Camp Eggers
Camp Eggers was a United States military base in Kabul, Afghanistan located near the US Embassy and the Afghan Presidential Palace. The camp was named after Captain Daniel W. Eggers, a US soldier from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, killed by an improvised explosive device along with three other soldiers on 29 May 2004 near Kandahar. Camp Eggers closed in 2015 as a part of the withdrawal of U. S. troops from Afghanistan. Camp Eggers was home to the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan and the Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan, it was used by all U. S. military branches and the International Security Assistance Force. Lt. Gen David Barno, first Commander of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan Camp Eggers from Globalsecurity.org
Kurds
Kurds or the Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group of Western Asia inhabiting a contiguous area known as Kurdistan. Geographically, those four adjacent and often-mountainous areas include southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northern Syria. There are exclaves of Kurds in central Anatolia and Khorasan. Additionally, there are significant Kurdish diaspora communities in the cities of western Turkey, in particular Istanbul, while a Kurdish diaspora has developed in Western Europe in Germany. Numerically, the Kurds are estimated to number anywhere from a low of 30 million, to as high as 45 million. Kurds speak the Kurdish languages, such as Kurmanji and Southern Kurdish. Religiously, although the majority of Kurds belong to the Shafi‘i school of Sunni Islam, there are prominent numbers of Kurds who practice Shia Islam and Alevism. Minority of the Kurdish people are adherents to Yarsanism, Yazidism and Christianity. After World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.
However, that promise was nullified three years when the Treaty of Lausanne set the boundaries of modern Turkey and made no provision for a Kurdish state, leaving Kurds with minority status in their respective countries. This fact has led to numerous genocides and rebellions, along with the current ongoing armed guerrilla conflicts in Turkey and Syria / Rojava. Although Kurds are the majority population in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, because of their statelessness, Kurdish nationalist movements continue to pursue greater cultural rights and independence throughout Greater Kurdistan. Kurdish is a collection of related dialects spoken by the Kurds, it is spoken in those parts of Iran, Iraq and Turkey which comprise Kurdistan. Kurdish holds official status in Iraq as a national language alongside Arabic, is recognized in Iran as a regional language, in Armenia as a minority language; the Kurdish languages belong to the northwestern sub‑group of the Iranian languages, which in turn belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.
Most Kurds are either bilingual or multilingual, speaking the language of their respective nation of origin, such as Arabic and Turkish as a second language alongside their native Kurdish, while those in diaspora communities speak three or more languages. According to Mackenzie, there are few linguistic features that all Kurdish dialects have in common and that are not at the same time found in other Iranian languages; the Kurdish dialects according to Mackenzie are classified as: Northern group Central group Southern group including Kermanshahi and LakiThe Zaza and Gorani are ethnic Kurds, but the Zaza–Gorani languages are not classified as Kurdish. Commenting on the differences between the dialects of Kurdish, Kreyenbroek clarifies that in some ways and Sorani are as different from each other as is English from German, giving the example that Kurmanji has grammatical gender and case endings, but Sorani does not, observing that referring to Sorani and Kurmanji as "dialects" of one language is supported only by "their common origin... and the fact that this usage reflects the sense of ethnic identity and unity of the Kurds."
The number of Kurds living in Southwest Asia is estimated at close to 30 million, with another one or two million living in diaspora. Kurds comprise anywhere from 18% to 20% of the population in Turkey as high as 25%. Kurds form regional majorities in all four of these countries, viz. in Turkish Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in West Asia after the Arabs and Turks; the total number of Kurds in 1991 was placed at 22.5 million, with 48% of this number living in Turkey, 18% in Iraq, 24% in Iran, 4% in Syria. Recent emigration accounts for a population of close to 1.5 million in Western countries, about half of them in Germany. A special case are the Kurdish populations in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, displaced there in the time of the Russian Empire, who underwent independent developments for more than a century and have developed an ethnic identity in their own right; this groups' population was estimated at close to 0.4 million in 1990.
