International Security Assistance Force Research Articles

Operation Interflex: a change in the character of security force assistance?

ABSTRACT The concept of Security Force Assistance (SFA) emerged during the Global War on Terror mainly as a consequence of the increased practice of train, advise, and assist operations. This reflected the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, and many African countries in which Western armies trained and assisted local forces in the fight against modern insurgencies. The use of SFA has continued ever since, nevertheless the Russia-Ukraine war has shifted the emphasis of European countries on training the Ukrainian forces for the fight against a conventional opponent. This article explores the consequences of this shift for the character of SFA. Using qualitative data, a comparison is made between the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and the current application of SFA in the Ukrainian context as embodied in Operation Interflex. Whilst the nature of SFA remains unchanged, the character of SFA changes when used to address regular threats.

Unpacking the learning dynamics of a military task force in Afghanistan from a project-based organising perspective

ABSTRACT From a theoretical perspective of project-based organising, this study analyses how a deployed military task force heuristically learns. Empirically, learning within Task Force Uruzgan (TFU) in southern Afghanistan, is scrutinised. This contribution of the Netherlands armed forces to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) lasted for four years and saw successive rotations of task forces simultaneously fighting an insurgency and trying to stabilise a part of Afghanistan through reconstruction and development projects. Above all, the study has found that task ambiguity can make it challenging for a task force deployed to deal with varying contingencies at the same time. Two effects are noteworthy. First, learning can become compartmentalised, with different organisational elements following their own learning trajectories. Second, learning can also become short-term focused, responding to the most imminent and familiar threat. Combined, both learning impulses affect organisational coherence in meeting the overarching mission end state.

Service within the extremely gendered North Atlantic Treaty Organization: civil and military personnel’s approaches to gender equality-focused policies

The article emphasises the challenges in the implementation of gender equality-focused policies in military missions and demonstrates the backlash these policies can create in everyday social interaction in military missions. A qualitative method of thematic analysis was used to study 17 in-depth interviews with former civilian and military personnel in the International Security Assistance Force and Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. The discursive exploratory analysis displayed that normative masculine constructions foster an environment in which women are perceived as: a threat to the unit they are part of; disruptive to male bonding in the unit; an objectified body; and an essential part of the successful mission in Afghanistan. Gender equality-focused policies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization face resistance in implementation because they threaten resources perceived greatly important in the organisation: normative masculine constructions. The military fails in attempts to manage diversity, and the military culture further values and reinforces sameness.

Transformation of the media system of Afghanistan in the context of the formation of statehood

The object of the study is the media of Afghanistan. The subject of the study is the genesis of methods for regulating the media system in Afghanistan. The article pays special attention to the formation of the media system of the modern period, which the authors have been defining since the end of 2021. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the media system of Afghanistan has been formed under the influence of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF, acted in accordance with resolution No. 1386[39] The UN Security Council of December 20, 2001) and the desire to create a liberal democratic state in the understanding of the ISAF leadership. Freedom of speech, expression and the media, which were achieved during this period, has been under the control of the Interim Government of Afghanistan since August 2021. This article defines the methods used by the current government of Afghanistan to regulate the media system. The main method of research is the content analysis of documents and information on the practice of law enforcement, compliance with current legislation. Naturally, he could not be divorced from the method of systematization of information - the study of information objects. For the first time in the scientific literature, an empirical study is presented, which represents important material on the history of the media system of Afghanistan, its current state, and the analysis of legislative changes. The study seems to be significant and expands knowledge about the media in this region. For 20 years, the media system of Afghanistan has been formed under the influence of an international coalition led by the United States, which tried to create a liberal democratic state. It was based on a compromise of Western "democratic" and Islamic values, more pluralistic and free than before and after this period. In August 2021, another political force came to power, forming a state based on other principles, which began to exercise control over all spheres, including the media, taking Sharia norms as a basis. One of the conclusions of the study was the strengthening of the traditional identity of the state by the new political power, which was "shaken" by Western reforms. After coming to power, the interim Government of Afghanistan repealed the 2004 Constitution and the 2009 Media Law. The Law on Access to Information in 2019 has not been officially repealed, but it is not respected in the country. Thus, the transformation of the state's media system has begun in the country.

