NATO’s Struggle for Intelligence in Afghanistan

A Complex Operational Environment

Documentation and analysis of the Afghanistan environment is fragmentary and superficial (Maley, 2005). The war-ravaged Afghanistan society suffers from extreme poverty and has among the lowest per capita GDP (gross domestic product). ² At all levels, the capacity of the Afghan government broke down and its legitimacy declined. It is common for people to identify with their ethnicity or tribe rather than with the Afghan state. As a result, the landscape of social relations looks like a kaleidoscope where tribes, subtribes, historical ties, and kinship play vital roles (Giustozzi, 2009). Geographic borders have little significance compared with the enduring tribal relationships that span them, such as those that cross between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Economically, Afghanistan has as fragile fiscal base and largely depends on outside resources. Afghanistan’s drug economy is responsible for an estimated 90% of the worldwide production of poppy, the raw material for heroin and morphine (Donkersloot et al., 2011). The drug network is complex. Afghan farmers sell their poppy or opium through intermediates. Drugs are then smuggled out of Afghanistan through bazaars, with the help of corrupt government officials and armed militia.

Compounding to the deteriorating state of Afghanistan, there is a violent insurgency that includes insurgent groups, such as the Taliban, the Haqqani network, foreign fighters (including al Qaeda), Hezb-i-Islami, and criminal organizations (Giustozzi, 2009). This contributed to attacks against Afghan civilians, international aid workers, and coalition forces.

Afghanistan also lacked a functioning security sector. This includes the different police organizations, the intelligence and security organizations, as well as the Afghan National Army (ANA). While the ANA has massively increased since 2003, their operational effectiveness remained dismal. Despite years of training and advice, and tens of billions in Western investment, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD, 2011) reported in 2011 that not a single ANA unit was capable of operating independent of NATO support. The rapid collapse of the Afghan armed forces in 2021 is another important indicator of their malfunctioning.

In the midst of this complexity, military troops from 51 different nations as well as more than 20,000 international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were active between 2001 and 2021. In an effort to visualize all these problems in Afghanistan, ISAF commander in 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, and his staff designed the diagram that is depicted in Figure 1. This example illustrates the complex nature of the Afghan conflict. Or as McChrystal remarked, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” ³

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Figure 1.

McChrystal’s Diagram on the Complexity of the Afghan Conflict. ⁴

The Afghan operational environment fits the definition of wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973). These ambiguous and fuzzy problems have an unknowable quality that make setting standards or achieving objectives extremely challenging if not impossible. Wicked problems such as the 2008 global financial crisis, global warming, acts of terrorism, and refugee streams have these qualities. The complexity of the Afghanistan conflict makes it well suited to be classified as a “wicked problem.” Drawing upon complexity literature, the remainder of this commentary will address three properties that are crucial to address wicked problems and reflect on their role as ISAF attempted to come to grips with its operational environment. These are requisite variety, learning, and enactment (see, for example, Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997).

Requisite Variety

According to Ashby’s (1956) famous “law of requisite variety,” a viable system thrives when its internal diversity matches the variety and complexity of its environment. This variety helps the system deal with the challenges posed by that environment (see also Morgan, 2006). ISAF had very little variety to match the complicated Afghanistan environment. Traditionally, intelligence units in military missions have emphasized the enemy (e.g., their unit strength, disposition, and morale), weather conditions (e.g., weather forecast, conditions of surf and tide on the beaches), and terrain (e.g., condition of roads, location of mine fields) (Glass & Davidson, 1952). NATO’s mission in Afghanistan was, however, not solely kinetic, but multidimensional in nature, with military, political, economic, and judicial aims. As such, intelligence beyond security-related aspects was required on a broad range of issues, including governance, socioeconomic, and criminal challenges.

To address this, NATO introduced the concept of PMESII: Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information. A striking example within the economic domain is the production of poppy in Afghanistan. When ISAF forces realized that addressing the poppy production was essential to stabilize Afghanistan, troops destroyed poppy fields and disrupted the supply chains (Donkersloot et al., 2011). To do this, understanding the complex drugs network was essential and ISAF gathered information on drug labs, traffickers, and drugs-related corruption, among others.

