The following two blogs #41 and #42 will now together further elaborate on the ISAF’s Caveat Crisis in Afghanistan, by providing a description of the way in which the mission’s caveat problem developed over the course of the Security Assistance mission, increasing in both scope and severity as the operation progressed through the four fundamental phases of NATO’s Operational Plan (OPLAN) for the mission. Indeed, limitation and ban rules in the Rules of Engagement (ROE) of ISAF national contingents were actively and obstructively present during all five of the OPLAN’s phases, from the very genesis of the ISAF operation in December 2001 until its complete termination in December 2014. These included the phases of: I) Assessment and Preparation; II) Geographic Expansion; III) Stabilisation; IV) Transition; and lastly V) Redeployment. These blogs will provide a concise overview of the diverse difficulties posed by these national caveat restrictions on the ISAF Force during each of these operational phases, in order to illustrate how the issue of heavy caveat imposition spread like a cancer, first politically in the Coalition of the Willing, and then operationally and tangibly across the mission in terms of both geography and time, with the caveat issue growing larger and generating more and more alarm in military and political quarters with the progression of each successive NATO-led phase until the final termination of the mission.
#40 In Videos: An International, Multilateral, Political & Strategic Failure – The Fall of Kabul & the Lamentable Loss of the Anti-Terror & Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, 2001-2021
In Videos: The calamitous political and military decisions taken by short-sighted governments in multiple Capitals, to rapidly end the Afghan theatre of war in the overall and ongoing Global War on Terror, and the resulting and hugely consequential developments and events that followed on the ground for the country and the people of Afghanistan, that has shocked, changed, and threatened the entire world. Important videos.
#39 Farewell Fallen Friend: Democratic Afghan Republic, 2001-2021
The tricolour flag, leaders, military personnel, and civilian citizens of a dead democratic country, the Democratic Afghan Republic, abandoned to die by the American President Joe Biden, and assisted in this political, strategic and national tragedy, with profoundly dire security consequences in the global struggle against Islamist terrorism, by collectively complicit and complacent allies and leading intergovernmental organisations around the world, in their mutually shared if short-sighted preoccupation and desire for a fast and final end to the long but vital Afghan War against terror forces in Central-South Asia.
ISAF – COIN APPENDIX 2 – Counter-Insurgency (COIN) Warfare: Definitions, Political Nature, 5 False Expectations, Necessity, & Lessons from Vietnam & Iraq for Afghanistan
In blog ‘#31 BACKGROUND – COIN Warfare & the ISAF’s COIN Strategy: Battle for the Majority Population’, I briefly outlined the central theoretical doctrine and most important principles of Counter-Insurgency (COIN) warfare. This appendix will present a fuller overview of counter-insurgency, by providing various definitions of COIN, the nature of COIN warfare to quell an insurgency, and – most importantly perhaps – addressing five false expectations of COIN war in the modern era, which continue to frustrate national and international efforts to defeat dangerous and destabilising insurgencies in nations around the world today.
#28 BACKGROUND – Afghanistan: The Land, its Diverse Ethnic Peoples & the Pashtun Taliban
#28 BACKGROUND Afghanistan: The Land, its Diverse Ethnic Peoples & the Pashtun Taliban – Dr Regeena Kingsley The Land of Afghanistan Borders & Resources Few countries have a history so permeated with conquest and conflict than that of Afghanistan. A forbiddingly inhospitable country, this 647,500 km² landlocked area is located in both Central Asia and on the western periphery of South Asia. It is bordered clockwise by Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan and China to the northeast, and Pakistan to the east and south, and Iran to the west. Afghanistan: Topographical view of Afghanistan