ISAF and European military transformation: German, Swedish and French counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, 2003–2014

This article examines the role of a subset of European militaries in responding to the Afghan insurgency during their deployment as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). While part of a multinational coalition, their heterogeneous military transformation was crucial to fighting the insurrection and confronting American pressure. In comparing the counterinsurgency innovations of Germany, Sweden, and France, we find that Germany acted reluctantly, Sweden largely emulated American doctrine, and France became a counterinsurgency pioneer. We argue that these developments took time and were accompanied by conflicts within ISAF and between the respective national military and political leaderships.

Role-theoretic discourse analysis of German security policy: a case of German parliamentary debate on the mission in Afghanistan.

This article combines linguistic discourse analysis with role theory to create a role-theoretic discourse analysis framework for German security policy. To illustrate this, we employ topos analysis on 30 plenary minutes of parliamentary debates regarding the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan, conducted by German Members of Parliament between 2001 and 2014. We interpret their perception of Germany's roles in light of key behavioral norms related to German security policy. The parliamentary discourse, shaped by topoi, sets the stage for decisions on German military operations abroad. The use of topoi is influenced by dominant thought patterns, particularly the perspective on Germany's role in security policy held by the political elite. Political decisions, in turn, reflect behavioral preferences guided by these viewpoints. Our research reveals how changes in German security policy are mirrored in the discourse. This discourse is structured around five categories of topoi for legitimizing or delegitimizing military operations abroad: necessity, obligation, self-interest, capability and preparedness, and solution. An evaluation of the use of topoi through the lens of role theory indicates that perceptions of Germany's role have evolved over time, encompassing roles such as a "civilian power," a "normal state," and an "agenda-setting role" in sync with its foreign military engagements.

Danish military fatalities in international operations 2002–2018

IntroductionThis study describes deaths among Danish soldiers in international operations 2002–2018. Having been part of UN and later NATO forces in ex-Yugoslavia, in 2002 the first Danish contingent took part...

NATO’s Struggle for Intelligence in Afghanistan

What role did North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the coalition (International Security Assistance Force—ISAF) it led play in the failure of the West in Afghanistan? This essay argues that the ISAF intelligence community’s inability to come to grips with the complex operational environment in Afghanistan contributed to the problem. Using three concepts from the complexity literature, requisite variety, learning, and enactment, I analyze critical flaws in NATO’s approach. ISAF’s weak cross-cultural competence, its inconsistent relationships with international civilian organizations, and its absence of double- and triple-loop learning are identified as key drivers of NATO’s weak intelligence performance.

How Afghanistan Influenced the Content of Armed Forces & Society: An Editor’s Reflection

This commentary examines the influence of the Afghanistan war on the content of Armed Forces & Society. My 20-year tenure as editor of Armed Forces & Society overlaps completely with the war. Using the lenses of the postmodern or post-Cold War military, I reflect on how the articles of this journal were influenced by the war. The postmodern military relies more heavily on volunteers, is more likely to engage in unconventional missions, and more likely to use multinational forces. I found an increase in articles devoted to reserve forces and contractors. In addition, many articles investigated the unique management challenges of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The multiple deployments and brutal nature of the war led to a large increase in health/mental health articles and also contributed to changes in the scope of the military family and veterans’ literature. The limited civil–military relations literature was affected indirectly.

