North Atlantic Treaty Organization Forces Research Articles

Unmasking the Diversionary Global Imperial Designs in the Invasion of Libya in 2011, ten years on, and counting

In this article, I analyse the machinations of Western modernity that were manifested in the 2011 Arab Spring protests in Libya. The principal objective of the paper is three-pronged. Firstly, I critically observe the reasons for the uprisings in Libya. Secondly, I critically analyse the Libyan government’s response to the protests. Lastly, I focus on the responses of the NATO-led so-called international community. The article employs a decolonial lens of analysis to address this three-in-one objective, on the basis that the current discussions on Libya's political impasse are deficient in addressing fundamental matters of intersections between regional, and global designs that fuelled the 2011 uprisings in Libya. I seek to answer why, fundamentally, was Libya targeted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), if saving lives as it purported was not achieved, and the intervention only exacerbated the conflict and increased the death toll as a result? The qualitative methodology is used and the paper uses secondary sources that are available in the public domain. The findings are that the Libyan invasion was a targeted and selective application of the legal norm of the responsibility to protect doctrine (R2P), quasi-insulated from legal reproach by being sanctioned by the United Nations (UN). As such, the UN was used as a vehicle for the powerful located in the Global North to punish a member of the weak Global South. Therefore, the Libyan invasion by NATO forces further entrenched the colonial global power structural configuration of the Euro-North American-centric world.

Instability in Afghanistan and Non‐traditional Security Threats: A Public Good Problem?

AbstractMany analysts and policy makers agree that the withdrawal of the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and formation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will exacerbate the political, social, ethnic and religious fault lines in Afghanistan and may lead to civil war and chaos in Afghanistan reminiscent of the 1990s. This will also exacerbate non‐traditional security threats such as Islamic fundamentalist and transnational terrorism, drugs/narcotics trade and human migration/refugee crisis in the neighbouring countries and beyond. This article argues that tackling the non‐traditional security threats facing the region and beyond is a public good. It analyses the tackling of non‐traditional security threats – terrorism, narcotics trade and human migration/refugee inflow – through the prism of collective action problem that is joint production of a good or joint action to tackle the problem. It illustrates that difference in threat perception, clash/conflict of interests and geopolitical rivalries will hinder cooperation and intelligence sharing, and lead to uncoordinated action and free riding. It will also create problems of leadership and affect the choice and efficacy of the organisation/institution to tackle the threats. The article highlights that in the absence of collective action, it will be extremely difficult to overcome the non‐traditional security threats emanating from Afghanistan.

Collection and sharing of medical information and medical intelligence (M2I) in NATO: a transversal survey

IntroductionThere is a requirement for adequate medical expertise to be available throughout the range of potential future operations involving members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The aim of...

New endemic focus of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Pakistan and future epidemics threats

ObjectiveTo get a clear epidemiological picture of cutaneous leishmaniasis in a new endemic focus, in order to address the most probable epidemic threats and its spread to the neighboring regions. MethodsA total of 870 clinically diagnosed patients were included in the study after taking consent and filling questionnaires from each individual. The field Giemsa-stained slides and cultures were examined microscopically. The data was organized in tables and graphs and analyzed using statistical package SPSS V 21. ResultsThe ratio of male was higher than females (499:371), cutaneous and mucocutaneous cases were 96.00% and 4.00%, and only 25.20% patient's used bed nets. A total of 57.10% had dirty places near their homes. Similar cases in the neighborhood and in families were 48.50% and 67.10% respectively. Only 87.35 % of Patients in the age range of 1–20 years received treatment. Up to five lesions per individual were noticed and 72.20% of them had symptomatic secondary infections. The lesions were observed on different sites of the body. ConclusionsLeishmaniasis is neglected in Landi Kotal Khyber Agency, the reasons being prevailing security situations and political sensitivity. North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan are in contact with Afghanis and with local people of Landi Kotal for logistic purposes. They may act as carriers in co-spreading of the species. There are potential risks of cross border transmission, with the probability of future epidemics in the surrounding regions.

