CASR

Canadian
American
Strategic
Review

Afghanistan  –  Canadian Forces  –  PRTs  –  ISAF  –  June 2005 Canada to Kandahar  –  Provincial Reconstruction Team or Operation Enduring Freedom:  Two Sides of the Same Coin Excerpts of an article by  Sean M. Maloney  –  Royal Military College of Canada [Ed: CASR  is supportive of  both planned deployments – the reconstruction team ( PRT ) at Kandahar, as well as the combat-oriented deployment of Canadian Forces as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in southeastern Afghanistan. The former emphasizes  rebuilding  the  political,  economic, and constabulary institutions of  Kandahar,  an important city in the south of Afghanistan.  In 2006, Canadian Forces will join US-led coalition forces seeking out  Al Qaeda and Taliban 'remnants' in the southeast of the country. Taliban supporters  were  given  refuge  in  neighbouring  Pakistan. From there they now strike across the border at  Kandahar. CASR  is convinced that the Canadian Forces (CF)  are competent  (and eager) to take on both deployments.  The current author  –  Sean M. Maloney  –  however, sounds a cautious note.  He describes the dangers of  the  ISAF / German  PRT at Konduz in the north.  Compared to Kandahar,  Konduz is a cakewalk.  His opinion is, of  course, his own.  CASR  finds  Professor  Maloney's  history of  PRTs to be useful for any concerned citizen. Perhaps Dr. Maloney's message can be summed up this way:  Be prepared for casualties.  Accept them with stoicism,  and honour the dead. No country committed to exporting justice, liberty, and prosperity to the world's benighted areas should  shrink  from  the goal  every time a  warrior  falls.] Operation  Enduring Freedom  vs 'International Stabilization Assistance Force' The focus of  Canada's  military  deployment  in  Afghanistan  has  centred on the capital,  Kabul,  where Canadian Forces  (CF), based at Camp Julien, have focused their  efforts  on a  'charm  offensive',  winning  the  hearts  and  minds of  the local population with highly visible light patrols, which have resulted in light casualties. A Canadian, LtGen Rick Hillier, was the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in 2004, and his steady hand on the wheel earned him a 'fourth star' as chief of the defence staff  (CDS)  in  2005.  However, the Canadian deployment  is  about  to  shift  from  Kabul  to  [one of  the]  provincial  capitals. [Ed:  It has since been announced that the Canadian Forces are, in fact, being deployed to the southern city of Kandahar to take over a US  'PRT' (Provincial Reconstruction Team) which will eventually be moved under  ISAF command.] The Provincial Reconstruction Teams are designed to assist the Afghan central government in Kabul extend its power to the remote areas of the country. These are not light patrols, but a very dangerous business, as I learned first-hand during a  recent  tour of  the area  in  northeastern  Afghanistan,  centred on  the  city of Konduz, where there is a prime example of a PRT, commanded by ISAF/Germany. ISAF  started  off  as  an  uncoordinated,  European-led  attempt  to  replace  OEF [ the US - led  Operation  Enduring  Freedom ]  after  the  war - fighting  phase  in Afghanistan was over.  At this point,  ISAF was non - NATO, limited to operating in Kabul, and proved to be unable to significantly assist in the stabilization of the country because of its limited  mandate and capabilities,  particularly when those were compared to the high level of coercive firepower that could be brought to bear by the 'warlords' and their militias in the Kabul area. By 2003, however, members of NATO agreed  to take over control of ISAF and,  eventually,  committed to expand the force outside Kabul into the provinces.  Canada was part of the ISAF effort in Kabul and deployed combat forces to stabilize the capital.  It is tempting to simplistically look at the OEF-ISAF dichotomy (as many do) and label one as 'warfighting' (US, bad) and the other as 'peacekeeping' (European, good). This sort of labelling distorts the reality of the situation and generates significant confusion. ISAF has never been a peacekeeping force, is not mandated or structured to peacekeep, and does not wear blue berets.  