29-minute read
Okay, we deserved this. A blog about civil affairs (CA) should probably begin with this question. The ever-present elephant lurks in every room a CA Soldier enters and remains there even after he/she leaves. How often have we heard or asked that question and provided or received an unsatisfying answer?
Speaking of elephants, a friend of mine often tells the story of the blind men who encountered different parts of an elephant and asserted with certainty that it was a wall, a snake, a tree, a fan, a rope, or some other object. People who observe or are aware of various aspects of civil affairs – both within and outside the community – often reach similarly flawed conclusions: it’s a special operations forces (SOF) thing; it’s not a SOF thing; it’s non-lethal; it can result in more bad guys being taken down than other “enablers”; it’s the Peace Corps with guns; it’s military government; it’s winning hearts and minds; it’s digging wells; it’s handing out soccer balls and paintbrushes; and so on.
One cannot fully understand CA without knowing its history. We have divided our response into two parts: this post will provide a historical context of Army civil affairs, along with some commentary and personal anecdotes, while a colleague will follow in the next post with a discussion of how to tell the civil affairs story. This first part is quite lengthy, but I promise that future posts will be shorter. However, as I prepared for this, I discovered a surprising amount of CA history I was unaware of. I believe sharing it as a foundation for future discussions is essential.
Origins
We often hear about CA connections to the Corps of Discovery and the military government in Mexico during the early and mid-1800s. They are undeniably part of our heritage, enshrined in the Friends of Civil Affairs’ Honorable Order of Lewis and Clark Medallions and the Civil Affairs Association’s Winfield Scott Medallions.
From my research, however, the first use of the term civil affairs seems to have occurred during the U.S. occupation of the Rhineland after WWI, when civil affairs (the plural noun) were associated with matters of concern to the civilian population of an occupied territory. Officers in Charge of Civil Affairs in Occupied Territory (also known as O.C.C.A.s) were appointed at the Third U.S. Army headquarters and, over time, its subordinate corps, divisions, and brigades.
The Third Army was formed from existing combat forces only a few days before the signing of the armistice on 11 November 1918. While it needed to be prepared for combat operations, it was specifically created as an occupation force to conduct military government in the Rhineland. Its O.C.C.A.s were chosen from within each echeloned formation to address civilian matters. Although they had no formal training for these roles, many of the senior O.C.C.A.s had prior experience from the occupations of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and other countries earlier in their military careers. Others came from administrative government positions in their civilian careers before the war.
Commanders were not trained to conduct military government or to integrate the O.C.C.A.s into plans and operations; they had to learn both through experience. As tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) were developed, they were shared across the force. The official after-action report on the American Military Government of Occupied Germany, known as The Hunt Report after COL Irvin L. Hunt, the lead O.C.C.A. who directed it to be written, indicated that brigades that designated O.C.C.A.s performed better in controlling civilian populations in their areas of responsibility than those that did not.
The O.C.C.A.s assessed the capabilities and capacities of local government organizations and the conditions of the populations in their assigned areas of responsibility; advised commanders on civilian concerns in those regions; and represented those commanders in engagements with local government officials while executing military government responsibilities. The Hunt Report outlined numerous lessons learned during the occupation and compared how the allied nations involved in the occupation of Germany organized for military government. Studies conducted by students at the War College during the interwar years convinced Army senior leaders that the Army required permanent and professional CA staff and formations for future conflicts. This new capability was developed and tested during WWII.
WWII
Whenever I test critics’ knowledge of CA in WWII, they often focus on the Marshall Plan (which didn’t begin until 1948, after Secretary of State Marshall proposed it at Harvard University the previous year), the post-WWII military government in occupied Germany and Japan (which started in 1945 after both countries fell to Allied forces), or the Monuments Men during the latter part of the war (after seeing the movie of the same name). The truth is that CA operations began much earlier and were integrated into combat operations, starting with Operation Torch in North Africa.
