By IRNA,
London : When troops are committed to operations in future there must be robust plans to coordinate military and reconstruction efforts from the earliest stages, the parliamentary Defense Committee warned Thursday.
“The all-party committee of MPs issued the warning in a new report entitled ‘Comprehensive Approach: The point of war is not just to win but to make a better peace.”
It recommended that the next government after the forthcoming elections lay out plans for the combination of civilian and military actors in a counter-insurgency operation in order better to preserve all the lessons learned from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“Communication is a key component of the use of the Comprehensive Approach and any strategy must include plans for conveying the strategic intent of the mission to local nationals,” said committee chair James Arbuthnot.
Plans for conveying the strategic intent were also key to keep to “the British public in an informative but fair and balanced way,” Arbuthnot said.
The Committee looked to the Stabilisation Unit recently formed by the Defence Ministry, Foreign Office and International Development Department to maintain a capacity to deploy significant numbers of personnel for post-conflict reconstruction.
This was also “to ensure that vital knowledge and skills gained during deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are retained and built on,” it said.
“At the start of operations like these, the Government should formally announce what government departments are to have what responsibilities,” Arbuthnot said.
“We would want to see leadership, clear objectives, a defined end state, strategy, tactics and details of the nature of civilian and military personnel required,” he said.
The committee, which has previously been critical of the handling of both the Iraq and Afghan war, also said that the government “needs to find better ways to draw on the expertise of NGOs without compromising the effectiveness and safety of aid workers on the ground.”