Stopwatch: NATO in Afghanistan

DR. JAMIE P. SHEA(Public Diplomacy Division): Welcome to Stopwatch. Ladies andgentlemen, I'm Jamie Shea, here at NATO Headquarters. This is the firstStopwatch, a new series which we're launching on the NATO website.

Every month for the next months, heading into the summer break, therewill be a Stopwatch where I will meet with a group of invited experts,some from NATO, some who are not from NATO, to discuss a topical issueof the day.

Over the next months we'll be looking atNATO's efforts to bridge the Mediterranean and form securitypartnerships with countries in Africa and the wider Middle East. We'llalso be looking at how NATO's getting on in fighting internationalterrorism, and what are the prospects for a better transatlanticrelationship in the wake of the NATO Summit next week.

But today we're going to start this first ever Stopwatch onAfghanistan. What has NATO been doing since it engaged in Afghanistan?Why is it there? Are we making a success of the mission? And what canyou expect NATO to be doing in the future?

As always Iwould very much welcome your e-mail questions in advance, which I willendeavour to use in Stopwatch, by putting your questions directly tothe experts and I would very much welcome, afterwards, your feedbackand your evaluation on any questions that came to your mind as youfollowed this series.

Today let me first of allintroduce our three invited guests. First of all, Simon Brooks. Simonis from Australia. He works with the International Committee of the RedCross, where he's responsible for relations and liaison with militaryforces in Europe. Simon has been all around the crisis areas of themodern world, from the Balkans to Afghanistan. So thank you very muchfor coming.

SIMON BROOKS (Delegate to the Armed Forces of Western Europe from the International Committee of the Red Cross): A pleasure.

SHEA: Ialso would like to introduce Diego Ruiz-Palmer who is the head of theplanning section in NATO's Operations Division, where he hasresponsibility for planning and policy work relating to NATO's missionsin Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. Diego, thanks very much.

DIEGO RUIZ-PALMER (Head of Crisis Management Planning, NATO's Operations Division): Thank you.

SHEA:And last, but by no mean least, Pierre Trudel of the Canadian ArmedForces. Pierre is the Deputy Branch Chief in the Operations Division onNATO's international military staff. He's just come back from a tour ofduty in Kabul, Afghanistan. So Pierre, welcome to you.

We've got 30 minutes, so I want a no-holds-barred frank and open discussion and I'm going to start with Diego.

Diego, it probably strikes many of our listeners and viewers assomewhat strange that NATO, an organization that was designed to defendWestern Europe, should now be going out of area and as far away asAfghanistan. What has prompted NATO to go to Afghanistan? Why are wethere?

RUIZ-PALMER: Well, Jamie, I think for two very good reasons. One essentially political, the other military.

Politically, in the spring 2002, after the terrorist attacks againstthe United States on September 11th, 2001, the Alliance decided that itmust have forces ready to deploy to wherever they might be needed. Thatwas NATO's response to the realization that threats could emergeanywhere in the world, that could threaten NATO member countries, butmore probably the international community.

Andtherefore, taking stock of what had happened with the attacks on theUnited States, where they were conceived in Afghanistan, even thoughthey were executed in the United States, NATO took this view that ithad to be able to project stability well beyond the Euro-Atlantic area.Hence, being able to be in Afghanistan today.

Militarily, several NATO nations took the lead of this InternationalSecurity Assistance Force that was created in the end of 2001 toprovide assistance to the new Afghanistan. And very soon the nationsthat led that force, initially the United Kingdom, Turkey, thenNetherlands and Germany--by the way all NATO nations--realized that itwas very demanding and burdensome for them to lead this force on anational basis, and turned naturally to NATO, with its experience andlarge planning capabilities, to lead ISAF.

And so Ithink when I you bring these two dimensions together it explains whywe're doing what we're doing today in Afghanistan.

SHEA: Well,thank you. Pierre, could you tell us exactly what the mandate of ISAFis? What it does, but what it doesn't do, so that we can understand alittle bit better the scope of this mission?

