Handy focuses on troops’ safe return - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Handy focuses on troops’ safe return

One of the last airmen leaving Iraq at the end of the year will be Maj. Gen. Russell Handy, who says he feels as though he has spent his “whole career flying over this country.”

As an F-15 pilot, Handy led combat missions over Iraq in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Southern Watch and Desert Fox. Today, as the Air Force’s top commander in Iraq, he is charged with making sure 3,000 airmen — along with thousands of soldiers and sailors — get home safely by the Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline.

Handy holds two jobs, commander of 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Iraq and director of Air Component Coordination Element-Iraq. His next assignment will be director of operations, plans, requirements and programs for Pacific Air Forces at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

A few days after President Obama decided not to keep U.S. troops in Iraq into 2012, Air Force Times called Handy at his office in Baghdad to talk about what he and his airmen will be doing in the next two months.

Q. What is your reaction to the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq?

A. The president’s comments just punctuated what we’ve been setting up to do and that is to comply with the security agreement.

I think it got everyone’s attention: This chapter of our relationship with Iraq really is coming to a close. It’s surreal, especially for my colleagues who have deployed here four or five times. And while I’ve not spent any time on the ground in Iraq until this last deployment, I feel like I’ve spent my whole career flying over this country. And it’s surreal to be at this point where we are withdrawing all our military forces.

Q. What will be keeping airmen busy in the coming months?

A. We’re focused not only on [pulling out] all our people and equipment, but doing it safely, because we still remember that this is a dangerous place. Our airmen will continue to watch over everyone who is leaving this country until the very last American leaves. That includes: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, combat search and rescue, close-air support, tactical airlift.

Our major training and assistance activity with our Iraqi partners is coming to a close, and now we’re focused on our withdrawal.

What we’ve done here over the last couple months is reposture our forces — put them somewhere else — to be able to employ them. It’s a big theater of operations, so we’ve got a number of aircraft that are in countries around Iraq but not in it. So we’ll still be able to provide that assistance from outside the country while we remove everyone.

Q. What is the Air Force’s role in the withdrawal?

A. A lot of what’s going to leave this country is going to leave on the ground. We had 90 or 100 convoys on the road yesterday. There are a huge number of trucks that are going to be hauling stuff out of here.

Air power has a lot to do with that, too. We will lift a large percentage of the passengers out of here, whether it’s a military aircraft or a commercial charter. Also any kind of sensitive cargo, certainly we do that with our strategic airlift.

Q. What does the relationship look like going forward regarding the Iraqi air force training mission?

A. From the outset, it’s going to look very similar to other countries where we have a large U.S. Embassy, U.S. mission or security cooperation. You’ll have Americans working under U.S. Mission Iraq who are servicing foreign military sales. You’ll have folks here, either contractors or military, who are working on long-range radar sales or the purchase of F-16s that the Iraqis are buying. Those are small numbers.

Now, will there be a relationship, for example, with U.S. Air Force training with Iraqi air force? That is the part that I think is evolving.

It’s a complicated political dynamic that [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] and his government are dealing with. The short answer is we really don’t know what that will amount to.

Still, there are between 25 and 30 Iraqis training to be pilots in the U.S., including 10 young pilots training to fly F-16s, and they’re in various stages of that. And you’ll continue to see Iraqis at our war colleges.

Q. What missions, over the next few months, are the Iraqis taking over?

A. Frankly, they are already doing a lot of the missions [and have been] for a long time.

They are providing some degree of surveillance and reconnaissance support to their forces right now. They’ve got their King Air aircraft with full-motion video capability. They’ve also got that in their Cessna Caravans, as well.

They’ve got fledgling [combat] close-air support capability, again in their Cessnas and also with their helicopters. Their army aviation command flew something like 2,000 operational missions over the last year. So they are already doing operations.

Q. We’ve been hearing that the Air Force will be the ones turning out the lights on U.S. Forces Iraq. Is that the case?

A. I think it will be a joint team that’s the last to leave. I certainly plan to be among the last folks out of here to ensure that all of our folks leave safely.

Take an air base, for example. Nominally you’ll have folks flying the aircraft and servicing it. You’ll have airmen running the airfield and potentially the tower and your security forces. But you are also going to have, likely, soldiers guarding that facility. So I really do think it will be a joint team all getting on the aircraft together, or getting in those last convoys.

Q. What’s going on with the F-16s in country?

A. We’ve maintained a presence of F-16 aircraft in the country for a while. We have repostured some of those aircraft outside of the country and kept some in. We’ll see the last of those leave in the coming weeks and out by the end of December.

Q. Is there a timeline for moving capabilities out of the country, and what does that look like?

A. I would rather not get into timelines. First, from a security perspective, I don’t want to paint the picture of the [withdrawal schedule] because of the potential for an enemy to take advantage of that. Secondly, it’s because we want to remain flexible.

In some case, this is conditions-based. Our timeline is we are going to comply with the security agreement. We’ll be out of here by Dec. 31.

Q. You mentioned pulling out of the country was surreal. You’ve been in the military and supported this war for nine years now. Was the sacrifice worth it?

A. I started this journey a little more than 21 years ago. I’ve participated in Desert Storm and everything in between. As I walk around and I look at the palaces and facilities that the Saddam Hussein regime built — then you read the history about what Iraqis went through during that regime — and then you go out and meet the Iraqis who are starting their own business or meet the public affairs specialist who is publishing stories that are true and sometimes controversial, you’ve got Iraqi and pan-Arab media everywhere publishing what they want.

That’s powerful stuff and it’s very different from what I experienced in my first exposure to Iraq.

Was it worth it? I get that question a lot. Folks are asking, “With the economic issues in the U.S., why are we spending all this money in Iraq?” Think about the region, and think about the recent Arab uprising and what has being going on in the neighborhood. And think about what the demonstrators were demonstrating for. Certainly they were demonstrating for better conditions and various social programs. But they were also demonstrating very strongly for a democratically elected, inclusive government, and Iraq has one of those.

Iraq is still struggling as a fledgling democracy, and they’ll work their way through that. But the importance of a stable Iraq and what that means to the region and to the world, it has tremendous influence on what happens in the U.S. from security to economics.

And certainly it’s hard to think about anything that has happened here over the last 21 years without thinking about the nearly 4,500 Americans who have given the ultimate sacrifice and the tens of thousands who have become casualties. That’s what brings it home.