ISAF Video Tele Conference

Interview with Brigadier General Lafontaine (CJ5)

PEGGY BEAUPLET (Media Operations Centre, Afghanistan): General, official good afternoon to you. I hope you don't mind with our continuing this press conference in English first thing.

VINCENT LAFONTAINE (ISAF Chief of Plans): I am afraid, but I will try.

BEAUPLET: Otherwise I'll make the interpretation. Don't worry. Thank you very much for joining us today. I will just ask the journalists to introduce themselves first and then we'll pass the floor on to you for any introductory remarks, after which we'll start the Q&A session. Is that fine with you?

LAFONTAINE: Yes. Thank you very much.

BEAUPLET: So starting on my left; David would you like to introduce yourself?

Q: David Brunnstrom from Reuters.
Q: Bonjour. Lorne Cooke, Agence France-Presse Service, Anglophone.
Q: Paul Ames from the Associated Press.
Q: Ahto Lobjakas, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Q: Brooks Tigner, Jane's Defence.
Q: Pascal Mallet, Agence France-Presse, Service Français.
Q: Et Christophe-François Lamfalussy de la Libre Belgique à Bruxelles. Bonjour.

BEAUPLet: Here we are and just to introduce myself briefly, my names is Peggy Beauplais and I'm working at the media operations centre in Afghanistan here at NATO headquarters. À vous General.

LAFONTAINE: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to be with you even if I am replacing on short delay Brigadier General San Jose who is really sorry but too busy on national duties to come and he asks you to forgive him for this change.

I am Brigadier General Vincent Lafontaine from the French Army and I arrived in Kabul in mid-July '07 of course. I am currently Chief of Planning in HQ ISAF. In advance and again I beg your pardon for my broken English, but I will try to do my best for you. As a background my last assignment in France was dealing with strategic planning, strategic military planning, about all the commitments France has all around the world - Africa, Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo, and of course Afghanistan.

For the time being and up to the end of February 2008 I am Chief J5 in ISAF HQ. That is to say that with my 20 Lieutenant Colonel and one Colonel, we are preparing the ISAF activities for the future from the next 60 days up to the what we call exit strategy we could say. We are working not only on the operations, but also with development, governance in the (inaudible) spectrum of supporting activities ISAF is able to develop.

So this is roughly my background and I am happy to start if you are ready.

BEAUPLET: General thank you very much. So without any delay who wants to take the floor? David?

Q: Thank you very much General for your time. This is David Brunnstrom, again, from Reuters. I wondered if I could just start by asking about the recent activity in the west of Afghanistan. We see we've had an incident where some Italian troops were abducted and then freed. I'd be grateful for any more information you can give on that operation. I see there's also been other violence in the west. Can you give us any explanation as to the reasons for the rise in activity by insurgents or others in the west of Afghanistan and how much of a concern that is for you?

LAFONTAINE: Yes. First, about the kidnapped Italian soldiers. All the information is going to be delivered by our public information office here in Kabul, but I could tell you some words. The Italian soldiers were rescued this morning in Farah province following an Italian-led ISAF mission to free them. They were kidnapped on Saturday the 22. I will not give you many details because it's not my part and you will obtain everything on this from, as I said, our specialized people.

Of course, it's a success story because it was very quickly solved. We know that we have some people who are injured, but it was, we could say, an action which shows to the kidnappers that it's not a solution for the future.

About the situation in the west area; we could say that some parts of the western area have always been with little trouble depending on the proximity of Nimruz province and (inaudible)... activities from Helmand. I really think that, as you see, the success of the results ISAF had on the insurgents - suppressing a lot of them, of the leaders - has an impact on the way act now. In fact we could say they have changed; they have been obliged to change their course of action, now trying to develop what we could call "arresting activities" with IED suicide bombers and kidnappings. But it's not the way they intended to act at the beginning of spring 2007 when they spoke about large spring offensive and so on.

So we could say we assisted during this summer a sort of change in the course of action of Taleban or the insurgents because of the result and the pressure that ISAF put on their shoulders.