The Inconclusive Repatriation of Afghan Refugees from Pakistan: Prospects and Challenges

Refugees and internally displaced persons are inescapable remnants of wars, political turbulence and natural disasters. Historically, people confronting religious and racial persecutions used to leave for non-violent regions, but presently political subjugation is the major cause of enforced migration. The settlement of around eighty million displaced persons worldover is a paramount global challenge. The refugees, displaced persons and migrants occasionally gain worldwide significant for serving the political interests of various great powers; otherwise, along with their host nations they bear least worth for the world powers. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 out-broke more than four million refugees into Pakistan. The West, especially the United States (US) as part of their anti-Communist Cold War agenda, lavishly assisted the Afghan Mujahidin, as they had launched guerilla warfare against the Soviet troops. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1992 initiated a large scale repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan after the Russian withdrawal from Kabul. Another massive repatriation program was also initiated in 2002 after the collapse of the Taliban regime by the US led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF). However, the terrible economic and security situations in Afghanistan spoiled the fruits of repatriations. On the other hand, Pakistan seeks the repatriation of millions of Afghans from its soil at the earliest, while the UNHCR, the refugees and Afghanistan have been apparently adopting the time-gaining strategy. An in-depth study of this highly complex issue reveals that Islamabad has yet to table a comprehensive repatriation plan, Kabul is incapable and inadvertent to the issue and the global community has least interest in the Afghan refugees. Pakistan and the refugees have been suffering since decade

ВЫЗОВЫ ДЛЯ ВОЕННОГО ПРИСУТСТВИЯ ГЕРМАНИИ В ЗОНАХ НЕСТАБИЛЬНОСТИ В АЗИИ И АФРИКЕ

Currently, there are two main forms of a state’s military presence outside its national borders: first, military presence on the territory of allies, strategic partners from among stable countries, and second, various ways of using the armed forces to resolve armed conflicts in areas of instability. In the second case, if and then military confrontation is over, external players can maintain their military presence in the country of origin of the conflict, which is about to enter or has already entered the stage of post-conflict development, preserving the role of external guarantors of its national security and defense systems. The goal of the article is to show the main results of the use of the Bundeswehr in the zones of armed conflicts in Asia and Africa by the early 2020 s, revealing the features and «bottlenecks» of this process in dynamics. The article analyzes the use of the Bundeswehr in the following areas: in Afghanistan, examines Germany’s involvement in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the NATO «Resolute Support» mission, showing the determinism of the forced strategic exit of the Alliance forces from this country; in the Middle East, examines the involvement of the Bundeswehr in the reform of the security sector in Lebanon and Iraq in the context of the anti-terrorist struggle is considered, the «bottlenecks» in the use of the military potential of the Bundeswehr in Syria; in the Horn of Africa, analyses three strategic attempts of Germany to gain a foothold on Somalia as well as their consequences for using the Bundeswehr on the African continent in general; in North and West Africa, the use of military tools for «fencing» of instability zone in Libya and for resolution of armed conflict in Mali are compared, the fundamental difficulties of maintaining Germany in this region are revealed.

Ideology, positionality and war

Abstract The objective of this article is to explore issues of ideology in situations of interpreting in conflict zones. Research into interpreting in conflict zones is quite recent and has shed light on interesting aspects. Ideology is clearly present in war situations and may condition the interpreter’s role. This article seeks to identify examples of power relations and ideology by drawing on the narratives of five local interpreters who worked with Spanish troops stationed in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force between 2003 and 2015. The narratives were collected using a semi-structured interview technique. The findings indicate that ideology is reflected in the interpreters’ perception of their own role as agents working for the good of their country against a common enemy, even though they were potentially perceived by both sides in the conflict as possible traitors. The traditional narrative of the interpreter as an invisible and impartial facilitator of communication would not appear to be applicable in this context.

Whole of (coalition) government: Comparing Swedish and German experiences in Afghanistan

AbstractWhole-of-government (WOG) approaches have emerged as a blueprint for contemporary peace and state-building operations. Countries contributing civilian and military personnel to multinational interventions are persistently urged to improve coherence and enhance coordination between the ministries that form part of the national contingent. Despite a heated debate about what WOG should look like and how to achieve it, the causal mechanisms of WOG variance remains under-theorised. Based on 47 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, this study compares Swedish and German WOG approaches in the context of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). I argue that coalition bargaining drove the fluctuation in the Swedish and German WOG models. Strategic culture was an antecedent condition. In both cases, COIN and the war on terror clashed with foundational elements of the Swedish and German strategic cultures, paving the way for a non-debate on WOG on the political arena. Finally, bureaucratic politics was an intervening condition that obstructed or enabled coherence, depending on the ambition of the incumbent coalition government to progress WOG. Overall, the results suggest that coalitions face limitations in implementing a WOG framework when the nature of the military engagement is highly disputed in national parliaments.