PIERRE TRUDEL(Deputy Chief of Current Operations, NATO's Operations Division):Absolutely. The core of the mandate is to assist the government ofAfghanistan in establishing a safe and secure environment, so thefuture is brighter for the country.

How we do it? Wedo it through the deployment of over 8000 troops. Most of them rightnow in Kabul, either at the Headquarters or the Multinational Brigade.We also have Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the north of thecountry, and soon we will have new teams established in the westernpart of the country.

We also play some sort of way ofa coordination role amongst the international community. And we alsosupport the Security Sector Reforms, some of the pillars. We provideassistance to the Counter-Narcotics pillar within our means andcapabilities. Also we assist with the process of the Disarmament,Demobilization and Reintegration of former combatants. And we alsoprovide some kind of assistance in the training of the Afghan army.

So in a nutshell this is what we do in Afghanistan at this point in time.

SHEA:Simon, from your point of view, working for an NGO that's very muchengaged on the ground in Afghanistan, do you think that ISAF has made adecisive difference to stability in the country? NATO has beencriticized for being rather slow in expanding beyond Kabul, beingrather slow at, for example, at going out into the sort of provinces,particularly in the west and the south of the country, or simply nothaving many troops there.

I mean, we have what, sortof 8000 compared with 60,000 in Bosnia back in the nineties, or 30,000,nearly 40,000 in Kosovo. What's your take on how well NATO's doing atthe moment?

BROOKS:I think, Jamie, obviously we're aware that there have been certaincriticisms, there has been support. I think there are pros and consthat have been voiced by many humanitarian actors, if I can put it thatway.

From the perspective of the ICRC, myorganizations, neutral independent actor, focused on victims of aconflict, bringing them protection and assistance. We are, I supposequite a unique organization in the sense that we're not there to judgeoperations, the legitimacy of an intervention, whatever.

What we are concerned about is the performance of arms carriers andothers, in respect of international humanitarian law. And I think tothat extent our view of the ISAF deployment is we'd have to say a goodone.

I think also quite positively is the fact thatNATO has sought to engage in... ISAF particularly has sought to engagein a level of dialogue with the humanitarian actors, which I think isessential. Because if you're going to be successful in your mission,and this is obviously part of... this is the reasons that you're there,the need to have a dialogue, to clear up differences, and for people tounderstand what you're doing and how you're doing it, I think isessential. And so in that respect I think ISAF has been quite positivefrom our perspective.

SHEA: Diego,from inside the house, I mean, how would you judge the successes ofISAF thus far? And do you think that after these well-publicizedproblems filling the shortfalls and finding the capabilities, do youthink that now we're beyond that, and we can expect a sort of smootherroll-out of the mission in the future?

RUIZ-PALMER:Yes, I believe so. I think, obviously given the location of Afghanistanso far removed from what has traditionally been the centre of gravityof this Alliance, Western Europe, it has been very demanding on allies.Not only to deploy troops, but to make available these operationalenablers, helicopters, transport aircraft, combat aircraft, othercritical capabilities which are large, expensive to move, and expensiveto maintain.

But I think we have now reached criticalmass. We are in Kabul, have been in Kabul now for 18 months. We haveexpanded to the north in 2004. We will be expanding to the west in2005, and already leaders are preparing the ground for expanding tosouthern Afghanistan in 2006. Actually our Secretary General a few daysago at the Nice meeting of defence ministers clearly explained that wewill be, in effect, in charge of 50 percent of the country and we havean intention eventually of taking over the whole of the securityassistance mission throughout Afghanistan.

So I'm veryoptimistic, although I recognize it is a demanding mission and we will,I'm sure from time to time express some difficulties of getting exactlyeverything that is needed. But I'm very confident that we will do whatis necessary and I think we have demonstrated that that can happen.

SHEA:Diego, let me ask you, nonetheless, a follow-up. Why did NATO haveproblems initially resourcing the capabilities? Was it the fact thatallies are already heavily engaged in the Balkans, in Bosnia, orKosovo, that European countries have commitments in Africa, or thatothers are in Iraq and NATO simply ran out of capabilities? Or do youthink, as maybe you're implying, that this was a new mission for NATOand that the political will hadn't quite been generated to understandthat Afghanistan was important, and be prepared to make the financialsacrifices to get the troops out there.