Within three weeks of landing in Tunisia on 8 November 1942, Lieutenant General Eisenhower wrote to U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Marshall requesting the swift deployment of State Department personnel to assume the duties of a single State representative and a small civil affairs section on his staff responsible for all civil matters in North Africa. “There is an acute need for such a body [of civilian experts] because the success of future operations from this base will depend very largely upon the speed with which the economy of this country is rehabilitated, at least to the point of sustaining a majority of the population above the starvation level.” In other words, his ability to employ lethal capabilities against the enemy was being hindered by rear area civilian concerns. On 28 November 1942, GEN Marshall replied, in part: “When the military situation permits, and the time of arrival of this condition cannot be forecast now, the State Department desires to relieve you of the responsibility for civil matters.” (Underline is mine for emphasis.)
Due to the State Department’s inability to meet the needs of military commanders during combat operations, Army civil affairs forces had to fill the gap for the rest of the war. From that point onward, CA staff and teams accompanied maneuver forces while military government (MG) detachments closely followed in Sicily, Italy, throughout the European theater following the landings at Normandy, and in the Pacific theater across the numerous islands leading to Japan. As the front advanced through liberated and occupied territories, CA forces assessed the status of local governance and humanitarian conditions immediately following combat operations and the departure of enemy occupational governments. They took initial steps to organize local people, organizations, and resources, supplemented by military rations and other Class X supplies, to address the immediate needs of the populace before moving on to the next objective. The MG detachments then assisted in re-establishing friendly government in liberated areas and established military government in occupied areas until that responsibility could be transitioned to other authorities.
Korea
When North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950 and U.S. troops from Japan deployed to assist South Korea, most of the Army’s civil affairs capabilities had been disbanded. An ad hoc CA unit, led by medical doctor Brigadier General (BG) Crawford E. Sams, was formed to address the massive influx of refugees into Pusan. In one instance, BG Sams carried out a secret mission behind enemy lines and confirmed that the rumored presence of the bubonic plague, or “black death,” among the North Korean population was actually hemorrhagic smallpox. While either illness threatened to reduce the lethality of United Nations (UN) military forces preparing to move north, the confirmation mitigated the need to obtain and transport rare and expensive medical resources to protect those combat troops from the wrong illness. This civil reconnaissance mission, designed to answer a commander’s critical information requirement, also yielded vital information about the disposition of the enemy: the Communist forces ravaged by smallpox were more understrength than initially believed.
Following the breakout of the Pusan Perimeter, Civil Assistance Teams were formed from CA forces newly arrived from the States, including the reconstituted 95th Military Government Group, to assist sovereign provincial governments across South Korea that had been destabilized during the recent North Korean occupation. When UN forces pushed northward to the Yalu River, North Korea became occupied territory, and Civil Assistance Teams established temporary military government in key populated areas. One such team, under the command of COL Charles R. Munske and consisting of 14 military and civilian members, followed closely behind the leading combat forces to the North Korean capital of P’yongyang. Working with personnel from UN occupational units – including LTC Aaron Bank, S-5 of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team – to improve conditions and reactivate government functions, the P’yongyang Civil Assistance Team made significant strides during several weeks of occupation. That progress ended when China entered the war and pushed U.S. troops back south of the 38th parallel, where CA forces continued to assist the South Korean government under the Korean Civil Assistance Command until this organization was dissolved in December 1955.
Vietnam
Early in the Vietnam War, neither American nor South Vietnamese leadership established a strategic civil affairs plan to direct tactical CA efforts. Teams from the 41st, 2nd, and 29th CA companies were spread across the peninsula, often lacking local language skills or interpreter support. These teams were attached to conventional and special forces combat units and developed programs according to local needs, conditions, and their members’ inherent expertise. Many mistakes were made, and opportunities were missed in the efforts to “pacify” the countryside.
The initiation of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary (later Rural) Development Support (CORDS) program marked a significant shift, integrating military security operations and civilian development efforts into a unified command structure aimed at counterinsurgency (COIN) and “nation-building” through civil assistance and military civic action programs. At this point, CA forces received the necessary guidance and command support. CA missions in rural villages, particularly medical civic action programs (MEDCAPs), were generally well received by local villagers and provided valuable atmospherics and information about enemy force dispositions that could not be obtained through other information-gathering methods. For the first time, these activities established a connection between CA, unconventional warfare, and special operations, leading to the relocation of the Civil Affairs School from Fort Gordon, GA (renamed Fort Eisenhower in 2023), to Fort Bragg, NC, in 1971.