When peace nations go to war: Examining the narrative transformation of Sweden and Norway in Afghanistan

AbstractWhat happens to dominant narratives and settled self-images of so-called peace nations when experiencing actual combat in out-of-area military missions? This question arises when studying the contemporary international engagement of small states that previously have mostly been engaged in peacekeeping with limited mandates and non-use of force restrictions. As today's international missions have altered radically, it is important to analyse narrative friction and transformation in small states with little prior experience of international war-fighting. This article addresses this lacuna by examining two small states and self-proclaimed peace nations – Sweden and Norway – in relation to their engagement in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO-led security mission to Afghanistan 2002–14. By examining the interplay and discursive struggle of two narratives — peace nation and military culture – this article finds that these narratives constantly constitute and reconstitute a small state's self-image and the boundaries for acceptable or even required behaviour. With altered principles regarding use of force there is an increased friction between the narratives. By addressing these frictions, the article contributes to the literature on small state international military engagement and develops and refines assumptions regarding the drivers and consequences of small state participation in out-of-area missions.

Peeking into Afghan's history: A study from 1988 to 2010

The study will elaborate the Afghan historical events that took place right after the Geneva accord of 1988 when USSR forces pullout from the country till 2010. The article will explain the emergence of the Taliban and their establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Moreover, the paper will elaborate on the Taliban's nexus with al-Qaeda and their efforts to settle them in Afghanistan. Furthermore, this particular research tends to analyse the US retaliation and war on terror after the catastrophic event of 9/11. Additionally, the paper will illustrate the launching of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Taliban's bloody resurgence and their belligerence after the said mission. Consequently, the research will examine Obama's administration war strategies and tactics after his presidential victory over John McCain.

AESS Historical Interview With Dr. Catherine Warner

Dr. Warner is the Director of the NATO Science and Technology Organization Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation. She was the science advisor to the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation within the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. Her mission was to ensure the office fulfilled its statutory responsibility on the oversight and reporting of test and evaluation results for major weapons systems to Congress and senior Defense Department leadership. In 2013, at the request of the Defense Information Systems Agency, Dr. Warner deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan for 16 months in support of NATO's International Security Assistance Force and the U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom. She led a team of Information Technology specialists in advising Afghanistan's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. From 1991 to 2010, Dr. Warner was with the Institute for Defense Analyses in Virginia where she performed analysis of operational tests for Army, Navy, and Air Force systems. She was an Assistant Director and the lead for Air Warfare. Her analysis portfolio included major aircraft systems such as the F-22, F/A-18E/F, V-22, and H-1. She was the lead analyst for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems including Predator, Shadow, Hunter, and Global Hawk. Dr. Warner worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, attended the University of New Mexico, the San Jose State University, and earned both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from Princeton University. Dr. Warner earned the NATO Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, DISA Exceptional Civilian Service Award, and the Presidential Rank Award.

Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions

We study the impact of battlefield casualties and media coverage on public demand for war termination. To identify the effect of troop fatalities, we leverage the otherwise exogenous timing of survey collection across 26218 respondents from eight members of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Quasi-experimental evidence demonstrates that fatalities increase coverage of the Afghan conflict and public demand for withdrawal. Evidence from a survey experiment replicates the main results. To estimate the media mechanism, we leverage a news pressure design and find that major sporting matches occurring around the time of battlefield casualties drive down subsequent coverage and significantly weaken the effect of casualties on support for war termination. These results highlight the crucial role that media play in shaping public support for foreign military interventions.

