Measuring NATO Effectiveness in Afghanistan?

Afghanistan: “NATO Can’t Measure Afghan War Performance: General,” by Andrew Gray, Reuters, 24 March 2009

How does NATO measure the effectiveness of operations in Afghanistan? Apparently, they don’t – according to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen John Craddock.

NATO has no reliable way to assess its performance in the war in Afghanistan even as the United States prepares to announce the results of an Afghan strategy review, the alliance's top commander said on Tuesday.

Craddock said his headquarters had tried to find ways to measure factors, such as security and the effectiveness of Afghan authorities, but the task had proven "overwhelming".

"Right now, our assessments of progress are anecdotal and they vary daily, weekly, with whoever makes the observation and where they are making them," Craddock told a hearing of the Senate's armed services committee.

The above statements are very telling of the difficulties that lie ahead for U.S. troops “surging” into Afghanistan.

Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) are military parlance for tracking how a campaign is progressing. The military campaign is usually broken into phases, and MOEs allow the commander to decide when a campaign has transitioned from one phase to the next. Each phase usually has certain metrics that, when met, signal success and transition.

It’s quite telling when the overall commander of NATO forces tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that he has no way of measuring how his campaign is progressing – no way of verifying the impact his forces are having on the country.

Hmm… What does that signal? We’ve been operating in Afghanistan for eight years now, and still don’t know how to quantify the definition of success there.