Q: Lorne Cooke from AFP. I know you said your people in Kabul were going to give a little more information. It was an ISAF operation this morning with the Italians and led by the Italians if I understand correctly, and it seemed to happen extremely quickly compared to other more civilian hostage situations we have. Is that typical? Should we expect that with soldiers their lives might be more very immediately in danger compared to civilians? Why did you choose... or why was it done in this way, if you can explain that to me?

And the other question I had was more generally about Taleban activity. I assume we're very much coming to the winter cut-off time now. Are we seeing a decrease in activity at all or how do you forecast the next month or so? I'm not sure what the weather is like there.

LAFONTAINE: So about your first question. Of course because they were soldiers, we had very quickly good reports which gave a lot of help to envisage a military operation. Secondly, we focused a lot of intelligence means to try to obtain these information which make an operation easier and feasible. What we know about these types of hostage kidnapping is that the period where it's possible to act is at the beginning and after then you enter in a long, long, long process of negotiation. So there is a sort of window of opportunity to act very quickly if you obtain sufficient information and intelligence and because of the efficiency of the special forces of intelligence means, it was possible to perform this operation.

Your second question is about the activity of the insurgents in winter and of course the activity of ISAF linked. On the insurgent side of course I could not guess what will happen. What we know when looking to the past is that traditionally fall and winter is a period where they try, because of the winter conditions which are in part of Afghanistan very severe, it's an opportunity for them to take some rest, to re-supply, to go to their safe havens if they have and so on.

So probably we could, if they work as in the past years, we could observe a decrease in activity, insurgent activity. But nothing is sure of course and it will depend on their own course of action. On the ISAF side it's really the intent of COMISAF. Of course I will not give you the operational planning for the next month, but just give you the general intent we could say. It's really the intent of COMISAF to go on putting pressure on them. Don't let them take rest and re-supply and to try to maintain this pressure we have during fall and winter to be in a better position for the spring period to start again the possible... what is called here the fighting season, even if it's a bad word. That is what I could say on this point.

Q: Paul Ames here from the Associated Press. General we heard last week about the start of an operation in Helmand province around the district of Gereshk I think it's called. Could you tell us how that operation is going and what the objectives are of that mission and how have the first few days been in achieving those objectives?

LAFONTAINE: The current operation which names is Palk Wahel is currently ongoing and I will not give you a lot of results. What we could say is that we are at the end of this operation and the aim, as in every area where we have to develop operations, is to disrupt the insurgents; to clear eventually the areas to be in a position to put ANA to control the ground after the operations. Currently the results seem..., but it's not finished. Good and we have... good feedback from RC south on this topic.

Q: Ahto Lobjakas, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. You mentioned in your introduction that you are to deal with what you call an exit strategy. I was wondering in the context of what's going on now in Helmand and in the southern provinces in general, if you could indicate how long do you think it will take for ISAF to be able to pacify those regions,  to have an ANA presence that can hold the area that you've taken? So basically, how long will it take before you will have subdued the insurgency from there? Thank you.

LAFONTAINE: First, I will have to say again that ISAF is not alone in these commitments in Afghanistan and ISAF if fully conscious that we will not alone solve the problem of Afghanistan.
Second, you all know and probably more in Brussels because of NATO than in other capitals, that ISAF is currently roughly 40,000 soldiers and it's quite under-resourced to be able to rapidly control this huge country. One other solution of course, part of the solution, is to implement as soon as possible ANA (Afghan National Army) and Afghan National Police to be in a position to take the lead on most of the security operations.

Today it's not completely possible. We just start and progressively we think it could be possible to give them the lead, but it's probably too early to say when it will be possible. We have a very good view on ANA progress. We think the strength of 70,000 soldiers could be achieved in quality and quantity. We could say at the beginning of 2009 something like this, but we also know that there are a lot of jobs to do for preparing a real efficient Afghan National Police and we are not directly working on this. You know that OEF with CSTC-A in Afghanistan is working on this.

But of course, developing this security aspect is not sufficient. We also have to support development and governance and we all know in the military point of view that the solution at the end will not be a military only solution, but of course a political solution. So probably because we are under-resourced, it will take more time than we initially hoped, but the solution is of course to develop and give the responsibility to the Afghan authorities in the different lines, but also in security lines with ANA and ANP as I said.