What's your reading on that?

RUIZ-PALMER:Jamie, I think it's a combination of all of those. I think acombination of the fact that they're already involved in many NATOoperations, which are also demanding. The fact that there are some 20peacekeeping operations around the world, many in Africa; we haveHaiti, we have many other places. And all of those are criticallydependent, again, not only on having troops... boots on the ground, butthese critical enablers, these Headquarters capabilities, fieldhospitals, engineers, all of those are in high demand, and there's ineffect, sorry, embedded competition between all these operations intrying to get the appropriate mix.

And it is true thatfor NATO, for this institution, for the allies who had had sort ofEurope as the horizon of their engagement, Afghanistan was a totalchange. And that means that allies have to now plan in their defenceplanning and their resource planning for having to make available thesecapabilities for months, sometimes for years, and make the resourceallocations to do that.

That is not something that isdone overnight, but I think we're getting much better at it, and youwill see in the months ahead, an ISAF footprint that is much larger,but also much better equipped.

So again, I'moptimistic that we're learning from some of our limitations in thepast, and we will be much more forceful in the future.

SHEA:But Pierre, nonetheless though, changing Headquarters every six months,where a country suddenly leaves, taking all of its resources andexperience with it, and the new country comes in, which has to startthe learning process, doesn't seem like a very efficient way for theAlliance to do business.

Do you think that we couldimprove on these kind of six-month rotations by having a kind of morepermanent commitment? Or is it just life the way we have to sort ofaccept it?

TRUDEL:No. On other missions the rotation of the senior person takes placeevery year. There's a lot to be said for that. A six-month rotation, ittakes the incoming unit, or senior leadership, about a month to getused to the place, to get acquainted with the leadership of thecountry, and a month before they're due to go the new staff, the newcommand element arrives and they go over the same procedures. So in asense they are efficient for about four months of their tour.

A year-long tour for selected senior staff would... there's a lot to besaid for that, and would be beneficial to the mission. I wouldn'tadvocate that for the troops, but certainly for the senior leadership.

SHEA:Thanks. Pierre, let me also follow-up. The word ProvincialReconstruction... or the term rather Provincial Reconstruction Teamshas been used. This is a sort of a rather novel concept. BeforeAfghanistan we really hadn't heard of these so-called PRTs. Can youexplain what they actually do, because there seems to be a little bitof confusion on that point? And then I'm going to ask Simon,particularly from the point of view of a humanitarian NGO, if he feelsthat this is the sort of the right way forward?

TRUDEL:The PRT concept was first established by the coalition, theAmerican-led coalition. A PRT consists of a small military element,supported by civilian personnel belonging to the Minister of ForeignAffairs or Development and so on. Their role is to extend the range ofthe government of Afghanistan, ensure that they're represented inremote parts of the country.

PRTs will ensure thatNATO has a presence on the ground. They will assist, sometime train thenational army or the police. They will be a link with the localgovernor, the local politicians and so on. And when the situationflares up, it has been known that PRT commanders have been involved andmanaged to bring the situation under control. So indeed, PRT plays auseful role.

The problem sometime with PRTs is theydon't have the enablers, the elements necessary to push a situation inthe right direction. They're very light on the ground, especially NATOPRTs are very light on the ground. The former commander of ISAF, JoeHillier, had reservations about the role of the PRTs and he made itknown.

American PRTs are... support in a different wayand have more fighting power than NATO PRTs. Having said that, our PRTsare doing a good role and doing a good job, and the expansion rightnow, when you will look at lessons learned from the current PRTs, itlooks pretty good for our expansion in the west and the role we'regoing to play there.

SHEA:But Simon, as I was saying, the NGOs have had sometimes some criticalobservations about PRTs. I've heard talk that these sort of militarizedthe traditional civilian-humanitarian function and that the militaryshould concentrate just on security and not really get involved in aidand reconstruction work. I mean, how... from your point of view, yourexperience, how do you see this?

