F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

Into the Breach?
NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan
was not something explicitly
mandated by the Bonn Agreement
of December 2001 that sketched a
pathway for Afghanistan’s “post-conflict”
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 Agreement,
the participants sought the “assistance of the international
community in helping the new Afghan authorities
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 throughout
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 formally
assumed authority for the ISAF mission. (The shift to
NATO leadership was designed to overcome the disloca-
F OCUS
The Afghanistan theater
of operations is proving
to be a critical test of
NATO’s capacities in
the post–Cold War
world.
tions that had earlier arisen as new
states were inducted to lead the mission
for six-month periods.) By then,
however, critical time had been lost.
The need to find an on-theground
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 experiences
of the U.S. military in South
Vietnam — the Civil Operations and
Revolutionary Development Support
program, in particular.
The model envisaged cooperative endeavors by military
and civilian affairs personnel in support of the reconstruction
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 benefits
of such activities would spread like ink on blotting
paper, demonstrating to wavering communities the benefits
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. command
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
JULY-AUGUST 2008/FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 37