Incorporating a comprehensive intelligence approach led to a paradoxal situation. Military troops developed collection plans that included many different requirements. Mapping all these aspects consumed much time, energy, and financial resources. ISAF was not an exception in this. Reflecting on the U.S. intelligence community, Desouza (2009) argues that any system that tries to cover all information needs—both operational and strategic—becomes overly complex. Multiple experiences from public management indicate that to develop a lasting system should be developed in cooperation with different stakeholders from the bottom-up (Bastoe, 2006; de Bruijn, 2007).

In Afghanistan, civil–military cooperation was crucial for ISAF troops to understand the complex operational environment. ISAF had many different structures in place to organize such cooperation. These included CIMIC or Civil Affairs units and staff, Provincial Reconstruction Teams, as well as a various civil advisors, including rule of law advisors, cultural advisors, political advisors, and counternarcotics advisors.

Scholars and practitioners have fiercely debated the interface between ISAF troops and international organizations and NGOs. These debates pointed at the risks for civilian organizations of being associated with a potentially unwelcome military force, and thereby losing the protective patina of neutrality (see, for example, Frerks et al., 2006; Maley & Schmeidl, 2015). The temporary nature of the coalition also challenged civil–military relationships. As civil actors and their military counterparts frequently had different objectives and different ways of achieving these (Rietjens, 2008; Save the Children, 2004), they favored cooperation as long as it served their interests. This led to opportunistic behavior. Differences in organizational culture, expertise, methods, and objectives between two sets of actors complicated the relationship even further (Lucius & Rietjens, 2016).

Finally, inadequate cross-cultural competences among ISAF troops contributed to the lack of requisite variety. ⁵ These competencies are defined as

the ability to quickly and accurately comprehend, then appropriately and effectively engage individuals from distinct cultural backgrounds to achieve the desired effect. (1) Despite not having an in-depth knowledge of the other culture, and (2) Even though fundamental aspects of the other culture may contradict one’s own taken-for-granted assumptions/deeply-held beliefs. (Selmeski, 2007, p. 12)

To acquire cross-cultural competence and work effectively in a foreign culture, three main components are necessary (Abbe & Halpin, 2009). First is cultural knowledge which begins with an awareness of one’s own culture and includes an understanding of culture and cultural differences through schemata or frameworks. In many cases, ISAF troops were unaware of the conflict’s complexity, the history of the area they operated in, as well as the ethnic sensitivities (e.g., Kitzen, 2016). This negatively influenced their ability to unravel the environmental dynamics and meet the intelligence requirements. To address this deficiency, many troop-contributing countries embedded cultural knowledge in the pre-deployment training of their troops.

Second, cross-cultural competencies include affective communication and incorporates attitudes toward other cultures and the motivation to learn about and engage with them. Openness and empathy are of particular importance. The stereotypical images of soldiers wearing mirrored sunglasses when talking to local Afghans illustrate poor affective nonverbal communication in the Afghanistan theater.

Third, cross-cultural competencies include skills that “encompass the ability to regulate one’s own reactions in a cross-cultural setting, interpersonal skills, and the flexibility to assume the perspective of someone from a different culture” (Abbe & Halpin, 2009, p. 24). Linguistic skills are crucial to realize this. Often, however, the Afghan authorities and population communicate in a language that the international troops did not master. Examples include Farsi, Pashto, or Dari. Language inadequacy greatly hampered the collection and processing of literal intelligence through open-source intelligence (osint), human intelligence (humint), or signals intelligence (sigint). To address this issue, military units widely used local as well as international interpreters. While they were able to compensate for part of the military’s linguistic skills, military units were often unable to effectively deploy these interpreters (van Dijk, 2021). The above illustrates how lack of requisite variety undermined ISAF’s intelligence gathering capacity.

