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“You Have the Clocks. We Have the Time.” Taliban Rational beliefs - inconsistent practices. Civil Military Coordination in North-Afghanistan. By Lillian Katarina Stene These submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PHILOSOPHIAE DOCTOR (PhD) Faculty of Social Science 2014 University of Stavanger N-4036 Stavanger NORWAY www.uis.no ©2014 Lillian Katarina Stene ISBN: 978-82-7644-576-3 ISSN: 1890-1387 PhD thesis no. 230 Do not be too hard, Lest you be broken, Do not be too soft, Lest you be squeezed. Ali ibn Abi Talib. III To my father Arnold, - a wise and caring soldier. V VI Preface The reason for my interest in civil military coordination originally stemmed from my Master’s thesis in Risk Analysis and Societal Safety. The master thesis displayed coordination problems between the civil and military actors, and I wanted to examine what the reasons for this might be. Another motivation was my participation in the NATO-led Multinational Experiments (MNE) during my employment at the Norwegian Joint Operational Headquarter (FOHK). The MNE work represented interesting theoretical ideas and insight in the complexity and challenges in civil military coordination. Besides, how can one not be interested in international relations, societal safety, conflicts and complex emergencies which have such major influence on people’s lives? I started to play with the thought that it might be possible for me to deploy to a mission in a conflict area to have my own experiences, and maybe find some of the reasons for why it seemed so difficult for the international response system to succeed. Because of my reserve officer background, I had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan to study the response system or to be more exact - the civil military coordination aspect - from the inside of an international organization such as the NATO led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). My first intent was to study the relations between civilian and military actors in Afghanistan from both sides, what was it that made the coordination so difficult? For various reasons, the focus changed toward ISAF, how it handled the civil military coordination in North Afghanistan. My struggle to gather data, to handle classified information, and to analyze and display these data coherently has taken more than four years. It has been an interesting journey in many ways, and the learning curve has been both steep, and not at least, a long one. This thesis could not have been done without the positive attitude from the Norwegian Armed Forces. Even though I am a reserve officer, it was not a matter of course that my abilities was of the level that I would be trusted and trained as a civil military coordination (CIMIC) officer, representing the Norwegian Armed Forces in the German led ISAF Regional Command North (RCN) in North-Afghanistan. Here I would like to thank Kristin Lund as a VII point of contact, and Jardar Gjørv as the one who arranged for me to receive the CIMIC training, and introduced me to the Norwegian CIMIC environment. This was vital for being able to go to Afghanistan to conduct my fieldwork. I was also given access to the same operation area for follow-up studies the year after my first field work. For this opportunity I am very grateful, and would like to thank Barthold Hals and Rani Tomter for the way they made it possible for me to conduct the follow-up interviews in the same field. I am also very thankful to the UN and NGO workers from various countries who participated to this research with their insights and knowledge. I am especially thankful to the many multinational ISAF officers’ participation, and for being very positive, open, and available in a harsh and often difficult working environment -- without their availability, there would be no thesis. I owe a debt of gratitude to you all, - especially Ivanko. A special acknowledgement has to go to my guides and supervisors, including my main supervisor Odd Einar Olsen and assistant supervisor Bjørn Ivar Kruke at the University of Stavanger; Odd Einar with his incredible analytic skills, and Bjørn Ivar with his creative questioning, considerations and good talks keeping me on the track. The Beirut week resulted in the long needed “kick” and eye-opener I searched for. Warm thanks to my family and friends for their patience. To the most important men in my life; Michael Peter, Tord Aron Leonard and Varg Ruben Alexander, thank you for being, and for patience and support. And to Lone: “- you are the future, show them!” Stavanger, 2014. VIII Summary What was the idea? Coordination is a vital element of crisis management (Turner, 1978; Minear et al., 1992; Schneider, 1995; Rasmussen, 1997; Strand, 2003; Boin et al., 2005; Kruke and Olsen, 2005; Keen, 2008). The coordination between civil and military actors is especially crucial and complicated if the crisis is characterized by political (military), economic, and social conflict, as displayed in Afghanistan. Civil and military actors have different organizational cultures, standard operating procedures, aims and priorities. Still, they are often forced to coordinate in order to