POST-MORTEM OF A HALF-HEARTED SECURITY OPERATION

 

#41 Operational “Caveat Cancer” in Afghanistan:

The Development of the Caveat Crisis in the NATO-led ISAF Mission,

OPLAN Phases I-II

 

– Dr Regeena Kingsley

 

* This blog is a revised excerpt taken from Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014), entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012.”

 

‘By all accounts, the expansion of NATO into southern Afghanistan is unencumbered by national caveats, but this should be the rule rather than the exception (emphasis added).’ [1]

– Julio Miranda Calha, General Rapporteur to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, ‘Draft General Report: Lessons Learned from NATO’s Current Operations’, 2006

 ‘NATO would be more effective if every contingent had no politically imposed restrictions.’ [2]

– D. Auerswald & S. Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone, 2014

 

The Global Importance of the War in Afghanistan & its ‘Mission Success’

In an earlier background blog, ‘#29 BACKGROUND – The NATO-led ISAF Operation in Afghanistan: Purpose, Mission, Characteristics, Genesis, Leadership & NATO Responsibility for Mission Success’, I provided an introduction to the military-civilian International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation that was authorised and prosecuted by the international community to bring security and stability to Afghanistan.

The ISAF operation took place in the wake of the Al-Qaeda “9/11” terrorist attacks against multiple targets in the American homeland in September 2001, and the subsequent punitive United States-led multinational war campaign called Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which was waged by a reactive and justice-seeking Coalition of Willing Nations or ‘Coalition of the Willing’.  OEF removed from power the Islamic Extremist, terrorism-supporting, xenophobic and Pashtun-fascist, politically totalitarian, and socially tyrannical Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who:

(1) had supported and enabled the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States of America by giving the core cell of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network sanctuary for many years within Afghan sovereign borders (along with many other regional and global terrorist groups); and

(2) after the 9/11 terrorist attacks had refused to be just and hand over to the American government Al-Qaeda’s leader, the mass-terrorist Osama bin Laden, for legal prosecution as a ‘mass-murderer through non-discriminate, politico-religious, and lethal acts of violent terrorism against nearly 3,000 innocent civilians’ of many ethnicities and nationalities, who had been living and working in two large and principal cities of America on that terrible black day in world history.

The Taliban fighting force was never a truly native, Afghan or ‘Khorasani’ group of fighters, formed by or from among the native inhabitants of the ancient land of Khorasan in Central-South Asia. They were in fact a Pakistan-created, Pakistan-manned, Pakistan-trained and armed, and largely Pakistan-controlled ‘proxy’ militia group.  The Taliban was once one of many tiny and unknown Pashtun groups of Islamist learners or students, studying under a village cleric Mullah Omar, and situated in the Maiwand region outside Kandahar (nearly all graduates from Dictator Zia’s Pakistani Madrassah schools, which had been deliberately established by Zia during the 1980s to radicalise Pakistani Pashtuns into extremist Islamists before entering government, intelligence or military service).

However, with Pakistan’s critical involvement, recruitment, guidance, and assistance, this tiny Taliban group of students was massively strengthened with both fighting men and materiel, and enabled to militarily conquer Afghanistan during the years 1994-1996, in order to promote and secure Pakistan’s – not Afghanistan’s – national interests in its neighbour Afghanistan and in the Central Asian region.  The Pakistan-enabled Taliban advance caused the collapse and northern retreat of the truly native, interim, pro-democracy and anti-terrorist Rabbani-Massoud government in Kabul, led by the university-educated and world-famous Tajik, Ahmad Shah Massoud (the so-called “Lion of Panjshir”). After three years of civil war after the Soviet Withdrawal from 1989-1992, Massoud’s native government had been successfully working with all the in-fighting Mujahideen groups to restore peace, security and stability to Afghanistan’s war-weary population nationwide – but was viewed with distaste in Islamabad as being ‘too independent of Pakistan’ for furthering their uses or interests in the region. Following Pakistan’s victory over its neighbour Afghanistan, and having already declared their village cleric the ‘Caliph/Emperor of Islam’ worldwide, the newly-installed Paki-Taliban government enforced Mullah Omar’s own severe interpretation of Islam on the native people of the conquered land, and had then harshly and savagely ruled the Afghan population for just over five years from September 1996 – December 2001.

[For more information on Pakistan’s role in creating the Taliban ‘Students’ movement, in subsequently enabling it to seize power in Afghanistan, and in introducing the Taliban to Al-Qaeda leading to the Taliban government transforming Afghanistan into a ‘terrorist university, training ground and safe-haven for cash’, and thereby causing Afghanistan to become the global ‘Ground Zero for Terrorism’ in the world, refer to blog ‘#28 BACKGROUND – Afghanistan: The Land, its Diverse Ethnic Peoples & the Pashtun Taliban’.]

When the U.S.-led Coalition of the Willing militarily ousted the terrorist-sheltering Taliban regime, it had simultaneously created a power-vacuum in a war-torn, under-developed, impoverished, famished, drug-addicted, and terrorised country, whose people had not experienced any true peace or prosperity since the Communist Soviet invasion of 1979.  In order to address this problem, the ISAF entity was created on 5 December 2001 at the international conference held in Bonn, Germany.  The Bonn Conference was convened to initiate the process of (a) rebuilding Afghanistan into a stable, native, free, Islamic, democratic, multi-ethnic, and pluralist State, that was at peace with itself, its own regional neighbours, and the international community of Nation-States at large, and (b) of implementing reconstruction and development so that the new Afghan State and its Afghan society could function better for the modern and technologically-sophisticated era, and the people have better access to the basic necessities of human life such as water, food, power, healthcare, medicine, and the reading and writing skills needed for literacy, as well as to doctors, nurses, teachers, agriculture and horticulture specialists, and other specialist advisers, in addition to telecommunications and internet access to the wider world, within this miserable, poor and backward, ‘Medieval-era’ country.

Although the ISAF mission slowly evolved over time, from an initial security assistance and reconstruction operation limited to the capital city of Kabul and its surrounding Kabul Province from 2001, to a fully-fledged Counter-Insurgency (COIN) war nationwide across the entire sovereign territory of Afghanistan from 2007, the principal goal or mission objective of the operation remained the same: to bring security and stability to Afghanistan in support of the successive, national governments of Afghanistan (including an Interim Government, subsequently a royally-convened,  elder-appointed, ‘Loya Jirga’ Transitional Government, and then successive democratically-elected and population-representative Sovereign Governments), in partnership with indigenous Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), comprised of native, recruited, trained, armed, combat-capable and educated army, air force, special forces, police, and border guard personnel.

As the military entity with command leadership and majority ownership of the ISAF mission ever since August 2003, the North American-European collective security organisation known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) had the largest stake in, and the greatest responsibility for, (1) the effective prosecution of the mission and (2) attaining mission success in Afghanistan.  According to NATO, and as articulated in a collective NATO communiqué from all the NATO Heads of State and Heads of Government after the Bucharest Summit of 2008, “mission success” was nobly defined as the following:

‘Our vision of success is clear: extremism and terrorism will no longer pose a threat to stability; Afghan National Security Forces will be in the lead and self-sufficient; and the Afghan Government will be able to extend the reach of good governance, reconstruction, and development throughout the country to the benefit of all its citizens.’[i]

The stakes were high. The NATO-led mission was of extreme and critical importance in the Global War on Terror post-9/11 for deterring further Afghanistan-based terrorist attacks on America or other Nation-States and freedom-loving peoples around the world. Moreover, the outcome of the ISAF operation would have a significant bearing on NATO itself as a collective security organisation: both in terms of (1) its post-Cold War quest for ‘relevance’ and ‘transformation’ in the modern security environment, following the ideological, practical and inevitable failure and collapse of its foundational enemy in the American-European region – the  Communist Soviet Union; and (2) its future aspirations to become a global Peace Support Operation (PSO) operator of modern, multinational, military missions in contemporary global security affairs, outside its own traditional American-European region and beyond collective-security defensive operations only, including in the successful prosecution of Counter-Insurgency (COIN) campaigns in the post-9/11 era of terrorism-waged ‘Islamic-Extremist Global Insurgency’ in multiple world regions.

