Statebuilding in Afghanistan

Multinational Contributions to Reconstruction

Nik Hynek, Péter Marton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136661006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This edited volume empirically maps and theorises NATO-ISAF's contribution to peacebuilding and reconstruction in Afghanistan. The book provides a contextual framework of the NATO participation in Afghanistan; it offers an outline of the security situation in Afghanistan and discusses geopolitical, historical, and military factors that are related to it.

It argues that a general underlying factor is that although the stated goals of the Afghanistan mission may be similarly formulated across the ISAF coalition, that are a great number of differences in the nature of coalition members' political calculations, and share of the burden, and that this induces a dynamic of alliance politics that state actors attempt to either mitigate, navigate, or exploit - depending on their interests and views. The book asks why there are differences in countries' share of the burden; how they manifest in different approaches; and how the actual performance of different members of the coalition ought to be assessed. It argues that understanding this offers clues as to what does not work in current state-building efforts, beyond individual countries' experiences and the more general critique of statebuilding philosophy and practice.

This book answers key questions through a series of case studies which together form a comparative study of national contributions to the multilateral mission in Afghanistan. In so doing, it provides a uniquely sensitive analysis that can help explain coalition contributions from various countries. It will be of great interest to students of Afghanistan, Asian politics, peacebuilding, statebuilding, war and conflict studies, IR and Security Studies generally.

1 Operation Herrick

The British campaign in Helmand¹

Anthony King

Introduction

In April 2006, British forces deployed to Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan as part of NATO's widening mission in the country. Despite the (misinterpreted) claim of John Reid, the Defence Secretary, that he hoped that Britain would complete its mission of reconstruction without having to fire ‘one shot', British forces have, in fact, been involved in the most intense fighting in Helmand since the Korean War (Fergusson 2008: 9). Over 300 soldiers have been killed while the campaign has cost millions of pounds a year at a time of economic crisis and budgetary contraction. The perhaps surprising scale of Britain's commitment to Helmand has been primarily explained by political and military leaders on two fundamental grounds. First, it is regarded as a threat-balancing mission aimed to reduce the risk of terrorism by building a stable post-Taliban Afghanistan. Second, but perhaps most importantly, the mission can be understood in terms of alliance dependence. Although it has been difficult for the British government or the armed forces to express it publicly, the UK's commitment to Helmand is overwhelmingly an attempt to demonstrate support for the United States and, thereby, to sustain the ‘special relation' and the privileged access to shared security and defence goods which the close alliance with the United States offers. More specifically, for the UK's armed forces, the Helmand campaign in 2006 offered a chance for British forces to redeem themselves after a failing campaign in Basra and to restore not only their reputation with the United States but also with their own domestic public. It was noticeable that, from 2006, successive British commanders in Basra complained about their lack of resources because Helmand had been prioritised by the Ministry of Defence over Basra.

The United Kingdom and its armed forces have been willing to make a considerable sacrifice in Helmand, primarily for reasons of alliance dependence, then. However, although alliance dependence provides a useful explanation of why Britain was willing to assume responsibility and invest so heavily in Helmand, it cannot entirely explain the subsequent prosecution of the campaign. In order to understand the Helmand campaign, it is necessary to investigate military operations themselves. These operations – and the overall campaign – have to be explained, at least in part, by reference to British commanders and the armed forces. In many cases, British commanders who had worked closely with the United States were very sensitive to the issue of alliance dependence and some of their decisions were motivated by attempts to demonstrate UK military credibility. However, while alliance dependence provided a background motivation for British commanders (which was recurrently significant), cultural and organisational factors within the British military had a more immediate influence on the campaign. Above all, the professional ethos of the British armed forces played a crucial role in the campaign. In some cases, this ethos undermined the ability of the British armed forces to conduct themselves in a way that was consistent with alliance-dependent behaviour. Indeed, at various points in the campaign, British forces operated in a way which was actively opposed by the United States.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical account of British operations in Helmand Province from April 2006 to the present in order to illustrate the way in which the concept of alliance dependence usefully explains Britain's commitment to Helmand, but cannot account for the development of the campaign there in its entirety.

