Page 116 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

756 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

the Helmand Province, the success of the elections is highly questionable as fraud, cor-
ruption and low voting percentages all caused problems in both national and provincial
elections. Generally speaking, the ISAF forces and forces from the Afghan National
Security Forces have been able to maintain an acceptable level of security in the largest
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cities but have failed to ensuring representation in the democratic institutions for the
rural population.
The sixth step tests the local leaders, although this of course requires that step five -
the holding of elections - was successful. With regards to autonomy and own initiatives
concerning the upholding of security and developing the local area, the elected leaders
have not been tested sufficiently. The testing has proven to be a difficult task as Afghan
autonomy must be respected and there were an insufficient number of alternative quali-
fied candidates. 17
The seventh step involves organizing a political party based on national consensus
on at least a number of points in terms of how political visions and problems should be
addressed. In this context, unifying the local leaders in one party or several parties is es-
sential to sustaining the peace. In the Helmand Province (and in all of Afghanistan), this
turned out to be impossible due to Afghan legislation. And the Afghan president Hamid
Karzai’s centralization of the power in the presidential office and the constant feuds
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between the parliament and the presidency have also obstructed progress in this area.
The final step is defined by winning over or suppressing the last insurgents and should
be accompanied by an offer of amnesty to the remaining insurgents. This step has partly
been a part of the 2006-2013 strategy and still is an important part of the offensive ISAF
operation. These measures are successful in relation to the levels of operation and
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tactics and have put a lot of pressure on the Taliban command structure. However, on
the level of strategy, this approach has failed in terms of steps 3 & 4 and the negative
consequences include further radicalization and alienation of the COIN force from the
majority of the population.

Neglecting the Basic COIN Principles
In general, you have two operation types; short-term operations and long-term op-
erations. Naturally, short-term operations have short-term objectives and in Afghanistan
these varied in the period from 2006 to 2013. The element of search and destroy, how-
ever, always played an important role, for example when the ISAF forces launched an
offensive and established a series of Forward Operating Bases in some of the remote

16 Udenrigsministeriet (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark), The Danish Helmand Plan 2011-2012, and
Report on the Danish Engagement in Afghanistan in 2010.
17 Peter Dahl Thruelsen, ‘Security Sector Stabilisation in Counterinsurgency Operations: The Case of
Afghanistan’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 22 (2011), 619–643 (pp. 527–632).
18 International Crisis Group, Afghanistan’s Parties in Transition., 2013, pp. 1–5 <http://www.crisisgroup.
org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/b141-afghanistans-parties-in-transition.pdf> [accessed 13
September 2013].
19 CH DANCON, ‘Interview with CH DANCON (Chief Danish Contingent)’, 2013, Private archive.