The ISAF mission in Afghanistan, then, was a crucial test of the NATO organisation – most explicitly a test of NATO’s actual, practical, tangible, real-world, collective ability to effectively and successfully wage war together in a modern security conflict of the 2000s and 2010s, and thereby prove its ‘fit-for-purpose’ qualities and credentials for pursuing its own grandiose, global and truly extra-Charter ‘Treaty+’ aspirations since 1991.

To achieve its aim of mission success in Afghanistan (and therefore NATO’s own success organisationally and globally), NATO developed an Operational Plan (OPLAN) comprised of five phases, during the progression of which, the entirety of the Afghan State would be slowly but surely secured, stabilised and transitioned from NATO control back to full, native and sovereign, Afghan political and military control throughout the entire State Area of Operations (AO).  This NATO OPLAN included the phases of: (I) Assessment and Preparation; (II) Geographic Expansion; (III) Stabilisation; and (IV) Transition, prior to the final planned phase of (V) Redeployment of NATO and Partner forces out of the Afghan theatre of conflict. [For more information on the 2003 NATO OPLAN and its five planned phases for the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, refer to the ISAF background blog: ‘#30 BACKGROUND – NATO’s Operational Plan (OPLAN) for ISAF Mission Success in Afghanistan, 2003-2014’.]

 

Caveats: The Black Fly in the ISAF Ointment

However, as also revealed in previous NATO military missions, there was a large black fly contaminating the NATO organisation’s ointment in Afghanistan.

In a previous blog ‘#33 The Problem of “National Caveats” in NATO Operations around the World, 1996-2016’, I introduced the recurring and persistent habit of NATO Member-States imposing severe and wide-ranging ‘national caveat’ constraints on the national forces they have each deployed to take part in NATO missions. This new and alarming ‘caveat habit’ has plagued the proper function and effectiveness of NATO missions – as well as United Nations missions – over a sustained period of three decades, ever since the end of the Cold War Confrontation in 1991 and the subsequent start of multiple, inter-ethnic, civil conflicts in formerly Communist and tightly-controlled areas around the world. These restrictive and obstructive Rules of Engagement (ROE) have appeared whenever and wherever NATO nations have deployed military forces to take part in NATO military missions around the world, in the interest of safeguarding regional or global security, such as in ground operations in Bosnia and Kosovo in the region of the Balkans*, in naval operations in the region around Somalia off the coast of East Africa, in aerial operations in the skies over Libya in the region of North Africa, and most notoriously in Stability, Security and Counter-Insurgency operations in the skies, deserts, fields and mountains of Afghanistan in the region of Central-South Asia.

[ *The Balkans located between Hungary, Italy and Greece arguably also being part of Europe – if  the region of “Europe” is judged to consist of all of the many lands, people-nations and their protective Nation-State entities (see the section ‘Understanding Russia’s Military Actions in Georgia & Ukraine since 2008’ in NATO Appendix: The ‘Ukraine NATO Membership & Nuclear Missile Crisis’) located North-South between the Norwegian Sea and Mediterranean to Aegian Seas on the one hand, and West-East from the east coast of the Atlantic Ocean across the European Alps and the Danube Basin to the west coast of the Black Sea on the other. Although it is important to emphasise that at the time of these NATO interventions the peoples and territories involved did not at all qualify for nor possess the full protected status of an official Member-State in the 1949 NATO Collective Security Alliance for collective defence and peace from war in the Americas and Europe following World War II.]

With regard to the ISAF operation in Afghanistan specifically, which operated for thirteen years between 2001-2014 following the overthrow of the Taliban regime post-9/11, it was demonstrated through numbers, figures, tables, graphs and maps how the issue of national caveat limitation and prohibition rules, imposed by the majority of national governments on the ROE of their respective ISAF national force contingents, posed a continuous and unresolved impediment to the proper function and effectiveness of a variety of ISAF combat and security force units operating in this extremely important security and stability mission in global security affairs.

In short, the internal and enduring caveat issue threw the ISAF Coalition and mission into a ‘Caveat Crisis’. Namely, the crisis of a voluntary Coalition of Willing Nations, operating in the conflict theatre of terrorised and war-torn Afghanistan, striving hard against severe Islamic Extremist opposition to attain lofty ‘Security Assistance’ goals, through the means of a Multinational Force (MNF) instrument comprised of diverse and differing national military contingents, which was, in fact, profoundly compromised and undermined by the reality that these force contingents were overwhelmingly and counter-productively controlled and fettered in all their security and stability tasking and operations by government-imposed limitation and prohibition ROE, which rendered the majority of ISAF national contingents in the MNF both inflexible and ineffective.

Indeed, it is an undeniable and tragic fact that government-imposed caveats proved to be a highly frustrating, embarrassing and deleterious hinderance and obstacle to effective Security Assistance operations in Afghanistan for the duration of this UN-mandated, NATO-led and vitally important global security mission, from the very genesis of the multinational ISAF operation in December 2001 until its complete termination thirteen long and bloody years later in December 2014.

This and the following blog will now provide further analysis on the ISAF’s Caveat Crisis by providing a description of the way in which the mission’s “caveat problem” developed over the course of the mission, increasing in both scope and severity as the operation progressed through the four fundamental phases of NATO’s Operational Plan (OPLAN) for the Afghan mission.  As one may see by this overview, the issue of heavy caveat restraints not only endured, but also grew larger and more alarming with each operational progression of the Afghan mission. In fact, national caveat imposition on national force contingents became the ISAF’s most severe internal problem within both the ISAF Coalition and the ISAF Multinational Force as a whole, developing much like a politico-military disease or an ‘operational cancer’ across the ISAF mission, in terms of both geography and time as the OPLAN phases progressed. A disease which, not surprisingly, produced tangibly negative effects on the effectiveness, timely prosecution, and success of the entire Security Assistance mission in Afghanistan, in this crucial conflict theatre in the Global War on Terrorism following 9/11.

This blog will begin by examining the caveat problem in the ISAF mission during the first two phases of the OPLAN, which took place over a period of five years between December 2001 – December 2006.

[For a table charting the imposition or lifting of national caveats among the ISAF’s Troop Contributing Nations (TCNs) during each phase, please refer to ‘WAR ON TERROR: ISAF APPENDIX 4 – Table Displaying the Complete Record of National Caveat Imposition Among the ISAF Troop Contributing Nations (TCNs) in Totality, August 2003 – December 2012’].

National Caveats:

‘Limitation’ and ‘Prohibition’ Rules of Engagement (ROE)

 

Rules of Engagement are formed, imposed and enforced to govern the lethal activities of national armed force contingents, while they are conducting military operations abroad in the name of their government and State. Rules of Engagement contain precise and classified instructions from government to national armed forces on exactly when (use of force) and how (degree of force) they may employ lethal force against the armed ‘hostile’ or ‘Enemy’ forces, while deployed and performing military tasks or missions towards specific mission or operational objectives. 

 

Since each set of Rules of Engagement (ROE) is considered, selected and approved individually in reference to a specific mission or operational environment, and are likewise drafted by military and political personnel with due and diligent deference and respect for all the State’s own national legal obligations under the body of international law concerned with war known as the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), nearly all Rules of Engagement are – or ought to be – ‘green-light’ rules that authorise lethal force to be initiated and sustained by national forces in a number of lawful circumstances, and in multiple lawful and approved ways, in accordance with the objectives of the mission or campaign.

 

“National caveats” or “national exceptions” are additional limitation and prohibition rules that the government has added to the ROE instructions governing the lethal activities of their soldiers, sailors and pilots conducting missions. Caveat rules impose added constraints or restrictions on the lawful use of force, and are often the result of political rather than military criteria and considerations (operational ”red tape”). These politically-derived national caveats can significantly affect the contingent’s flexibility, manoeuvrability and effectiveness, and also impact dramatically upon how national forces can be used by their National Commander, and the Operational Commander of a Multinational Operation, while deployed and operating within a multinational security mission.