OEF, on the other hand, is not a pure hunter-killer force, and its mandate ranges far beyond the mere elimination of Al Qaeda high-value targets in the region. OEF and ISAF, of course, do not operate alone. They have a complex relationship with the Afghan government. The Afghan government has evolved over three years  from  a  'transitional'  government,  to  an  'interim'  government,  to  an 'elected' government. The tools to project central government power throughout Afghanistan have been slow to arrive, but police and military forces cannot be created overnight. The Afghan National Army (ANA), a multi-ethnic force, was eventually deployed piecemeal on operations in 2003 and, by 2004, conducted battalion-level actions.  Police force development has  proceeded slowly, but highway police and border police units have appeared with greater frequency in late 2004.  OEF and ISAF operations are now closely coordinated with Afghan defence operations. The Significance of  Provincial Capitals in the  Reconstruction of  Afghanistan Konduz is a microcosm of international activity in Afghanistan. Situated in the fertile cotton - bearing lowlands of  the north,  and  ringed  with  mountains, it commands the north-south trade routes to  Uzbekistan and  Tajikistan.  It  sits astride the main east-west trade route in the  northern  part  of  the  country  and boasts a major  airport.  The collapse of Taliban  forces  in  the  region,  and  the subsequent filling of the vacuum with the Northern  Alliance  militias  –  who  spilled  down  from  their  mountain  citadel situated to the east in Feyzabad  –  made  Konduz  an  area  of special concern to OEF  in  2002.  There were other areas like Konduz  –  Mazar-e-Sharif,  to the west, Gardez,  south of Kabul,  and Kandahar,  in the southeast. The  Taliban  could  not  be  permitted  to  consolidate  and  retake or  otherwise interfere with the provincial population centres and infrastructure that was now under the control of the militias. At the same time, somebody had to keep an eye on those same militias.  In early 2002,  OEF made a transition from comparatively conventional operations to counter-insurgency missions. Information was critical to the hunt for Al Qaeda members.  A web of human sensors all over the country cued the  special  operations  forces'  response in  their  anti - Al Qaeda  mission. OEF was not a massive force and was not structured for occupation missions in the wake of the rout of the Taliban.  OEF's mission was to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The collapse of the Taliban regime occurred ahead of schedule and the follow-on OEF stabilization plan was still under development. With an accelerated timetable and an ineffective (non-NATO) ISAF, the greatest concern was that the militias would start to fight among themselves, with a subsequent return to the destructive civil war of 1993 to 1996, the period that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place. The central government was embryonic and subject to coercion by the warlords and their militias, since there was no national army. Something had to be deployed in the early days of the conflict by OEF to buy time for the establishment of a stronger central government. From 'Stabilization Assistance Force' to 'Provincial Reconstruction Team' The immense cumulative damage caused by twenty-five (25) years of war was an obstacle both to rapid movement of forces, and to the provision of immediate humanitarian  aid.  OEF civil  affairs needed to assess the situation in the country,  and to address the most immediate concerns.  The combination of  these two tasks was the conceptual basis for what was originally called a Regional Team.  [The spawning of the PRTs.] The 'Regional Team' was soon re-styled as a 'Joint Reconstruction Team', or JRT. The force development was definitely a 'cart before the horse' situation. Again, there is plenty of room for confusion here. There was a difference between immediate humanitarian needs and [later] reconstruction requirements. One was short-term, the other was long-term.  The military 'civil affairs'  (CA in American terminology), or 'civil-military cooperation' (CIMIC in Canadian Forces terminology) are focused on the short-term. These operations are designed to engender good will from the local population, and ultimately elicit information that can aid the military forces in defeating the insurgency. The JRT concept was tested in Gardez, Konduz, and Bamyan during late 2002. These teams were structured to collect information of all types, liaise with the militias, and coordinate the non-governmental organization [NGO] relief efforts with the OEF civil affairs efforts. Early JRTs,  like the one in Konduz,  were as small as 12 to 30 personnel,  mostly special forces  and  civil  affairs  troops.  