ISAF WITHDRAWAL AND AN UPSURGE OF RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM IN AFGHANISTAN

An upsurge of religious extremism and terrorism in Afghanistan that followed the 2014 withdrawal of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the pessimistic forecasts for the country’s future: a far greater number of terrorist attacks and their victims among non-combatants across the country was the most obvious repercussion. The civil war continued unabated, while the negative additional factors—the Taliban that had grown much stronger, as well as the activation of ISIS militants, who had come from Iraq and Syria to continue fighting—contributed to its further exacerbation. All sorts of extremist religious groups in Afghanistan consolidated their positions and even created an unwelcome possibility of their transit to the Central Asian countries. The authors have clearly demonstrated that there is a direct interdependence between the presence of ISAF under U.S. command and the degree of violence of the Taliban, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—Khorasan Chapter, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan operating in Afghanistan. They have also analyzed the impact of the statement made by the U.S. regarding the signed agreement with the Taliban that envisaged the removal of U.S. troops from the country in the next fourteen months and the release of Taliban prisoners. Since the Government of Afghanistan had been left in the cold, many doubted that the agreement would be fully realized any time soon. An analysis of the events that followed demonstrated that the Taliban would not stick to its part of the agreement, while the White House treated the document as an election promise (formally) fulfilled. There are enough extremist organizations (i.e., ISIS) that operate in the provinces and, free from obligations and in pursuit of their own aims, might interfere in the attempts to fulfill the agreement in its optimistic version. An assessment of certain processes suggests that the threats coming from ISIS are somewhat overestimated. The studies are based on the following methods: comparative analysis of relevant literature, statistical analysis of the dynamics of time series to identify the developing trends of terrorist activities of religious extremists in Afghanistan.

The Return of the Military Memoir: The Bundeswehr Deployment to Afghanistan and the Re-Emergence of a Literary Form

This article examines the re-emergence of the military memoir in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) since the deployment of the Bundeswehr, the armed forces of the FRG, to Afghanistan as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in 2001. The resurgence of a literary form associated in the 1950s with the apologetics of officers of the Wehrmacht, Hitler’s army, and the construction of a usable Second World War past is striking. The article locates this phenomenon in a gap that has been growing since the mid-2000s between official claims about the deployment and soldiers’ perceptions of the reality on the ground. It also reads memoirs by Achim Wohlgethan, Heike Groos, Andreas Timmermann-Levanas and Robert Sedlatzek-Muller as examples of the soldiers’ dominant narratives – of the exercise of military skills and of trauma – to emerge from ISAF. These recent memoirs resemble more closely the texts by soldiers from other NATO forces and they offer a partial normalisation of a form with a problematic history in the FRG. In the face of ongoing suspicion on the part of German scholars, the article draws on a tradition of English-language scholarship to argue also for a normalisation of critical approach. What is needed is a method able to relate the texts to international scholarship about the form while remaining sensitive to the distinctive way in which, against the background of the form’s problematic history in Germany, they embody key values of the founding ideal of Bundeswehr of the soldier as a ‘Citizen in Uniform’. Tweetable Abstract: The return of the military memoir in German suggests the normalisation of a difficult form; critical approaches are urgently required to explore this.

“We are not getting the good stories out”: revisiting Quebec media coverage and NATO’s strategic narrative for the International Assistance and Security Force (ISAF)

The purpose of NATO’s strategic communications is to inform and influence key audiences into supporting its decisions and operations. High levels of public opposition in contributing nations to NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has led many to blame strategic communications for failing to explain the objectives and the importance of the mission. This paper seeks to evaluate where strategic communications succeeded and where they failed using Quebec as a case study, as it is the Canadian province that had the highest levels of opposition to the mission. The first part of this study uses NATO internal communications products to establish the core messages of the ISAF narrative in different phases of the mission. The second part surveys the main themes in the coverage of ISAF in Quebec’s main newspapers and TV shows. The major finding of this paper is that there was an effective dissemination of the NATO narrative in Quebec media, yet the narrative had little impact on opinion polls. The fact that the strategic communication campaign was successful in informing but not in influencing the Quebec audience carries important implications for the crafting of future NATO strategic narratives. This study concludes that efforts to improve military strategic communications in should focus developing communication products specific to minority cultures.