 

Within the military, caveats may be imposed across the full spectrum of armed forces – on naval, air, infantry and elite Special Operations Forces (SOFs).  Caveats may also be imposed to constrain the activities of civilian officials involved in reconstruction, development, governance and humanitarian assistance work.  In this way, governments can enforce national caveats to constrict or curtail the activities and functions of both national security and stability forces deployed to a Multinational Operation (MNO).

 

A limitation caveat, also known as a ‘yellow-card’ ROE rule, requires the National Commander of a deployed unit to apply for and obtain explicit approval and authorisation from the government in the home capital before that unit can participate in a task, operation or geographical movement requested of it from Operational Command in theatre.  In most cases, this government permission must be sought and obtained from the relevant Minister or Secretary of Defence, or in the case of civilian personnel the Minister of Foreign Affairs or Secretary of State. But the caveat may often also involve seeking and acquiring permission from the Head of Government as well, the Prime Minister or President of the Nation-State. When a permission-request becomes necessary due to a national contingent’s caveat restraints, the National Commander at Operational Headquarters will display his ‘yellow card’ to the Operational Commander pending an affirmative or negative response from his or her government in the home Capital. The waiting time involved in this permission process can amount to just a few hours, to 24 hours, to a number of days, or – in the worst and most frustrating cases – up to a whole week, 10 days, or even longer. In the latter cases, and to the great embarrassment of the deployed national contingent and especially its National Commanding Officer, by the time the National Commander receives a response from his or her government, the time-dependent ‘window of opportunity’ for the actual execution of the requested security task, especially in a fluid and rapidly evolving security environment such as in wartime, may have already lapsed or closed, and the task become far too late or even impossible to undertake.

 

By contrast, a prohibition caveat, also known as a ‘red-card’ ROE rule, is a complete ban.  National military forces are forbidden by their own governments from participating in certain tasks, operations, movements, sorties, patrols, communications, surveillance, intelligence-gathering, or intelligence-sharing during the course of their deployment in theatre. Certain lawful tactics, lawful weapons, and even ‘the use of lethal force’ itself (i.e. firing weapons to kill ‘hostile’ or ‘Enemy’ human targets) may actually also be prohibited by government within the multinational military operation. The use of lethal force (a.k.a. ‘killing the killers’ or ‘to kill or be killed’) may be banned even when military forces are deployed and operating in an active and deadly warzone, or may be minimised and restricted by governments for use only in reactive ‘self-defence’ scenarios, rather than for broader and more traditional or normal use in proactive ‘mission accomplishment’ scenarios in pursuit of operational objectives (e.g. the proactive and offensive lethal force used by Free Allied Forces fighting against Nazi German Forces in Europe, in order to liberate European States from the Aggressive and Expansionist German ‘Reich’ or ‘Empire’ during WWII).  Upon any request by the mission’s Operational Commander for national forces to conduct any of these forbidden security tasks, the representative and delegated National Commander at Headquarters is obligated by military law to obey his or her own civilian political masters in government in the Capital of the home country. He or she must refuse or deny each and every one of these requests from Operational Headquarters in the conflict theatre, and by way of proof will typically display his government-issued ‘red card’ to the Operational Commander (to the incalculable chagrin of one or even both parties involved).

 

In this way, government-imposed ‘yellow-card’ limitation and ‘red-card’ prohibition ROE ‘caveats’ together present a terrible hinderance, roadblock, or ‘brake’ on military sorties and missions being devised or enacted by military servants in active conflict theatres, in pursuit of an overall operational goal set collectively by their political masters. They are a form of often unnecessary – and even invasive – political overreach and micromanagement in the military sphere of activity (the art and science of lawful lethal warfare). They blunt, retard and weigh-down ‘tip of the spear’ military forces, rendering them less robust and less flexible while simultaneously more clunky and more ineffective. And all of this to the regrettable and visible detriment of their own countries and forces, the countries, forces and civilians of other States, of various needed military missions, and of the Multinational Operation or war campaign as a whole.

 

National caveat rules are also a source of real and personal vexation, frustration and anger for military commanders of all levels, who are involved in the planning and/or execution (‘Command and Control’) of important military missions on the ground, on the sea or in the air, where the success of the operation – and the lives of many – are equally at stake, but are being needlessly and heedlessly jeopardised, sacrificed or lost by short-sighted political decisions made by politicians in the home capitals of participating countries.

 

In short, the presence of national caveat fetters on military forces, employed in the lawful use of lethal force in conflict zones, often mark and designate the difference between a Nation-State determinedly ‘waging war’ or a Nation-State half-heartedly and hesitantly ‘playing at war’ in national and global security affairs.

 

Phase I – ‘Assessment and Preparation’ (Dec. 2001 – Nov. 2003)

The issue of national caveats within the ISAF operation first appeared within only months of the genesis of the ISAF, as 4,000 forces drawn from 17 nations deployed to Kabul Province.[3]  Many of these nations were NATO-members, several of which had also assisted the U.S. in the overthrow of the Taliban during the earlier ‘Coalition of the Willing’ OEF military operation.  From this point of time until November 2003, the mission was in its first operational phase Assessment and Preparation, a period during which the ISAF was to assess the security situation on the ground in Afghanistan and prepare to expand the mission throughout Afghanistan.

 By the end of 2002 it became clear that caveat imposition was widespread amongst the various national contingents based in Kabul, equating to some 5,000 troops drawn from 22 countries.[4]  In November critics began to decry this ‘maze’ of national caveats on the multinational ISAF force contingents, which they claimed were restricting the activities of ISAF members’ forces and were thereby limiting the ISAF coalition’s effectiveness.[5]  

ISAF’s RC-Capital: The command sector of Kabul Province, commanded by Lead Nations France, Turkey & Italy on the basis of rotation.[6]

To illustrate, some of these caveats forbade any involvement of national forces with the parallel OEF operation taking place alongside the ISAF operation in the eastern parts of the country.[7]  Other caveats concerned limitations on any movement of national forces within one kilometre of the Pakistan border or prohibited any ‘cross-border activity’ across the Durrand Line.[8] 

Most prevalent of all, however, were caveats which forbade national forces from being deployed outside of Kabul Province at all, or even outside certain suburbs or ‘assigned patches’ of Kabul City.[9]  NATO officials complained that this refusal reduced the ability of the ISAF ‘to respond to incidents on the ground’ in Kabul Province.[10]

In addition to Area of Operations (AO) caveats, moreover, some governments had imposed restrictions singular to that nation alone.  One nation, for instance, banned the participation of national forces in missions where they might be required to operate alongside ‘an historical rival’.[11]  A number of countries also prohibited participation in riot-control operations (a caveat also widespread in NATO’s KFOR Operation in Kosovo, which would lead to NATO’s inadequate response during the security crisis one year later), or indeed from using riot control agents such as tear gas.[12]

In addition to these caveat prohibitions, most ISAF force contingents were also bound by their governments to engage in conducting certain tasks only if permission had been sought and obtained from their respective capitals beforehand.[13]  This permission process was not only slow and laborious, a reality that cost precious time and slowed down reaction times for the COMISAF and ISAF HQ, but also the end-result was often a negative response.[14]  The Canadian contingent, in particular, went on record as one of the worst performers during Phase I with regard to this permission process. 

