Human Aspects in NATO Military Operations: Project developed under the framework of NATO's Defence against Terrorism Programme of Work with the support of Emerging Security Challenges Division/ NATO HQ

Abstract

The Human Aspects of the Operational Environment (HAOE) project has its roots in the challenges posed to current North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in Afghanistan. However it is obvious that focusing only on Afghanistan would not be enough since in the future NATO will be presumably involved more and more in operations outside its territory, and that the large majority of such operations will be represented by Non-Article 5 Crisis Response Operations (NA5CRO). The local population has been always one of the most important features of the operational environment, and as the conflict between the adversaries increasingly spreads among it, gaining local population’s support becomes the new centre of gravity of military operations. In NA5CRO NATO will have to interact directly with the local population that encompasses the entire range of ethnic groups and cultures and different actors from military/paramilitary, local governance, NGOs, criminality, security domains. Different environments require different capabilities. Therefore, a solid environmental understanding is vital during the operational planning and preparation phases, in order to ensure that appropriate capabilities are deployed. A thorough understanding of the local population is needed to comprehensively approach the operational environment, to enhance population support for NATO operations, and to improve the operational effectiveness and security. The NATO HUMINT Centre of Excellence (HCOE) assumed that the right manner to overcoming these challenges could be found only by a comprehensive approach, involving the military alongside academia and international and governmental organizations. Therefore the present project brought together subject matter experts (SME) from different domains with the goal of sharing their knowledge and current understanding of human aspects of the operational 5 HUMINT Centre of Excellence environment, in order to contribute to the improvement of NATO's Comprehensive Approach Strategy, and to act as a catalyst for the multidisciplinary research related to this topic.