NATO Crisis Response

The ethno-territorial conflicts precipitated by the breakup of the Soviet Union and dissolution of Yugoslavia had major implications for European security and substantially altered the strategic priorities of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the post-Cold War period. In order to preserve regional stability, NATO expanded beyond collective defense into crisis management and peacekeeping to address destabilizing ethnic conflicts, particularly in the Balkans region. This paper proposes that the NATO peacekeeping operation succeeded as a whole in stabilizing the Kosovo crisis and enabled the creation of a functioning, multiethnic state in Kosovo, which became independent in 2008. Using Kosovo as a case study, this paper outlines a conceptual framework for use in examining the success of the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, in stabilizing the Kosovo crisis and enhancing regional stability. This framework consists of five core security tasks – diffusing the crisis; ensuring security; enabling humanitarian relief operations; facilitating a political solution; and fostering long-term regional stability – organized around an end state of establishing a stable, independent Kosovo. The paper concludes with comments on the usefulness of KFOR as a model for peacekeeping and the long-term use of NATO forces in such peacekeeping operations going forward.

How the Transformation of Military Power Leads to Increasing Asymmetries in Warfare? From the Battle of Omdurman to the Iraq Insurgency

As captured by neorealist theory, military power became increasingly relative through into the twentieth century, leading to a concentration of power within and between states—and enabling the buildup of huge colonial empires hardly a century ago. Yet since 1945, due to the overproportional effectivity gained by weaker and in particular nonstate actors it has become less relative, leading to a dispersion of power—resulting in an often violent decolonization, the problems US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces have faced in Iraq and Afghanistan in dealing with comparatively small insurgencies and a growing number of failing states. Military power has a selective function: the more relative it is, the more it restricts patterns of conflict as well as the number and nature of actors relevant to international and domestic security. Today, it is because military power is becoming less relative that security policy has to adapt to increasingly asymmetric challenges.

Surgical Experience at the Canadian-Led Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan

The purpose of this study was to document the surgical experience of the Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit (R3MMU) at Kandahar Airfield Base while Canada was the lead nation for the facility. This study will help inform on future staffing, training, and deployment issues of field hospitals on military missions. From February 2, 2006, to October 15, 2009, the Canadian Forces Health Services served as the lead nation for the R3MMU. We retrospectively reviewed the electronic and the actual operative database during this timeframe to assess surgical workload, types of surgical procedures performed, and the involved anatomic regions of the surgical procedures. During this timeframe, there were 6,735 operative procedures performed on 4,434 patients. The majority of our patients were Afghan nationals, with Afghan civilians representing 34.8%, Afghan National Security Forces 31.6%, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces 25.3%. The number of operative procedures by specialty were 3,329 in orthopedic surgery (49.4%), 2,053 general surgery (30.5%), 930 oral maxillofacial surgery (13.8%), and 272 neurosurgery (6%). The most frequently operated on body region was the soft tissue, followed by the extremities and then the abdomen. Thoracic operations were very infrequent. Our operative data were slightly different from historical controls. Hopefully, this data will help with planning for future deployments of field hospitals on military missions.

Divided Partners: The Challenges of NATO-NGO Cooperation in Peacebuilding Operations