Views over Kabul City, the location of ISAF Headquarters.[15]

Firstly, Canadian National Commanders were given ‘very limited discretion’ so that permission had to be obtained for a variety of operations.[16]  In 2002-2003, for instance, Canadian National Commanders had to ‘call home’ to ask permission to conduct any mission ‘that might risk collateral damage’, or had ‘the potential for lethal force’, or wherever significant casualties or strategic failure might be a possibility in the mission (see endnote).[17]  As Auerswald & Saideman state: ‘This essentially meant a phone call home anytime the battle group was to leave the base since collateral damage is always a possibility when hundreds of soldiers move out’.[18] 

Secondly, the Canadian contingent held the unenviable status of being among the slowest of all the ISAF force contingents to respond to COMISAF mission requests ‘sometimes taking up to 24 hours or more’.[19] 

Thirdly, all Canadian forces – whether ground, air or Special Operations Forces (SOF) forces – operated under some of the strictest caveats in the ISAF, a status also shared by the French and German contingents.[20]  Indeed, according to one Canadian National Commander, COL Pat Stogran deployed to Kabul Province in 2002, Canadian caveats were so strict in these early years that he reportedly:

Feared that these conditions would dangerously restrict the ability to act when necessary, [and] that micromanagement from home might create a disaster akin to events in Bosnia and Rwanda where officers had to stand by and watch war crimes take place’…Stogran considered these restrictions to be not only unnecessary but perhaps even dangerous. Indeed, Stogran had prepared himself and his officers for the possibility that he might have to act beyond his authority if it meant stopping mass killings. Luckily, he never had to face that situation. [21]

RC-Capital Badge: The badge of ISAF Forces in Regional Command Capital.[22]

Apart from the widespread imposition of these restrictions, in addition to the range they encompassed, and the time taken by commanders to manoeuvre around them, the caveat issue within the ISAF was exacerbated by the fact that all of these caveats remained secret and classified by national governments, and were neither written nor declared to the COMISAF commanding the mission.  This state of affairs continued even after the end of Phase I, into NATO’s successive operational phases. For example, in 2004 national caveats still remained secret and undeclared to the NATO-appointed ISAF Operational Commander, at that time Canadian COMISAF Lt Gen. Rich Hillier, and therefore existed in unknown quantities of numbers on ISAF forces.

As a result of this secrecy, the content of each of the caveats imposed on national contingents in Kabul  was discovered only haphazardly, as the COMISAF was denied the use of certain contingents by that contingent’s National Commander vested with the ‘red card’.  Even in instances where senior NATO commanders were able to work out contingents’ caveats based on these red-card refusals, in addition to experience working alongside national force contingents in other NATO operations (for instance, KFOR), the reality of having to manage ISAF forces in the light of so many constraints was extremely tiresome.  As one deputy COMISAF of this period later commented, working around these caveats was ‘extraordinarily frustrating’.[23]  

The result was that ISAF COMISAFs began to rank national contingents as belonging to one of three ‘tiers’ of countries based on their caveat restrictions, ranked according to both their level of flexibility and their ability to respond to security events. [24]

 

Phase II – ‘Geographic Expansion’ (Dec. 2003 – Dec. 2006)

The ISAF’s caveat dilemma only deepened over the course of the following years, during which time NATO instituted its second phase of the NATO OPLAN, Phase II – Geographic Expansion. 

This second phase was to take place in four stages, corresponding to geographical thrusts northwards, westwards, southwards and eastwards from Kabul Province, renamed to RC-Capital. During these geographical expansions the ISAF coalition would take command of the four other large command sectors within Afghanistan, at that time still commanded by American OEF forces.  However, while the expansions seemed to consolidate the NATO-led ISAF’s authority and prestige as a multinational military security mission, in terms of national caveats, the four expansions actually served to highlight – even worsen – the ISAF’s caveat plight.

Expanding Northwards & Westwards

First of all, in December 2003 NATO had commenced the first stage of ISAF expansion northwards from Kabul Province, to take command of nine new Afghan provinces by the end of October 2004. The new sector was to be known as Regional Command-North (RC-North) and was commanded by Lead Nation Germany with ground forces supplied from Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Hungary.[25]  While operationally the expansion was a large step forward for the ISAF, in terms of caveats the northern expansion had resulted in a worsening of the ISAF’s caveat situation as the same restrictions on activities experienced in RC-Capital began to reappear in the ISAF’s new northern sector.

RC-North: Close crop of ISAF’s RC-North, commanded by Lead Nation Germany.[26]

Indeed, alarm and concern over ISAF national caveats were once again soon raised within the international community.  According to U.S. Ambassador Robert L. Barry, for instance, not only had these northern ISAF forces not ‘deployed as fast and strong as we had hoped’, on the one hand, but they had deployed with caveats, on the other hand, which focused them on reconstruction and their own ‘force protection’ at the expense of their other assigned security tasks.[27]  Furthermore, the most restrictive caveats of all were imposed by RC-North’s own Lead Nation in command, Germany.[28]

RC-North Badge: The badge of ISAF Forces in Regional Command North.[29] 

In May 2005, secondly, NATO commenced the second expansion of the ISAF westwards to assume full command of Regional Command-West (RC-West) by September, a sector which was assigned to Italian Lead Nation command with forces fielded from Italy, Spain, Lithuania and the United States.[30]  However, as previously, this western expansion gave rise to increased caveat difficulties. Not only was NATO again unable to raise sufficient troops from among the ISAF members to properly deploy to western Afghanistan, but national caveats were also reappearing in the new western sector, imposed again even on the forces of the new sector’s Lead Nation – Italy. [31]  This fact led U.S. Ambassador Robert Barry to conclude that ‘without a U.S. lead ISAF has been severely hampered’.[32]  

RC-West: Close crop of ISAF’s Regional Command West, commanded by Lead Nation Italy.[33]

In fact, by this time it was becoming apparent to NATO that the ISAF force as a whole was proving a cumbersome and unwieldy instrument for the security assistance and stabilisation mission in hand, with unknown numbers of national caveats imposed on forces stationed in all three sectors of RC-Capital, RC-North and RC-West.  Indeed, despite renewed efforts by a nascent Taliban insurgency to scuttle the ISAF mission and foster instability in Afghanistan, TCNs in all three Regional Commands – Capital, North and West – had imposed caveats on their forces that prohibited participation in ‘offensive’ or ‘combat’ operations, allowing involvement only in defensive operations.[34]  At the same time other countries had confined their forces to the provision of humanitarian assistance alone, excluding themselves from all security operations altogether.[35]  Caveat limitations also became more prevalent, with permission from national capitals required to be obtained before national forces could be committed to any operation in which national personnel might be exposed ‘to a higher degree of risk’, before every deployment of SOFs, and even before travel by the contingent National Commander.[36] 

What is more, the majority of ISAF forces – including combat manoeuvre units – were prohibited from ever being deployed outside the boundaries of their originally assigned locations.[37]  While these boundaries usually related to the perimeter of the Regional Command to which contingents had been assigned – a problem for the COMISAF in itself since contingents could not be used throughout Afghanistan as necessity demanded – they sometimes also referred to even the perimeters of a particular province, district, or even city suburb within the RC.[38] 

RC-West Badge: The badge of ISAF Forces in Regional Command West.[39] 

This emphasis by NATO nations on force protection measures was particularly significant during this period, occurring only a short time after unwritten caveats among NATO forces deployed to Kosovo had created an embarrassing security fiasco, when NATO forces were restricted by force protection caveats from acting to protect the Serb population being targeted by violent and widespread Albanian riots across the Kosovar province (see endnote and refer to blog ‘#23 Caveat Chaos in Kosovo: Divided Allies & Fettered Forces in NATO’s KFOR Operation during the 2004 “Kosovo Riots”’).[40]  In fact, despite the caveat disaster in Kosovo which had impugned NATO’s reputation as a credible security force, most of the 36 TCNs to the ISAF in Afghanistan during 2005 were operating under national caveats limiting how their forces could be used, thereby impacting on what ISAF forces could actually do across the entire mission within the Afghan theatre of war.  This was a state of affairs that, according to one U.S. senior defence official, rendered it ‘unnecessarily complicated for commanders’.[41]  Indeed, caveats regularly led to serious and frustrating security scenarios and crises for ISAF commanders. 

Caveats were not only wreaking havoc on the ground, moreover, but they were also undermining the entire mission to stabilise Afghanistan, which was founded on the premise of first establishing and then maintaining security within the Afghan AO.  The ISAF’s first and second expansions in Afghanistan had consequently shown that, while the KFOR disaster may have resulted in a greater awareness and focus on the harmful role of national caveats on NATO forces within NATO Headquarters, it had not led to the elimination or reduction of caveats by NATO nations within NATO’s new mission in Afghanistan.