Security was provided by  local  militias, with American A-10 fighter-bombers, and Dutch or Norwegian F-16 fighter-bombers on call for air support. Special operations  forces,  engaged in  hunting  Al Qaeda,  used  JRTs  as bases when necessary in their ongoing mission.  Over the course of  2002-03,  however, the insurgency was more and more localized in the eastern and south-eastern parts of Afghanistan,  as  the  Taliban  and  Al Qaeda were driven back to the Pakistani border. Humanitarian Aid becomes a Larger Part of the 'Reconstruction' Mission JRTs  located  outside of  these areas turned more and more to aid coordination, but numerous non-governmental organizations  (NGOs)  were put off by the fact that the military was coordinating aid efforts. After numerous NGO personnel were murdered by  insurgents or  bandits,  the NGOs  cried out for more security,  but [understandably]  didn’t  trust  the  local  militias. Coordination efforts became more and more problematic,  so the United States expanded their civilian participation in the JRTs to include State department and US AID personnel.  In time, the JRTs were renamed  'Provincial Reconstruction Teams' [PRTs].  By January 2004,  there were nine OEF - led PRTs throughout the country  (one British,  one New Zealand,  the remainder American),  coordinated by the primary American military headquarters in Afghanistan. In the early days,  the local militias were the only  form  of  control  in  the  newly liberated  areas.  Any  form  of  Western engagement had to remain very discrete and small,  while retaining effectiveness. The NATO expansion plan,  established after  the  Istanbul  Summit in  June 2004, divided  Afghanistan  into  four  zones: north,  west,  east, and south.  OEF  had PRTs   in  all  four  zones.   In  principle, NATO - ISAF  was  to  replace  OEF  in the northern sector first. Then, over time, in  a  counter - clockwise  fashion,  progressively  replace  the  former  OEF  PRTs with  NATO - ISAF  PRTs.  Germany  volunteered  to  take  over  Konduz  at  the end  of  2003.  Thus,  the  Konduz  PRT  became a  test  case as  to how  well  the NATO - ISAF countries would cope with the hand - over of control of  the  PRTs. Aid organizations in Kabul initially tried to dictate how reconstruction monies should be distributed. This offended the Konduz governor and local leaders. The German PRT leadership was able to soften the stance of the aid community by setting up committees that allowed local leaders to establish the aid priorities. This in turn led to central government participation when the national reconstruction plan was established.  Consequently,  the central government was able to gain influence in provincial leadership circles. Gradually Expanding the Power of the Afghan Central Government This influence was expanded slowly in other areas,  particularly in policing the highways,  and  then  the  municipalities.  The  deployment of an  ANA  unit  to Konduz  increased  the  central  government's  presence even  further,  but again, in an incremental way. The Konduz PRT team became responsible for monitoring a heavy weapons cantonment site and attempting to convince recalcitrant militias and their  'warlords'  that they did not need their tracked BMP armoured vehicles or T-55 tanks. The leaders of the Tajiks and Uzbeks, who formed the bulk of the militias, were inclined to label all Pashtuns as 'Taliban', in an attempt to get ISAF to focus all their  resources on  the  Pashtuns  and  leave  the  more  northerly  militias alone. [And let them keep their weapons and their poppy fields.] However, when the Konduz PRT forces were combined with the ANA, police, and reconstruction coordination, the militias' power base was slowly eroded, with little or no violence between the militias and the central government forces. PRTs are not peacekeeping missions: they exist to extend central government influence throughout a nearly  post - apocalyptic  feudal  land.  The goal is to combat insurgency using a variety of lethal and non-lethal tools. Complex challenges like these will face Canadian Forces when they re-deploy to Afghanistan in  2005 to serve in a  PRT.  One difference will be that Canada will commit to an  OEF  PRT  in a  'hot'  area,  one closer in  proximity to the  Taliban insurgency  [eg, Kandahar].  The security situation in Konduz  is comparatively benign,  but the types of  situations  encountered  by  the  Germans  in  Konduz have their counterparts everywhere. Sean M. Maloney  teaches in the War  Studies  program at the  Royal  Military College of  Canada.  This article is excerpted from a paper published in PDF format by  the  Institute for Research on Public Policy  (IRPP).               [ Top ]