BROOKS: Well,I think there are two essential points, and Pierre made a point amoment ago about, I guess differing sets of objectives within PRTs. Imean, I think the humanitarian community with the experience, certainlythe ICRC, has been that you can't say that the PRT model represents X,Y and Z. I mean, there can be variations on that. And that's, I think,one issue which is difficult to understand.

The otherpoint, as you yourself have said, I mean this is a fairly relative...well, this is a fairly new concept. In terms of Afghanistan, it, Ithink, it's quite a challenge for humanitarian organizations, which insome cases have been there for more than 25 years. My organization hasbeen associated with Afghanistan since the late 1970s. And to have amajor actor coming in, the military in association with, if you like,reconstruction elements, and to adapt to an understanding, within adialogue, I think, is quite challenging. And so I think there have beencertain misconceptions, I would say.

From our side,again, I think it's been very positive in that ISAF has been verywilling to engage in a dialogue with us, and we've sought thisdialogue, as we seek a dialogue with all arms carriers in anyparticular context.

If I could just make a finalpoint: I think this whole business of the PRTs, if you like, andintegration of effort, is clearly the way that governments, I think,are demonstrating they want to go in the post-conflict environment. Ithink within Iraq there are similar, if you like, structures emergingthere as well. And it make sense, I think, if looked at objectively, tosay governments who wish to pool their resources to achieve, if youlike, an end state within a nation-building process.

And for us we accept that if this is the way the governments want togo, this is all well and good. There are a number of concerns that myorganization has, and that is where there is, if you like, a blurringof lines, military operating with... not in uniform. These sorts ofthings, I think, give a certain precarity to operations whichhumanitarians can lead. And I think that to a certain extent this iswhere some of the criticisms have been levelled.

SHEA:Diego, do you think these are sort of fair observations from the NGOside, particularly having military not in uniform? Do we need to do abetter job of explaining the PRT concept to the other NGO groups that(inaudible)...

(SPEAKERS OVERLAP)

RUIZ-PALMER:Well, I'm sure there's always room for getting the message out in abetter way. I mean, I think we have to realize PRT is a new concept.This is not the traditional way that, for instance, NATO has operated.We have not done so in Bosnia, we have not done so in Kosovo.

It is, I think, something that is quite well adapted to both thegeography of the country, its remoteness and the particularcircumstances of the mission we're trying to accomplish. And I think itfulfils the need to provide a kind of secure environment around thetowns, around the villages. I mean, there's no reconstruction that cantake place, there's no return to normal life. There's no possibilityfor the children to go back to school and so on and so forth, unlessyou have that kind of secure environment where the reconstructionefforts of the international community, of the NGOs, are very muchdependent on security assistance, and that security assistance itselfcannot take root if those reconstruction efforts don't flourish.

So I think the PRTs can be a prototype(?), can certainly be betterexplained, but I think they are the right tool for the right place forthe right moment, if you wish, in that sense.

SHEA: Yeah, Pierre, come in.

TRUDEL:I just want to make the point that the term reconstruction ismisleading. The local population very often will think that the PRTwill bring money to reconstruct the city and so on or the village, orwhatever. This is not the case, unfortunately. They have limitedcapacity to undertake humanitarian projects.

SHEA:Well, let me go to another topic, particularly as our Stopwatch clock,of course, is ticking. This is this notion of a merger. I'm sure ourviewers will know that there are two missions at the moment inAfghanistan. There's the ISAF mission, which we're addressing, butthere's also the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom in the south,which has been fighting the al-Qaeda remnants and the Taliban. Iunderstand there's talk at NATO Headquarters now about merging thesetwo missions.

Why would we want to do that if themissions are quite distinct. You know, one peacekeeping, and the othermore war-fighting? What's in it for NATO? Diego?

RUIZ-PALMER:Well, Jamie, I think we need to be quite categorical, I think, withsome of the facts here. They are distinct, it is true. In the sensethat they were started at different times for different purposes andthey're different mandates. They had an initial very distinct focus.They had different capabilities.