Going South

It was in the context of this increasingly unmanageable situation with ISAF security forces that NATO began planning its final expansionary stages southwards and eastwards, comprising the final two ISAF expansions of Phase II.  These expansions would not only both take place during the subsequent year, but would expand ISAF command into areas in which the newly resurgent Taliban maintained a stronger presence than elsewhere in Afghanistan.  In light of the varied and numerous national caveats among ISAF coalition forces, however, the majority of which were still unstated and therefore learned only as a result of planning problems and security crises, concern began to mount with regard to the effectiveness of ISAF security forces deploying to the south. 

This was especially the case amongst American officials who believed the heavily-caveated ISAF allies were ill-prepared for the change in military tempo and the level of threat inherent in ensuring security in these former Taliban strongholds, especially in and around Kandahar, which was not only the birthplace of the Taliban movement, but also an area which had provided strong support for the Taliban regime and its leaders.[42]  Indeed, Taliban attacks against American OEF and local Afghan National Army (ANA) forces then stationed in southern and eastern Afghanistan were both more audacious and frequent than anything the ISAF allies had experienced hitherto in the quieter northern and western parts of the country, where ISAF forces saw their mission as primarily and strictly ‘peacekeeping’.[43] 

Indeed, as the Taliban insurgency gained strength during the first half of 2006, many of the NATO and non-NATO TCNs to the ISAF seemed reluctant to accept the reality that, in order to secure and stabilise Afghanistan, the mission had to change from a traditional peacekeeping or nation-building operation, into a more fully-fledged COIN mission.  This was especially the case in the south, where the Taliban were gaining influence and control over the local populace.  In the north, however, where the insurgency had not yet gained a foothold, nation-building activities were still able to continue more or less unheeded by insurgency activity.[44]  As one Canadian Colonel summarised the situation at that time: ‘Operating in the north is like doing peace-keeping in Bosnia, while the south is full of insurgents, improvised explosive devices, and suicide bombers, all making for a very high risk environment’.[45] 

Unsurprisingly, given their record of caveats focused on force protection, the governments of many NATO allies – particularly those from continental Europe and beyond such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Turkey – subsequently opted to keep their forces in the north and far away from the fighting required to secure and stabilise the country.  Turkey even refused initially to take command of any PRT outside of RC-North, then the quietest ISAF command within the entire mission, rejecting PRTs even in RC-West or RC-Capital.[46]  ‘We have no intention to go into Stage 2 or 3 due to logistic and security problems’, Turkish officials claimed (see endnote).[47]

In fact across the ISAF force, reluctance to engage in COIN combat operations against insurgents became a common and recurring theme.  This was evident, firstly, in the way that caveats began to increase within the ISAF force, which forbade the participation of contingents in ‘offensive’ operations, ‘war-fighting’ or ‘combat’ operations and – even more explicitly – ‘counter-insurgency operations’.  Secondly, moreover, caveats began to emerge which forbade outright the deployment of national forces anywhere ‘south of the Hindu Kush’, thereby halting the COMISAF from deploying their contingents to RC-South where the risk of being in harm’s way in relation to insurgents was greater than elsewhere in the country.  This anti-south caveat held sway even in cases of emergency, when the COMISAF might urgently need forces to assist ISAF allies in the south during serious security crises.[48] 

In this way caveats were serving to divide ISAF mission into two geographical zones: the ‘north’ (RC-Capital, RC-North and RC-West) and the ‘south’ (RC-South and RC-East).  The seriousness of this situation was captured by the Brookings Institute in early 2006, which commented that: ‘While the overall [NATO] rules of engagement are fairly robust, each contributing nation is operating under so-called national caveats that strictly limit what their troops can do…This is not the sort of force or set of rules that will protect and rebuild a country of 25 million people’.[49]  Indeed, the article cast doubt on the real political will for the mission among the ISAF’s European participants, concluding:

It is not yet clear that the European governments who are committing to this mission know what they are getting into or have the political will and support to see it through…European leaders who think they have signed on for a casualty-free traditional peacekeeping operation had better think again, especially as the NATO deployment moves in the more dangerous south. [50]

The Southern Expansion

In January 2006 the ISAF commenced its third expansion southwards into RC-South, an area encompassing six provinces in southern Afghanistan.  The new sector was to be commanded on the basis of rotation between Lead Nations Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom – the three nations that had first volunteered to deploy combat forces to the south.[51]  The approximately 7,700 ground forces deployed there were drawn mainly from these three nations, but also included small contingents from Romania, Denmark, Estonia and new ISAF contributor, Australia.[52]  The mission’s expansion south thereby more than doubled the total ISAF force, raising the total force level from approximately 7,000 to 15,000 by the end of the expansion on 31 July 2006.[53]  Small units of Special Operations Forces (SOFs) attached to the U.S. OEF mission, and harking from Denmark, France and Australia, also remained in RC-South in order to ‘continue combat operations against terrorist elements’.[54]

RC-South: Close crop of ISAF’s Regional Command South, commanded by Lead Nations the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Canada.[55]

However, as with the previous two geographical expansions, this diffusion of ISAF forces into southern Afghanistan was again accompanied by difficulties.  Indeed, not only did the ISAF force deploy under-strength, since the majority of ISAF’s 37 TCNs refused to send their forces into this more hostile and active sector of the country, but out of the handful of countries that did volunteer to deploy to the new southern sector, most were again imposing national caveats restricting how their forces could be used once deployed there.[56]  This was in spite of not only the 2005 Copenhagen Resolution, drafted in recognition of the ISAF’s growing caveat crisis in order to encourage the reduction of the number of caveats imposed on ISAF forces, but also an earlier informal NATO agreement between all the countries deploying forces south and east, to reduce national caveats and institute more robust ROE on their national contingents.[57] 

In fact, of the seven nations deploying forces to Afghanistan’s more hostile southern regions, only two countries deployed their national contingents free from national caveats – Lead Nations Canada and the United Kingdom.   With regard to Canada, in particular, despite its earlier caveat record in Kabul Province, Canada had over time relaxed its ROE to dramatically alter its stance completely by the time of the Canadian contingent’s deployment south.  Rather ironically, in regard to other NATO allies, this change of view on the caveat issue within the Canadian government occurred in spite of the expected increase in actual risk operating in the Afghan south (in fact Canada’s highest imposition of caveats took place when Canadian forces had operated in Kabul Province, a low-risk environment with few military threats).[58] 

The third Lead Nation, the Netherlands, deployed its forces under national caveats, causing RC-South to be the fourth consecutive sector in which a Lead Nation with lead command responsibility was imposing restrictions curtailing its forces’ activities.  Indeed it soon became clear that the Netherlands, Romania, Denmark, Estonia and Australia, while eliminating all ‘major caveats’ from their forces’ ROE, as per the informal agreement, had nevertheless left minor caveats intact.[59]  These so-called ‘minor’ caveats consisted of hefty prohibitions against national forces participating in either counter-terrorist operations or offensive security operations – the latter effectively ruling out involvement in all combat operations. [60] 

This state of affairs was an alarming and pressing cause for concern among NATO military commanders and officials, especially given the high and escalating level of insurgent activity in the ISAF’s southern sector.  In fact, by the end of the southern expansion in July 2006, nearly half of all ISAF forces in Afghanistan operated under caveat constraints, an unhappy fact which rendered the caveat issue: ‘A source of great contention as a major cause of interference in terms of troop manoeuvres and overall operational effectiveness’.[61]

RC-South Badge: The badge of ISAF Forces in Regional Command South.[62]

To be sure, the imposition of combat caveats on combat forces in the Afghan south was the most troubling development of all in terms of the ISAF mission’s growing caveat problem.  Firstly, it indicated that the mission’s caveat difficulty – far from being confined to the north or the west – was spreading from sector to sector, rendering it increasingly difficult for ISAF security forces to prosecute their assigned security tasks.  Secondly, because securing the restive Afghan south was a vital lynchpin in the entire campaign to stabilise Afghanistan, non-combat caveats imposed by forces deployed to RC-South were essentially the worst of all the caveats imposed by coalition members, since they made the accomplishment of this crucial southern task virtually impossible. 

