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Chapter 5
To a greater extent perhaps than ever before, soldiers are straying into civilian humanitarian and reconstruction territory in Afghanistan. Hence military forces within the PRTs are coming into greater contact with assistance actors. By considering the complexities of managing the civil-military interface at different levels, I will attempt to demonstrate the problems that the PRTs face in strengthening security for the people of Afghanistan. First, I consider how the ongoing combat status of participating nations affects their ability to uphold the cornerstone principles of a peace support operation. I then examine the mandate of the PRTs, questioning their clarity of purpose and objectives. Referring back to chapter 2, and the management of civil-military relations, I move on to take a closer look at the PRTs at an operational level, considering how the PRTs have been received by civilian assistance agencies. By examining the PRTs in this way I ultimately consider their contribution to the security situation in Afghanistan.
The overall goal of the PRTs, as described the US military, 'is to provide a more safe and secure environment so that reconstruction work can be done' (USIP, 2003). PRTs will seek to achieve this by working to 'extend the Afghan Transitional Administration's presence across the whole country, as part of the ongoing political transformation of Afghanistan, to facilitate improved local stability and security, and to facilitate reconstruction and development in these areas' (DFID internal document, 2003).
The first US PRT was established in Gardez on 31 December 2002. Other US-led PRTs are now operational in Bamian and Konduz. Eight PRTs in total are envisaged across Afghanistan. They are intended to be multinational in character and ultimately 'about 90% Coalition manned and equipped' (USIP, 2003). Ultimate control and command for the PRTs is held by the US as leader of the coalition, with a PRT headquarters in Bagram tasked with oversight of operational issues on the ground.
The vision is of a combination of military and civilian personnel working in units of between 50 to 100 people, with a military lead and soldiers making up the majority of the teams. Military staff consist of a mix of civil affairs officers, quick reaction forces, monitoring teams and infantry from a variety of services (UK Government presentation, 2003; O'Brien, 2003, p.38). Political staff are provided by the US State Department in the case of the US, and the Foreign and Commonwealth (FCO) in the case of the UK. Development expertise is provided by USAID and DFID for the US and UK PRTs respectively (1). The teams are intended to work together in an inter-disciplinary fashion as an expression of civil-military integration. Talking at a conference on civil-military cooperation in January 2003, a representative of the US military described the PRTs as 'basically a super-CIMIC or super-CMOC' (USIP, 2003).
Having developed the initiative, the US requested that other coalition nations provide inputs, either into existing US-led PRTs or as lead nations in the creation of additional PRTs. In response, the UK has deployed a PRT to Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan (which began work in July 2003) and is looking to provide inputs into other PRTs and the PRT headquarters. New Zealand is in the process of taking leadership of the US PRT in Bamian, and Germany is discussing a possible take-over of the Konduz PRT. Other nations have expressed an interest in seconding staff into existing PRTs but not to lead a PRT at the current time.
The previous chapter described the extent of ongoing coalition action in Afghanistan. But what does this dual function mean for the PRTs? Is it possible for a nation or a coalition of nations to remain engaged in remnant warfighting and to keep the peace at the same time? Indeed, are these activities not contradictory? Whilst aggressive coalition military action may only be ongoing in small pockets of Afghanistan, the legacy of the war at its peak must remain fresh in the minds of many Afghans.
Considering the implications of this split personality, Tharoor and Johnstone (in Gordon and Toase, 2001) write that: 'There is no simple answer to the humanitarian dilemma, but the key to a solution might lie in not trying to do two things at once. One of the basic lessons learned by the UN in Bosnia is that you cannot make peace and war with the same people on the same territory at the same time. It is never wise to try to coerce people with whom you must also cooperate, within the same set of circumstances' (p.13).
In Chapter 1 I touched briefly on the 'trinity of principles' (Donald, 2002, p.21) considered necessary for UN peacekeepers to work effectively: consent, neutrality/impartiality and minimum or non-use of force. Making the assumption that these core principles are also relevant for non-UN peacekeepers, I will now use the principles as a framework, applying each one in turn to the PRTs in Afghanistan. Doing so begins to suggest some fundamental difficulties ahead.