"The land of Karda" is mentioned on a Sumerian clay-tablet dated to the 3rd millennium B. C; this land was inhabited by "the people of Su". Other Sumerian clay-tablets referred to the people, who lived in the land of Karda, as the Qarduchi and the Qurti. Karda/Qardu is etymologically related to the Hebrew term Ararat. Qarti or Qartas, who were settled on the mountains north of Mesopotamia, are considered as a probable ancestor of the Kurds. Akkadians were attacked by nomads coming through Qartas territory at the end of 3rd millennium B. C. Akkadians distinguished them as Guti, they conquered Mesopotamia in 2150 B. C. and ruled with 21 kings. Many Kurds consider themselves descended from the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, use a calendar dating from 612 B. C. when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was conquered by the Medes. The claimed Median descent is refl
Director of Central Intelligence
The Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2005, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the President of the United States and the United States National Security Council, as well as the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various U. S. intelligence agencies. The office existed from January 1946 to April 21, 2005. After the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act it was replaced by the Director of National Intelligence as head of the Intelligence Community and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as head of the CIA; the post of DCI was established by President Harry Truman on January 23, 1946, with Admiral Sidney Souers being the first DCI, followed by General Hoyt Vandenberg who served as DCI from June 1946 to May 1947. The DCI ran the Central Intelligence Group, a predecessor of the CIA; the office of DCI thus predates the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was created by the National Security Act of 1947, which formally defined the duties of the Director of Central Intelligence.
This 1947 Act created the National Security Council. Until April 2005, the DCI was referred to colloquially as the "CIA Director," though he was head of both the CIA and the broader Intelligence Community. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent investigation by the 9/11 Commission, a movement grew to re-organize the Intelligence Community; that movement prompted the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act in December 2004, which split the DCI's duties among two new offices. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence would serve as head of the Intelligence Community and advise the NSC on intelligence matters; the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency would serve as chief administrator of the CIA. The reorganization took effect on April 21, 2005; the 19th and last DCI, Porter J. Goss became the first director of the CIA, while John Negroponte became the first DNI. Status As of April 2019, there are six living former Directors of Central Intelligence, the oldest being William H. Webster.
The most recent Director to die was George H. W. Bush, on November 30, 2018. Living former Directors of Central Intelligence Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was the third Director of Central Intelligence, but the first who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. During his tenure, a National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948, further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons." Those operations, were conducted by other agencies such as the Office of Policy Coordination. See Approval of Clandestine and Covert Operations and Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for details of the eventual merger of these operations with the CIA, as well as how the equivalent functions were done in other countries. During the first years of its existence, other branches of the U.
S. Federal government did not exercise much supervision over the Central Intelligence Agency. Justified by the desire to match and defeat Soviet actions throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, it undertook a task that many believed could be accomplished only through an approach similar to the Soviet intelligence agencies, under names including NKVD, MVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB; those Soviet organizations had domestic responsibilities. The rapid expansion of the CIA, a developed sense of independence under the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles exacerbated the problem of the U. S. Intelligence Community's freedom from independent review. After the armed landing of Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, President Kennedy discharged and replaced Dulles. Dulles had been an O. S. S. Veteran from World War II, his autobiography is more noteworthy for giving insight into the mindset of key people in the field than it is in giving a detailed description of the CIA and its operations. President John F. Kennedy exercised greater supervision, he appointed a Republican with a general engineering background, John McCone.
McCone, despite a lack of intelligence agency background, is considered one of the most competent DCIs, an excellent manager. The agency stepped up its activity in Southeast Asia under President Lyndon Johnson. McCone resigned from his position of DCI in April 1965, believing himself to have been unappreciated by President Johnson. McCone's final policy memorandum to Johnson argued that expansion of the War in Vietnam would arouse national and world discontent over the war, before it defeated the North Vietnamese regime. Raborn, a distinguished naval officer who directed the design and development of the entire Polaris ballistic missile submarine system, had a somewhat short and unhappy tenure as the DCI, his background included no foreign relations experience, intelligence experience only concerning naval operations. CIA historians have said "Raborn did not'take' to the DCI job", in their opinion. Raborn resigned as the DCI on June 1966, having served for only fourteen months, he was replaced by his deputy, Richard Helms.
Helms was an OSS and CIA veteran, the first DCI to have risen through the ranks at CIA. Helms became the Director of the OSO after the CIA's disastrous role in the attempted Bay of Pigs In
Jane Mayer
Jane Meredith Mayer is an American investigative journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. In recent years, she has written for that publication regarding: money in politics. In 2016, Mayer's book Dark Money—in which she investigated the history of the right-wing billionaire network centered on the Koch brothers—was published to critical acclaim. Mayer was born in New York City, her mother, Meredith, is a painter, print-maker and former president of the Manhattan Graphics Center. Her father, William Mayer, was a composer, her paternal great-great-grandfather was one of the founders of Lehman Brothers. Her maternal grandparents were Mary Fleming and Allan Nevins, a historian and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s authorized biographer, who wrote that, despite the Ludlow Massacre and his fellow industrialists "...did nothing criminal."Mayer attended two non-denominational secondary schools: Fieldston, in the northwest area of the Bronx borough of New York City. A 1977 magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as senior editor of the Yale Daily News Magazine and as campus stringer for Time magazine.