Consequently, instead of forces capable of the full range of combat operations and full operational and tactical flexibility, the acting COMISAF – then UK General David Richards – was limited in his operational planning by forces bound by severe and intrusive caveats banning combat, counter-terrorist and even counter-insurgent operations.  Such a situation in RC-South was nonsensical since, as Richards himself publicly expressed to the ISAF TCNs in May, the whole third expansion south was effectively a ‘combat operation’.[63]  The issue of national caveats was simultaneously becoming an increasingly troubling and weighty matter of concern to officials within NATO, as well as within the ISAF command headquarters itself.  In point of fact, overall, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the caveat imposition within the ISAF was spiralling out of control.   

ISAF Deploys East

This grim caveat situation within the mission only intensified in subsequent months as the ISAF prepared to deploy eastward.  On 5 October 2006 the ISAF commenced its fourth and final expansion stage eastwards into a large swathe of territory that not only encompassed the RC-Capital sector containing the capital city of Kabul, but also ran along a significant length of the long and porous border between Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.[64]  The sector was to become known as RC-East and was assigned to the Lead Nation command of the United States, with additional support provided by Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey and New Zealand.  Due to the fact that a large number of American combat forces were already deployed in the east, formerly deployed under the command of OEF but now to become part of the ISAF mission under ISAF command, this final stage of the ISAF mission’s expansion in Afghanistan proceeded far more quickly than the other three stages, being finalised in only three months.[65] 

Nevertheless, despite this NATO success in completing the geographic expansion of the ISAF mission, national caveats were still creating difficulties within the mission – even in the new eastern sector.  General lack of political will amongst the ISAF coalition members to have national forces involved in the hardest tasks of enforcing and maintaining security in the country had also extended to the eastern regions of Afghanistan.  Even prior to the expansion in July of 2006, it was purported that the overwhelmingly ‘narrow interpretation’ of the ISAF mandate, as shown by the 70 national caveats imposed by a majority of the governments contributing forces to the ISAF, caused numerous Afghan government officials to beg their U.S. OEF counterparts operating in RC-East ‘not to turn over their areas to NATO replacements’.[66] 

RC-East: Close crop of ISAF’s Regional Command East, commanded by Lead Nation the United States.[67]

When, as these officials had feared, forces from NATO countries Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey – as well as non-NATO nation New Zealand – subsequently did take control of their respective assignments, most of these national contingents took command of their posts constrained by national caveats which, as elsewhere in Afghanistan, restricted their operational and tactical activities in RC-East.  Indeed, as was later revealed by NATO SACEUR General John Craddock, the total number of caveats imposed on the ISAF force had risen from 70 in early July to a total of 83 during the subsequent period, as the eastern expansion took place.[68]

These alarming events led then NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, to publicly announce at a NATO media conference in November the dire extent of the caveat situation within the mission with ‘scores’ of caveats inhibiting the movement and operation of ISAF forces in Afghanistan.[69]  Rather than revolving around a north-south Afghanistan divide as promoted in the press, he intimated, the caveat problem was in fact a nationwide matter and about Afghanistan in total, ‘be it north, south, west or east’. [70]  While acknowledging in reference to Bosnia and Kosovo that NATO had never had a mission operation without caveats, de Hoop Scheffer emphasized that the current state of affairs was ‘not the ideal situation’ and asserted that the lifting of the caveats was ‘from time to time even more important than bringing in new forces’.[71] 

RC-East Badge: The badge of ISAF Forces in Regional Command East.[72]

 

Concern for Phase III – ‘Stabilisation’

By the end of December 2006 the ISAF had not only completed its eastward expansion, but also the full geographical expansion of the ISAF AO across the entirety of Afghan sovereign territory, as mandated by both the GIRoA and the UN under Resolution 1510 of October 2003 (see endnote).[73]  The completion of the fourth ISAF expansion thereby signalled the end of Phase II of NATO’s OPLAN, and the start of Phase III – Stabilisation. [74] 

As the ISAF prepared to secure and stabilise the whole of Afghanistan, however, anxiety and deep misgivings abounded amongst NATO officials and observers alike regarding the ISAF’s ability to actually achieve its mission given its difficult caveat predicament.  NATO leadership had only deepened the caveat plight of the mission, with many of its members – even strong, militarily-capable NATO members, refusing to allow their troops to participate in counter-insurgency security operations or even to deploy their troops to any locality where they might be in harm’s way, or where casualties might potentially be sustained (even temporarily such as in emergency situations).  ‘The alliance is on the back foot in combat operations due to the fact that only a handful of countries are actively involved in fighting the insurgency’, claimed senior diplomats and military officials, who contended the credibility of NATO was in jeopardy. [75]  Or as former U.S. President, George W. Bush, later recounted in his memoirs:

The multilateral military mission proved a disappointment…Every member of NATO had sent troops to Afghanistan. So had more than a dozen other countries. But many parliaments imposed heavy restrictions – known as national caveats – on what their troops were permitted to do.  Some were not allowed to patrol at night. Others could not engage in combat. The result was a disorganized and ineffective force, with troops fighting by different rules and many not fighting at all.[76] 

Indeed, concern was rising especially within NATO Headquarters in regard to this flood of caveat constraints within the ISAF force.  NATO officials and commanders, chief amongst them NATO SACEUR General James Jones who had overseen Phase II of the mission, were worried that with so many operational restraints hindering operations and diminishing the ISAF’s combat ability, the force was not in a good position to begin the next stabilisation phase of the OPLAN. [77]  This phase was due to begin in January of the new year, 2007, when ISAF forces would be fully deployed and responsible for all security and stability operations, through which they were to ensure and maintain security against insurgents throughout the entire country of Afghanistan.[78]  The question remained, could the ISAF successfully achieve Phase III in the light of so many national caveat constraints on its forces?

To make matters worse, COMISAF David Richards had announced that both the country and the mission was in fact at a ‘tipping point’, with mission success hinging on progress in the southern sector of Afghanistan.[79]  While British and Canadian ISAF forces in RC-South had through the killing of over 500 insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces  been able to ‘broadly stabilize’ the southern regions of the country, Richards explained, insurgents there were still seriously undermining international attempts to stabilise the country.[80]  Indeed, if the local Afghan people did not see ‘concrete and visible improvement’ in their daily lives over the next six months, Richards warned, there was a danger that up to 70 percent of Afghans in the south could ‘switch sides’ and begin supporting these insurgents.[81]  As British Prime Minister Tony Blair then stated, echoing both the COMISAF and the assessment of ISAF military commanders on the ground, ‘the next few months will be crucial for the Western presence in Afghanistan’.[82]

This blog has further explored the ISAF mission’s caveat dilemma, by providing a description of the way in which the mission’s caveat problem developed during the first two phases of the NATO OPLAN – Assessment and Preparation and Geographic Expansion.  The overview has demonstrated how the difficulties posed by the imposition of national caveats by ISAF’s own TCNs increased as the mission progressed and as ISAF forces deployed from Kabul Province into the other four other geographical zones around the country of Afghanistan. 

Indeed, the national caveat issue had evolved from a minor frustration to a nationwide security dilemma, as the effects of the caveats became more widely felt across the mission. 

The following blog, ‘#42 Operational “Caveat Cancer” in Afghanistan: The Development of the Caveat Crisis in the NATO-led ISAF Mission, OPLAN Phases III-V’, will continue this exploration, by examining the way in which the ISAF’s crippling operational “caveat cancer” continued to spread and grow in extent and severity within the ISAF force during the final three phases of NATO’s OPLAN for the ISAF mission in Afghanistan – Phase III – Stabilisation, Phase IV – Transition, and Phase V – Redeployment, which took place between January 2007 and December 2014. 

