[Vision2020] NATO Defense Chiefs Focus on Progress, Challenges Ahead in Afghanistan

[Tom Hansen]

>From American Forces News Service -

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NATO Defense Chiefs Focus on Progress, Challenges Ahead in Afghanistan
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Nov. 16, 2006 - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and 23 other NATO defense chiefs reaffirmed their commitment yesterday to
the alliance's security mission in Afghanistan as they evaluated successes
made, new approaches under way and challenges ahead.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace met at NATO headquarters here with members of NATO's
Military Committee for talks that will lead up to the NATO Summit in Riga,
Latvia, later this month.

The discussions, led by Canadian Air Force Gen. Raymond Henault, Military
Committee chairman, focused heavily on NATO's historic role in the
International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

"We talked at great length about Afghanistan and had a very, very good
discussion about the mission that NATO is on right now and the need to have
three places to have progress - one being security, but two and three being
governance and economics," Pace told American Forces Press Service following
yesterday's session.

NATO members understand that all three efforts are equally important to
Afghanistan's long-term success, he said.

"We obviously and correctly focus on security," the chairman said. "But we
also need to be encouraging our own government and other governments to look
at what we are doing to help (Afghan) President (Hamid) Karzai in developing
his ministerial capacity to govern, and also what we are doing collectively,
internationally, to help provide jobs and alternative livelihoods other than
the drug trade."

To achieve these goals, NATO members recognize that the military is part of
the solution, but not the whole answer, Pace said, and that they need to
channel military efforts to work in synch with other, non-military efforts.
"We can't do it without good governance and good economics, and they can't
do it without good security," he said.

Pace said he looks forward to an upcoming change within ISAF's command staff
that will increase continuity by rotating staff members in at various
intervals rather than all at once. In the past, a new ISAF commander arrived
with a nucleus of staff officers from his own country, filled out by
augmentees. They group arrived together, served together and left together
when the next commander came in.

Under the new arrangement, already starting to take shape, ISAF will have a
composite headquarters that's "built from the ground up specifically for the
mission in Afghanistan, and it will be done in a way that the whole staff
won't change out all at one time," Pace explained.

When U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill, who currently commands the Army Forces
Command, arrives in Afghanistan in February to take the helm at ISAF, his
new combined staff will already be in place.

About one-third of the staff will move in by the end of this month, the next
one-third will arrive in December, and the final one-third, in January, Pace
said. Of those new staff members, some will move to ISAF staff positions
from other assignments in Afghanistan.

"This will bring continuity and predictability," Pace said. "It's a very
positive step for ISAF."

Yesterday's meetings also included discussions about successes NATO has
achieved in Kosovo and the lessons learned there that can be applied in
Afghanistan.

"Kosovo in many ways is a good model for some of what we are looking to do
in Afghanistan," Pace said.

He cited the challenges commanders in Afghanistan face due to "caveats"
imposed by individual NATO countries on their forces - basically, rules
about what missions their troops can and can't do. "If you get too many
countries with too many different do's and don'ts, it makes it very hard for
the commander to get his job done," he said.

Commanders in Kosovo experienced similar challenges, but through
cooperation, "we were able to work the number of caveats down to almost
zero, over time," Pace said.

"It's a matter of respecting countries' sovereignties," he said. It requires
"finding out what is it about a particular action or task they are not
comfortable with, and then finding a way to design that task in a way that
is acceptable to the countries involved."

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.