Operation Herrick: the UK joint plan for Helmand

Following Britain's involvement in the downfall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Operation Herrick began in 2002. Between then and the start of Operation Herrick 4 in April 2006, the operation was small scale with only a few British personnel deployed, mainly working with Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in the north and training the Afghan National Army. Herrick 4 marked a major escalation of British involvement in Afghanistan, involving the assumption of responsibility for Helmand. During 2005 and early 2006, the government, the MOD, the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) developed a cross-governmental plan for Helmand, although the process was badly compromised by inter-departmental politics. The plan identified as vital the area around Lashkar Gar, the provincial capital, and Gereshk. This area was defined as an Afghan Development Zone on which British inter-agency efforts would be focused. DFID and the FCO would work within this area, improving living conditions and governance. As part of this plan, the Helmand Task Force (3 PARA) was tasked with establishing a British centre of operations at Camp Bastion and securing a triangle of territory between that base, Lashkar Gar and Gereshk. The military plan for Helmand developed by 16 Air Assault Brigade involved two fundamental elements. In order to secure the Lashkar Gar, Bastion, Gereshk triangle, one company from 3 PARA would be deployed to Forward Operating Base Price near Gereshk (Rayment 2008: 119; Tootal 2009: 28). The other companies would either be used to secure areas for the PRT or to conduct raids against areas in which ‘insurgents/criminals' were known to operate (Rayment 2008: 119; Tootal 2009: 29). With 3,500 troops of which only 600 were infantry, the plan for Herrick 4 was ambitious. Nevertheless, although Helmand Province was known to be lawless, the main site of opium production in Afghanistan, with a Pashtun population hostile to the Kabuli government and with some political rivalry among leaders, the region had been relatively quiet militarily since the fall of the Taliban. The Helmand Task Force deployed in April 2006 with optimism that the agreed plan could be implemented, even if some limited fighting would be unavoidable.

Platoon houses and forward operating bases

British troops were quickly deflected from their officially designated task of securing the Lashkar Gar triangle. Almost immediately upon deploying to Helmand in April 2006, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, Brigadier Ed Butler, came under political pressure from the incumbent Governor of Helmand, Mohammed Daoud. Daoud claimed that various settlements were about to fall to the Taliban, if the British did not deploy immediately. As a result, Brigadier Butler deployed his already meagre forces across Helmand Province from Garmsir in the south to Musa Qala in the north. In all, the battlegroup spread itself across seven major positions over an area of 1,875 square miles of difficult terrain. The result was some of the fiercest fighting in which British troops had been involved since at least the Korean War. Throughout the summer of 2006, isolated pockets of British soldiers were besieged in ‘platoon houses', as hostile forces assaulted them on an almost daily basis. The fighting was particularly intense in Musa Qala, Sangin and Now Zad. In Musa Qala, for instance, the Pathfinders Platoon, the Brigade's elite reconnaissance team, was besieged in the district centre for 40 days from 14 June to 26 July until their relief in August by a Danish reconnaissance squadron (Bishop 2007: 150–65). On many occasions during that summer, the platoon houses were in danger of being overrun.

It has become convenient to dismiss Herrick 4 as an aberration which has been rectified by subsequent tours. Indeed, Brigadier Butler, who was at the time seen as a rising star in the Army, is now widely criticised within the armed forces for the approach he adopted. However, although Herrick 4 has been the object of much unofficial critique, it is not at all clear that the campaign structure, despite very significant expansion, began to change fundamentally until December 2008, and ultimately until February 2010. On Herrick 4, there was one battlegroup for the entire province. By October 2009, a Marine Expeditionary Brigade had taken responsibility for the entire western and southern part of the province. The remaining part of the province was divided into UK battlegroups North-West (Musa Qala), North (Sangin) and Centre South (Lashkar-Gar) (though Britain had the equivalent of four battlegroups in these areas), and the Danish battlegroup Central (Gereshk) – a total of approximately eight battlegroups in all. This represented a huge multiplication of effort from 3,000 troops in 2006 to a force level of 19,000 (including the new Marine Brigade).

