War Simulation in Qatar Another Signal to Iraq

DOHA, Qatar -- As Baghdad sought Saturday to defuse the threat against it, the commander of U.S. military forces in the region took center stage in a high-tech war room in this tiny Persian Gulf nation and launched the first phase of electronic war games that include a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Seated at a command table before a 25-foot-square battlefield screen in Qatar’s Camp As Sayliyah, Army Gen. Tommy Franks and more than 200 members of his staff finalized an array of U.S. military scenarios that will be part of the command-and-control exercise, which formally begins here Monday.

Dubbed Internal Look, it is the first such exercise staged outside the U.S. -- and within the boundaries of some of the most strategic real estate in Franks’ U.S. Central Command, which covers 25 nations.

Run from sophisticated war-fighting headquarters inside a well-fortified, 262-acre military camp in the Qatari desert, the weeklong war games underscore the new importance of this nation, which has a population of 750,000 and is located about 650 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The timing of the computer-assisted command drill, coupled with separate, continuing live-fire exercises by the U.S. Army near the Iraqi border in northern Kuwait, appeared to ratchet up the United States’ military pressure on Iraq as the two countries approach a possible showdown over United Nations inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

Internal Look itself involves no troop movements. It is designed to test the U.S. military’s ability to command, control and communicate among all four U.S. armed services now deployed throughout the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and Southwest and Central Asia.

“There are no moving troops, just moving electrons -- a lot of electrons,” said one Central Command officer here. “There is a whole plethora of contingencies that CENTCOM has to plan for.”

Franks has made no public statements or appearances since he landed here in the Qatari capital from his command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., on Friday. He headed straight to the secretive military base that houses the new mobile command post -- several dozen prefab buildings and tents bristling with high-tech American gear.

In opening Saturday’s session, called the “Rock Drill,” Franks stressed the important roles of troop readiness, flexibility in planning and leading-edge technology on the modern battlefield, according to Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communications for Central Command. But military and political analysts stressed that the symbolism of the exercise is not the what of it but the where.

“Qatar’s strategic importance extends well beyond this exercise,” said an analysis published Friday by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank in the U.S. capital.

Beyond Camp As Sayliyah, the U.S. Air Force has stationed more than 3,000 personnel at Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, 20 miles southwest of Doha, which can accommodate scores of U.S. attack aircraft. Its 12,000-foot runway is the longest in the region.

Qatar’s progressive ruler, Sheik Hamad ibn Khalifa al Thani, has sanctioned and encouraged America’s growing military presence here. It is part of an intensive campaign by the emir to use Qatar’s natural-gas wealth to modernize and safeguard the nation. He launched the campaign after he overthrew his father in a bloodless 1995 coup.

The emir also has presided over progressive social and religious policies that have made Qatar a model of emerging democratic freedoms in the Islamic world. It is home to the largely independent Al Jazeera television network, which is revolutionizing mass communications in the Arab world.

But there are other forces at work behind the seemingly pro-American stance in a nation that, Saturday’s opening exercise showed, could well house the brain trust of a future U.S. war on Iraq.

“We are not pro-anybody. We are pro-ourselves,” said Hassan M. Saleh Ansari, director of the Gulf Studies Center at the University of Qatar. “We believe that having a powerful friend is in our interest, and we believe it is nothing to be ashamed of.”

The nation, he said, needs America’s protection as it exploits one of the world’s largest natural gas reservoirs, in which U.S. companies have invested about $50 billion.

Those economic ties have been followed by cultural ones. Qatar is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new “City of Education” intended to have branch campuses of several U.S. universities.

And most recently, the country has given virtual carte blanche to U.S. military forces in the strategic alliance that allowed Franks’ Central Command to base its new command facility here.

“With a Gulf War looming, the importance of this cooperation cannot be minimized,” concluded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s analysis, titled “A Tale of Two Qatars.” “But the U.S.-Qatar alliance is murkier than it appears.

“Qatar’s policies are not so much ‘pro-American’ as they are pragmatic steps to offset instability, compensate for weak defenses and undercut Qatar’s foes.”

Qataris are most wary of Saudi Arabia, their powerful neighbor. The two nations have fought on and off for nearly 70 years over their common border, and Qatar accused the Saudis of sponsoring an unsuccessful countercoup a year after the younger Al Thani took power.

Qatar also has a history of admiration for and friendship with leaders of the Al Qaeda terror network.

A Qatari Cabinet minister and member of the ruling family played host to senior Al Qaeda members in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks; that minister reportedly has been stripped of his power. And U.S. officials have grumbled about Al Jazeera’s airing of exclusive videotapes of Osama bin Laden since the attacks.

But the overwhelming majority of Qataris are fiercely loyal to their emir, according to most analysts. And the emir has been unequivocal in his support for the U.S. presence here -- and President Bush’s war on terror.

The emir even bought television ad time to affirm that support -- commercials that promoted Qatar’s backing of the U.S. counter-terror campaign.