The 1980s and 1990s
I believe that civil affairs became a casualty of its association with the “hearts and minds” campaign of the Vietnam War and the development of the AirLand Battle doctrine in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After the Vietnam War, the U.S. turned away from “nation-building,” and the Army refocused on the Fulda Gap and potential large-scale combat operations (LSCO) in Europe. Civil affairs entered a period when its role in LSCO was no longer understood, the CA structure and equipment were not modernized in sync with the maneuver units they were meant to support, and capabilities once considered critical for military government missions were allowed to atrophy.
MG(R) William R. Berkman, former Chief of the Army Reserve and long-time president of the Civil Affairs Association, once shared a little-known but significant event in civil affairs history with me. While attending an Army conference in the early 1980s, he and a fellow CA officer discovered that the Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) planned to dismantle the entire Army CA force structure to accommodate other wartime capabilities. When they informed Senator Strom Thurmond of this plan, the senator – a WWII CA veteran who served in both the Pacific and European theaters, participated in the Normandy campaign with the 82nd Airborne Division, commanded the 360th CA Brigade (Bde) in peacetime, served in the Army’s Office of Civil Affairs at the Pentagon, and retired from the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) as a major general – intervened with a phone call to the CSA. MG(R) Berkman told me it was shortly after this that, for their protection, civil affairs units – which already had a foothold in the special warfare community since the Civil Affairs School moved to the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS) in 1971 – were realigned under the operational control of the 1st Special Operations Command (1st SOCOM) at Fort Bragg, NC, in the mid-1980s. In 1989, the Army activated the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) at Fort Bragg, and in 1991, the Active Army’s 96th CA Battalion (Airborne) (96th CA Bn (A)) and all continental United States (CONUS)-based USAR CA units formerly assigned to U.S. Army Reserve Commands were reassigned to USASOC as subordinate units of the new U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) (USACAPOC(A)).
Despite this turbulence, civil affairs forces participated in every major deployment of U.S. Army ground forces during the 1980s and 1990s, starting with Grenada in 1983. However, after reviewing several firsthand and secondhand accounts of various operations, I noticed a pattern: civil affairs forces were often omitted from the early stages of these deployments. This omission was due either to misunderstandings about their roles in combat or security missions (as seen in the early planning for the Gulf War in 1991 and the execution of the Implementation Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995) or to a deliberate choice to exclude reserve component forces (as occurred in Somalia in 1992). Desert Storm is a notable exception to this pattern, especially considering the doctrinal inclusion of many USAR CA units. However, recognition of the need for these forces came late in the planning phase, and they connected with their supported units only weeks before the ground war began. Additionally, civil affairs functional specialists, who formed the Kuwait Task Force and worked closely with the Kuwait Emergency and Recovery Program of the Kuwaiti government in exile in Washington, D.C., faced challenges integrating their plans with CENTCOM staff.
Pieces of the omission problem likely include concerns about USAR mobilization timelines, the perception that CA operations were special operations activities rather than tasks for conventional forces, the fact that CA integration into conventional operations was not taught in schoolhouses apart from USAJFKSWCS, and the awareness that the Army did not adequately train for all aspects of LSCO as it would fight in real operations. On this last point, aside from the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Chaffee, AR, and later Fort Polk, LA (renamed Fort Johnson in 2023), the dirt combat training centers (CTCs) and warfighter exercises (WFXs) overlooked the role of civilians and civil considerations in LSCO scenarios. Transitioning to post-conflict stabilization was not rehearsed in any training events. It seems that commanders had lost sight of the fact that, during combat operations – whether in friendly or enemy territory – they are responsible for everything within their unit boundaries until they are relieved of that responsibility and transfer it to a higher headquarters or other authority.
Here are three personal anecdotes that illustrate the statements about training and stabilization mentioned above:
- In 2017, I attended a dinner where a four-star theater commander, who was a colonel in the late 1990s, acknowledged that he had been “deficient in civil affairs” for the first 20 years of his career. It was only when he served as a brigade commander in Kosovo that he first encountered civil affairs Soldiers and realized the significance of the civil affairs mission.
