Combined Joint Task Force 180

When the 10th Mountain Division headquarters arrived in Afghanistan in late 2001, its role was to serve as a forward HQ for the Combined Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC), the headquarters in Kuwait that oversaw all ground force operations throughout Central Command’s area of responsibility. The 10th Mountain Division’s headquarters, in turn, would command all land forces inside Afghanistan. Major General Franklin L. Hagenbeck, commanding general, 10th Mountain Division, later recalled that the entire process of choosing his headquarters for CFLCC (Forward) had been improvised, providing little time for his staff to prepare. CFLCC (Forward) later became CJTF Mountain. It was this headquarters that ran Operation Anaconda. The mission of CJTF-180 was to conduct operations to destroy remaining Al Qaeda/hostile Taliban command control and other hostile anti-Islamic Transitional Government of Afghanistan elements, trains Afghan National Army, and conducts directed information operations, civil military operations and humanitarian assistance operations in coordination with the ITGA in order to establish a stable and secure Afghanistan able to deter/defeat the re-emergence of terrorism. In mid 2003 ("weeks" after 1 May 2003) McNeill and the bulk of his staff from the XVIII Airborne Corps that had formed the core of CJTF-180 departed Afghanistan. Command of CJTF 180 and its 11,000 personnel was passed to Major General John R. Vines, who had recently commanded Combined Task Force 82 (CTF 82). On 27 May 2003 Lieutenant General McNeill turned over command of CJTF-180 to Major General Vines. CTF 82, mostly drawn from the 82nd Airborne Division, had begun redeploying to the United States in April. Beginning in May 2003, the 10th Mountain Division headquarters and other combat and support elements of the division arrived to replace the departing forces, but this transition would take most of the summer. The 10th Mountain Division headquarters then became the staff for CJTF-180, still under Major General Vines, significantly reducing the size and capacity of the senior military command in Afghanistan. In September 2003 Brigadier General Lloyd J. Austin arrived in Afghanistan as commander of the 10th Mountain Division and Commander CJTF 180. Then Major General David Barno arrived in Afghanistan in early October 2003 on temporary duty status. He spent roughly six weeks there as a two-star officer. In November 2003, Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan (CFC-A) was established as the U.S. led, coalition headquarters for Afghanistan. Now-Lieutenant General Barno took command. CJTF-180 was restructured as a subordinate organization of CFC-A, with the 10th Mountain Division seemingly remaining responsible for tactical combat/security operations only. One of the pillars of Barno's new counter-insurgency strategy was to order the troops to live alongside the people, and thus he allotted brigades to specific areas of responsibility, creating Regional Command East and Regional Command South. Previously the forces had conducted missions hunting insurgents without establishing long-term relationships with specific areas. Department of Defense Authorization Appropriation statements for FY 2005 describe "...CJTF-180 is a division level organization that exercises command over 11 separate task forces; including 2 coalition battalions and other support, medical, engineering, and training units. It also has special operations capabilities assigned from U.S. and coalition nations." On 15 April 2004 the headquarters of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division arrived in Afghanistan and took command of CJTF-180 from the 10th Mountain Division. Lieutenant General Barno then decided to rename the CJTF because the “180” designation had traditionally been given to Joint task forces led by the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps. Barno chose Combined Joint Task Force 76 as the new name to evoke America’s history and the democratic spirit of 1776. The CFC-A commander was hoping that this new designation would highlight the change in command at the operational level at a time when Afghanistan appeared to be moving closer to democracy. ==Rotations==