Damning internal report on NATO’s intervention in Afghanistan

By Nigel Chamberlain, NATO Watch

The Independent has acquired an internal UK Ministry of Defence report on Afghanistan via the Freedom of Information Act. Lessons from the Soviet Transition in Afghanistan was produced in November 2012 by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire.
 
The study examines the “extraordinary number of similar factors that surround both the Soviet and NATO campaigns in Afghanistan” and highlights lessons that military commanders could learn. It suggests that it was a campaign to impose a foreign ideology on the Afghan people and was an unwinnable war.
 
Key points highlighted by The Independent include:
 
NATO forces have been unable to eliminate the insurgents’ safe havens;
ISAF has failed to protect the rural population;
The survival of the Afghan government after combat troops withdraw is unlikely;
Afghanistan has a very weak economic base which will need outside financial support for many years; and
Regional players do not have a vested interest in the success of the Kabul government.
 
The report states that, like the Soviet Union, NATO abandoned its central aim once it realised that the war was militarily unwinnable and that support of the population was essential. It continues: “Both interventions have been portrayed as foreign invasions attempting to support a corrupt and unpopular central government against a local insurgent movement which has popular support, strong religious motivation and safe havens abroad”. 
 
And both were judged as failed interventions by world opinion. Also like the Soviet intervention, ISAF was unable to defeat the insurgents, control the country’s borders or protect the rural population. The report states that the Soviet withdrawal plan was handicapped by a publicly announced timetable and that NATO made the same mistake. It is pessimistic about how long central government will last, and how effective it might be.
 
Russia Today picked up the story and added that the MoD report mirrors another assessment prepared by the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In its annual Military Balance report released this week, the think tank forecast that the Afghan insurgency would not be eliminated by the end of 2014. “The hope is that it can be reduced to such a level that it no longer poses an existential threat to the state and can be contained by Afghan forces,”the IISS said, predicting that in 2015 the country would be “a patchwork of insurgent activity”.
 
The MoD report comes soon after the New York Times printed an internal Command Threat Advisory by ISAF Commander, General Dunford, in which he instructing ISAF to intensify security measures in response to fears of a greater risk of attack from rogue Afghan security forces and from insurgents. It was suggested President Karzai’s recent, highly critical statements have fuelled the flames and are indicative of the deteriorating relationship between the Afghan Government and NATO. 
 
In the editorial of the March edition of The Observatory, we highlighted that President Karzai had not attended NATO’s leadership handover ceremony in Kabul but that two days later, General Dunford met President Karzai. While not elaborating on what was discussed at the meeting ISAF reported that "the intent of today's meeting was to pay respects to the President, reaffirm ISAF’s support to the campaign, and continue the productive relationship between ISAF and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”.