- The sentiment regarding stabilization is reflected in a document I read in 2004, in which a colonel on the Army staff, responding to a 1999 tasker to review a Department of Defense (DoD) directive on civil affairs, stated, “Take out all references to occupation; we’re not doing that anymore.”
- In 2002, during a major U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) exercise, the three-star joint task force commander recognized that, once he defeated the enemy forces, he would be responsible for terrain containing host nation civilians, third-country nationals, and others for whom he was accountable until he could transfer his unit’s stability operations to a follow-on force. When he briefed his transition plan, the JFCOM commander congratulated him for being the first joint task force commander ever to plan, coordinate, and present such a plan at that level.
Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan
Within days of September 11, 2001, 50 members of the 352nd Civil Affairs Command (CACOM) from Riverdale Park, MD, arrived at CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, FL, to participate in planning the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and on Flight 93. In February 2002, the one-star CACOM commander visited Fort Bragg and provided an overview of the Command’s accomplishments related to Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) up to that point. One accomplishment he was keen to share was the inclusion of “humanitarian assistance,” or HA, in the CENTCOM mission statement for Afghanistan. At that time, I was working in the Civil Affairs Doctrine Division at USAJFKSWCS. Standing at the back of the room, my boss and I exchanged glances, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned the other five civil affairs activities outlined in contemporary CA doctrine: populace and resources control (PRC), foreign nation support (FNS), military-civic action (MCA), emergency services (ES), and support to civil administration (SCA). We were particularly concerned about the latter, knowing that the primary objective was to remove the Taliban from power.
We discovered that the CACOM was not assigned to conduct SCA; that mission fell to the State Department and its partner nation equivalent ministries. It was also not designated to lead the Combined Joint Civil-Military Operations Task Force (CJCMOTF), as its structure and expertise did not align with the logistics requirements anticipated for the initial phases of the HA mission.
As early as November 2001, active CA forces of the 96th CA Bn (A) established a civil-military operations center (CMOC) at Bagram Airfield and began setting up coalition humanitarian assistance cells (CHLCs) throughout the country to assess local needs, propose suitable projects with local input for CENTCOM’s Overseas Humanitarian, Disaster, and Civic Aid (OHDACA) program, evaluate the local security situation to facilitate the return of UN and international humanitarian non-government organizations (NGOs) that had ceased operations when combat erupted, and advise U.S. forces collaborating with the humanitarian community.
In February 2002, USAR CA units began replacing the 96th in the CHLCs. Recognizing that the governance mission exceeded the capacities of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), enterprising CA Soldiers from the 489th CA Bn based in Knoxville, TN, and the 360th CA Bde from Columbia, SC – perhaps drawing inspiration from the provincial Civil Assistance Teams of the Korean War – developed the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) concept. PRTs formed around CA teams led by lieutenant colonels and included representatives from State, USAID, logistics personnel, and others to advise Afghan political leaders at the provincial level and deliver assistance through projects that linked provincial governments with the central government in Kabul. When DoD mobilization and redeployment policies rendered the inventory of available CA lieutenant colonels inaccessible, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force supported a “joint solution” by providing commanders and lieutenant colonels from their respective services as PRT commanders. CA Soldiers still comprised the majority of military PRT personnel.
Once the rotation of forces to Afghanistan solidified, active CA units worked exclusively with SOF, while USAR CA units generally worked with conventional brigade combat teams (BCTs) and PRTs. In 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the International Security Assistance Force commander, implemented a population-centric (COIN) strategy throughout Afghanistan. Drawing on military civic action experience from Vietnam, SOF initiated a COIN program called Village Stability Operations (VSO). In VSO, small SOF teams embedded themselves in remote Afghan villages to partner with local security forces and government officials to establish security, governance, and development while countering Taliban efforts to do the same. That same year, the U.S. government launched the largest deployment of U.S. agencies to a combat zone since the Vietnam War with the “civilian uplift” to enhance the integration of security, governance, and development throughout Afghanistan. Many of these civilians were integrated with organic CA staff at PRTs, BCTs, and Regional Commands. Meanwhile, the Army National Guard Agribusiness Development Teams (ADTs), deployed since 2008 to help revitalize Afghanistan’s agricultural sector as part of the U.S. effort to build government capacity and stabilize the country, were integrated into BCT operations.