Co-operation and consent, the British Army writes, are
'…fundamental to success in all Peace Support Operations. Without the active co-operation and consent of the parties and the indigenous population there can only be subservience and a dependency culture, not a self-sustaining peace' (British Army, 1998, p.4-2).
Yet, consent for the PRTs in Afghanistan can at best be deemed patchy and superficial. The practice of supporting warlords and their armies for short-term gains in the political process, as explained earlier in the chapter, translates into a form of consent by co-option. So long as the promise of material or political gains are still on offer, regional warlords can be expected to continue to allow PRTs access to populations. But once incentives comes to an inevitable end - breaking the 'parasitic economic relationship developed between local and multinational forces' (Misra, 2002, p. 17) - warlords will have little to gain from co-operation with the PRTs. This break in co-operation could at best result in a lack of engagement with PRTs and at worst a resort to direct combat.
Having become virtually synonymous in its usage with impartiality, neutrality as a principle has now fallen 'out of favour with all but the most traditionally minded of UN actors' (Donald, 2002, p.22). The fact that the impartiality of PRTs is also being called into question is more problematic. Donald defines impartiality as 'active, its actions independent of the parties to the conflict, based on a judgement of the situation; it is fair and just in its treatment of the parties while not taking sides' (ibid., p.22).
The inevitable association of PRTs with Operation Enduring Freedom - by warlords, by Afghans more generally, and by NGOs and IOs - surely renders it virtually impossible for them to be seen as a third party, and therefore as truly impartial, in the current context. Whilst not based in the same barracks as their coalition colleagues, PRTs operate under the same command structure. They receive air support from the coalition as and when required (UK Government presentation, 2003; The Economist, 2003a, p.41); and, despite subtle differences in dress and weaponry, to all intents and purposes PRT personnel share much the same appearance as their peers in combat. The intervening force may believe themselves to be acting impartially, but it is the combatants and the general populations' perceptions that become the practical measure of impartiality (Connaughton, 2001, p.40). In this case, The British Army's own golden rule of impartiality -that 'the referee must not become a party to the conflict' (British Army, 1998, p.3-2) - is broken. On a strategic level, the parent nations of PRTs are already very much parties to the conflict and have considerable interest in taking sides.
It is worth pausing here to make a distinction here between areas where coalition combat operations continue in Afghanistan (eg. in the south and southeast) and those where warfighting has come to an end (eg. in the north). In those areas where coalition combat has ceased, association with aggressive forces is likely to be less of an issue. Similarly, different militaries with different approaches (as set out in Chapter 2) are likely to experience problems with impartiality to greater and lesser degrees. UK soldiers operating in northern Afghanistan, for example, dressed in uniform over body armour, wearing berets not helmets and carrying sidearms, are less likely to be associated with their colleagues in combat than US PRT personnel in full combat gear (2).
In terms of the use of force, PRTs are intended to have 'a robust self-defence capability' but will not 'prosecute change at the end of a barrel' (USIP, 2003a). Dialogue and liaison are seen as important tools in lieu of military might. However, despite the fact that the PRTs themselves are lightly armed for self-defence purposes only (ibid.; UK Government presentation, 2003), their colleagues operating under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom are anything but. Once again, as with perceptions of neutrality and impartiality, it is this association with aggressive military operations that presents a potential problem for the PRTs.
There is considerable confusion about the strategic objectives of the PRTs. PRTs were launched in response to widespread calls for increased security in Afghanistan. The ultimate goal of the teams, as mentioned earlier, is to facilitate the development of a safe and secure environment to allow recovery and reconstruction efforts to make progress. And yet, the published objectives of the PRTs are unclear. Despite the military make-up of PRTs, their aims appear to veer away from a direct focus on security. At a conference hosted by the United States Institute for Peace in January 2003, a representative of the US military set out the objectives of the PRTs as follows:
These are broad aims with no direct reference to the security situation. They are echoed by the UK, which claims that PRTs will 'work through dialogue and liaison' and argues that they are 'not designed to fight a battle but to encourage peace and stability' (DFID internal document, 2003).
