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Florida trailer park is a global nerve center for US-led `long war' on terror

Behind a chain link fence in what was once a car park in a major US military installation sits a tight formation of green-trimmed white trailers, where national flags belonging to countries from Australia to El Salvador flutter in the Florida breeze.

It may look like one of the multitude of retirement communities that dot the shores of the sunshine state. Fort MacDill, near Tampa, boasts two excellent golf courses, a nice stretch of sandy beach and another trailer park reserved for Snowbirds -- former military officers fleeing the harsh northern winters. There are also plenty of palm trees.

But this set of trailers, and the military officers who emerge from their tin doors in various configurations of desert camouflage, are engaged in a far more serious enterprise. They are planning for a global conflict that, Washington believes, will dominate the next 20 years of our lives and perhaps our children's.

The Pentagon calls it the "long war": An integrated military, financial and diplomatic campaign against al-Qaeda and its affiliates that will eventually span the globe, shaping the lives of the coming generation much as the Cold War defined the baby boomers.

And yet within the very heart of "Centcom," where generals, admirals and officers of lesser rank have been engaged with the idea for months, the contours of the coming clash remain a matter of debate. The 63 countries represented here see a need for a concerted effort against al-Qaeda, but they are not at all sure that they share the US' vision, or its leadership, of that war.

Since the autumn of 2001, when US President George W. Bush declared the "global war on terror," Fort MacDill has been the nerve center of the US-led coalitions against first Afghanistan and then Iraq.

The airbase is the headquarters of the US central command, which extends from the Middle East through the horn of Africa to central Asia.

Here, in Thursday morning meetings around a horseshoe conference table where LED clocks show the time from Islamabad to Washington, senior officers gather to map strategy, exchange tactical knowledge and generally wear away cultural baggage.

"The benefit of having this coalition here is that everyone has a different perception on every-thing," Royal Marine Colonel Mark Bibbey said.

Coalition members also share intelligence, or at least they are supposed to -- several officers said this was a sensitive matter.

"One of the things that needs to be done to get the upper hand on the war on terror is to share information on the bad guys," a European general said.

"The need-to-know principle needs to be replaced by the need-to-share," he said.

Now, as the war on terror is rebranded as the long war, the Pentagon plans to rehouse the trailer park inhabitants in a brick-and-mortar building. It also wants to make the coalition a permanent force.

"We want to make it a lasting organization," says a US major general involved in planning.

"We see there is a requirement and a benefit for maintaining a coalition to support the long war," he said.

"It gives us a chance to look a little down range, a little into the future, not to be reactive, but to be pro-active," the general said.
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