This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ NATO AND COALITION WARFARE IN AFGHANISTAN, 2001-2014 Hanagan, Deborah Lynn Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 06. Oct. 2021 NATO AND COALITION WARFARE IN AFGHANISTAN, 2001-2014 Deborah Lynn Hanagan A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of War Studies King’s College August 2017 University of London 1 ABSTRACT This thesis analyzes the involvement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Specifically, it analyzes multinational military adaptation and change at the operational level within the ISAF coalition which operated in the midst of a complex conflict that changed in character over time. NATO was not initially involved in military operations, but this changed slowly over time. First, it decided to take over ISAF in Kabul, and then it expanded ISAF, both geographically and operationally. ISAF then surged, followed by an organized withdrawal. Why did this happen and how did ISAF maintain coalition cohesion throughout the campaign in Afghanistan? Despite a multitude of forces that should have frayed coalition cohesion, such as intra-alliance friction over burden-sharing, operational inefficiencies related to national caveats, reluctance to commit forces, especially to engage in combat, and a widespread perception the war was a failure, the ISAF coalition did not fall apart and contributing nations did not abandon their partners. Instead, cohesion endured, the coalition increased in size and expanded what it did, and NATO members and partners stayed engaged for some thirteen years. This thesis proposes an analytical framework comprised of two drivers, political will and organizational capacity, to explain this puzzle. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………….……..2 TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………….……..3 Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………….……….5 The Puzzle…………………………………………………………………………5 Evolving International Environment………………………………………...……11 The Literature………………………………………………………………….….19 Research Question and Analytical Framework………………………………….32 Methodology and Research Sources……………………………………………...39 Expected Contribution……………………………………………………………41 Chapter 2: Setting the Stage………………………..………………………………….….43 The Genesis of NATO……………………………………………………………44 New Strategic Security Environment…………………………………………….54 NATO’s Response to Transitioning Post-Communist Countries………….…….61 NATO’s Response to War in the Balkans……….………………...………….….67 Chapter 3: September 2001-July 2003: NATO Absence……….…………..…….………79 A Shattered State and Terrorist Sanctuary………………………………………..81 New Strategic Environment: the West Goes to War……………………….…….85 NATO Starts to Adapt and Gets Involved in Afghanistan………………………105 Chapter 4: August 2003-September 2008: NATO Gets into the Game………………….123 NATO Deploys and Expands…………………………………………..……..…125 OEF Evolves and Expands………………………………………………………135 Fighting Heats Ups……………………………………………………….………143 Chapter 5: October 2008-December 2014: NATO Surges……………………………….173 The Conflict Escalates and NATO Changes Direction………………………….174 ISAF’s Other Warfare……..………………………………………….………….204 The Transition….………..…………………………………………….…………221 Chapter 6: Conclusion………………………………………………………….…………240 3 APPENDIX 1: ACRONYMS…………….………………………………………………252 APPENDIX 2: COMMAND STRUCTURES (OEF AND ISAF)………………….……256 APPENDIX 3: ISAF ROTATIONS AND COMMANDERS……..……………….……267 APPENDIX 4: COALITION FORCE LEVELS…………….………..……………….…268 APPENDIX 5: PROVINCIAL RECONSTRUCTION TEAMS…….…………….….…269 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………….….……271 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Puzzle. In the annals of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) history, 2011 was a banner year for the Alliance because it was engaged in a wide range of military operations around the world. These included ground, naval, and air missions, such as the continuing peace support operations in Kosovo in the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR).1 Maritime operations were encompassed in two different missions – Active Endeavour and Ocean Shield. Operation Active Endeavour had been launched in response to the Alliance’s Article 5 declaration after the United States was attacked by al Qaeda on September 11th, 2001. This naval mission monitored shipping to detect, deter, and protect against terrorist-related activities in the Mediterranean Sea.2 Operation Ocean Shield was a counter-piracy mission operating off the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf of Aden. Its surface vessels and maritime patrol aircraft deterred piracy activity and offered escort assistance. It also offered training to countries in the region to improve the indigenous capacity to fight piracy.3 The NATO Training Mission–Iraq (NTM-I) developed Iraqi Security Forces through training and mentoring activities and it contributed to establishing training structures and institutions.4 The NATO-led intervention in Libya, called Operation Unified Protector, was undertaken under a United Nations (UN) mandate and with the encouragement and support of the 1 Anders Fogh Rasmussen, The Secretary General’s Annual Report 2011 (Brussels: NATO Public Diplomacy Division, 2012), 8. The KFOR mission began under a UN Security Council mandate (1244) in June 1999 with a force of 50,000 troops. By the start of 2011, the force was 10,000 troops and it was reduced to 5,500 troops in March. 2 NATO, “Operation Active Endeavour,” http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_7932.htm. The operation began in October 2001 and was conducted by a Task Force of surface vessels, submarines and maritime patrol aircraft. It was commanded and controlled by Allied Maritime Component Command Naples, Italy. The objective of the operation was to prevent another attack like the ones against the USS Cole in 2000 and the French oil tanker Limburg in 2002. The naval force gathered and processed intelligence information about suspect vessels. As of 2011, it had hailed over 100,000 merchant vessels and boarded approximately 155 suspect ships. 3 Rasmussen, The Secretary General’s Annual Report 2011, 9. Counter-piracy operations began in 2008. Operation Ocean Shield was carried out in compliance with relevant UN Security Council Resolutions and in coordination with other key organizations, such as the European Union, the African Union and the United Nations. 4 Ibid. During its seven years of execution (August 2004-December 2011), NTM-I “trained over 5,200 commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the Iraqi Armed Forces and around 10,000 Iraqi Police.” 5 League of Arab States. This operation was oriented on protecting Libyan civilians and it utilized air and naval assets to enforce a maritime arms embargo, to enforce a no-fly zone, and to conduct precision air and naval strikes against Muammar Qadhafi’s military forces.5 Airborne surveillance over the Mediterranean Sea by the Alliance’s fleet of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) airplanes supported both Operation Active Endeavour and Operation Unified Protector.6 These operations were dwarfed by the operations in Afghanistan. The largest and most significant military activity in 2011, and the only mission in which all 28 of the allies participated, was the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan. Its objective was to ensure the country would “never again be a base for global terrorism.” 7 Not only was the year significant because it was the apogee of NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan, but it was also the year the ISAF coalition reached its maximum size in terms of participating nations, 50, and number of troops deployed, over 130,000.8 Over the course of the year, ISAF, in partnership with Afghan security forces, engaged in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations against an insurgent coalition that included a reconstituted Taliban and associated groups, such as the Haqqani Network and al Qaeda. It engaged in a range of peace support operations that included stabilization and reconstruction activities through 28 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT). In addition, the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), the coalition’s main effort, focused on developing the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) by training and mentoring the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan