Three days after the Czech Republic officially joined the U.S. military buildup around Iraq, its soldiers staged a modern warfare scenario: lots of smoke, bloody casualties and a long wait for rescue as specialists in moon suits sized up a mock chemical attack.
With a post-Warsaw Pact reputation for having among the forces best prepared to handle “hot zones,” the Czech unit picked an appropriate setting for the exercise Monday: the crumbling structure of an abandoned Kuwaiti women’s prison on the grounds of the Camp Doha military base.
If deployed in a real nuclear or chemical attack in Kuwait or Iraq, the 189 Czech specialists could decontaminate up to 300 victims in an hour as well as up to 140 vehicles, if enough water is available.
As the United States steps up its threat to go to war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the Czech Republic last week formally joined the U.S. forces building up in the region.
Military officials are happy to have Czech expertise in responding to a chemical strike. Czech specialists are credited with being the sole forces to find traces of nerve gas during the 1991 gulf war, according to U.S. and Czech officials. The Czechs found the traces in Saudi Arabia, and no injuries were reported.
“The Czech Republic philosophy is that we cannot passively consume security, but we have to actively contribute to it as well,” said Defense Minister Jaroslav Tvrdik, whose nation joined NATO in 1999.
“Of course we would prefer a peaceful solution, but in the case of Saddam Hussein, we cannot be passive,” he said.
The Czech army will add 107 people to the 251-member unit and send 40 more vehicles, said Czech Col. Jan Weiser, the commanding officer. Czech Maj. Gen. Pavel Stefka, army chief of the general staff, will join the U.S. Central Command in Tampa on Tuesday.
Since Sept. 2, 2001, the Czech 4th Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defense Company has trained with U.S. and German forces in the Kuwaiti desert.
While the German and U.S. teams are capable of responding to the fallout of such attacks, the Czech forces offer “a real unique capability” in terms of its specialists and equipment, U.S. officials said.
“It gives us more confidence because so much of our capability lies with the Czechs,” Marine Lt. Col. Charles Chase said.
The Czech expertise in handling sites devastated by chemical attacks was developed during the days of the Warsaw Pact, when the former Czechoslovakia was under the sway of the Soviet Union.
“I would say it’s the outcome of our not very beautiful past,” Tvrdik said, referring to the time when the Warsaw Pact was working on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and finding ways to defend against them.
On the desert grounds of Camp Doha, several men pretended to be unconscious, scattered throughout the abandoned jail grounds, now often used for military training.
The facility featured a dozen or so cells in a courtyard, where five soldiers lay with fake blood splattered on them. Atop the one-story prison’s roof, a soldier on watch duty also was knocked out.
The exercise portrayed the painstaking maneuvers of responding to a hot zone, a site hit by a missile or bomb leaving a high level of chemical or biological agents, officials said.