perform their humanitarian, political and military tasks in joint efforts to assist the local populations in a complex emergency. To manage this coordination, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in North-Afghanistan operated under three concepts: the Comprehensive Approach (CA), Counterinsurgency (COIN), and the NATO civil-military coordination (CIMIC) doctrine. These three approaches, to some extent, overlapped, to some extent were contradictory, but most important; they were differently understood and implemented with various levels of success. ISAF, as a powerful military actor in Afghanistan, consists of many high qualified and capable soldiers at all levels. The question is whether it is possible for such an organization as ISAF to handle crisis management under the guidance of these coordination concepts and the broad mandates operational in Afghanistan? To enlighten this, the structures and processes in ISAF organization are studied in order to assess how these structures/ processes influenced the civil military coordination in the field. With the aim of contributing to the enhanced knowledge about civil military coordination, I put forth the following research question: - How do ISAF structures and processes influence civil military coordination in North Afghanistan? IX In the analysis I have applied theories of security and the new wars, complex emergencies and, in particular, organizational theories with a basis in bureaucracy-theory and new-institutional perspectives. The rationale behind this choice was that military organizations are normally viewed as representatives of rational bureaucratic organizations, having structures and processes that characterize rational organizations (Weber, 1971; Banfield, 1959; Lindblom, 1959). The new-institutional perspective is meant to be a tool to explain the shortcomings of rationally built organizations and the influence of the surrounding environment (Greenwood et al., 2008; Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Further, the use of Turner (1976/1978) and Turner and Pigeon’s (1997) theories of man-made disasters enlighten the crisis management perspective. What was done? To be able to understand and collect genuine data about ISAF’s influence on civil military coordination, it was essential to get personal experiences from the field. After attending pre-deployment courses I was sent to North Afghanistan as a CIMIC officer, doing participant-observer research for a seven month fieldwork. Back home, the data was systematized and followed up the year after by a new field work in the same operation area, then in the role of a declared researcher, for enhanced data collection based on interviews and meetings. As a CIMIC officer I followed the ISAF “project factory” in North- Afghanistan. The “project factory” were local, regional or national ongoing projects characterized by military involvement and extensive civil military coordination, - through which I studied many parallel processes. I did not have the opportunity to follow any of these projects from planning to implementation and evaluation, as projects at this level often were ongoing for years, and my deployment represented seven months in line with the military rotation system. Consequently, to many ISAF officers including myself, these projects represented “a running train” in which one had to jump on and off on the way. Still, the processes in the six projects in which I participated became vital sources of information in my data collection. X After getting a picture of ISAF structure and processes during my first field- work, I focused more on the understanding and interpretation of ISAF mandate and civil military concepts in the second follow up field-work. Civil and military personnel representing three levels were interviewed: ISAF Joint Command (IJC) in Kabul, the subordinated Regional Command North (RCN) in nearby Mazar-e Sharif and the RCN subordinated Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), representing many countries, stationed in different provinces. Also document analysis, meetings, discussions and field conversations contributed to my data collection. What came out of it? By studying ISAF organization in North Afghanistan, influential aspects to civil military coordination became apparent. It is essential to acknowledge the importance of cultural awareness and understanding of the context in a so-called “out of area” operation such as the one ISAF conducted in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Western way of conflict management based on Western logic, rationality, expectations, and traditions might not be appropriate. One also needs to acknowledge the difference between civilian and military actors. As experienced in the studied projects military tend to be action-minded with a high sense of responsibility and control. This might result in narrower thinking in line with their own training and experience for accomplishing a mission with a specific, usually short timeline. Civilian actors, even though they are very varied, more often have a long term perspective and focus on the local structures and processes.
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