Preparing for war: assessing the feeling of preparedness of Dutch military  personnel deployed to Afghanistan

Between 2006 and 2010 Dutch military personnel conducted a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign in Uruzgan, Afghanistan. The Taliban reseized power in Afghanistan after the retreat of international troops, raising the question whether the campaign had been successful. This paper aims to study whether Dutch military personnel felt adequately prepared to conduct a COIN-operation in Afghanistan, leading to the research question: to what extent did officers of the Dutch armed forces feel prepared for the different elements of COIN for their deployment to Afghanistan during the ISAF-campaign? First, the different elements of COIN have been identified. These are: security, politics, economics and culture. Thereafter, 8 Dutch (ex-) officers have been on how they experienced their preparation. The preparation for security was very in-depth and sufficient. The preparation for the cultural element was deemed as basic and influenced the feeling of preparedness for the political and economic...Show moreBetween 2006 and 2010 Dutch military personnel conducted a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign in Uruzgan, Afghanistan. The Taliban reseized power in Afghanistan after the retreat of international troops, raising the question whether the campaign had been successful. This paper aims to study whether Dutch military personnel felt adequately prepared to conduct a COIN-operation in Afghanistan, leading to the research question: to what extent did officers of the Dutch armed forces feel prepared for the different elements of COIN for their deployment to Afghanistan during the ISAF-campaign? First, the different elements of COIN have been identified. These are: security, politics, economics and culture. Thereafter, 8 Dutch (ex-) officers have been on how they experienced their preparation. The preparation for security was very in-depth and sufficient. The preparation for the cultural element was deemed as basic and influenced the feeling of preparedness for the political and economic aspects. A fifth element has been added after the analysis. This organisational element focused on organisational decisions that affected the interviewees’ feeling of preparedness. Overall, the officers felt prepared enough to complete their tasks in Afghanistan, more focus on local culture could have benefited the effectiveness of the campaign. The academic implication of this study is that culture should be added to the pillars of COIN. More practical implications refer to the Dutch strategy, which is not in line with the pre-deployment preparation of personnel. A policy recommendation following this study is to revise pre-deployment training for COIN-missions similar to the one in Uruzgan.Show less

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Preparing for war: assessing the feeling of preparedness of Dutch military personnel deployed to Afghanistan