Following a 2010 assessment indicating that U.S. political and military objectives had been met, the U.S. began a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011, culminating in the final withdrawal of all U.S. troops on 30 August 2021. Civil affairs Soldiers stationed at the SOF headquarters on Bagram Airfield were among the last to depart when U.S. forces withdrew from there the previous month.
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) presented a different scenario. A higher concentration of U.S. forces organized under a corps headquarters began staging in Kuwait months before D-Day, leading to a greater density of mobilized civil affairs units. The 96th CA Bn (A) deployed teams early to support Rangers and other special operations forces. It also established a Humanitarian Operations Center in Kuwait (HOC-KU) to work closely with the Kuwaiti government and coordinate with the NGOs that had fled Iraq for Kuwait in anticipation of combat operations. Meanwhile, a CACOM headquarters, three CA brigade headquarters, and four Direct Support CA battalions linked up with doctrinally templated conventional force headquarters in the desert. A Special Operations CA battalion (formerly known as a Foreign Internal Defense/Unconventional Warfare (FID/UW) battalion designed to work with special forces) linked up with a special forces group in Romania to conduct operations in northern Iraq.
When U.S. forces crossed the berm into Iraq on 20 March 2003, six-man CA teams accompanied maneuver brigades as they advanced north to Baghdad, engaging civilians when they could and reporting on human security conditions and enemy dispositions. The Direct Support (DS) CA company headquarters, the General Support (GS) CA companies (which included tactical-level planners and functional specialists), the CA brigades (which consisted of operational-level planners and functional specialists), and the CACOM (which had strategic-level planners and functional specialists) remained behind the berm, waiting to be called to respond to the considerable number of civilians expected to be displaced from their homes due to combat operations. When that did not happen, they stayed in place until they were called forward to assist with post-war activities.
Despite the precedents set by World War II and the Korean War and the existing CA doctrine that employed CA forces in temporary governance roles, no such plan existed for OIF 1. During my interviews with staff at different levels of command as part of the OIF Study Group, I found that the corps was unprepared for Phase IV, Stabilize, which typically includes plans for tasks such as establishing civil security and civil control, restoring essential services and governance institutions, and supporting economic and infrastructure development until these responsibilities can be transferred to another authority. When I asked one brigade commander about his thoughts when the looting of government and cultural heritage buildings began in Baghdad, he told me that all units were still in a defensive posture, expecting a counterattack at any moment. As the looting commenced and it became clear that the Iraqi Army had disbanded, commanders felt uneasy about the change in mission. However, because many of them had experience in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia, and others, they understood what needed to be done. They quickly reoriented their staff to those new tasks.
One organization – the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), led by retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner and later replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) – operated outside the established military structure and did focus on post-conflict stabilization. However, its staff faced numerous vacancies when Baghdad fell. Fortunately, the CACOM staff had also been considering post-conflict challenges, even without a formal mission. The CACOM filled some of ORHA’s vacancies, and when the CA units were deployed from Kuwait, they rapidly established a Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Center in Baghdad and several CMOCs throughout the country. These centers gathered information about community conditions and needs and mobilized resources from local communities and returning NGOs to initiate stabilization efforts until a new government could be formed.
The U.S. implemented a rotation plan for long-term operations in Iraq, resulting in multiple changes to the needs, structure, and missions of CA forces as security conditions evolved. Iraq saw the establishment of PRTs led by State Department representatives, significantly supported by CA personnel. A force design update expanded the size of tactical CA support from a 6-person team to a 32-person company, among other structural adjustments. Although USAR CA units were not scheduled to transition to that design until 2008-2013, CENTCOM and USSOCOM authorized the deployment of CA forces in that configuration as early as 2006, as it provided a more robust capability where it was most needed. Since the new design doubled the capacity of the existing DS CA battalions and included more captains and senior NCOs than two legacy CA battalions combined, many vacancies in deploying formations had to be filled with newly trained Soldiers from across the USAR.