Q: Yes. Good morning General. Brooks Tigner of Defence News here. I wanted to ask you what I think is an operation question you might be positioned to answer and that's the following: if we assume that the Taleban is going to use its drug money and other financial resources to buy increasingly sophisticated weaponry, I'm wondering what this means for ISAF forces and in particular how to protect ISAF's military bases, its depots and its convoys, and my question to you is are you... you mentioned that of course ISAF is under-resourced to protect or control the whole country, but are you looking at just the protection of your military assets? Are you satisfied with the level of defensive... you defences, your defensive equipment et cetera against short and medium range artillery, shoulder-fired mortar, et cetera? Do you have those defensive systems in place and are you happy with the way they're operating or do you need a higher level of protection?
Thank you.

LAFONTAINE: If I may, first you spoke about the drug activities and I think it could be a good opportunity to speak about this because as you saw in New York yesterday, it was also one of the points which was mentioned. So I will first begin with this point and then come back to the protection.

As you know, on this topic ISAF has a limited mandate. It's principally in support of government of Afghanistan and it's really government of Afghanistan which is in first line. Why? First you have to be aware that our troops, our military soldiers, are not trained and equipped to fight against this type of threat. They are military people. They are soldiers. They are not policemen and so it's not their job to directly fight against these poppy cultivators, poppy traffickers and so on.

The second point is about eradication. Often people are thinking that eradication is the solution to the drug trafficking. Of course not. Drug trafficking is a very complex activity from cultivation, to commercialization, and so on and so on, and it's a huge fight with which probably take years and years. But again, government of Afghanistan is in first line on this.

Having said that we are fully aware that we have to support as efficiently as possible government of Afghanistan in its fight against counter-narcotics because the links between traffickers and insurgents and the links about money to insurgents is so important that we have to try to support all the agencies working on this, and principally government of Afghanistan, as efficiently as possible.

Q: Excuse General, may I intervene?

LAFONTAINE: Within our -

Q: General... hello?

LAFONTAINE: Yes?

Q: Excuse me General. My question was less about fighting the drugs than the threat which the money from the drugs represents and that is the Taliban will buy more sophisticated and deadly weaponry to attack ISAF forces. So I really don't care about the fight against the drugs. My question is are you worried that you will not be able to protect your military bases against attack?
Thank you.

LAFONTAINE: Okay, again, I understood your question. But I was interested to develop the first point. But anyway, I could come directly to your question about protection.

First, currently we couldn't say that insurgent threat in terms of weapons has been really developed in terms of modern way of attacking. To be frank, a lot of IED, a lot of suicide bombers, are using quite common weapons. The most difficult in the protection is probably the difficulty to address these type of protection more than the modern aspect of the weapons. For example, currently the air missiles are hopefully not present on this theatre and we hope it could last as long as possible.

But I fully agree that if the drug money comes very largely to the insurgents, we could have a change of nature of the weapons. Currently we have developed a lot of tactical and technical procedures to protect our troops. We have developed what we call Counter-IED Branch and they are working on the technical point of view, but also on the tactical procedures. Protection is not only means and capabilities in terms of equipment, but also tactical procedures and we see every time when we are attacked by IED or suicide bombers.

So currently, if your question is are we sufficiently protected with the current threat, we have developed the means to protect ourselves, but it's the nature of the aggression which is so difficult to address.

Q: Bonjour General. I am going to ask you a question also with my broken English, but I am sure that you will understand very well the question because it's not technical anyway, because my colleagues have already asked the good question on this side. So my question is more general. It will be about the rule of... let's say... not the rule of law in times of war, but relations between civilians and armies on the theatre, a question that the French army has been instituting for the last 50 years (if I remember). There are also some theories that were taken by NATO or U.S. army in the last decades that emanated or were originating from let's say Indo-China, Algerian War and some other theatres.

The problem is still the same. Nobody has been able to solve the problem right now - how to deal with the hearts and minds of the population if we have from time to time those bombings of civilians, even if it's not possible to prevent.

(DELAY/BREAK IN TRANSMISSION)

LAFONTAINE: I think I kept your question about how to win hearts and minds.

