The military impact of post-Cold War conflicts on civilian life has been obvious for all to see: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechyna, Georgia, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia and Sudan. In each case, warring parties have caused suffering - intentionally or inadvertently - to civilian populations directly as a result of military operations. Destroyed homes and infrastructure, displaced populations, starving refugees and broken economies all create chaos in military theatres that increasingly penetrate or even embrace civilian territory.
The need for co-ordination, co-operation and, especially, information exchanges between military and civilian groups operating in such scenarios is also obvious. And yet it has been slow in coming since the Berlin Wall fell nearly 20 years ago, despite an ever-closer working proximity of international military coalitions, humanitarian aid g roups, reconstruction teams, international political authorities and development organisations in regions of conflict.
Efforts to co-ordinate diverse players across a battlefield go by different names. For example, the Norwegian government, which has pushed hard for such an approach for the past five years, calls it integrated peace operations - a concept based on co-ordinated planning and consultation from all parties before, during and after a peacekeeping operation is launched. While theoretically appealing, that may not be fully achievable owing to the unpredictability of conflicts and, more fundamentally, the innate reluctance of aid organisations to get too close to military authorities.
This has seen an increasingly widespread acceptance of the concept of civil-military co-operation (CIMIC), which, narrowed to its military application, essentially means ensuring that the civilian, humanitarian and reconstruction aspects of a conflict are factored in by military authorities when planning operations. CIMIC also strives to informally provide or receive information from civilian groups to boost the safety or logistical planning of all players.
Most nations involved in coalition peacekeeping - particularly those of NATO - understand the need for CIMIC. However, there is no consistency of approach across the 26 allies, according to those familiar with the issue. This is one of the reasons why NATO recently added to its growing network of specialised 'Centres of Excellence' with a site specifically to promote CIMIC across its member nations.
NATO's Civil-Military Co-operation Centre of Excellence (CCOE) is located at a former Dutch air force base along the outskirts of Enschede in the central-eastern Netherlands. Sitting right next to the base's now-abandoned Cold War-era airstrip, CCOE's facilities are provided and maintained by the Dutch ministry of defence. However, operating and personnel costs come from the centre's participating nations.
The centre's current sponsoring countries are Denmark, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland, with Slovenia expected to join in 2009. Belgium and Norway participate with contributions of personnel and expertise and talks are continuing with Bulgaria and Hungary, as well as with other allies, to join as well.
Accredited by NATO in July 2007, the centre has spent the time since on various tasks, such as: civil-military doctrine and research; classroom instruction for military and civilian personnel; defining the CIMIC element to NATO exercises; developing a CIMIC handbook for operational personnel; and spreading the word to commanders that CIMIC is a critical component to operational planning and convincing civilian groups to agree to co-operate with them.
This last task is probably the centre's most difficult challenge. "We are way beyond the initial 'teddy bear' phase of CIMIC where soldiers handed out toys or chocolate to children in Bosnia in the 1990s to create goodwill. The concept has evolved well beyond that in the intervening years, but there are still some big challenges ahead of us," Colonel Bert Kuijpers, CCOE's Dutch director, tells Jane's.
The most important challenge is to convince allied commanders to systematically consult with CIMIC personnel before launching a lethal operation, he says. "Military planners inherently prefer to stay within the planning 'box' of things they are trained to deal with. They don't want to consider those factors they can't control such as random movements of refugees or the consequences of knocking out a target that might be critical to aid organisations such as a bridge or tunnel. We have to compel them to do that, however," says Col Kuijpers.
His German colleague, Colonel Hans Jürgen Kasselmann, who succeeds Col Kuijpers later this year, agrees. Recently returned from a tour of duty in northern Afghanistan, Col Kasselmann says that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has launched lethal operations in the region involving police and military forces, without consulting civilian authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). "That was a mistake. We now know that we have to do these first in co-ordination with the civil side," he says. NATO's accumulated experience in peacekeeping operations also shows that military authorities "need to convince NGO representatives that it is worth getting in touch with military authorities before they deploy into a theatre", says Col Kuijpers, adding: "It's a two-way process."