Learning

The second property for organizations to address wicked problems is learning. Learning is present when actors reflect on major challenges or problems that may arise and do take corrective actions. Organizational studies literature identifies different types of learning that are helpful in analyzing ISAF’s efforts. Whereas single-loop learning refers to actors making simple adaptations and taking corrective actions, double-loop learning involves reframing and seeing things in novel ways. Triple-loop learning entails actors developing new processes or methodologies for arriving at such re-framings (see, for example, Romme & Van Witteloostuijn, 1999).

At the individual and unit levels, single-loop learning happened through briefings and presentations, during pre-deployment and handover/takeover periods. Often, however, there were no formal procedures to codify experiences or lessons learned. While some soldiers and units recorded their experiences and lessons, often in self-developed formats and reports, others paid no attention to this. This led to fragmentation and hampered structural comparison and analysis of the lessons learned (Noll & Rietjens, 2016).

The soldiers’ short deployment periods, generally between 4 and 12 months, worsened the situation even further. Within ISAF’s intelligence branches, such a short period turned out to be detrimental to understand the situation and build trust relations. Also, most units preferred operational personnel to those dedicated to lessons learned. This was understandable given the need for personnel that can undertake military action, but led to neglecting the lessons-learned process. In addition, commanders sometimes had limited interest in discovering what had gone wrong.

At the level of double-loop learning, that is, of reframing, one saw a continuing debate within and among the troop-contributing countries about what strategy to follow. The U.S. strategy illustrates this well. During their early years in Afghanistan, many U.S. forces applied a counter terrorism strategy. U.S. intelligence units emphasized insurgent groups, such as the Taliban and the Haqqani network, and focused on their whereabouts, capacities, modus operandi, and leadership. Meanwhile, U.S. operations were highly kinetic and aggressive using drones and special forces, among others. Over time, however, U.S. troops learned that focusing on insurgent groups was not sufficient. Rather, it was essential to win popular support for the coalition forces. U.S. troops, as well as many other countries, therefore switched to a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in which an integrated approach of defense, diplomacy, and development was central. As Major-General Mart de Kruif, the commander of Regional Command South put it in 2009, “Yes, we shall kill evil-doers, but the centre of gravity [of our mission] lies in protecting the population” (van Bemmel, 2009).

To execute this COIN strategy, a comprehensive understanding of the operational environment was needed (see also the discussion on PMESII in the previous section). In his landmark study, Michael Flynn and colleagues (2010) commented on the flawed status of the U.S. intelligence community in generating such a comprehensive picture, and thus the difficulty of establishing double-loop learning:

Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers—whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers—US intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency. (p. 7)

Other countries such as Canada have done a better job in double-loop learning. One of the reasons for this is the small cadre of long-serving military intelligence officers and noncommissioned officers (Charters, 2012). They constitute the intelligence branch’s “institutional memory” as they have experienced many different conflicts. In Afghanistan, their tasks were similar to what they did in the Balkans, which helped them reframing their environmental understanding.

Finally, triple-loop learning seeks to enhance the fullness and depth of learning about complex issues and dilemmas (De Waard et al., 2021). To this end, actors not only link together in an overall learning infrastructure, but also develop competencies and skills to use this infrastructure. In Afghanistan, such triple-loop learning hardly took place among NATO troops, international civilian organizations, as well as Afghan actors. Although there were regular meetings and conferences at which lessons were shared, these exchanges were unstructured and lacked follow-up. The interface between ISAF troops and international organizations and NGOs was already addressed in the previous section. The exchange of lessons between the international community and the Afghan actors had a specific set of challenges. These included a lack of mutual trust, the limited education of local people, NATO personnel’s short deployments, and the conflicting motives of local powerbrokers (Rietjens et al., 2009). Like with requisite variety, NATO’s intelligence efforts to use its many challenges as opportunities for learning fell short.

