The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

Into the Breach? NATO’s involvement in Afghan- istan was not something explicitly mandated by the Bonn Agreement of December 2001 that sketched a pathway for Afghanistan’s “post-con- flict” transition. But it was naturally assumed that the organization would be involved, not least because of the solidarity with the United States that NATO and its members had voiced after the 9/11 attacks. In Annex I to the Bonn Agree- ment, the participants sought the “assistance of the inter- national community in helping the new Afghan author- ities in the establishment and training of new Afghan security and armed forces.” They further requested the United Nations Security Council “to consider authorizing the early deployment to Afghanistan of a United Nations–mandated force” to “assist in the maintenance of security for Kabul and its surrounding area.” Such a force “could, as appropriate, be progressively expanded to other urban centers and other areas.” The Security Council proceeded, through Resolution 1386 adopted on Dec. 20, 2001, to authorize the establishment of an International Security Assistance Force, with a “Chapter VII” enforcement mandate to take action “to maintain or restore international peace and security.” Ideally, this force should have been deployed through- out the country as rapidly as possible, to consolidate the momentum that the overthrow of the Taliban regime had created. But this was not to be. Differences emerged between the NATO allies over the burdens to be carried. And the Bush administration — perhaps with an eye to future operations in Iraq — was reluctant to commit the airlift capability required to sustain an expanded ISAF. This came to a head in a very public way, through the publication in the Washington Post on March 20, 2002, of an article headlined “Peacekeepers Won’t Go Beyond Kabul, Cheney Says.” This effectively killed off the idea of ISAF expansion in the short run, although alarmed observers continued to press for it to happen. Not until Oct. 13, 2003, with Security Council Resolution 1510, did the ISAF receive a wider mandate — two months after NATO had formal- ly assumed authority for the ISAF mission. (The shift to NATO leadership was designed to overcome the disloca- tions that had earlier arisen as new states were inducted to lead the mis- sion for six-month periods.) By then, however, critical time had been lost. The need to find an on-the- ground substitute for an expanded ISAF was a key factor contributing to the development of the Provincial Reconstruction Team model, which also drew on some of the experi- ences of the U.S. military in South Vietnam— the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Sup- port program, in particular. The model envisaged cooperative endeavors by mili- tary and civilian affairs personnel in support of the recon- struction and peacebuilding activities of local Afghan authorities. These would run alongside the operations directed at eliminating al-Qaida operatives and armed insurgents, following the “inkspot” theory of social order underpinning the PRT model. This implied that the ben- efits of such activities would spread like ink on blotting paper, demonstrating to wavering communities the ben- efits of throwing their support behind the new Afghan state and its international backers. Challenges On the Ground By early 2008, no fewer than 26 PRTs were operating in different parts of Afghanistan, some under U.S. com- mand and others part of NATO’s deployments. On the ground, the teams’ operations have been shaped by both the local circumstances they confront and their own countries’ military-organizational cultures and senses of what a mission in Afghanistan should properly involve. In some parts of Afghanistan — such as the relatively stable Bamiyan, where New Zealand personnel comprise the core of the local PRT — the model has worked well. In other areas, however, the picture has been much more blurred. In Kandahar, for example, Canadian forces have suffered significant casualties at the hands of a neo- Taliban insurgency, well beyond the casualty levels that the Canadian public had been led to expect. This and the similar experiences of the British in Helmand have raised doubts about the viability of pursuing reconstruction in an environment in which ambient security is absent. And in an organizational sense, problems have arisen around such mundane matters as personnel rotation and loss of F O C U S J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 The Afghanistan theater of operations is proving to be a critical test of NATO’s capacities in the post–Cold War world.