That will probably never be truly balanced, however, according to Nick Grono, deputy president of the International Crisis Group's Brussels office. Grono says: "Too often commanders simply declare: 'This is a military operation and NGOs should get behind us and support it.' And that's it. That leaves a huge gap in understanding our needs."
He pointed to the 13 August killing of three International Red Cross workers near Kabul by Taliban resistance fighters as an example. "They were driving a white vehicle, a Land Rover, as most NGOs and international organisations do. But so do military personnel, despite repeated requests from NGOs that they avoid this," observes Grono. "I'm not saying that the vehicle was attacked simply because it was white, but by having all military vehicles painted in a different colour - anything but white - this would remove any doubt in an assailant's mind."
Grono adds: "There is certainly a role [for CCOE] to play in getting mutual understanding of each other's needs, although we NGOs haven't really turned our minds completely to this issue yet. In principle it's a good idea, but the practice is difficult."
That will not stop CCOE's staff from trying, however. "It's all about raising awareness on both sides of the civil-military equation," says Col Kuijpers. "Ideally, we'd like to see an equal split between military and civil representatives under the same roof here for training purposes."
CCOE is partnered with a wide group of military and civil organisations: the 26 allies; NATO's Allied Command Transformation and its various subcommands; the EU's military staff, academic institutions and military academies; NGOs; and international organisations such as the UN and the Red Cross.
The centre will train some 230 students in its basic CIMIC course during 2008 and another 100 staff and functional specialists in advanced CIMIC techniques such as detailed assessments of theatre conditions regarding civilian infrastructure, refugee displacement and logistics, security risks and more. Upon request, it also sends instructors to teach at national CIMIC courses across the alliance. For 2009, CCOE expects to train 300 students in basic doctrine and 140 specialists, as well as extend co-operation to universities and defence academies in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United States.
As the centre is independent, it can push through new ideas and doctrine far more quickly than if it was a bona fide arm of NATO. "We have really only one master, our co-ordinating committee, which allows us to move around as we see fit in dealing with NATO or academic institutions or whatever," says Lieutenant Colonel Arno Tage, CCOE's deputy branch chief for planning and co-ordination. "And it helps that we have direct links to each national ministry of defence."
A key task entrusted by NATO to the centre in 2008 is to produce and update its 'bible' for CIMIC doctrine, known as Allied Joint Publication No 9, and to develop a training and education curriculum to support it. "We co-ordinate both, which means all parties accept our centre as the custodian for these goals," says Lt Col Tage.
As part of this effort, CCOE is currently developing a handbook for CIMIC officers, with guidance on organising civil-military meetings, assessing conditions in the field such as emergency electricity and water supplies, and injecting CIMIC into operational planning. The handbook incorporates lessons learned as they are gleaned from NATO's various peacekeeping missions. One of these "is that militaries shouldn't barge in to build schools or other infrastructure without working closely with civilian organisations or local authorities", observes Col Kuijpers.
That lesson has been particularly apparent in Afghanistan where NGOs involved in building schools or hospitals have sometimes found themselves in infrastructure competition with one or more of NATO's 26 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Each PRT's mixed group of civil reconstruction workers and military personnel is organised by a lead country and a member of NATO's ISAF peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Lack of co-ordination between civil players and the PRTs has caused duplication of effort or confused public perception of who is doing what, according to NGOs operating there. This raises a major doctrinal challenge, admits Col Kuijpers: "Whether a nation uses its own soldiers and personnel or hires in private groups to operate it, the composition of a PRT and how it's run is up to each ally. That's not important. What counts is the output and effect: they should be the same for each PRT."
Unfortunately, that has not been the reality: "In northern Afghanistan we had Finnish, German, Hungarian and Norwegian PRTs," says Col Kasselmann. "While there was great effort to harmonise their military elements, the outcome of each PRT was by no means the same."
Indeed, NATO and its commands have been slow to grasp the dangers of CIMIC inconsistency, but that may be about to change, according to Col Kuijpers. "We've been in discussions with ACT [NATO's Allied Command Transformation] for the last year and a half and I hope to get some agreement from them that each PRT nation will run their military and civil people responsible for CIMIC planning through our training," he says. "That would be a big step forward."
© Jane's Information Group 2008, Jane's International Defence Review. Reproduced with permission.