Q: Je continue la question. Je voulais juste terminer. So do you believe sincerely that NATO is going to win in Afghanistan knowing that all the past experiences in that kind of war were disasters?

LAFONTAINE: As I said, I really think that the question is not to win or to lose on the military point of view. What we are doing here in Afghanistan is to try to put the conditions, security conditions, to find a political solution. It's not to defeat definitely Taliban or insurgents. Again, you came to Indochina and Algeria. Of course some lessons learned on the tactical level are interesting, but you really know that the circumstances were very different. I think on the tactical level we could learn a lot, but on the strategic and even operative level, there is no match to learn on this.

You spoke about the difficulty of winning hearts and minds when we cause civilian casualties. Of course, it's really a difficulty and you are of course fully aware that for ISAF soldiers even one civilian casualty is very bad news that we really deplore. Be completely sure that everything is made to prevent and avoid this type of drama. COMISAF has been personally involved in writing a tactical directive which is very strict on the use of close air support and I have a French example which is very clear. You probably know that France has committed some of our soldiers to what we call OMLTs, which are committed directly inside Afghan battalions when they are committed.

Last Sunday I met these guys and they asked me a question because they were committed with ANA and ANP against insurgents during the night and they saw at 500 metres insurgents fighting against them. They asked for close air support. It was very clear for them that it was possible to fight against them, but the fighter when he came decided, because the rules are very strict, it was not possible to fight and for the soldiers in a certain way it was something difficult to accept. But with this example you understand that we are very cautious on using close air support on the ground.

And the last point which is really, really important also, is to keep in mind that insurgents have no consideration for civilian casualties and they will not win hearts and minds because when they have suicide bombers, when they have IEDs, the number of civilian casualties is really, really high and they don't care of this and I'm sure that it will have an impact at the end.

Q: A question. You just said that the objective of ISAF is not to defeat definitely the Taliban and the insurgents. What do you mean by that? And also, when and how do you decide that you have achieved your goals?

LAFONTAINE: Again, I am coming back to the words which are defining our mission. We are in Afghanistan to support government of Afghanistan to deliver safe and secure environment. So we are in support of government of Afghanistan and we are not directly fighting against insurgents. So when I said we are not trying to defeat the insurgents directly, it's because we are sure that it's not a military solution again which will solve the difficulties of this country.

The military tool could play a role, but it's only part of a role. A lot has to be done on development and governance. You all know and understand of course that security could help to have development in different parts of Afghanistan. But of course, on the other side, it will be very... it will have very good consequences on security if development grows in Afghanistan.
So it was why I tried to use these words "we are not here to defeat the Taliban; we are here to support the Afghan government."

Q: Just a follow-up question. Does that mean that ISAF could be leaving Afghanistan when there would be still pockets of insurgency on the field?

LAFONTAINE: I think it's not to the military side to decide when the military tool will have to leave or not from Afghanistan. What is true is that security is not exactly the same definition in the different parts of the world. So of course, we could not have exactly the same security in Afghanistan than for example in Belgium. We have to take into account this history of the country, the way of life and so on.

But the exit strategy again will be only when the government of Afghanistan with its own tool of security would be in a position to maintain a safe and secure and environment for its people.

Q: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty again. You've referred to the practice of governance a couple of times and I'd like to ask you what precisely you mean when you say ISAF is a assisting the Afghan government or Afghan authorities to improve the governance of the country. I'm particularly thinking along the lines when you say that ISAF's main goal is to provide the security conditions for the Afghans to impose a political solution and this clearly is not the same thing as reforming the government or helping reform the practices of the government.
For example, if you take... much of the government is corrupt and the apparently in competition with the Taliban over the drug money as far as I understand. What can you bring to bear to counteract that sort of temptation - these huge sums of money that corrupt the government? I mean how, in practical terms, to help the Afghan government reform itself?
Thank you.

LAFONTAINE: As we all understand, the different... what we call line of operations, way of acting in Afghanistan to try to solve a problem, are security, governance and development. What we understand more and more is that these lines are really interconnected and the way we could have the government of Afghanistan to be less corrupted or to be more efficient is of course when developing security, it's easier to have provincial governor, regional governor, which are in a position to represent Afghanistan central authorities.