Originally called Joint Regional Teams, the name was later changed to Provincial Reconstruction Teams at the request of the Afghan Transitional Administration (ATA) (Stapleton, 2003b, p.2). The addition of the word 'reconstruction' has caused serious concern amongst the humanitarian and development community. For many, there is a disconnect between the priorities of the PRTs and the real needs on the ground (Refugees International, 2003). This 'encroachment by military actors on humanitarian space' (O'Brien and Stapleton, 2003, p.13), has been accompanied by widespread calls for the coalition to clarify the purpose of the PRTs and to explicitly outline how they intend to use the PRTs to enhance security across Afghanistan.
This disjunction between priority needs and the objectives of the PRTs is illustrated in a number of ways. First, the PRTs are arguably not focusing on the most insecure areas of Afghanistan. Southern or southeastern regions of Afghanistan would be the most obvious targets for peace support operations, yet no nation has yet stepped forward to lead a PRT there as yet.
Second, the size of PRTs prohibits them from being able to directly enforce or impose peace in an insecure environment. 40,000 peacekeeping troops were sent to Kosovo, 'which has a population of less than half of just the 2 million Afghan refugees who returned home last year' (UN News Service, 2003). In Bosnia, 60,000 peacekeepers arrived to oversee the implementation of a peace agreement in a country one-twelfth the size of Afghanistan (The Economist, 2003b, p.10). If, as planned, PRTs in full are deployed to eight regional centres of Afghanistan, that would add a further 400 to 800 peacekeepers to ISAF's current quota, bringing the total number of peacekeepers in Afghanistan to around 5,800. Numbers such as these do little to alter the startling parity of commitment and resources devoted to Afghanistan compared to other examples.
On the other hand, supporters of the 'light footprint' approach to security argue that a large occupying force on the same scale as that deployed to Bosnia, Kosovo or East Timor would most likely fail in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has experienced a long history of dealing with would-be occupying forces and has responded violently to invasive strategies. Any attempt to impose security on Afghans would, Ottaway and Lieven (2002) claim, 'require a strong foreign military and civilian presence, projecting to the world the image of a Muslim country under foreign occupation. As in Somalia, the outcome would almost certainly be conflict between the international force and powerful local groups' (p.135).
It is certainly true that not everyone in Afghanistan is supportive of a foreign peacekeeping presence. Recent attacks on ISAF forces, most notably the attack earlier this year on German ISAF peacekeeping troops which left four soldiers dead and dozens of other soldiers and bystanders injured (BBC, June 2003), illustrate a level of serious resistance in Afghanistan to the presence of foreign peacekeeping troops. (4)
Concerns at a strategic level about potential military 'mission creep' into humanitarian and development territory appear to become magnified and heightened at an operational level. It is worth taking a moment to consider why UN agencies and NGOs in Afghanistan appear so keen to distance themselves from the PRTs at an operational level. In Chapter 2, I divided civilian concerns about military involvement in humanitarian/development assistance into two main categories: reservations as to how the military carries out its humanitarian or development objectives; and suspicions as to why military actors want to be involved in the first place. Revisiting this division may help to explain the dangers that humanitarian and reconstruction agencies see in relating too closely with the PRTs.
During my own visit to Afghanistan in April 2003 I witnessed the anxiety of assistance actors first-hand. Clumsy use of language and a lack of forethought by the US military were largely to blame for the initial unease felt by many. In early meetings with humanitarian and development agencies, US soldiers discussed their intention to co-ordinate the reconstruction process in PRT areas (Stapleton, 2003a, p.11). Agencies reacted angrily to this potential role for a predominantly military force. The United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), established in the wake of coalition activity in Afghanistan, is clearly mandated by the terms of the Bonn Agreement to carry out a co-ordination function. Following a series of outspoken retaliations by NGOs, UN agencies and UNAMA itself, US-led PRTs subsequently dropped their ambitions to carry out this co-ordination function, talking instead in terms of offering a 'facilitation' role to NGOs, including assistance with project identification and possible funding (Stapleton, 2003c, p.1).