She continued her studies at Oxford University. Mayer began her journalistic career in Vermont writing for two small weekly papers, The Weathersfield Weekly and The Black River Tribune, before moving to the daily Rutland Herald, she worked as a metropolitan reporter for the now-defunct Washington Star, in 1982 joined The Wall Street Journal, where she worked for 12 years. She was the first woman at the WSJ to be named White House correspondent, subsequently, senior writer and front page editor, she served as a war correspondent and foreign correspondent for the Journal, where she reported on the bombing of the American barracks in Beirut, the Persian Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the last days of Communism in the former Soviet Union. Mayer contributes to the New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Prospect, she has co-authored two books: Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, a study of the nomination and appointment of Clarence Thomas to the U.
S. Supreme Court. Strange Justice was adapted as a 1999 Showtime television movie of the same name, starring Delroy Lindo, Mandy Patinkin, Regina Taylor. Strange Justice was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award for Nonfiction, both books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Time magazine said of Strange Justice: "Its portrait of Thomas as an id suffering in the role of a Republican superego is more detailed and convincing than anything that has appeared so far." Of Landslide, The New York Times Washington correspondent Steven V. Roberts said, "This is a reporter's book, full of rich anecdote and telling detail.... I am impressed with the amount of inside information collected here."In an Elle magazine interview, Mayer said about her next article, “I’m focusing broadly on stories about abuses of power, threats to democracy, corruption.” Mayer's third nonfiction book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, addresses the origins, legal justifications, possible war crimes liability of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees and the subsequent deaths of detainees, sometimes victims of mistaken identity, under such interrogation by the CIA and DOD.
The roles of Dick Cheney and attorneys David Addington and John Yoo in providing cover for the grisly procedures were prominent. The book was a finalist for the National Book Awards. In its review of The Dark Side, The New York Times noted that the book is "the most vivid and comprehensive account we have so far of how a government founded on checks and balances and respect for individual rights could have been turned against those ideals." The Times subsequently named The Dark Side one of its ten most notable books of the year. Military and diplomatic historian, Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, reviewing the book in The Washington Post, wrote: " achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces." Post reporter Joby Warrick reported that Mayer's book revealed that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst warned the Bush administration that "up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake."
The administration insisted that all were enemy combatants. In a story appearing the same day in The New York Times, reporter Scott Shane revealed that Mayer's book disclosed that International Committee of the Red Cross officials had concluded in a secret report in 2007, that "the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes."Mayer said of her book: "I see myself more as a reporter than as an advocate." Mayer covered the Obama administration's prosecution of whistleblowers with an article about former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake. Despite Obama's campaign promises of transparency, Mayer wrote, his administration "has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentl
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term Geneva Convention denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War, which updated the terms of the two 1929 treaties, added two new conventions; the Geneva Conventions extensively defined the basic rights of wartime prisoners, established protections for the wounded and sick, established protections for the civilians in and around a war-zone. The treaties of 1949 were ratified, by 196 countries. Moreover, the Geneva Convention defines the rights and protections afforded to non-combatants, because the Geneva Conventions are about people in war, the articles do not address warfare proper—the use of weapons of war—which is the subject of the Hague Conventions, the bio-chemical warfare Geneva Protocol; the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant went to visit wounded soldiers after the Battle of Solferino in 1859.
He was shocked by the lack of facilities and medical aid available to help these soldiers. As a result, he published his book, A Memory of Solferino, on the horrors of war, his wartime experiences inspired Dunant to propose: A permanent relief agency for humanitarian aid in times of war A government treaty recognizing the neutrality of the agency and allowing it to provide aid in a war zoneThe former proposal led to the establishment of the Red Cross in Geneva. The latter led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the first codified international treaty that covered the sick and wounded soldiers in the battlefield. On 22 August 1864, the Swiss government invited the governments of all European countries, as well as the United States and Mexico, to attend an official diplomatic conference. Sixteen countries sent a total of twenty-six delegates to Geneva. On 22 August 1864, the conference adopted the first Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field".
Representatives of 12 states and kingdoms signed the convention: For both of these accomplishments, Henry Dunant became corecipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. On 20 October 1868 the first, attempt to expand the 1864 treaty was undertaken. With the'Additional Articles relating to the Condition of the Wounded in War' an attempt was initiated to clarify some rules of the 1864 convention and to extend them to maritime warfare; the Articles was only ratified by the Netherlands and North America. The Netherlands withdrew their ratification; the protection of the victims of maritime warfare would be realized by the third Hague Convention of 1899 and the tenth Hague Convention of 1907. In 1906 thirty-five states attended. On 6 July 1906 it resulted in the adoption of the "Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field", which improved and supplemented, for the first time, the 1864 convention, it remained in force until 1970. The 1929 conference yielded two conventions that were signed on 27 July 1929.