An example which is well known is about the police corruption. We all know that currently there are problems of payment of the policemen. Policemen are in a difficult situation on the security point of view. If we could help to present Afghan National Police to the population as a help for them to implement security, it could be a good way for us to implement good governance in Afghanistan. Roughly you understand that we cannot act directly on the governance, but we could have indirect affects on governance.

Q: It's Paul Ames again from the Associated Press. Just to pick up on a couple of things you said earlier. You mentioned the fact that ISAF is under-resourced. Could you give us a rundown of what are your most immediate needs in terms of strengthening those resources that you have at ISAF? We hear a lot about helicopters. Can you give us a rundown of what you think the most urgent needs are for... to reinforce ISAF?

And second... a related question really, how soon do you think that the Afghan National Army will be in a position where they can actually replace ISAF troops across the country. Will it be pursuable for example for the ANA to take over the work of one of the PRTs that NATO is currently running in the near future, in the next two or three years? I'm asking this particularly in the circumstance where you have some of the current ISAF countries, the Canadians and the Dutch for example, who are facing parliamentary debates about whether to maintain their troops in the current positions.
Thank you.

LAFONTAINE: If you agree, it will be the two last questions because I have a meeting with COMISAF which is planned in 10 minutes and I will be very sorry to be late to this meeting.
Coming back to your question. First, your question about under-resourced capabilities for ISAF and what are the means we need to be more efficient. As you said, first the means which is really important to give us more flexibility is helicopters. Helicopters for transport, helicopters for medevac medical evacuations, because without this it's more and more difficult to have momentum in our operations to be flexible, to shift an effort from one area to another.

Second, we are clearly currently under-resourced with manoeuvre battalions. As I said, currently the operations are delivering effects on clearing areas, disrupting insurgents, but the difficulty is that we have not sufficient ANA or ANP means to backfill the area when ISAF forces are leaving. So we need more currently manoeuvre units to be able to control the ground when necessary. Of course this need will reduce as ANA and ANP, but mostly ANA, will grow up in terms of volume and capabilities.

The third means which is really, really important because of this need of improving ANA is what we call OMLTs. I spoke about this in the last minutes. Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams which are embedded in Afghan battalions and help them to first train and, when necessary, help them to conduct the operation. Of course, because of the type of the arresting activities of the insurgents, we need more capabilities in counter-IED because it's a difficult topic and we have to implement it at the lowest level if possible. These are mainly the capabilities we need. Probably some others of course, but the most important I said.
When ANA could take the lead... to be frank we already started the process of trying to put ANA in the lead. We have some operations and probably you heard about Operation Khyber in RC east where the operation was led by an Afghan official dealing with Afghan National Army and U.S. battalions. So we start in the south also, but it's the beginning and we will have to improve more and more.

The intent of COMISAF is to put the ANA in lead more and more during the next spring period, but for this we need to implement these famous OMLTs. When could it be possible to take over PRT security in different parts? I think currently we are just thinking about what we call a transition phase. As I said, the transition process has already started. We are currently trying to develop the way it could be possible to implement this transition in future, but according to the level of capabilities of ANA, it could not be possible at large scale before 2009/2010.

Q: General, last question if I understand well. About the OMLTs. You described the fact that they might be in a combat situation. Does it mean that all OMLTs right now in the south or elsewhere have the possibility to fight whatever the position of the government is on this... possibility?

LAFONTAINE: No, you're right. Of course, the national willing is key and will be respected. Only the OMLTs from the nations who accepted to be committed in direct operations are going to be with conducts in operations in south and east. But of course OMLTs are useful everywhere and countries could provide OMLTs for battalions which are in other situations and it could be also very useful.

But anyway, the willing of the nation and the, we could say, possible restriction it presents will be respected by NATO and ISAF.

BEAUPLET: General thank you very much. I understand you have other obligations so I will not put you under more pressure and will let you go to your meting with COMISAF. On behalf of the journalists thank you very much again for your time, especially on last minute's notice and for your frankness throughout this Q&A session. Encore une mille mercis et je vous souhaite une bonne fin de journée.

LAFONTAINE: Merci à vous tous et bonne journée aussi.