The NATO Campaign in Afghanistan Comparisons With the Experience in Colombia BY DICKIE DAVIS Just days after 9/11, Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them – an authorization that continues to this day. The vote in the Senate was 98 to nothing. The vote in the House was 420 to 1. For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5 – the commitment that says an attack on one member nation is an attack on all. And the United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy al-Qaeda’s terrorist network and to protect our common security. – President Barack Obama, West Point, December 1, 2009 n June 2014 I accompanied a field trip organised by the Brenthurst Foundation, a South African non-governmental organization, to Colombia. The aim of the trip was to look at what Ilessons could be learned from the Colombian Government’s successful campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Having developed, over the last 10 years, an in depth knowledge of the war in Afghanistan since 2001 I was struck by both some of the simi- larities and differences between the two countries, and the attempts by the international com- munity to help. This article looks at the campaign in Afghanistan as the NATO mission comes to a close, drawing comparisons with the Colombian experience as appropriate. It focuses on five areas: campaign goals and the linkages to values and culture; campaign ownership; corruption; troop numbers; and military capacity building. When the U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in 2001, its aim was the defeat of terrorist elements operating from Afghanistan. It sought to achieve this by defeating Taliban military forces, removing their government from power and destroying those elements of al-Qaeda operating in Afghanistan. The longer-term aim of the coalition was to Major General Dickie Davis has recently retired from the British Army where he was Director General of Army Recruiting and Training, and is an associate of the, South African based, Brenthurst Foundation PRISM 5, NO. 3 FEATURES | 135 DAVIS create a stable, democratic Afghanistan that regarded the operation as a peacekeeping mis- would no longer be a safe haven for terrorists. sion. Thus, with OEF seeing Afghanistan as OEF started as a conventional warfighting being at the end of a conventional war and operation that used air power, Special Forces, ISAF initially viewing Afghanistan as a peace- and troops from the Northern Alliance to keeping operation, it was not until the comple- defeat the Taliban, and this phase was very suc- tion of ISAF expansion that the whole interna- cessful. However, many key Taliban govern- tional military effort could be put on a ment members and military commanders common doctrinal footing: that of counter- escaped. An end to combat operations was insurgency. declared by OEF in May 2003, and at this Throughout the period 2007 – 2009, the point the operation focused on stabilizing the Taliban-led insurgency grew in intensity, par- country. ticularly in the South and the East of the coun- While there had been tactical engage- try, and ISAF and Afghan commanders made ments with small numbers of the Taliban in repeated requests for more forces and an the south and east of the country ever since expansion in the planned size of the Afghan their fall, by 2005 the numbers and size of Army. President Obama agreed to a troop these engagements increased considerably. In increase in March 2009. In autumn, 2009 the effect, during the period from 2001 to the start President led a review of the Afghan mission, of 2005, the Taliban achieved strategic survival which resulted in an agreement to surge both and then began to run an offensive campaign U.S. and international forces for an 18-month in Afghanistan, which they hoped to grow period. Beyond this period there was a clearly- from guerrilla warfare to conventional war stated intent by the ISAF nations to disengage fighting. from combat operations, the date for which The International Security Assistance Force was subsequently set as the end of 2014. (ISAF), as approved in the Bonn Agreement of During the London Conference in January December 2001, deployed under a UN man- 2010 it was announced that the Afghan Army date as soon as the agreement was signed. would be increased in strength to 171,600 and Initially, ISAF was deployed to Kabul, thus the Police to 134,000 by October 2011, thus securing the new government’s seat of power. providing the scale of forces necessary to However, the mandate included assistance in enable an international troop drawdown. The the training of Afghanistan’s armed forces, hard fighting that followed over the course of assistance in reconstruction and, most impor- 2010 changed the dynamic of the campaign tantly, for expansion of ISAF throughout and another U.S. review in December of that Afghanistan. The ISAF mission was formally year confirmed the start of the drawdown as taken over by NATO in August 2003, and July 2011, with the end of 2014 set as the date expansion, initially to the north of the country, for the end of the NATO mission. The exit was started in December 2003 and completed strategy was confirmed at the Chicago NATO with the inclusion of the east of the country in summit of May 2012. October 2006. Until the expansion of the mis- The UN has been present in Afghanistan sion to southern Afghanistan in July 2006 the since October 1988 with a limited purpose of majority of NATO force-contributing nations assistance and co-ordination, and as a result its 136 | FROM THE FIELD PRISM 5, NO. 3 THE NATO CAMPAIGN IN AFGHANISTAN footprint has always been relatively small. Issue 1: The Linkage between the Goals Following the war in 2001, the UN role in of an Intervention and Values and Afghanistan remained one of assistance. In Culture particular, it was felt that the mission needed No longer is our existence as states under to operate with a light footprint, in order to threat. Now our actions are guided by a prevent it from being seen as yet another occu- more subtle blend of mutual self-interest pying power, and that an Afghan interim and moral purpose in defending the values administration should quickly take the lead. we cherish. In the end, values and interests President Karzai formed the Interim merge. If we can establish and spread the Afghan Administration after the signing of the values of liberty, the rule of law, human Bonn Agreement in December 2001. It was rights and an open society then that is in drawn from key members of the Northern our national interests too. The spread of Alliance and other important groups who had our values makes us safer. As John Kennedy been driven from power by the Taliban. put it, “Freedom is indivisible and when However, very few members of the interim one man is enslaved who is free?” administration and subsequent government had lengthy experience in running a country, – Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chicago, and the civil service, almost destroyed by over April 1999 20 years of war and limited formal govern- ment, was ineffective. Furthermore, a demo- When Prime Minister Blair made his Chicago cratically elected government had never gov- speech in April 1999, Europe was in the mid- erned Afghanistan; rather, traditional tribal dle of the Kosovo crisis. For the UK, this was structures had dominated, and these were followed by intervention in May 2000 in Sierra based on patronage rather than on a culture of Leone. In fact, the overseas interventions of the service provision to the electorate. As a result, 1990’s involving British Forces were relatively warlordism remained a feature of Afghan pol- short, self-contained, and largely successful. itics. Thus by 2001 the UK had a doctrine for inter- Given the broad international consensus vention and ten years of relatively successful behind the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, there practice as the backdrop for the interventions was much support for the new government of of the first decade of the 21st century. As Rob the country from the international commu- Fry remarks: “Wars in defence of liberal values nity. Lead nations were appointed to help are what the British people fought throughout rebuild key elements of the state and support the twentieth century, and these wars were the government in difficult areas. Nations and wars of unnegotiable necessity. Wars in promo- international organizations offered donations, tion of liberal values are what the British although many did not want to pass their armed forces have fought for since 1991 and, money through the Government and thus by their very nature, they have been discretion- funded the projects directly. This approach ary.”1 Looking back it is clear that “Chicago gave the Government of Afghanistan some Doctrine” thinking had a huge influence on considerable co-ordination challenges. the conduct of the international community in Afghanistan and on the early stages of the PRISM 5, NO. 3 FROM THE FIELD | 137 DAVIS campaign. After the initial defeat of the Taliban taxes to a central government or of that gov- in 2001, in an unstated way, it underpinned ernment delivering effective services.2 our plans to help put the country back on its This issue has been at the heart of the feet. Yet the culture of the population, the very debate between coalition members about fabric of the nation, and the nature of its tra- whether the campaign was just about the ditional systems of governance were so far defeat of al-Qaeda and the denial of safe removed from those of the Western countries havens, or whether it was about the much big- involved, and the timescales involved so short, ger task of nation-building in order to create a that there was bound to be disappointment stable Afghanistan that was resilient to the and recalibration.