Defense Technology International - July 2007 - (Page 16)

DISPATCHES GLOBAL the tactics that OEF is using to ﬁght Taliban and Al Qaeda as part of the War on Terror and the way that ISAF forces, using special operations units, are conducting counter-insurgency operations in provinces such as Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan. ISAF is engaged in “permanent operations there to keep the Taliban running and to disrupt their commandand-control organization,” a senior NATO ofﬁcial in Brussels says. “We’ve seen major operations in Sangin and the Kajaki Dam in Helmand, where the problem is not so much with clearing an area but holding it. It’s a difﬁcult balance between movement and holding, which is why we need the Afghan NATO peacekeepers will ﬁght if attacked. national army to hold the Dutch troops stand beside a PzH-2000 area after we move out.” self-propelled howitzer during a break Because of this, NATO between ﬁre missions after a Taliban commanders in ISAF say, assault. A Royal Netherlands Air Force it would from a military AH-64D Apache helicopter ﬂies by. point of view be a huge Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and 80 advantage to bring ISAF and OEF under one uniﬁed command. They note there is NGOs. According to senior NATO sources, U.S. hardly any difference between the two at troops understand what the Comprehensive the operational level. This would, howApproach is and what it means. They are ever, require an extended ISAF mandate, also aware that using too much violence and something few European nations would causing civilian casualties has an adverse ef- accept. fect on what ISAF is trying to achieve. Senior political sources at NATO “Also, don’t forget that the OEF mission headquarters say that for now, a mergis not only to hunt terrorists, but to train er of ISAF and OEF is “not politically Afghan security forces, which is largely feasible.” Each nation’s commitment to a U.S. effort,” a German NATO general ISAF is dictated by politicians, and this says. “Given the huge amounts of dollars can cause friction. As one senior German that the U.S. is investing and the effort it ofﬁcer complained: “Germany has 3,000 puts into training the Afghan national army troops in Afghanistan. But when I visit and police, the U.S. is engaged in a major the ISAF headquarters in Kabul, I am and positive way in our effort to rebuild not allowed to attend certain operational Afghanistan.” brieﬁngs—they are restricted to the U.S., On the other hand, NATO, faced with U.K., Canada, the Netherlands and a few heavy losses among its forces in Helmand other nations. This is purely because my and Kandahar provinces, has started to country imposes a caveat on how German conduct targeted military operations forces can be employed, meaning they against speciﬁc leaders of the Taliban and cannot be used to help out in operations Al Qaeda. in southern Afghanistan.” “Without disclosing too much, it is ofOther problems facing NATO and ISAF ten more effective to strike precisely at key include: targets in the opposing forces’ commandA serious shortage of ground troops. and-control organization than to take on Maj. Gen. Bruno Kasdorf, ISAF chief of the masses,” one NATO general with ISAF staff, told a conference in Berlin on July says. “We have been pretty successful in this 4 that if ISAF had the same number of regard.” troops per square kilometer as NATO’s Another senior NATO ofﬁcer adds that Kosovo force, it could be 800,000 strong it is often “difﬁcult to distinguish” between rather than 40,000. “What NATO is doing in Afghanistan is like trying to control Kosovo with 227 troops,” he says. “What ISAF needs is at least several thousand more troops so we can cover the areas we have no presence in.” These areas include the provinces of Day Kundi in central Afghanistan and Nimroz on the Iranian border, says another NATO general, where ISAF has a “very poor intelligence and situational-awareness picture.” Kasdorf added that ISAF also needs “more helicopters, reconnaissance assets and instructors to train Afghan security forces.” In this context, he welcomed a new decision by Italy to deploy helicopters and Predator UAVs. Political interference at the tactical level. “Events at the lowest tactical level can have immediate impact at the highest strategic and political levels,” Kasdorf advised. This results in a tendency by national politicians to interfere at tactical and operational levels. “Opponents and national caveats have polluted ISAF’s command-and-control system,” one NATO general says. “We don’t need this backseat-driving. If politicians don’t trust their military commanders, they should kick them out—but they should not try to run local battles from faraway capitals. It is wrong and it can kill people.” Civilian casualties. During June, news media reported several incidents in which dozens of civilian casualties were allegedly caused by U.S. or NATO air strikes. According to a senior civil servant involved in the NATO operation, the damage that can be done by killing civilians, including children, is immense. “We talk about winning the hearts and minds of the people, but the reality is that hearts and minds are given to us as presents that we fail to appreciate,” she says. “It is not about winning hearts and minds, it’s about not losing them. If children are killed in an air strike, people will blame NATO for two or three generations. We have to take this very seriously.” Military sources, however, warn that the Taliban and other factions play this card by using civilians as human shields and ﬁghting NATO from positions among the population. German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung on July 3 called this a “perﬁdious strategy in which they deliberately take positions among civilians, including children, to ensure there are casualties if NATO tries to engage. They then report exaggerated casualty ﬁgures that are often not veriﬁed by the media before being published.” Kasdorf said there are “many actors in Afghanistan with their own agenda.” The international effort has many success stories to tell but they are not reported in the DAVID AXE/DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL • • • 16 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL JULY/AUGUST 2007 www.aviationweek.com/dti http://www.aviationweek.com/dti

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Defense Technology International - July 2007

Around the World Science Watch Tech Watch Parallax Ghost Ship Low Visibility Red Tape Sub Catcher Boom Time Broad Access Fight or Flight Cut Loose Loud and Clear Drone On Postmortem The Net Cutting Edge On the Record In Review Insight

Defense Technology International - July 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.