping the FSU recover by means of a new international Marshall Plan.

This was a gigantic undertaking, with many uncertainties: Could the U.S. muster the international community, use NATO, bring in the Japanese and other developed nations, and get the necessary resources? And then, how would this undertaking be received in the FSU itself?