Another bone of contention between PRTs and assistance actors is the US-led PRT practice of carrying out village-level needs assessments. Using a basic template developed by the UN, PRT forces have conducted dozens of assessments aimed at determining the priority reconstruction needs of villages within the PRT's operational radius. NGOs have fiercely criticised this form of intervention. Anecdotal reports point to needs assessments being conducted by 'male personnel who never met with women and had little or no historical knowledge of the communities with which they were engaging' (O'Brien and Stapleton, 2003, p.12), and who are largely untrained in participatory assessments and development (CARE, 2003b, p.6). My own observations bear witness to predominantly male and often heavily armed US Civil Affairs Officers conducting assessments by meeting with village leaders over a two to three hour period. As far as I could gather, there was no crosschecking of data to determine the reliability of the information, or to identify the needs of women, ethnic minorities, or other groups with particular needs. Projects were then selected using raw data, with no apparent analysis of underlying social, economic or political factors, or with an eye to the future sustainability of projects.
In addition to the above, NGOs and others continue to express alarm about the potential long-term effects of unrealistic raising of expectations, and of the hasty implementation of programmes which may end up exacerbating rather than placating local tensions. They complain too of poorly executed programmes which endanger fragile local economies by falsely inflating prices for goods and services. The relative operating costs of the PRTs have also come under scrutiny. O'Brien (2003, p.38), for example, calculates that it is around fifty times more expensive to cover the costs of a US soldier rather than a senior Afghan aid professional working for an NGO or the Afghan government (5).
Direct PRT support for humanitarian and reconstruction projects has provoked widespread suspicion amongst assistance agencies with lead governments accused of overtly politicising and militarising aid (O'Brien, 2003, p.38). US-led PRTs have their own financial allocation of approximately $12 million set aside for support of small-scale programmes this year (Burnett, 2003, p.3). Funding is provided by the US Department of Defence (DoD) from within its Overseas Humanitarian Disaster and Civic Aid (OHDACA) budget (Stapleton, 2003b, p.5). Implementation of projects is carried out by either local contractors, NGOs or on occasion directly by PRT personnel. In line with OHDACA guidelines projects must conform with emergency/humanitarian-style priorities and needs. US PRT spending has predominantly focused on drilling wells, rebuilding schools and clinics and some road resurfacing (ibid., p.5). These are often sectors where UN agencies and NGOs already have substantial capacity to cover basic needs, resulting in an unnecessary duplication of assistance (6), and begging the question as to why the PRTs are so keen to implement duplicate programmes.
The UK PRT in Mazar-e-Sharif has a budget of approximately $1.5 million for development and reconstruction programmes (7) (UK Government presentation, 2003). Costs for reconstruction-style projects are covered by DFID, which allows for relative flexibility as to type of programmes selected for support (8). It is early days for the UK-led PRT but, at least in principle, DFID states that 'development projects will be selected with care in consultation with the ATA and local development actors so as to avoid duplication or interference with activities already being undertaken' (DFID internal document, 2003). Pipeline plans suggest that DFID funding will be targeted towards 'the security sector, institution and capacity building in the Government and the economic sector' (ibid.). Whilst DFID's own PRT budget is small, the intention is to use UK presence to lever funds from other donors towards security-orientated sectors.
Within the UK-led PRT, unlike the US version, there is a relatively clear definition between military, development and political components. Reconstruction and development programmes appear to remain firmly under DFID's jurisdiction with minimal military involvement in either their identification or implementation. Local contractors or NGOs are invited to bid to implement projects. UK soldiers, in the meantime, have been working with UNAMA to collect factional weapons and register the private weapons of militias in the region. Whilst only a small-scale activity at the current time, it is hoped that the process will gather momentum and feed into wider DDR initiatives (ibid.). Finally, the political component is focusing on facilitating an enhanced dialogue between central government officials, local powerholders and representatives of independent Afghan organisations such as the Afghan Human Rights Commission (UK Government presentation, 2003).