 

* For more information on the impact of national caveats within the NATO-led ISAF Operation in Afghanistan, see Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices (including ISAF national caveat lists), which can be freely viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984.

 

Endnotes

[i] North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ‘ISAF’s Strategic Vision’, NATO Newsroom, 3 April 2008, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-052e.html, (accessed 11 November 2011).

[1] North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), J. Miranda-Calha (Portugal), General Rapporteur, ‘Draft General Report: Lessons Learned from NATO’s Current Operations 061 DSC 06 E’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly 17 March 2006, http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=997. 2-3., (accessed 14 December 2011).

[2] D. Auerswald & S. Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone, Princeton: Princeton University Press, USA, 2014, p. 28.

[3] A. Saikal, ‘Afghanistan’s Transition: ISAF’s stabilization role?’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, 2006, p. 527.

[4] George W. Bush, Decision Points, New York, Crown Publishers, 2010, p. 207.

[5] ‘U.S. War in Afghanistan’ [Interactive Timeline], Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/us-war-afghanistan/p20018, (accessed 17 January 2013).

[6] Adapted from, ‘Afghanistan ISAF RC and PRT Locations’, NATO Headquarters, SITCEN Geo Section, 22 October 2009, http://www.isaf.nato.int, (accessed 1 December 2009).

[7] D.P. Auerswald & S.M. Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, New York, United States, (15-18 February) 2009, p. 7, http://profs-polisci.mcgill.ca/saideman/Caveats%20and%20Afghanistan,%20isa%202009.pdf,  (accessed November 18 March 2013); M. Kaim. ‘Expanding ISAF-Ending OEF: The Debate on the Mandates Sending German Troops to Afghanistan’, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik,(SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs, August 2007, http://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publications/swp-research-papers/swp-research-paper-detail/article/expanding_isaf_ending_oef.html, (accessed12 July 2012).

[8] ‘FACTBOX – Restrictions on NATO troops in Afghanistan’, Reuters AlterNet, 26 November 2006, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26451165, (accessed 18 November 2009).

[9] Ibid.; J. Brophy & M. Fisera, ‘“National Caveats” and it’s impact on the Army of the Czech Republic’, Univerzita Obrany, 29 July 2007,  http://www.vabo.cz/stranky/fisera/files/National_Caveats_Short_Version_version_V_29%20JULY.pdf, (accessed November 18, 2009); ‘Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban’, This Is London, 26 November 2006, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23376029-makeshift-rorkes-drift-unit-of-medics-and-engineers-holds-out-taliban.do, (accessed 4 August 2010).

[10] ‘FACTBOX – Restrictions on NATO troops in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[11] Auerswald & Saideman, Caveat Emptor: Multilateralism at War, op. cit. p. 8;  D.P. Auerswald & S.M. Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, a paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,Toronto, Canada, (2-5^th September) 2009, p. 9, 2009, www.aco.nato.int/resources/1/documents/NATO%20%at%20War.pdf, (accessed 18 March 2013).

[12] M. Boot, ‘ “Proactive Self-Defense”’, Council on Foreign Relations, 3 July 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10985/proactive_selfdefense.html, (accessed 28 January 2013); Garamone, J. ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, American Forces Press (AFP) Service, 7 October 2005, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=18122, (accessed 26 January 2009);  ‘FACTBOX – Restrictions on NATO troops in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[13] Auerswald & Saideman,  ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 16.

[14] ‘FACTBOX – Restrictions on NATO troops in Afghanistan’, op. cit.; S.M. Saideman, ‘CIPS Policy Brief #6: Caveats, Values and the Future of NATO Peace Operations’, October 2009, University of Ottawa Centre for International Policy Studies, p. 1, http://cips.uottawa.ca/publications/caveats-values-and-the-future-of-nato-peace-operations/, (accessed 5 June 2013).

[15] Kabul Travel Guide, Virtual Tourist, http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/Afghanistan/Velayat_e_Kabol/Kabul-1118570/TravelGuide-Kabul.html, (accessed 21 June 2011); Afghanistan – Kabul, GlobalSecurity.Org., http://www.globalsecurity.org/jhtml/jframe.html#http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/images/kabul_residential-area_13.jpg, (accessed 29 June 2011).

[16] Auerswald & Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 16.

[17] Cited in D.P. Auerswald & S.M. Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, ibid., p. 15.

MAJ General Andrew Leslie, the Canadian National Commander and deputy COMISAF in 2003, was required to call home ‘whenever Canadian special operations forces engaged in any significant activities, even when operating outside of ISAF as part of OEF’ (Auerswald & Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, ibid., p. 15).

[18] Auerswald & Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, ibid., p. 14.

[19] Cited in D.P. Auerswald & S.M. Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, ibid., p. 16.

[20] Auerswald & Saideman,  ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, ibid., pp. 13-14.

[21] Auerswald & Saideman,  ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, ibid., pp. 14-15; Auerswald & Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 20.

[22] ‘RC-Capital’, Subordinate Commands, http://www.isaf.nato.int/subordinate-commands/rc-capital/index.php., (accessed 17 May 2011).

[23] Canadian deputy COMISAF, MAJ General Andrew Leslie, cited in Auerswald & Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 8.

[24] Cited in Auerswald & Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, op. cit., pp. 15-16.

[25] International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), ‘ISAF Placemat’, About ISAF – Troop Numbers and Contributions, 2 January 2007, http://www.isaf.nato.int/, (accessed 20 February, 2013).

[26] Adapted from ‘Afghanistan ISAF RC and PRT Locations’, NATO Headquarters, op. cit.

[27] Ambassador R. L. Barry, ‘Foreword’ in C. Scott, ‘Assessing ISAF: A Baseline Study of NATO’s Role in Afghanistan’, British American Security Information Council (BASIC), March 2007, p. iii, http://www.basicint.org/sites/default/files/afghanistan.pdf, ( 12 April 2009).

The ISAF was under-resourced when it deployed to the north, suffering short falls in utility helicopters, transport aircraft, quick reaction forces and even a medical facility.  Indeed, the Finnish government found difficulty even in finding helicopters to deploy Finnish troops to the PRT in Meymaneh (M. Gordon, ‘Dispatches – Flirting with Failure: NATO’s Afghan Mission’, World Security Network, 21 May 2004, http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/Broader-Middle-East/Gordon-Michael/Dispatches-Flirting-with-failure-NATOs-Afghan-mission, (accessed 25 March 2013); U.S. Embassy Helsinki (released by Wikileaks), Cable 04HELSINKI1571, NATO Ambassador Burns’ visit to Helsinki, 16 December 2004, https://wikileaks.org/cable/2004/12/04HELSINKI1571.html, (accessed 11 July 2011).

[28] United States Library of Congress, V. Morelli & P. Belkin, ‘NATO in Afghanistan: A Test of the Transatlantic Alliance’, Congressional Research Service (CRS), 17 April 2009, p. 10, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33627.pdf, (accessed 20 February 2013).

[29] International Security Assistance Force, ‘RC-North’, Subordinate Commands, http://www.isaf.nato.int/subordinate-commands/rc-north/index.php, (accessed 17 May 2011).

[30] ISAF, ‘ISAF placemat’, 2 January 2007, op. cit.

[31] U.S. Embassy Helsinki, Cable 04HELSINKI1571, op. cit.

[32] Barry, ‘Assessing ISAF: A Baseline Study of NATO’s Role in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[33] Adapted from ‘Afghanistan ISAF RC and PRT Locations’, NATO Headquarters, op. cit.

[34] Garamone, ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, op. cit.; Boot, Proactive Self-Defense, op. cit.

[35] Garamone, ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, ibid. 

[36] Footnote 31, in Auerswald & Saideman, ‘NATO at War: Understanding the Challenges of Caveats in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 15; Auerswald & Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 21.

[37] Brophy & Fisera, ‘“National Caveats” and it’s impact on the Army of the Czech Republic’, op. cit.; Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban, op. cit.

