Wednesday, December 05, 2007

First Lady Gets Update on Challenges Facing Military Youth

By Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

Dec. 5, 2007 - First lady Laura Bush attended a special event here today to learn about challenges facing
military youth and to let them know they're not forgotten. "We need to get the word out to children of all of our military families, (that) we know you do serve also, and (of) the sacrifices you make with your parents gone for a long part of your childhood. We want military kids to know we are aware of that," Bush said during the special "Helping America's Youth" event at the base youth center.

"We (also) know that if children have caring adults in their lives, they're more likely to make wise decisions for their own lives," the first lady said.

"And when your parents are deployed, it's really important that other caring adults have an opportunity to step in and help young people while their parents are away," she continued, adding that she knows many do have that benefit.

Helping America's Youth is a nationwide effort to raise awareness about the challenges facing the nation's youth and to motivate caring adults to connect with youth in the areas of family, school and community.

Dr. Stephen Cozza, professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University, told the audience that
military kids have just as tough and important a job as their parents do. Despite that, they're resilient, he said.

"We need to remember, first and foremost, that they are generally a healthy and capable group of youngsters who possess strengths that are at least equal to their civilian counterparts," said Cozza, who also serves as the associate director for the Center for the Study of
Traumatic Stress. He went on to note that certain events and situations can cause increased stress on military children.

Combat deployments tax even the healthiest families, and multiple deployments even more so, he said. The combat experience itself can affect servicemembers, and consequently their children, upon the parent's return to the family.

"During wartime, servicemembers often witness and participate in violent and destructive acts that fall outside the realm of the typical human experience," Cozza said. "Combat can lead to neurobiological and psychological consequences that don't simply disappear when they return home."

These issues can be as benign as the common cold or much more serious, he said. Open discussion can help families and children better understand the changes they may see in their parents.

"Our community programs should be knowledgeable about child and family responses to deployment and reintegration challenges, and should be comfortable referring troubled service or family members to health care facilities when appropriate," he said.

Brooke Borelli, 12, the daughter of
Air Force Col. Elizabeth Borelli of the 11th Operations Group at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., knows well the challenges of being a military child. When she's switched schools in the middle of the school year, she said, she often finds she may be ahead in one subject but behind in another. Perhaps the biggest challenge came when her mother was deployed to Iraq.

It was tough when her mom didn't come home every day and she couldn't have individual time with her, Brooke said. But the situation came with its own benefits. She reached out to her family and community and filled her mother's deployments with activities.

"I think it's made me a better person for doing it," Brooke said. "I've learned to be more independent and stable on my own."

Shanice Gaddy, 17, also knows what it means to be part of a military family. Her mother, District of Colombia
Army National Guard Master Sgt. Jacqueline Whitney, was deployed to Iraq for a little more than a year just as her daughter was starting high school.

Shanice said not having her mom there as she charted that new territory was a struggle, but National Guard programs helped her shake feelings of sadness and loneliness.

"I discovered that they had National Guard youth programs," Gaddy said. "Then I started to feel better, because I felt as though people were there for me."

And using resources like the National Guard youth programs is exactly what the first lady encouraged families to do if they feel they may need help, said Barbara Thompson, director of the Office of Family Policy/Children and Youth, a part of the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

"Mrs. Bush gave a very powerful message when she mentioned to
military families that if they need help, they should reach out and seek help through programs and support systems," she said. "I think she sets the tone for the nation in telling the nation that military children also serve and they sacrifice and we should take good care of them as a nation."

That's easier, thanks to the many resources available to
military children and families; however the programs are good only if they're accessible, Thompson said.

She said Mrs. Bush heard about the importance of addressing needs of military children who are geographically separated from a military installation, and consequently are far way from the resources located there.

"We're a great organization. We have a lot of programs at every one of our installations, but we can't do it alone," Thompson said. "We need the expertise, and we need the ability to reach out to the larger community to ensure all children's needs are met."

The first lady also heard from organizations such as the Armed Services YMCA, the National
Military Family Association, and Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which are reaching out to the overall community to ensure all military children have resources available.

Armed Services YMCA and the National
Military Family Association are both supporters of America Supports You, a Defense Department program connecting citizens and corporations with military personnel and their families serving at home and abroad.

Kosovo Task Force Prepared for Conflict, Commander Says

By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

Dec. 5, 2007 - As negotiations on Kosovo's "final status" are expected to reach a political stalemate Dec. 10, a top commander in NATO's Kosovo Force said today his troops are prepared for any potential conflict in the breakaway province. The commander of Kosovo Force's Multinational Task Force East said the mood in Kosovo is "anxious" days before talks led by the United States, the European Union and Russia are likely to end in disagreement. Provincial
leaders of the 90-percent ethnic Albanian enclave in southern Serbia are expected to unilaterally declare Kosovo's independence in January or February.

"When the declaration of independence comes, we will be prepared to act against any kind of activity,"
Army Brig. Gen. John E. Davoren told American Forces Press Service.

"We are impartial," he said. "It doesn't matter whether you're a Kosovar Albanian or a Kosovo Serbian ... if you engage in violence, then we as members of Kosovo Force are going to have to act against you."

Kosovo has been under United Nations administration and policed by 16,000 NATO peacekeepers, known as KFOR, following a U.S.-led bombing campaign in 1999 that expelled the Serb army and prevented "ethnic cleansing" of the region's Albanians.