In this article, I examine the challenges associated with the cooperation between NATO and nongovernmental organizations in peacebuilding operations. I argue that those challenges need to be understood as part of a process of contestation and competition over the redefinition of the of the game in the changing domain of peacebuilding. This process of contestation, I suggest, can significantly undermine NATO's ability to contribute to sustainable peacebuilding in war-torn countries. KEYWORDS: peacebuilding, NATO, reconstruction, humanitarianism, norms, contestation. IN RECENT YEARS, AS PART OF A PROCESS OF REDEFINING ITS IDENTITY AND purpose, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become deeply involved in complex operations aimed at stabilizing and rebuilding countries emerging from conflict. One of the key assumptions underpinning those operations is that their success depends crucially on systematic coordination between military and civilian actors--governmental and nongovernmental, domestic and international. The official discourse articulated by NATO (often echoing the UN discourse on peacebuilding) assumes that the alliance and a plethora of civilian organizations will mobilize their respective resources and cooperate closely in reconstructing war-torn countries. In practice, however, cooperation between NATO and civilian agencies engaged in reconstruction has been limited and, in some instances, virtually nonexistent. (1) As noted in Alexandra Gheciu's and Roland Paris's introduction to the special focus section, this tends to be portrayed as just one aspect of a larger challenge of coordination among the myriad of actors involved in reconstruction. By contrast, some scholars have highlighted the dangers of focusing too much on procedural efforts to improve coordination, to the detriment of substantive issues and challenges of peacebuilding. Roland Paris, for instance, has noted that the heavy emphasis on the question of coordination tends to conceal deeper disagreements among those actors over the desirable means and ends of reconstruction. (2) Against the background of those debates, this article seeks to shed light on some of the deeper issues that can help explain the inadequate cooperation between NATO forces and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in peacebuilding operations. (3) The relationship between NATO and NGOs is one of the most interesting aspects of the changing sub-field of peacebuilding, not least because these are institutions with very different cultures and mandates that now find themselves in a situation in which they need to collaborate in unprecedented ways. Yet this relationship remains comparatively undertheorized in the--otherwise rich--international relations literature on peacebuilding. I suggest that problems of cooperation between NATO and NGOs need to be understood as part of a process of contestation and competition over the redefinition of the of the game in the changing domain (or subfield) of peacebuilding. Rapid transformations in peacebuilding since the 1990s have blurred the boundaries between activities performed by military and civilian actors, and have destabilized existing norms governing the roles of various actors involved in postconflict reconstruction. In the context of these broad changes, a variety of actors (local and international, civilian and military, governmental and nongovernmental) have mobilized various forms of material and symbolic capital in an effort to cast themselves--and secure recognition--as expert, leading actors in peacebuilding operations. Simultaneously, they have tried to reshape the norms and rules of peacebuilding according to their particular worldviews. Although this article focuses specifically on relations between NATO and the NGO community, it is reasonable to argue that this is part of a larger process of change, which involves practices of contestation and competition among multiple players engaged in postconflict reconstruction. …

High Hopes and Limited Prospects: Washington's Security and Nation-Building Aims in Afghanistan

Four years have passed since the United States and allied governments toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan and began security and nation-building operations. Despite the continuing deployment of thousands of Western troops and the expenditure of billions of dollars in foreign aid, current conditions in Afghanistan are perilous. Poverty is rampant, the drug trade has shown no sign of decline, warlords remain in power, and the Taliban continues to confront US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces. With the US preparing to reduce its troop presence in 2006 and NATO poised to deploy forces into Afghanistan's dangerous southern provinces, Western security and nation-building efforts are at risk of failure.

Developments in the Laws of War: NATO Attacks on Yugoslavia and the Use of Force to Achieve Humanitarian Objectives

