CENTCOM

CENTCOM, the portion of the U.S. military responsible for protecting American security interests in an area stretching from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia. The region monitored by this command encompasses 20 countries, including Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and northern Red Sea, and the five republics of Central Asia. MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, is home to CENTCOM headquarters.

On January 1, 1983, CENTCOM was organized by President Ronald Reagan to support U.S. interests in the Middle East. It was designed to be a permanent replacement for the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, a versatile but less regionally specific organization established by President Jimmy Carter to combat Soviet aggression. CENTCOM was not designed to be a permanent war-fighting unit, but it is equal in prestige and support to the country’s eight other unified combatant commands, which are made up of two or more branches of the armed services. In the early 21st century CENTCOM contained five units that came from each of the four armed services as well as the Joint Special Operations Command. It is CENTCOM’s function to organize and coordinate those services into a war-fighting institution.

The region for which CENTCOM is responsible contains some of the most economically depressed and politically unstable areas in the world. It is also an area characterized by a great deal of terrorist activity and is home to many terrorist organizations. As a result, the command has taken a lead role in combating the emerging threat posed by international terrorism while continuing to pursue peaceful engagements through humanitarian operations. Since its inception, CENTCOM has been responsible for several operations, including two conflicts between the United States and Iraq—Operation Desert Storm (1991) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003–11)—and the Afghanistan War, which began in 2001.