CIAO DATE: 04/2013
Volume: 10, Issue: 1
Fall 2007
Civil-Military Coordination: Challenges and Opportunities in Afghanistan and Beyond (PDF)
Lara Olson, Hrach Gregorian
This special issue of The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies is edited by Lara Olson and Hrach Gregorian of the Peacebuilding, Development and Security (PDS) Program, which was initiated at the University of Calgary in 2007 with funding from CMSS, and represents a partnership between CMSS and the Institute of World Affairs. The papers expand on presentations made at an expert workshop held in Calgary by the CMSS and the Institute of World Affairs on Coordinated Approaches to Security, Development and Peacekeeping: Lessons Learned from Afghanistan and Liberia. This issue is significant but little examined, perhaps because it lies on the intersection between traditional conceptions of defence policy, peacekeeping and the work of NGOs. These matters all will be illuminated by a study of this issue as a topic in its own right. The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies is happy to serve as host to this endeavour.
The Civil – Military Effort in Afghanistan: A Strategic Perspective (PDF)
Colonel M.D. (Mike) Capstick
Since the final objectives of the Bonn Process were met in the Fall of 2005, the security situation in the south of Afghanistan has deteriorated to the point that substantive economic development has been retarded. The more serious consequences of this situation include an erosion of public confidence in the elected government’s ability to consolidate peace and stability, a burgeoning poppy industry and an increase in generalized lawlessness and “war-lordism.” Internationally, the persistence of the insurgency has caused any number of Western leaders to question the continued viability of their national commitments to the future of Afghanistan. This situation is the result of a number of serious strategic errors – military and civilian. This paper will describe these and will use the Afghan Compact as the framework to suggest a major re-orientation of the international effort so that it accords with this vital joint Afghan – International strategic vision. It will also suggest some measures to improve coordination among all international and Afghan actors to ensure the future of the Afghan people.
Civil-Military Coordination Practices and Approaches Within United Nations Peace Operations (PDF)
Cedric De Coning
The paper argues that the bi-polar civil-military coordination concept is no longer adequate to describe the system-wide coordination needs of contemporary UN peace operations, at the strategic level, in the context of the UN Integrated Mission concept. However, the civil-military coordination concept is still appropriate and meaningful at the operational and tactical levels, both from a humanitarian and military perspective. UN Civil-Military Coordination (UN CIMIC) is the function within the military component of a UN peace operation responsible for facilitating liaison and coordination between the military component of the UN mission and its civilian counterparts and partners. In the UN Integrated Mission context the military component is one of many UN mission components, and function as part of the overall UN System. As such it participates in a wide network of coordination mechanisms that, taken together, constitute mission-wide coordination. UN CIMIC is not responsible for all aspects of civil-military coordination, but it has a very specific role to play in the context of Mission Support and Community Support, and the overall Liaison and Information Management function required to sustain these two types of military support to civilian partners in a UN peace operations context.
Stephen Cornish
This paper will review the evolution of integrated and 3D approaches and seek to highlight the different responses to such approaches shown by classic humanitarian organizations and multi-mandate development organizations. By providing an overview of past forcible humanitarian interventions and with a particular focus on Afghanistan, we will trace the practical and ethical challenges faced by aid agencies attempting to maintain programming in such contexts. In so doing it will be suggested that the 3D approach emphasizing coherence between different instruments, while motivated by good intentions, has resulted in humanitarian and development aid programming becoming subordinated to political interests in counterproductive ways. In fact, in Afghanistan the co-optation of soft power for political and military ends has led to reduced humanitarian assistance for populations in danger and to increased insecurity for humanitarians trying to assist them – thereby effectively exposing clear limits to the deeper integration strategies currently being promoted for stabilizing failed states.
A Means to What End? Why PRTS are Peripheral to the Bigger Political Challenges in Afghanistan (PDF)
Barbara J. Stapleton
The civil-military relationship in the political context of Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban has fulfilled a number of functions, not all of them formally acknowledged. From 2002, it was heavily promoted by the international community within and beyond Afghanistan as a key means of facilitating tangible results in reconstruction and development and in so doing, improving the security situation.1 Moreover, the phased expansion of NATO forces throughout the country from 2003 onwards was primarily conducted via ‘Provincial Reconstruction Teams' (PRTs), which came to epitomize the civil military approach in Afghanistan. The first PRT was operational in Gardez, in the east, by January 2003; over four years later, twenty-five PRTs, led by thirteen different nations, were located in provinces throughout the country.
Interagency and Civil-Military Coordination: Lessons From a Survey of Afghanistan and Liberia (PDF)
Lara Olson, Hrach Gregorian
Existing field coordination processes commonly have two main outcomes: they result in mere "information sharing" and have no real coordination impact; conversely, they produce a kind of forced, "false coherence", referring to superficial changes in language and formal adherence to new frameworks, driven by the agenda of the actor with the most power and resources. Some key factors contributing to this problem; coordination processes often assume agreement among actors on strategies and don't provide opportunities for inclusive and meaningful multi-stakeholder dialogue; power asymmetries block real dialogue; funding relationships and competition limit the ability of existing coordination processes to achieve some level of common intent; groups hold different notions of the purpose of coordination in the first place, ranging widely from greater centralized control, to democratic consensus-building, to credible, reliable information exchange. However, in working "side by side" in such settings and preserving their autonomous mandates and roles, civilian and military agencies can still improve the way their efforts link up and support the bigger peace.