In May 2000 Dragiša Krsmanovich, the Serbian Public Prosecutor, began the indictment for war crimes of the leaders of the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Germany, and the former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Secretary-General Javier Solana. These charges, laid in the Serbian Supreme Court, related to alleged violations by NATO forces of the Geneva Convention on the conduct of war. These violations were alleged to have occurred in the course of NATO attacks upon Serbia during 1999, operations which were undertaken to persuade the Yugoslav Government to comply with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1160, 1199 and 1203. These resolutions had required Yugoslavia's withdrawal from the province of Kosovo. During enforcement operations conducted from 24 March to 8 June 1999 NATO was alleged to have breached the Convention by using cluster bombs, and by attacking civilians, residential areas, and non-military targets. Ironically, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other Yugoslav Serbs have themselves since been indicted by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, also for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In this case these crimes were allegedly committed against the Kosovo Albanians. A situation such as the collapse of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is one fraught with dangers and difficulties for the international community. Not least of the difficulties have been legal, including the prosecution of political and military leaders by international courts. As with the trial of Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie case, the development of rules and procedures of international criminal trials have been influenced more by political considerations than by legal. But we can say with some confidence that an international criminal legal system is slowly developing. This is consistent with a growing sophistication in public international law, originally confined to state-to-state relations. It was unusual to prosecute war leaders in international courts, but they were always liable to sanctions of some kind, however ineffective. Perhaps more problematic however is the question whether the Serbian public prosecutor had a good case. Was NATO guilty of war crimes? The most serious war crime was traditionally levying war without just cause. Although the basis of Serbia's action against NATO and the allies was more narrowly focused, alleging the illegal use of cluster bombs, and attacking civilians, residential areas, and non-military targets, the whole basis of NATO's actions may possibly be challenged. For most purposes, the law of war may be divided into two parts: the legitimacy of the resort to force, and the rules governing the conduct of hostilities, often called jus ad bellum and jus in bello respectively. Both changed markedly in the course of the twentieth century. This paper will consider the broader question of whether NATO's actions in attacking Yugoslavia were lawful (jus ad bellum). It will also look briefly at some of the legal ramifications of the more recent USA-led global war on terrorism, which also raises questions of the legality of the use of force in non-traditional military operations. The narrower question of a breach of the laws of war, by attacking civilian targets (jus in bello), will be left to other writers.

Military Medicine's Role Continues in Bosnia

IT APPEARS that US military medicine will be at work in Bosnia-Herzegovina beyond the 1-year stay, originally expected to end December 20,1996, that had been announced for American troops participating in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) peace-enforcement effort. Some 5000 US soldiers moved into the former Yugoslavia last month from bases in Germany. This, the Pentagon says, is the covering force for withdrawal of 15 800 US military people, many of whom were in place December 20,1995, when the 52000-troop NATO force assumed the peace-enforcement duties from the United Nations ( JAMA . 1996;275:24). The new arrivals are expected to stay until mid-March 1997, although some diplomats contend that NATO forces will have to remain in the region for at least 2 more years if the civil war is not to resume. Military physicians are watching the newcomers closely until they acclimatize, because the tick season does not end until later

NATO after Iraq: Out of sector, or out of business?

Abstract : The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has survived many Cold War crises over the past forty-one years, only to be faced with the most crucial test to Alliance solidarity: The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the effect of the War in the Gulf. This paper examines the future of NATO in light of these two cataclysmic events. It is the author's thesis that unless NATO accepts the out-of-area mission for its military forces, it will become a hollow shell and collapse upon itself. The method of analysis is simple and direct: First, demonstrate that there is historical precedent for NATO military forces being employed out-of-sector; second, review the basic NATO charter to ensure that it does not expressly prohibit NATO forces operating out of the Central Region; third, illustrate that Germany's Basic Law does not prohibit their military forces from being deployed out of the Central Region; and finally, persuade the reader that no European only organization (WEU, EC, or CSCE) could handle this out-of-area mission.

The preparation of high-purity iron on a large laboratory scale

To get a clear epidemiological picture of cutaneous leishmaniasis in a new endemic focus, in order to address the most probable epidemic threats and its spread to the neighboring regions.A total of 870 clinically diagnosed patients were included in the study after taking consent and filling questionnaires from each individual. The field Giemsa-stained slides and cultures were examined microscopically. The data was organized in tables and graphs and analyzed using statistical package SPSS V 21.The ratio of male was higher than females (499:371), cutaneous and mucocutaneous cases were 96.00% and 4.00%, and only 25.20% patient's used bed nets. A total of 57.10% had dirty places near their homes. Similar cases in the neighborhood and in families were 48.50% and 67.10% respectively. Only 87.35 % of Patients in the age range of 1–20 years received treatment. Up to five lesions per individual were noticed and 72.20% of them had symptomatic secondary infections. The lesions were observed on different sites of the body.Leishmaniasis is neglected in Landi Kotal Khyber Agency, the reasons being prevailing security situations and political sensitivity. North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan are in contact with Afghanis and with local people of Landi Kotal for logistic purposes. They may act as carriers in co-spreading of the species. There are potential risks of cross border transmission, with the probability of future epidemics in the surrounding regions.