But we have to alsorecognized that there's some things that bring them together. The factthat, for instance, a good part of what Enduring Freedom does issecurity assistance. Actually only a fraction of the coalition forcesare actually involved in day-to-day combat on the southern and easternfringes of Afghanistan.

A lot of what the U.S.-ledcoalition PRTs do is security assistance; is very close, very similarto what NATO is trying to accomplish.

So I think thereis already an overlap. And as time has gone by, actually OperationEnduring Freedom has been doing less and less combat and more and moresecurity assistance, which has brought the two operations closertogether.

On the other hand, also, we have torecognize that some ten NATO allies contribute forces to OperationEnduring Freedom. We always forget that after the attacks on the UnitedStates, the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, a number of NATOallies joined the United States under Article 5 of the North AtlanticTreaty, which allows for individual contributions to a collectiveresponse. And that's exactly what they did.

And so aswe have found out over time, it is somewhat dysfunctional to have twoseparate operations with separate chains of command, but whose ultimatepurpose, which is to build a new democratic Afghanistan of peace, isessentially the same. Even though the methods; one is more a combatoperation, another one is more... obviously security assistanceoriented, but at the end the end result is nonetheless a self-standingAfghanistan.

SHEA:Well, I suppose, Simon, that people interested in Afghanistan wouldprobably be saying to themselves, well, look, you know, if NATO andEnduring Freedom, they merged their efforts, we'll have one big forcein Afghanistan, and once we have one big force that covers all of thecountry we should be absolutely able to better deal with the problemsthat everybody's pointing at: the warlords, all of these militias thatare still in place, which could disrupt the central government. And ofcourse, the big drugs problem.

From your perspective,with an NGO, do you think that we're not really doing enough at themoment to tackle those two key problems?

BROOKS:I think on those two particular... those two particular issues I'm notparticularly sure that I'm qualified to be able to respond. But just tocome back to a point, I mean, I think the integration of thesemissions, or the possibility, as Diego was saying, of these missionsbeing integrated, points to something that I think former marinecommandant in the U.S., Commandant Krulak, pointed to "the three blockwar", and I think wherein he saw that within the same contextualenvironment that you'd have forces conducting peacekeeping operations,humanitarian operations and also the war fighting.

Ithink what this means for humanitarian organizations, in the wholespectrum of activities that you're going to accomplish there, whetherit be dealing with the warlords issue, as you put it, or drugs issue,whatever, is that for humanitarians I think it's quite difficult tounderstand how it is that the environment changed so rapidly in what wewould term the global confrontation, or what I guess you'd term thecounter-insurgency effort. And for organizations that, to a largeextent, have been rejected within environments where they've beenaccepted in the past. Again, I think for all of us I make no secret ofthe fact that within Afghanistan the movement, the freedom of movementfor the ICRC has been limited since about 2003 when one of ourdelegates was murdered in the field.

For us, I thinkunderstanding what it is that a combined force was achieving, how itwas going about it in prosecuting its political and militaryobjectives, is important. And I think, again, to the extent that thereis a solid dialogue, and there's a strong explanation, and also theability for humanitarians to go out there and achieve what it is thatthey're supposed to.

SHEA:Well Pierre, just very briefly, because we don't have a great deal oftime left, and I want to talk a little bit about the future, but whatis ISAF doing in a concrete way to cope with these warlords and theirweapons, as well as to assist in curbing the drug production?

TRUDEL: Well, the first point about the DDR process within Kabul...

SHEA: DDR being...?

TRUDEL: Demobilization,Reintegration... Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration. We'vedone... within Kabul we've been active in making sure that the somewhatheavy equipment has been cantoned, returned to proper cantonment.

As the second part of your question, outside Kabul our role is more limited, and special agencies are dealing with that.

As your second part of your question dealing with counter-narcotics,our role is very limited. Right now it consists in logistics report andexchange of information with the agencies dealing with that.