In relation to the US-led PRTs in particular, NGOs and other assistance actors share concerns that the lines between themselves and military forces are becoming increasingly blurred. PRTs are predominantly military forces, even with the presence of civilian actors such as USAID or DFID personnel. If local populations witness PRT military forces carrying out assessments, issuing funds and even implementing programmes, then the distinction between civilian and military is potentially threatened. As detailed in chapter 2, this association of civilian assistance agencies with the military (whether real or perceived) may compromise the core principles of humanity, independence and impartiality that aid agencies often rely on to carry out their work effectively. This potential compromise is not just a question of principles; there are practical consequences too. The security situation in Afghanistan is precarious to say the least. A blurring of lines and hence a confusion between actors, may ultimately impact on the personal security of aid workers. In turn this lack of safety may restrict the ability of those actors to continue to provide humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to the people of Afghanistan (Morris, 2002, p.14).
In light of continued hostilities, assistance actors are even more cautious about any perceived association with the PRTs. PRTs are making an effort to communicate effectively with assistance agencies. The presence of USAID and DFID personnel provide agencies with 'familiar', and crucially non-uniformed, individuals with which to do business. Despite this, agencies fearing 'guilt by association' (Cuny in Gordenker and Weiss, 1991, p.76) with warring parties are likely to continue to keep their distance - taking the isolationist position first mentioned in Chapter 2. A number of NGOs have gone to very visible lengths to distance themselves from the PRTs on the basis that they 'did not want to be used for intelligence gathering or to be associated with activities that could be interpreted by Afghans as such' (O'Brien and Stapleton, 2003, p.12). The 'contagious effect' (Studer, 2001, p.374) of military involvement in civilian humanitarian and development activities potentially brings very real dangers for assistance actors in Afghanistan. Whether this will prove to be an untenably aloof position (ibid., p.384), only time will tell.
PRTs aim to have an indirect positive impact on the security situation in Afghanistan. By providing an enabling environment, PRTs are intended to 'help the Afghan people themselves create a safe and stable environment' (DFID, internal document, 2003). Many are sceptical of their capacity to achieve this. The scale of military force provided by the PRTs is a drop in the ocean in terms of what is likely needed to act as a realistic deterrent to peace-spoilers. The cornerstone principles of peacekeeping are compromised by the warring status of PRT participating nations. The mandate and strategic aims of the PRTs are unclear, with only an indirect focus on security and a conversely heightened focus on humanitarian and reconstruction components. This 'creep' into humanitarian and development sectors is stepping on the toes of other actors, particularly when US-led PRTs continue to focus on sectors already covered by civilian agencies. Humanitarian and development organisations worry that the blurring of lines between themselves and soldiers operating within a PRT framework compromises their own security and ultimately the effectiveness of their programmes. The combat status of lead PRT nations only increases the danger of association for assistance actors, leading to a communication and co-operation vacuum in place of an effective civil-military interface.
PRTs have been described as a 'second-best option to the expansion of ISAF' (Stapleton, 2003b, p.4). The International Development Committee of the UK Government's House of Commons argues that 'without a specific peacekeeping mandate Joint Regional Teams will be able to do little to bring security to the population and may not enhance the aid effort either' (House of Commons, 2003, p.8). Few have faith in the PRTs to make any difference to the security situation on the ground, and some even fear that they may make things worse. Dialogue and engagement with regional powerholders may eventually have the adverse effect of strengthening the credibility of local warlords through direct contact with the international community, which bypasses the rule of central authorities.
This chapter has put the work of the PRTs under the microscope. I started with a discussion of how the PRT measures up against 'standard' peacekeeping conceptual principles. I then examined the strategic objectives of the PRTs, before ending with a close-up look at how they operate on the ground - the hows and the whys of the PRTs. In the next and final chapter, I will step back to put the PRTs into a broader context. In so doing I will attempt to come to some conclusions about the current case study.
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'On the day I left Kabul, a car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing four German soldiers, members of the international security force Isaf. The Germans' bus was lifted into the air; human flesh lay on the roadside. When British soldiers arrived to "seal-off" the area, they were watched by a silent crowd, squinting into the heat and dust, across a divide as wide as that which separated British troops from Afghans in the 19th Century, and the French from Algerians and Americans from Vietnamese' (p.20).