Enactment

The third property, enactment, refers to the idea that only by acting organizations can make sense of their environment (Weick, 1979). The enactment perspective stresses that the environment and the organization are in a symbiotic relationship, in which organizational measures actively shape the environment and people dynamically invent rather than passively consider what is happening around them. Isenberg (1985) applied the concept of enactment to military operations and termed it “fighting empirically” (p. 178). In his vision, the growing complexity and ambiguity of military operations require a behavioral pattern in which generating intelligence and action are intertwined. More specifically, Isenberg states, “the most effective officers may take action with a very incomplete understanding of the battle situation [. . . and . . .] will define and solve problems, and implement the solutions in a continually reiterating cycle” (Isenberg, 1985, p. 178).

For ISAF, enactment was an important property to understand its environment. The operational task-setting was so multifaceted and equivocal that action was an important way to probe the environment and learn by doing. There are numerous examples that illustrate how ISAF troops gained situational awareness by means of enactment. Increased presence of ISAF troops in Afghan communities was a key issue as Charters (2012) explains:

Once CF [Canadian Forces] troops moved into the villages on a permanent basis, however, confidence and communication improved, leading to more information and better situational awareness. That, in turn, led to both greater security for the population and the ability of the CF to support projects that met locally defined needs. In sum, cultural intelligence gained by living with and listening to the people advanced the Canadian Forces’ overall campaign objectives at least as much as or more than direct assault intelligence-led operations. (p. 489)

Other examples of enactment included (1) interacting with the Afghan population during patrols, (2) deploying forward operating bases as this led to feedback from the surrounding communities, (3) carrying out hearts and minds or quick impact projects, (4) security sector reform such as training Afghan police and Afghan army, (5) direct action of special forces units (i.e., small-scale offensive actions in a hostile or denied environments), and (6) military operations that were aimed at intelligence generation. All these activities led to feedback (either positive or negative) enabling ISAF forces to elucidate their understanding of the complex operational environment. Compared with the other two recommended methods for dealing with wicked problems, NATO more successfully applied enactment.

Conclusion

For almost two decades, NATO, its member countries, and allies have tried to come to grips with the complex operational environment of Afghanistan. This proved to be a daunting task. Complexity theory provides a lens to analyze this endeavor. Using three main properties (requisite variety, learning, and enactment), I reflected on ISAF’s efforts to gain situational understanding. In particular, the lack of requisite variety and learning has played a decisive role. With regard to requisite variety, the lack of cross-cultural competences and the arduous relationship between NATO’s forces and the international organizations and NGOs contributed to a lack of understanding. In terms of learning, NATO has done a particular bad job. Whereas single-loop learning took place regularly, double-loop learning and particularly triple-loop learning were largely absent. As such, NATO mirrored an inert organization.

At the same time, however, fully understanding a country as complex as Afghanistan seems impossible for outside actors. Just imagine thousands of non-U.S. soldiers tasked with comprehensively grasping all complexities of the American society and based on that accurately predicting (near) future events. It is clear that this is a mission impossible, but still we expect intelligence communities to do so. In addition, one should realize that mapping so many different aspects consumes much time, energy, and financial resources.

ISAF’s episode is, unfortunately, not unique. The missions Enduring Freedom (2001–2014) and Resolute Support (2015–2021) faced similar challenges (see, for example, Matisek & Wiltenburg, 2021; Neumann et al., 2013). The sudden withdrawal of the international troops in 2021 is another example of the complex intelligence problems that confront the international community. Although several intelligence organizations warned of a collapse of the Afghan government in the months preceding the withdrawal, only very few were able to foresee the exact course of events. Britain’s most senior military officer, Gen. Sir Nick Carter, summarized the main concern:

It was the pace of it that surprised us and I don’t think we realised quite what the Taliban were up to. They weren’t really fighting for the cities they eventually captured, they were negotiating for them, and I think you’ll find a lot of money changed hands as they managed to buy off those who might have fought for them. (See Note 4)

This is the fate of intelligence organizations. When they accurately understand the situation, foresee the future, and disseminate their products on time, decision makers are able to take swift action and subsequently take all the praise. But if intelligence organizations are unable to provide intelligence with a level of specificity that allows for timely and appropriate decisions and actions that can be taken with respect to an identified threat (Gentry & Gordon, 2019), they will be the ones who are, often publicly, blamed.