The DoD’s mobilization policy reduced activation and deployment times for USAR units while limiting the remobilization of units and individuals within a specific timeframe. This resulted in only nine months of boots on the ground, rather than the typical twelve to fifteen months for active conventional units. Furthermore, CA units were unable to participate in pre-deployment training and movement with the units they were to support in the theater. This led to shorter relief-in-place processes, particularly for units in remote areas, which hindered their ability to complete projects before redeployment. Additionally, it caused inconsistent command policies and approaches, along with an overassessment of key facilities in a unit’s area of operations. More importantly, it created an unsustainable churn that impeded USACAPOC(A)’s capacity to generate organic units to meet demand. As the G-3/5/7 of USACAPOC(A) from 2007-2009, I can tell you that this was a nightmare. The 2007 surge in Iraq required the newly formed 95th CA Brigade (Special Operations) (Airborne) (95th CA Bde (SO)(A)) to scale back support for special operations missions and to form five companies to assist conventional forces. In 2009, seven USAR chemical companies trained and deployed to Iraq as provisional civil affairs companies, providing previously deployed USAR CA units with sufficient dwell time to prepare for subsequent rotations.
Much of what CA forces do relies on the civilian skills provided by USAR CA units. Specialists with expertise in areas such as government, public facilities, economic development, public services, economics, commerce, civil information, cultural relations, displaced civilians, emergency services, and environmental management are essential for understanding the civilian environment and for quickly restoring these functions in a feasible, sustainable post-war scenario, which facilitates the return of U.S. forces. In Iraq, some functional specialists lacked the qualifications required for their assigned positions. For instance, I recall reading an account in which a representative from an NGO expressed concern that the CA education specialist with whom she was collaborating was a high school gym teacher without the knowledge needed to establish a school system, for which a school administrator would have been a more appropriate choice. Nonetheless, there were many qualified functional specialists among the deployed CA units in every rotation. U.S. forces relied on them to identify, vet, and utilize local resources to address civilian challenges that strained U.S. and partner nation capacities. (In 2014, the 38G Military Government Specialist program was introduced to ensure greater discipline and rigor in selecting individuals with the education and experience necessary to be genuine government specialists.)
Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines
Meanwhile, special operations CA teams played a major role in winning one theater’s piece of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines (OEF-P). In the early 2000s, an indigenous insurgent group partnered with an Indonesian terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda and increased terrorist operations in the Southern Philippines. They conducted deliberate attacks on the Armed Forces of the Philippines and targeted U.S. service members. The U.S. Pacific Command stood up Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P) to help the government of the Philippines defeat this threat. The JSOTF-P conducted COIN, counterterrorism, and FID operations from 2002 to 2017. Among the lessons that made it successful was the realization that the human terrain – the civil society, political, and cultural aspects of the operational environment – was the key terrain in irregular warfare. Special operations CA forces interacted with local Filipino citizens, learned how and why they favored the insurgents over the legitimate government, and which local informal leaders they considered more legitimate and influential. Working by, with, and through combined U.S. and Filipino civil-military teams, they delivered specific projects tailored to specific communities for specific objectives and, over time, created resilience among the people, which enabled them to reject insurgent and terrorist group influence and eject the foreign fighters.
The Reassignment and Resizing of CA Forces
Perhaps the most significant changes to Army civil affairs during OEF and OIF were the reassignment of USAR CA forces and the fluctuation in the number of CA forces to meet Army needs. In 2004, stabilization efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq were in full swing; however, the GWOT continued, and SOF was the tip of the spear in U.S. counterterrorism operations around the world. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld understood why CA was part of the SOF community, but he believed it differed from the other SOF components and was better placed in the conventional force. On 1 October 2006, all CONUS-based USAR CA forces were reassigned from USASOC to the U.S. Army Reserve Command (USARC) and no longer designated as SOF for the purposes of Title 10, U.S. Code. Meanwhile, USASOC retained proponency for doctrine, combat development, and institutional training of all Army CA forces. Although this initially caused confusion over proponency functions for USAR CA forces, this arrangement remains in place today.
