Originally Posted by
Eden
Having been a planner/liaison in ISAF recently, I can attest to how dysfunctional the entire NATO set up is in Afghanistan. NATO planners - some of the sharpest officers I met in my career, by the way - kept a chart that listed by nation what their caveats were. It had to be cross-indexed, color coded, and linked in a constantly updated website so that the order writers knew that Country A could not deploy outside of their allotted region without their MOD's approval, or that Country B would only accept TACON to Country C, or that Country D's helicopters could not be used for reconnaissance. The US was just as guilty as other members of NATO; though we denied having any caveats, we in fact had several that hampered planning and cooperation.
What is worse was the fact that each major NATO player runs its own war. The US played whack-a-mole, the British tried to apply the tactics of 1919, the Canadians manfully fought pitched battles requiring artillery, CAS, engineer support, and tanks, while the Dutch plied the open-hand, soft cap approach. All of this in neighboring provinces! ISAF, at least while I was there, tried to bring coherence at the operational level, but it had no levers to force compliance. Again, the US was just as guilty as any other party in refusing to support a common NATO approach to counterinsurgency, even after we came under ISAF 'command'.
Finally, the force levels are just too low. ISAF's minimum military requirement - the forces needed to successfully conduct operations even under the present limited mandate - has never been met. At one point during my last tour, the US had as many generals as they had infantry companies in Afghanistan. Anybody who has gone through the NATO Force Generation process comes away disillusioned that neither the US nor our fellow NATO partners are willing to ante up the troops needed. On the other hand, there are more than enough troops to engender resentment and resistance.
So, frustration in Afghanistan will continue for three classic reasons:
1. The counterinsurgents do not have sufficient combat power to hold what they clear. Nor can they concentrate what combat power they do have due to NATO's system of national fiefdoms, national caveats, and the scattering of PRTs helter-skelter across the countryside.
2. The insurgents have a reliable source of funding and manpower to allow them to take the field pretty much when and where they choose.
3. The insurgents have a secure sanctuary across the border.
This is COIN 101, and no strategy is going to work that doesn't address all three questions.
). I remember how very painful and painstaking were the efforts to arrive a NATO-standard solutions. I try and emphasize to my O/Cs that if we the US Army had such a time relearning COIN, we should not be surprised that for NATO/ISAF, it is an even greater challenge. The issue on caveats and national command channels sounds much like a UN peacekeeping mission where Force "commanders" really do not command anything.
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