One, the "Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field", was the third version to replace the original convention of 1864. The other was adopted after experiences in World War I had shown the deficiencies in the protection of prisoners of war under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907; the "Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" was not to replace these earlier conventions signed at The Hague, rather it supplemented them. Inspired by the wave of humanitarian and pacifistic enthusiasm following World War II and the outrage towards the war crimes disclosed by the Nuremberg Trials, a series of conferences were held in 1949 reaffirming and updating the prior Geneva and Hague Conventions, it yielded four distinct conventions: The First Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field" was the fourth update of the original 1864 convention and replaced the 1929 convention on the same subject matter.
The Second Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea" replaced the Hague Convention of 1907. It was the first Geneva Convention on the protection of the victims of maritime warfare and mimicked the structure and provisions of the First Geneva Convention; the Third Geneva Convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" replaced the 1929 Geneva Convention that dealt with prisoners of war. In addition to these three conventions, the conference added a new elaborate Fourth Geneva Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War", it was the first Geneva Convention not to deal with combatants, rather it had the protection of civilians as its subject matter. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions had contained some provisions on the protection of civilians and occupied territory. Article 154 provides that the Fourth Geneva Convention is supplementary to these provisions in the Hague Conventions.
Despite the length of these documents, they were found over time to be incomplete. In fact, the nature of armed conflicts had changed with the beginning of the Cold War era, leading many to believe that the 1949 Geneva Conventions were addressing a extinct reality: on the one hand, most armed conflicts had
Iraq
Iraq the Republic of Iraq, is a country in Western Asia, bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west. The capital, largest city, is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Arabs, Assyrians, Shabakis, Armenians, Mandeans and Kawliya. Around 95% of the country's 37 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan and Mandeanism present; the official languages of Iraq are Kurdish. Iraq has a coastline measuring 58 km on the northern Persian Gulf and encompasses the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain, the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert. Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf; these rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers known as Mesopotamia, is referred to as the cradle of civilisation.
It was here that mankind first began to read, create laws and live in cities under an organised government—notably Uruk, from which "Iraq" is derived. The area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian and Babylonian empires, it was part of the Median, Hellenistic, Sassanid, Rashidun, Abbasid, Mongol, Safavid and Ottoman empires. The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century, it was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, Basra Vilayet. In April 1920 the British Mandate of Mesopotamia was created under the authority of the League of Nations. A British-backed monarchy joining these vilayets into one Kingdom was established in 1921 under Faisal I of Iraq; the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from the UK in 1932. In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created.
Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003. After an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party was removed from power, multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005; the US presence in Iraq ended in 2011, but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country. Out of the insurgency came a destructive group calling itself ISIL, which took large parts of the north and west, it has since been defeated. Disputes over the sovereignty of Iraqi Kurdistan continue. A referendum about the full sovereignty of Iraqi Kurdistan was held on 25 September 2017. On 9 December 2017, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIL after the group lost its territory in Iraq. Iraq is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of one autonomous region; the country's official religion is Islam. Culturally, Iraq has a rich heritage and celebrates the achievements of its past in both pre-Islamic as well as post-Islamic times and is known for its poets.
Its painters and sculptors are among the best in the Arab world, some of them being world-class as well as producing fine handicrafts, including rugs and carpets. Iraq is a founding member of the UN as well as of the Arab League, OIC, Non-Aligned Movement and the IMF; the Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name. One dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk and is thus of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for "city", UR. An Arabic folk etymology for the name is "well-watered. During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿAjamī, for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran; the term included the plain south of the Hamrin Mountains and did not include the northernmost and westernmost parts of the modern territory of Iraq. Prior to the middle of the 19th century, the term Eyraca Arabic was used to describe Iraq.
