CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Doha, Qatar is the destination this week for a leader with the West Virginia National Guard.
The trip for Capt. Joshua Goforth, who heads of the West Virginia National Guard State Partnership Program involving Qatar, is the next step in a series for the cooperative effort announced earlier this year.
Goforth was scheduled to leave West Virginia on Sunday.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on right now at the behind-the-scenes level to get things in place to make the partnership strong,” said Major General James Hoyer, adjutant general for the West Virginia National Guard.
Previously this month, he and Goforth attended the U.S. Army Central Command Senior Strategy Session in Arlington, Va. That session included meetings with representatives from Qatar along with those from seven other Middle East countries.
This fall, a small Qatari delegation is scheduled to visit Charleston to review the capabilities of Qatari military forces and plan for future military-to-military events.
In May, Governor Jim Justice led a ceremonial event at the State Capitol with representatives from Qatar.
It’s all being coordinated with the Qatar attaché office in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Embassy in Qatar and U.S. Central Command.
“These things are things that move at a slow pace because your first piece of this is to build relationships,” Hoyer said.
Early on in the Qatar partnership, “They want to spend a good bit of time working on developing command and control capabilities, training activities in the United States,” Hoyer said.
At the same time, work continues to build on a separate cooperative effort under the State Partnership Program for the West Virginia National Guard and Peru. That partnership dates back to 1996.
Most recently, Sgt. 1st Class Héctor Guillén, a Peru native who’s leading the Peru WVNG State Partnership Program, provided leadership training to 200 Peruvian noncommissioned officers.
It’s important work, Hoyer told MetroNews.
“I want to spend time as much time as the West Virginia Guard can building partnerships and relationships so that we have less likelihood of having to send men and women into harm’s way to deal with threats otherwise,” he said.