Davoren and the 35th Infantry Division took command of KFOR's Multinational Task Force East, or MNTF-E, on Nov. 2. MNTF-E, with headquarters in Urosevac at Camp Bondsteel, is one of five task forces that conduct intelligence-led operations, and work closely with both the local
police and the local population to gather information, according to NATO's Web site.

MNTF-E also is responsible for more than 60 miles of administrative "boundary lines," the official name for the UN-mandated demarcation separating Kosovo and Serbia. The task force oversees roughly 50 miles of Kosovo-Macedonia border to the south, where incidents between ethnic Albanians and law officers in Macedonia the past two months have stirred controversy, Davoren said.

The brushes near Kosovo's border come in the midst of increasingly harsh political rhetoric from the Serb government in Belgrade, and growing concern over reports in Kosovo's news media of paramilitary activity along Kosovo's boundaries.

Though largely autonomous, Kosovo remains under the sovereignty of Belgrade, which sees Kosovo as the site of cherished Serb mainstays, including several of the most prominent Orthodox Christian shrines in the country. As Kosovo seeks independence, Serbia refused to relinquish the province.

"There is anxiety because there are a number of folks making statements about what the potential future could be," Davoren said of recent political discourse in the region. "There is a lot of discussion about what is actually going to happen on the 10th of December."

Davoren said Kosovo appears calm on the ground, but KFOR is constantly reevaluating the situation in the Serb enclave, assessing threats to stability amid the shifting political landscape.

Meanwhile, recent claims about paramilitary activity in Kosovo are making their rounds in the media. Davoren said the two most prominent groups discussed in reports are the "Tsar Lazar Guard," a group that has organized patrols in Serbia, according to Kosovo media, and the outlawed Albanian National
Army, known as AKSH and branded as a terrorist organization by the U.N. mission in Kosovo.

"One of the TV stations in Kosovo filmed a group of 10 people in black uniforms and masks, supposedly walking along the administrative boundary line to protect Kosovo," Davoren said. "There's also been news reports of a reporter attending some induction ceremony where 20 Kosovo Albanians were joining the AKSH in a ceremony so that they could be prepared to defend Kosovo from the invasion of the Tsar Lazar Guard."

Davoren said the Tsar Lazar Guard reportedly has vowed to wage war on all Kosovo Albanians and U.N. personnel if Kosovo declares independence. Furthermore, they have publicized their desire to detonate a
nuclear bomb in Kosovo.

"I, as Task Force East commander, and we as KFOR, are concerned about these reports; we take them seriously, (and) we go out and we conduct operations to look for these groups," he said. "But what we find is there are an awful lot of these reports, but not much in the way of activity of these groups actually out along the administrative boundary line."

Davoren said many similar reports, which often quote local residents who allege they have seen groups of uniformed and armed men around Kosovo, are based on hearsay or otherwise unconfirmed accounts.

"I also have to take into consideration the perceptions of the people that are listening to the stories," he said. "Where I don't find a lot of facts substantiated in reports, those reports still cause folks some anxiety, (and) there is a little bit of tension caused from that anxiety."

The commander said KFOR's mission is to eliminate or mitigate issues early on before they escalate to something bigger. He cited a March 2004 example, when a disputed news report which alleged that three ethnic Albanian children drowned after being chased into a river by a group of angry Serbs, triggered a wave of riots.

"We want to make sure that we take a look at a number of different things that could be trigger events, separate fact from fiction, and then take appropriate measures so that we are able to deal with those," he said.

Since March 2004, KFOR has worked to correct problems identified following the riots that killed at least 36 people, wounded nearly 1,000 others, and destroyed an estimated 110 houses and 16 churches in its trail.

To gauge the milieu in Kosovo, for instance, KFOR troops interact with the local populace during mounted and dismounted patrols, and through liaison monitoring teams, which listen to concerns of coffee shop and restaurant owners, and other local people. Davoren said he and other senior
leaders interact with village leaders, local priests and Imams, municipality leaders and other elected officials.

"We get a wide cross-section from people who are in positions of power, people who are just your average citizen, and get a feel for what the concerns are – where things are going well, where things are going badly," he said.

Additionally in 2004, nations with forces in Kosovo removed the majority of
military caveats that hindered troops' operational capabilities, Davoren said. For roughly the past two years, he added, KFOR has rehearsed how troops would smoothly transition from posts around Kosovo, rehearsing scenarios that might require additional NATO reserve troops be brought into Kosovo or the greater Balkan region.

"Right now, the troop levels are sufficient," he said. "There are contingency plans where if additional troops are needed to be brought in, those have been identified."

Davoren's comments came a day after NATO's supreme allied commander acknowledged the possibility of quickly raising the force level if needed in Kosovo, which he called NATO's "most volatile" issue.

"There will be those who want to create mischief, and that will be manifested as strife and potentially violence, in Kosovo,"
Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock told reporters at the National Press Club here yesterday. "There will be, then, those who will respond to that, against the advice of, I think, calmer heads to not respond."

The general said, however, that community leaders in Kosovo hope to avoid violence, and that
military strategy is in place to maintain stability.

"We have done contingency planning for the best case and the worst case," he said. "I am very comfortable with what we have done."