And the point is that we will have to do more because curbing... thisis what is keeping the drug lords alive, and a lot of illegalactivities take part around them. And if NATO wants to at some pointput together an exit strategy, this will have to be addressed in verydramatic way, and I don't think we'll be able to avoid getting involvedat some point.

SHEA:Well thanks, because the drug issue is an issue which the e-mails inadvance of this program have mainly highlighted, so it's obviously onethat's not going to go away.

But now, turning to thefuture... We've been through the presidential elections. They've gonesurprisingly well. Better than anybody had dared hope. We've now gotthe parliamentary elections coming up. We don't know when, butsometime. We've got the end of the so-called bomb process, which iswhat the international community envisaged. The country will have itssovereignty under a new democratic set of institutions. Though Diego,after this summer, do they still need NATO? Do we still have a rolethere? Can we declare mission accomplished and bring the troops home?Hoe do you see the future of NATO's engagement in Afghanistan if theAfghans are now able to handle their own affairs?

RUIZ-PALMER: Well,Jamie, I think we are sort of halfway in a way. I mean, one way oflooking at it is sort of a big phase one of the process is about toconclude. That was started in Bonn, as you mentioned, in December 2001,and the end point of that process was to get a new sort ofself-standing Afghanistan with an elected government based on aparliamentary elections and we're very close to that. We hope to haveparliamentary elections by the summer. And I think that that mandatefrom Bonn will have been fulfilled.

But I think weneed to move beyond that, because I think that in order to ensure thatwe will have a vibrant Afghanistan for the long term, we need to ensurethat the civil society, that all the institutions are in place. So Ithink there is very much an important role for NATO to continue to playthrough ISAF.

And I think what we will witness overthe next year or so is both a geographic expansion of ISAF, as we haveexplained, to the west and into the south, but also a functionalexpansion of NATO's role in terms of providing greater support acrosssome of those SSR pillars that Pierre has mentioned, these SecuritySector Reform, whether it's training the new Afghan army, providinggreater support to demobilization of militia, or planning support tothe Afghan government or the counter-narcotics campaign.

SHEA:I mean, Pierre, would you say that the logical thing would be for NATOto invite Afghanistan to join the Partnership for Peace, because let'sface it, many of these activities which Diego is describing areactivities that NATO's been carrying out under the partnership withcountries from central and eastern Europe or the Caucasus or CentralAsia? Should we enlarge Partnership for Peace and bring in Afghanistan?

TRUDEL: Why not? NATOseems to be no borders these days. But I have to say, joke aside, thatwhen I was there, this is an issue that was at one point mentioned byhigh-level representative of the Afghan government. Not much hashappened since, but eventually why not?

SHEA: WellSimon, we're looking a little bit now towards the long term. NATO seemsto be going increasingly into Central Asia, the Middle Eastern region.In your view, particularly as an NGO, is that something which ishelpful, or is a high NATO profile in this part of the world which maycould be seen, if you like, as sort of domination by the West. Is thatsomething which may complicate your efforts in the future?

BROOKS:I think that the direction that NATO will take will obviously bedependent on a whole series of factors; political objectives etc. And Ithink that obviously the speakers here today have indicated thatAfghanistan is quite a complicated problem to be dealing with to beginwith.

From that perspective, my organization, with itsfocus on victims of conflict, I mean, we want to have access to that.We want to ensure that NATO understands who we are, what our role is inplaces like Afghanistan and to allow us to do our job. And I have tosay that, you know, we would salute, if I can use that term, NATO forallowing us, to, if you like, engage with NATO and to bring a betterunderstanding of who we are.

SHEA:Well, thank you very much to my three guests for giving up theirvaluable time to be here today, and to participate in this first everStopwatch. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope the audienceenjoys it. Otherwise, we probably won't have any more Stopwatches.

But at least, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for tuning intoday. Send us your e-mails with your frank reactions. We'll read everyone. We don't promise to reply, but we'll at least try to read them.And don't forget to tune in for another fascinating edition in onemonth's time.

But for now from NATO, over and out.