In the mid-2000s, when the demand for civil affairs exceeded capacity, the Army grew two active CA brigades, one USAR CA brigade headquarters, and five USAR CA battalions. The 95th CA Bde (SO)(A) and four new special operations CA battalions activated between 2006 and 2008 to join the 96th CA Bn (A) under USASOC. The 85th CA Bde and its five subordinate battalions stood up between 2011 and 2013 under U.S. Army Forces Command. The USAR grew the 361st CA Bde and the 457th CA Bn in Germany under U.S. Army Europe and four CA Bns in CONUS under USACAPOC(A) between 2010 and 2012. In 2016, the Army stood up five active Theater Civil Affairs Planning Teams (TCAPTs) in five Geographic Combatant Command headquarters.
In 2014, the Army evaluated its capabilities for contemporary COIN and reassessed the force structure necessary for LSCO. Like the post-Vietnam era, civil affairs were considered non-essential to LSCO, prompting the Army to take risk with this “enabler” to prioritize rebuilding combat arms formations. The 85th CA Bde and four of its battalions were inactivated in 2016 and 2017, leaving the 83rd CA Bn at Fort Bragg to fulfill its theater missions and immediate response force responsibilities until it, too, was inactivated in 2024. USAREUR inactivated the 361st and 457th in 2023 in favor of other structures. Likewise, USARC inactivated four CA battalions in 2022 to allocate resources for other USAR capabilities.
Despite the turmoil of the past 24 years, most CA Soldiers would say they have the best job in the Army. CA Soldiers take pride in their contributions to the force, the mission, and the civilians they protect and support. Active and USAR CA forces are currently deployed worldwide to meet GCC and USSOCOM requirements, competing to prevent wars or establish conditions for victory should prevention fail. To support this effort, the CA proponent at USASOC continues to develop doctrine, organizational designs, training plans, materiel requirements, leadership and education programs, personnel management, facility requirements, and policy input for today’s Army and the Army of the future.
So, what is civil affairs?
The second paragraph of this post ends with a list of misconceptions that many civil affairs Soldiers have encountered from individuals who have observed the civil affairs elephant from different perspectives. To address the question, I have attempted to condense over 100 years of civil affairs history into about 5,700 words.
In WWII and Korea, CA forces set the basic framework of conducting rapid assessments, advising commanders, assisting governments and populations in friendly territories, and conducting military government in occupied territories. They conducted CA operations during combat operations, delivering DS CA capabilities to combat forces as they advanced across the battlefield and providing GS MG capabilities in significant population centers immediately upon liberating or capturing those areas. TTPs evolved as CA and MG forces gained new combat experiences, but combat commanders learned they could not effectively consolidate gains and move on to the next objective without them. CA and MG forces served an economy of force function by reducing reliance on U.S. military resources for civilian problem sets and increasing dependence on host nation or third country military and civilian resources to address those issues.
Under the CORDS program in Vietnam, CA established a connection with unconventional warfare and special operations for the first time. It is important to note that CA didn’t migrate to SOF; CA forces found they were as crucial to SOF as they were to conventional forces.
The challenges of the 1980s, 1990s, and post-9/11 GWOT were met with the tenacity of CA men and women who provided commanders with the same critical actions and capabilities to understand, engage, and leverage the civil component for military advantage as their predecessors. Our challenge today is to project this legacy into the future. If a corps, division, brigade, or special operations unit conducts a training event, responds to a crisis, or executes a combat operation, there is a civil component to that activity. This civil component is the least attractive part of the operational environment for warriors, but it is a critical aspect, and it is where the men and women in civil affairs operate. By deliberately seeking out and engaging civilians in the operational environment during peace, crisis, and combat operations, civil affairs Soldiers preserve lethality for when it is needed most and alleviate human suffering caused by the violence of hatred, nature, and war.
In Part 2, COL(R) Chris Holshek discusses using a strategic narrative to convey the civil affairs story.
Questions: Was this historical background helpful? What did I get wrong? What part of civil affairs history would you like to dive into deeper?
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