The term Sawad was used in early Islamic times for the region of the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contrasting it with the arid Arabian desert. As an Arabic word, عراق means "hem", "shore", "bank", or "edge", so that the name by folk etymology came to be interpreted as "the escarpment", viz. at the south and east of the Jazira Plateau, which forms the northern and western edge of the "al-Iraq arabi" area. The Arabic pronunciation is. In English, it is either or, the American Heritage Dictionary, the Random House Dictionary; the pronunciation is heard in US media. In accordance with the 2005 Constitution, the official name of the state is the "Republic of Iraq". Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological remains of which have been discovered at Shanidar Cave This same region is the location of a number of pre-Neolithic cemeteries, dating from 11,000 BC. Since 10,000 BC, Iraq was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture (k
Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport
Mihail Kogălniceanu Airport is situated in southeastern Romania, in the commune of Mihail Kogălniceanu, 26 kilometres north-northwest of Constanța. It is the main airport of Northern Dobruja region and provides access to Constanța County, the Port of Constanța and the Black Sea resorts; the airport is named in honour of the third Prime Minister of Romania. The military sector of the Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport is an annex of the 86th Air Base. Since 1999 it has been used by the United States Air Force. Built in 1955, as a military airbase, Mihail Kogălniceanu Airport opened for civil operations in May 1960, when it replaced the old Palas Airport. A passenger terminal with a capacity of 200 passengers per hour was inaugurated in 1962, five years by an expansion to a processing capacity of 300 pax/hour. In 1974, a major expansion increased the processing capacity to 1,000 pax/hour. Use of the airport peaked at 778,766 passengers in 1979, when foreign tourism to the Romanian Riviera was at a high.
Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport handled 127,635 passengers in 2017, which represents a 34.9% increase over the previous year. The airport was home of the former Romanian Air Force 57th Air Base, the only unit operating the Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter aircraft; the base was disbanded in April 2004 and all the 18 MiG-29s remain in open storage at the airport. It has been used by the US Military since 1999. In 2003, it became one of four Romanian military facilities that have been used by U. S. military forces as a staging area for the invasion of and ongoing counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq, operated by the 458th Air Expeditionary Group. It was intended to become one of the main operating bases of United States Army Europe's Joint Task Force East, a rotating task force to be provided by the U. S. 2nd Cavalry Regiment, to grow to a brigade sized force. The JTF-E concept has been reduced to the Army-only Task Force East, but the base still retains an important role, given added weight by the 2014 Crimean crisis.
During the first three months of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the airport was transited by 1,300 cargo and personnel transports towards Iraq, comprising 6,200 personnel and about 11,100 tons of equipment. As of October 2009 the US has spent $48 million upgrading the base. Plans are for the base to host 1,700 US and Romanian military personnel. Since 2009 the US operates a Permanent Forward Operating Site several times larger than the temporary base housed in the former 57th Air Base, it is currently home to the 863rd Helicopter squadron which operates IAR-330L's. With the closure of the Transit Center at Manas in Kyrgyzstan, The United States military transferred processing operations for military deploying to Afghanistan and other locations to the base; the United States Army 21st Theater Sustainment Command and Air Force 780th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron are responsible for US operations there. On 15 August 2018, the Britain’s Royal Air Force four Eurofighter Typhoons based there were scrambled to intercept six Russian Air Force Su-24 Fencer bombers over the Black Sea, under the NATO Enhanced Air Policing mission.
It is alleged to be one of the black sites involved in the CIA's network of "extraordinary renditions". According to Eurocontrol data, it has been the site of four landings and two stopovers by aircraft identified as belonging to the CIA's fleet of rendition planes, including at least one used executive jet N379P. European media have distributed reports of a fax intercepted by Swiss intelligence, datelined November 10, 2005, 8.24pm, that "was sent by the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, in Cairo, to his ambassador in London. It revealed that the US had detained at least 23 Iraqi and Afghani captives at a military base called Mihail Kogalniceanu in Romania, added that similar secret prisons were to be found in Poland, Kosovo and Bulgaria." Several city bus lines link the airport to Constanta railway station. There are few private bus lines operating to downtown Constanta or Romanian Black Sea resorts. There is no shuttle service available. There are always cabs available outside airport terminal.
The cost of a ride to Constanta is around $30, higher than the bus rates which can be as low as $1.50. The Airport is accessible by car and is located in north-western part of Constanta, which can be accessed from the DN 2A/E60 Constanta-Harsova or A4 motorway until Ovidiu; the airport can be reached from A2 by exiting towards Cernavoda driving on DN22C towards Medgidia through county road DJ 222 passing through Cuza Voda all the way to town of Mihail Kogalniceanu where the airport is located. Alternatively from A2 there is another exit towards Medgidia on DJ381 and continue on DJ222. Car rentals are available. There is free long term parking right outside airport terminal. On June 12, 2017, a MiG-21 LanceR of the Romanian Air Force crashed on approach, 8 km away from Mihail Kogălniceanu Airport; the pilot, though injured and the aircraft was written off. Aviation in Romania Transport in Romania Charlie Coon, Construction To Begin This Winter On Romania Bases and Stripes, September 30, 2006 JTF East Media related to Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport at Wikimedia Commons Media related to Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base at Wikimedia Commons Official website Google Map - Aerial View Sourcewatch link Accident history fo
