Rational beliefs - inconsistent practices: Civil military Coordination in North-Afghanistan
Doctoral thesis
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/301697Utgivelsesdato
2014-09-10Metadata
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- PhD theses (SV-IMS) [19]
Originalversjon
Rational beliefs - inconsistent practices: Civil military Coordination in North-Afghanistan by Lillian Katarina Stene, Stavanger : University of Stavanger, 2014 (PhD thesis UiS, no. 230)Sammendrag
What was the idea?
Coordination is a vital element of crisis management (Turner, 1978; Minear et
al., 1992; Schneider, 1995; Rasmussen, 1997; Strand, 2003; Boin et al., 2005;
Kruke and Olsen, 2005; Keen, 2008). The coordination between civil and
military actors is especially crucial and complicated if the crisis is
characterized by political (military), economic, and social conflict, as
displayed in Afghanistan.
Civil and military actors have different organizational cultures, standard
operating procedures, aims and priorities. Still, they are often forced to
coordinate in order to perform their humanitarian, political and military tasks
in joint efforts to assist the local populations in a complex emergency.
To manage this coordination, the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) in North-Afghanistan operated under three concepts: the
Comprehensive Approach (CA), Counterinsurgency (COIN), and the NATO
civil-military coordination (CIMIC) doctrine. These three approaches, to some
extent, overlapped, to some extent were contradictory, but most important;
they were differently understood and implemented with various levels of
success.
ISAF, as a powerful military actor in Afghanistan, consists of many high
qualified and capable soldiers at all levels. The question is whether it is
possible for such an organization as ISAF to handle crisis management under
the guidance of these coordination concepts and the broad mandates
operational in Afghanistan?
To enlighten this, the structures and processes in ISAF organization are
studied in order to assess how these structures/ processes influenced the civil
military coordination in the field. With the aim of contributing to the
enhanced knowledge about civil military coordination, I put forth the
following research question:
- How do ISAF structures and processes influence civil military
coordination in North Afghanistan?
In the analysis I have applied theories of security and the new wars, complex
emergencies and, in particular, organizational theories with a basis in
bureaucracy-theory and new-institutional perspectives. The rationale behind
this choice was that military organizations are normally viewed as
representatives of rational bureaucratic organizations, having structures and
processes that characterize rational organizations (Weber, 1971; Banfield,
1959; Lindblom, 1959). The new-institutional perspective is meant to be a
tool to explain the shortcomings of rationally built organizations and the
influence of the surrounding environment (Greenwood et al., 2008; Meyer and
Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Further, the use of Turner
(1976/1978) and Turner and Pigeon’s (1997) theories of man-made disasters
enlighten the crisis management perspective.
What was done?
To be able to understand and collect genuine data about ISAF’s influence on
civil military coordination, it was essential to get personal experiences from
the field. After attending pre-deployment courses I was sent to North
Afghanistan as a CIMIC officer, doing participant-observer research for a
seven month fieldwork. Back home, the data was systematized and followed
up the year after by a new field work in the same operation area, then in the
role of a declared researcher, for enhanced data collection based on interviews
and meetings.
As a CIMIC officer I followed the ISAF “project factory” in North-
Afghanistan. The “project factory” were local, regional or national ongoing
projects characterized by military involvement and extensive civil military
coordination, - through which I studied many parallel processes. I did not
have the opportunity to follow any of these projects from planning to
implementation and evaluation, as projects at this level often were ongoing for
years, and my deployment represented seven months in line with the military
rotation system. Consequently, to many ISAF officers including myself, these
projects represented “a running train” in which one had to jump on and off on
the way. Still, the processes in the six projects in which I participated became
vital sources of information in my data collection.
After getting a picture of ISAF structure and processes during my first fieldwork,
I focused more on the understanding and interpretation of ISAF
mandate and civil military concepts in the second follow up field-work. Civil
and military personnel representing three levels were interviewed: ISAF Joint
Command (IJC) in Kabul, the subordinated Regional Command North (RCN)
in nearby Mazar-e Sharif and the RCN subordinated Provincial
Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), representing many countries, stationed in
different provinces. Also document analysis, meetings, discussions and field
conversations contributed to my data collection.
What came out of it?
By studying ISAF organization in North Afghanistan, influential aspects to
civil military coordination became apparent.
It is essential to acknowledge the importance of cultural awareness and
understanding of the context in a so-called “out of area” operation such as the
one ISAF conducted in Afghanistan. Moreover, the Western way of conflict
management based on Western logic, rationality, expectations, and traditions
might not be appropriate. One also needs to acknowledge the difference
between civilian and military actors.
As experienced in the studied projects military tend to be action-minded with
a high sense of responsibility and control. This might result in narrower
thinking in line with their own training and experience for accomplishing a
mission with a specific, usually short timeline. Civilian actors, even though
they are very varied, more often have a long term perspective and focus on the
local structures and processes. Successful, sustainable projects presuppose
local ownership, which mostly requires a long term perspective. Accordingly,
when military actors are engaged in the civilian sphere as presupposed in the
overall civil military coordination concepts applicable for ISAF, this requires
a long term perspective, consistency, and clear lines of role performance and
responsibility.
This was not the case. ISAF displayed internal diversity in preparedness,
priorities, and policy. The practice of ISAF civil-military coordination did not
ensure local ownership of projects, as they were mostly ISAF planned and
executed, within a strict timeline.
An important source of ISAF coordination problems were the unclear civil
military concepts of CA, COIN and CIMIC or Civil Affairs doctrine. The
concepts were differently understood, prioritized, and interpreted in different
NATO and non-NATO ISAF participating nations, as well as on the different
ISAF organizational levels, being well known in upper headquarters and more
or less unknown or ignored out in the field. Besides, this diversity of
interpretation of the concepts also led to organizational inconsistency,
hampering appropriate coordination with the local environment and other
actors presupposed for an appropriate crisis management. The ISAF
inconsistency gave a picture of an organization with many nuances which
coordinating actors found difficult to read.
Findings show how ISAF, an intended rational bureaucratic organization, was
faced with diversity and inconsistency in organizational structures, as well as
training, planning, and role performance. Accordingly, ISAF strove to keep
the needed unity of effort that characterizes a functional military organization.
Structural problems such as a very top heavy organization, different organized
headquarters, and multiple reporting lines influenced and complicated civil
military coordination processes in general, as well as in the planning and
execution of projects.
Military planning and decision-making processes were exigent, with no
overall clear end-state1 or aim to measure the activity against and the multiple
reporting lines complicating the information and communication processes.
Besides, the vague and broad ISAF mandate gave plenty of room for varied
interpretation and practice.
Additionally, internal coordination were hampered by different national
policies and trainings before mission, as well as the fact that ISAFparticipating
nations had different national caveats that blocked the unity of
effort as well as an efficient command and control structure.
1 End state is a military term used in this thesis, meaning the set of required conditions that defines achievement of the Commanders’ objectives.
Findings also indicate that theories like rational and new-institutional
organization theories are applicable when analyzing the military structures,
processes, and role performance, and how this affects civil military
coordination. Nevertheless, the most important contribution of this thesis is
empirical, composed as it is of a data collection that would have been very
difficult to achieve without being on the inside of the organization.
This research shows how important it is to make clear distinction between
civilian and military responsibilities, in time and space, if and when military
is involved in civilian projects. If military actors are engaged in civil military
coordination tasks and projects they should not be a subject to the same logic
of action as the kinetic units. Further, if military is supposed to keep security,
a more strict and joint military command and control system, as well as a
more specific defined concept of action and tasks is necessary.
Beskrivelse
PhD thesis in Risk management and societal safety