Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

7 October 2003

ISAF

• AFP quotes an ISAF spokesman saying NATO-led peacekeepers and Afghan police Tuesday arrested a man in Kabul suspected of preparing “terrorist” attacks. “At 6:30 this morning, ISAF troops and Afghan security services conducted an operation to arrest a suspect in central Kabul. This operation was to protect the local population as well a ISAF troops,” the spokesman reportedly said. According to the dispatch, he added that the suspect was in custody and would be questioned over “terrorist activities,” but declined to provide the man’s nationality or any further details.

Media center on reports that NATO has decided to advance planning to move ISAF troops beyond Kabul and into other Afghan cities.
AFP writes that the decision, which has to be approved by the UN, would see German forces taking the lead in extending the UN-mandated force. The dispatch quotes an unidentified official saying the NATO agreement was twofold: accord for Germany to lead a PRT in the northern town of Kunduz, and a decision in principle to the expansion of the ISAF mission beyond Kabul. “This is just a first step. This is just the political guideline that can then be used by military planners for more detailed planning on what this expansion could look like,” the official reportedly indicated. The dispatch claims that one of two scenarios under consideration at NATO is to send between 2,000 and 10,000 troops to other Afghan cities and to multiply the number of PRTs already active in several regions.
NATO agreed Monday to expand its international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan beyond Kabul for the first time in an attempt to bolster the authority of President Karzai, says the Daily Telegraph. It was not clear how far ISAF would extend its presence, notes the daily, adding that diplomats spoke of “limited temporary deployments” outside Kabul, rather than a permanent peacekeeping presence. The article highlights that much will depend on how many extra troops can be deployed to reinforce the 5,300 peacekeepers in Afghanistan at present.
“The Alliance’s military have already begun studying the possible scenarios for redeployment outside Kabul. According to the military experts, “2,000 to 10,000” extra men would have to be deployed in strategic Afghan cities, the list of which has not been drawn up,” says French daily Le Figaro. Claiming that for security reasons, France does not envisage increasing its contribution beyond its battalion of 558 service personnel and its some 150 special forces deployed on the Pakistani border, near Spin Boldak, the newspaper adds: “The extension of NATO’s role in Afghanistan comes up against a lack of troops and means. The war in Iraq deprives number of allies of further room for maneuver. The Afghan terrain also poses severe logistic problems, difficult to resolve in a few weeks. ‘If only because of the distances to be traveled, that mission needs much more considerable means than those which it has been possible to deploy in the Balkans,’ it is noted in Brussels. The Europeans lack, in particular, jumbo aircraft to transport the troops to the remote regions and to evacuate them rapidly in an emergency. The division of tasks between the NATO mission and that led by the Americans within the framework of Operation Enduring Freedom also still has to be defined. These organizational matters will be discussed by the Alliance’s defense ministers during their informal summit in Colorado Springs.”

NATO

Reports that allied military and defense chiefs meeting in Colorado for an informal summit will study ways to use the NRF in a crisis are generating prominent interest.
NATO defense ministers will discuss progress toward establishing a NATO Response Force, a brigade-size unit that could be deployed on short notice anywhere in the world in a crisis, writes AFP. The first elements of the force of about 15,000 to 20,000 troops are to be ready next year and it should be fully operational by 2006, the dispatch notes. It adds that the ministers will take part in an exercise Wednesday at Shriever Air Force base outside Colorado Springs that is designed to dramatize how quickly crisis events can require such a force.
A related New York Times article says NATO’s defense ministers and military chiefs will begin arriving in Colorado Springs Tuesday, ahead of an unusual secret exercise to study how the Alliance’s proposed NRF might be deployed in a crisis. The daily quotes a senior Defense Department official saying the meeting would be the first time that NATO’s top military and civilian defense officials would join in a rapid reaction force exercise, which the Pentagon was studiously describing as a “study seminar” and not a war game. The newspaper adds that American officials declined to give details in advance, fearing that doing so might skew the outcome. It quotes one senior Pentagon official saying, however, that the goal was to “illuminate some of the issues that will arise from the creation” of the NRF. “In the modern world, crises can emerge quickly,” the official reportedly said, adding: “They can be very dynamic. The initial problem can change rather rapidly. This is an opportunity for ministers to kind of think through some of the implications of that security environment for the way NATO does its business.”
“The dramatic twists and turns of a fictional scenario which will be presented to the 19 NATO nations’ defense ministers at the edge of the Rocky Mountains on Wednesday are a secret. But one thing is for sure: it will challenge them to think about how the Alliance, built over half a century ago to battle the Soviet Union in Europe, must now be ready to strike with agility and devastating power at threats from weapons of mass destruction and terrorism far beyond its borders,” writes Reuters.