Yet, the initial pattern of dispersal remained. During the course of successive tours up to this time, platoon houses were converted into Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) while many new FOBs were constructed. The patterns established during Herrick 4 seem to have been affirmed until at least December 2008 rather than revised. Perhaps most surprisingly, this dispersal of troops across the province meant that at the start of 3 Commando Brigade's tour in October 2008, there were only 50 soldiers in the Lashkar Gar area, the supposedly decisive ‘ink spot'. If the Brigade had not reacted rapidly to a major Taliban offensive on Lashkar Gar on 10–11 October with Apache strikes, a major setback would have been likely.² At that point there was a belated attempt to concentrate efforts around Lashkar Gar, considerably assisted by the insertion of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

There has been a second element to the British approach in Helmand: offensive operations. Towards the end of their tour in Helmand, 16 Air Assault Brigade tried to liberate themselves from their self-imposed fixing in the platoon houses. 3 PARA began to mount a number of mobile patrols seeking to engage the Taliban pre-emptively. 3 Commando Brigade developed these patrols into the concept of the Mobile Operations Group (MOG). During their first tour, 3 Commando Brigade's MOGs patrolled around the Helmand desert, interdicting Taliban at key points in the Helmand River Valley (the fertile Green Zone). However, the Royal Marines were only ever able to conduct raids; they never had the troops to hold any ground (Southby-Tailyour 2008: 180–81). Subsequent formations continued to engage in offensive operations of similarly short-term effects. The commander of 12 Brigade, John Lorimer, understood the recurrent attacks he mounted in 2007 as ‘mowing the grass'; there was no suggestion that they would have any lasting effect on the Taliban. Even major operations have had a tendency to produce evanescent kinetic effects rather than lasting stabilisation benefits. There were close affinities between the two forms of operation. The FOBs operated independently of each other while successive mobile operations were typically unconnected to each other in time and space. Both approaches represented a dispersion rather than concentration of effort.

The problem of dispersal

Dispersion has been long recognised as a fundamental military error (von Clausewitz 1989: 204). Concentration of forces has subsequently been established in western military doctrine as one of the principles of war. The success of General Templer's Malayan campaign in the 1950s was substantially dependent upon his implementation of this principle of concentration. He recognised that he had insufficient forces to cover the entire Malayan peninsula and therefore identified ‘ink spots' on which his forces should concentrate. In those ink spots, British forces would be able to defend the population from the Communist guerrillas (Thompson 1974: 57; Galula 2006: 52–3). Indeed, British commanders in Helmand, familiar with counter-insurgency principles, fully recognised the potential dangers of dispersion. Thus, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, the Commanding Officer of 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment on Herrick 4, recognised that his own platoon house strategy contradicted British counter-insurgency doctrine: ‘We were deviating from the principle of using our forces to have an effect in one area which could then be secured for development' (Tootal 2009: 52). Although there have been too few troops to reach the recommended ratios, British commanders in Helmand up to 2008 exacerbated the problem of inadequate numbers by dispersing their forces.

By contrast, the tactic of dispersion and the high intensity warfighting which it has engendered has allowed the Taliban to develop some very effective counter-tactics. Negating British advantages in firepower, the Taliban have increasingly resorted to the extensive use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). This has not been a sign that they have been defeated, as is sometimes assumed. Rather than sign of defeat, IEDS have become, in effect, a form of indirect offensive fire for the Taliban – the tactical equivalent of mortars or artillery without the need for firing points. They are produced and laid on an industrial scale, interdicting movement and impeding interaction with the civilian population. Because the FOBs were typically so isolated and undermanned, troops never dominated the area sufficiently to prevent the Taliban planting these devices. As a result, British troops have struggled to secure the population.

In addition, in counter-insurgency campaigns, it is widely accepted that intelligence is a necessary condition of success (Thompson 1974; Kitson 1971; US Army/Marine Corps 2007). The security forces need to understand the population and its social and political dynamics and have accurate and actionable ‘contact' intelligence on the insurgents (Kitson 1971). This understanding and intelligence has been singularly lacking in Helmand, especially up to 2009, but it still persists today. For instance, Michael Yon, an ex US-Special Forces soldier, observed a similar ignorance while he was embedded in Sangin as a journalist in 2009: ‘Having just spent another month with British forces in Helmand, today I am on my own in the same province. During the last month, our great allies the British lost dozens of soldiers who were killed or wounded. Cooperation from locals is almost non-existent in many places. Interaction between civilians and British soldiers was nearly zero' (Yon 2009). British forces have been consequently reliant upon aerial surveillance into order to track the placement of IEDs. It is consequently very difficult for the British to identify the bombers definitively or to build up an intelligence picture of the insurgents. In Iraq, by contrast, the intelligence which the United States forces were able to gather from an increasingly willing population was decisive in rescuing the campaign (Kilcullen 2009).