[38] Brophy & Fisera, ‘ “National Caveats” and it’s impact on the Army of the Czech Republic, ibid.; Makeshift ‘Rorke’s Drift’ unit of medics and engineers holds out Taliban, op. cit.; U.S. Department of Defense (U.S. DoD), The Pentagon, Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan –  Report to Congress in accordance with section 1230 of the National Defence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (Public Law 110-181), as amended, April 2010, p. 18 http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/Report_Final_SecDef_04_26_10.pdf., accessed 14 January 2013.

[39] ‘RC-West’, Subordinate Commands, http://www.isaf.nato.int/subordinate-commands/rc-west/index.php., (accessed 17 May 2011).

[40] The security disaster there had led to great disappointment among NATO military commanders over the way in which the forces of a large number of NATO nations – including principal NATO allies such as Germany, France and Italy – had failed to act to the threat.  Indeed, only NATO nations Norway and the United States could be given praise for the way in which they, together with non-NATO nations Finland and Sweden, ‘did not hesitate to act’ during the riots  (U.S. Embassy Helsinki, Cable 04HELSINKI1571, op. cit.).

[41] Garamone, ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, op. cit.; Boot, Proactive Self-Defense, op. cit.

[42] Garamone, ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, ibid.; Boot, Proactive Self-Defense, op. cit.

[43] Garamone, ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, ibid.; Boot, Proactive Self-Defense, op. cit.

[44] Auerswald & Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 29.

[45] Ibid., p. 27.

[46] U.S. Embassy Ankara (released by Wikileaks), Cable 05ANKARA353, Afghanistan: Turkey Considering UK Request to Take Over PRT in North,19 January 2005, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/01/05ANKARA353.html, (accessed 12 July 2011).

[47] U.S. Embassy Ankara, Cable 05ANKARA353, op. cit.

In June 2006, however, Turkey would eventually accept leadership of a PRT in Wardak Province in RC-East, a province that neighboured RC-Capital where Turkey was a Lead Nation on the basis of rotation (U.S. Embassy Ankara (released by Wikileaks), Cable 06ANKARA3352, We Look Forward to Your Visit, Turkey Is A Strong Ally In the Global War on Terror, 8 June 2006,  http://wikileaks.org/cable/2006/06/06ANKARA3352.html, (accessed 22 July 2011).

[48] United Kingdom House of Commons (U.K. HoC), Defence Committee, UK Operations in Afghanistan: Thirteenth Report of Session 2006-07(HC408), 18 July 2007, p. 18. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselet/…/408.pdf, (accessed 5 August 2010); J. Hale, , ‘Continuing Restrictions Likely on Some NATO Forces in Afghanistan’, DefenseNews, 21 September 2009, http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4286208, (accessed 23 September 2009).

[49] P.H. Gordon, Back Up NATO’s Afghanistan Force, Brookings Institute, January 8, 2006, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2006/0108afghanistan_gordon.aspx?p=1,(accessed 25 November 2010).

[50] Ibid.

[51] United States Library of Congress, Morelli & Belkin, op. cit. p. 16.

[52]Boot, Proactive Self-Defense. op. cit.; ISAF, ISAF Chronology Table, http://www.isaf.nato.int, (accessed 3 August 2010)

[53] Garamone, ‘U.S. Wants More Robust Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan’, op. cit.; Boot, Proactive Self-Defense; ISAF, ‘ISAF Placemat’, 2 January 2007, op. cit.

[54] United States Library of Congress, Morelli & Belkin, op. cit., p. 17.

[55] Adapted from ‘Afghanistan ISAF RC and PRT Locations’, NATO Headquarters, op. cit.

[56]Boot, Proactive Self-Defense, op. cit.; ISAF, ISAF Chronology Table, op. cit.

[57] United States Library of Congress, Morelli & Belkin, op. cit., p. 17.

[58] Auerswald & Saideman, ‘Caveats Emptor: Multilateralism at War in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 27.

[59] J. Miranda-Calha, (Portugal), General Rapporteur, ‘Draft General Report: Lessons Learned from NATO’s Current Operations 061 DSC 06 E’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, 17 March 2006, p. 2,  http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=997. 2-3., (accessed 14 December 2011); United States Library of Congress, Morelli & Belkin, op. cit. p. 17.

[60] Miranda-Calha, Draft General Report: Lessons Learned from NATO’s Current Operations 061 DSC 06 E, op. cit. p. 2 (17 March 2006); United States Library of Congress, Morelli & Belkin, op. cit., p. 17.

[61] International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Institute for the Study of War: Military Analysis and Education for Civilian Leaders’, http://www.understandingwar.org, (accessed 30 June 2009).

[62] ‘RC-South’, Subordinate Commands, http://www.isaf.nato.int/subordinate-commands/rc-south/index.php., (accessed 17 May 2011).

[63] United States Library of Congress, Morelli & Belkin, op. cit. p. 17.

[64] North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), ‘NATO’s Role in Afghanistan – Leading the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)’, NATO in Afghanistan: NATO Bucharest Summit Guide 2-4 April 2008), http://www.nato.int/docu/comm/2008/0804-bucharest/presskit.pdf, (accessed  6 February 2013).

[65] LTGEN David W. Barno (Ret’d), Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, 26 August 2010, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Washington D.C., United States.

[66] Boot, Proactive Self-Defense, op. cit.

[67] Adapted from ‘Afghanistan ISAF RC and PRT Locations’, NATO Headquarters, op. cit.

[68] A. de Borchgrave, ‘Commentary: NATO Caveats’, United Press International (UPI),10 July 2009, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2009/07/10/Commentary-NATO-caveats/UPI-47311247244125/, (accessed 17 January 2013).

[69] ‘FACTBOX – Restrictions on NATO troops in Afghanistan’, op. cit.

[70] de Hoop Sheffer, J.‘Press Briefing on NATO’s Riga Summit by NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer’, NATO Online Library, 24 November 2006, http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2006/s06112a.htm, (accessed 1 December 2009).

[71] Ibid.

[72] ‘RC-East’, Subordinate Commands, http://www.isaf.nato.int/subordinate-commands/rc-east/index.php, (accessed 17 May 2011).

[73] As UNSCR 1510 states, the UN Security Council ‘authorizes expansion of the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force to allow it, as resources permit, to support the Afghan Transitional Authority and its successors in the maintenance of security in areas of Afghanistan outside of Kabul and its environs, so that the Afghan Authorities as well as the personnel of the United Nations and other international civilian personnel engaged, in particular, in reconstruction and humanitarian efforts, can operate in a secure environment, and to provide security assistance for the performance of other tasks in support of the Bonn Agreement’ (United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Resolution 1510 (2003) – Adopted by the Security Council on its 4840^th meeting, on 13 October 2003, 13 October 2003, http://www.nato.int/isaf/topics/mandate/unscr/resolution_1510.pdf, (accessed 12 March 2009)).

[74] ISAF, ‘ISAF Placemat’, 29 January 2007, op. cit.

[75] ‘Germany’s Non-Combat Caveats to be Reviewed by Nato’, Deutsche Welle, 29 November 2006, http://www.dw.de/germanys-non-combat-caveats-to-be-reviewed-by-nato/a-2250071-1, (accessed 7 February 2010).

[76] G. W. Bush. Decision Points.  New York: Crown Publishers, 2010, p. 211.

[77] ISAF, Institute for the Study of War: Military Analysis and Education for Civilian Leaders’, http://www.understandingwar.org, (accessed 30 June 2009).

[78] LTGEN David W. Barno (Ret’d), Interviewed by Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.; Scott, ‘Assessing ISAF: A Baseline Study of NATO’s Role in Afghanistan’, op. cit., p. 2.

[79] F. Abrashi, ‘NATO Chief Warns of Afghan Tipping Point’, Washington Post, 8 October 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/08/AR2006100800233.html, (accessed 27 February 2013).

[80] Ibid.

[81] Ibid.

[82] K. Sengupta & S. Castle, ‘Britain to commit extra battalion to NATO’, The Independent, 30 November 2006, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/britain-to-commit-extra-battalion-to-nato-426368.html, (accessed 24 January 2013).