Page 88 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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national SOF to Afghanistan. Now these forces are no longer relied on for rare and
episodic use. They have increasingly been groomed for, and budgeted as, a con-
tinuous presence as well as a surgical strike force.

Part III
Case Study: Afghanistan
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the United States deployed SOF to Afghanistan to
target AQ and the Taliban-led government. NATO invoked Article V, the treaty’s mutual
defense clause, for the first time in its history, providing the basis for NATO members to
support the United States. In the early days, SOF from Australia, Britain, Canada, Den-
mark, France, Germany, Poland, and Turkey rapidly deployed to Afghanistan.
Multi-National Commands
In Afghanistan since 2001, a range of NATO members countries took responsibilities for
varying territories and tasks as well as non-NATO members. While multi-national ac-
tivities were sometimes coordinated, SOF was decidedly not integrated across national
units.
Such separation of forces limited SOF’s ability to have strategic impact across that coun-
try, strained limited aviation and intelligence platforms, and fragmented training mis-
sions with Afghan units, thereby slowing down efforts to increase domestic stability and
return military authority to local leaders.
Challenges To Synchronization
There were a number of obstacles to SOF synchronization, most notably that most
NATO members consider their national Special Operations Forces to be:
1) a scarce resource;
2) of exceptionally high value;
3) often with unique capabilities.
To combine such forces, for the purposes of the war in Afghanistan, would then re-
duce the availability of these forces for individual national need, as well as ex-
pose certain national techniques and skills, and increase risk to their forces by turn-
ing over control and command to a non-national leader in a major battleground.
Increased Need
In Afghanistan, SOF was in great demand due largely to its counterterrorism capabili-
ties, that are generally more honed than national conventional forces. What began as a
force of about 500 grew to a force of 2,200 special operators, and led in 2007 to an over-
arching SOF element called the International Security and Assistance Forces Special
Operations (ISAF SOF). NATO established a SOF Coordination Center to offer training,
tactics, and capability development, and by 2010, NATO Special Operations Headquar-
ters (NSHQ) provided new infrastructure for joint training and planning, an effort that
continues to grow today.