Explaining dispersion: British military culture

One of the central difficulties of Operation Herrick from 2006 to 2008 (and persisting until 2010) seems to have been the dispersion of (already inadequate) forces. Yet, it is very surprising that British commanders have made this mistake, especially since they recognise the importance of concentration. The lack of strategic political guidance from the UK government and poor inter-agency coordination in Britain, which many commentators and practitioners have described, do not seem to be irrelevant here. However, since British commanders initially took the decision to disperse and have reaffirmed that dispersal with FOBS and recurrent MOGs, it would seem that a plausible answer to this question is likely to be found in professional motivations and self-understandings of the British commanders. In particular, British commanders seem to have been driven by a need to act – to do something decisive and appropriately military irrespective of the political complexities of Helmand. In 2006, for instance, conceiving the Afghan operation as a battle, Ed Butler, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, found it impossible not to act when the entire purpose of his presence in Helmand was to support the Afghan government: ‘You're placed in this predicament when you have a sovereign state which has accepted democratic principles and has invited us in', he said. ‘It's a key battle in the war on terror. They've asked you to do something, what do you say? To do nothing, to prevaricate, is not an option' (Bishop 2007: 111). This desire to act – and to be seen to seize the initiative (in a conventional military way) – seems to be a product of the ethos of the British military and the professional expectations of the British officer corps. Indeed, the distinctive organisational culture of the British military seems to have had a substantial influence on the way in which the campaign has been understood and prosecuted by the British.

Warfighting ethos

British Defence Doctrine, the foundational statement of the British way of war, identifies the fundamental principles for the armed forces. One of these is the ‘warfighting ethos' the centrality of which to the armed forces is unambiguously underscored: ‘A warfighting ethos, as distinct from a purely professional one, is absolutely fundamental to all those in the British Armed Forces' (MoD 2008: para 524). This ethos distinguishes the armed forces from civilian organisations: ‘Not only do they [service personnel] all accept the legal right and duty to apply lethal force, they also accept a potentially unlimited liability to lay down their lives in the performance of their duties' (MoD 2008: para 525). British Defence Doctrine recognises that the forces are involved in many other operations and activities than combat but this fact should not obscure the fundamental purpose of the armed forces: ‘Notwithstanding the proportion of their career engaged in duties other than warfighting, it is essential that all Servicemen and Service-women develop and retain the physical and moral fortitude to fight' (MoD 2008: para 525). The members of Britain's armed forces define themselves by reference to combat. However, while combat is the ultimate professional ideal, the warfighting ethos instils a much broader predilection for activity and tempo in the British military. The British military has a highly developed work ethic...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Statebuilding in Afghanistan
• Routledge Studies in Intervention and Statebuilding
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: what makes coalitions s/tick?
• 1 Operation Herrick: the British campaign in Helmand
• 2 Germany and Regional Command-North: ISAF ’s weakest link?
• 3 Between expectations and reality: the Dutch engagement in Uruzgan
• 4 France in Kapisa: a combined approach to statebuilding
• 5 Canada and collective action in Afghanistan: theory meets practice
• 6 PRT activity in Afghanistan: the Australian experience
• 7 The New Zealand PRT experience in Bamyan Province: assessing political legitimacy and operational achievements
• 8 A peace nation in the war on terror: the Norwegian engagement in Afghanistan
• 9 Finland’s ISAF experience: rewarding, challenging and on the edges of the politically feasible
• 10 Hungary’s involvement in Afghanistan: proudly going through the motions?
• 11 From followers to leaders as ‘coalition servants’: the Polish engagement in Afghanistan
• 12 Post-decisional and alliance-dependent: the Czech engagement in Logar
• 13 Turkey’s ISAF mission: a maverick with strategic depth
• 14 Trials and tribulations of the Lithuanian participation in the NATO ISAF mission
• Index