POLAND WRESTLING WITH CIVILIAN CONTRIBUTIONS FOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L WARSAW 001140 SIPDIS EUR/CE FOR MORRIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/24/2018 TAGS: PREL MAPP AF PL SUBJECT: POLAND WRESTLING WITH CIVILIAN CONTRIBUTIONS FOR NOVEMBER GHAZNI DEPLOYMENT Classified By: Deputy Chief of Mission Pam Quanrud for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY. Poland begins its fourth Afghanistan rotation November 1 with the consolidation of 1,450 soldiers in Ghazni province. The GoP agreed to take sole responsibility for operations in Ghazni in March 2008, and began detailed military planning at that time -- particularly to secure the Kabul-Kandahar road. By their own admittance, however, the Poles have not made as much progress planning the civilian component of their counterinsurgency campaign as they prepare to take on the Ghazni PRT. Personnel and financial resources have not yet been secured; legal and other institutional impediments remain; high-level interagency meetings have not produced policy consensus. Accordingly, the Poles expect their takeover of the U.S. PRT in Ghazni to be halting and slow, and are looking for U.S. support and insight in the coming year. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (C) DAO and Poloff met September 24 with Ambassador Tadeusz Chomicki, Director of the MFA Asia and Pacific Department, to discuss details of civilian deployment to Afghanistan. Chomicki said the GOP was three weeks into a high level inter-ministerial "Strategy Review" with regard to the military contingent and its civilian component, chaired by MFA Under Secretary Przemyslaw Grudzinski. Other participants in the Strategy Review include MOD, the intelligence services, and the Ministry of Finance. The most recent meeting, attended by FM Radislaw Sikorski, Defense Minister Bogdan Klc, and Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski focused on clarifying policy and on enhancing the "instruments," particularly financial and legal, that will be needed after the Ghazni take-over. ¶3. (C) Chomicki said Poland had engaged in peacekeeping operations of some kind since 1953, but civilian engagement was foreign to its experience. Accordingly, although Poland wanted to take more responsibility for the PRT in Ghazni, it lacked appropriate instruments. Specifically, Poland needs new regulations to allow civilian recruitment, and greater understanding and flexibility from the Finance Ministry. Chomicki said that the MFA will sponsor eight civilian activities in Ghazni, but would be hampered by its own lack of expertise, one-year budgets, and a restrictive law on tenders. Just recruiting would be a major challenge, Chomicki said, since the few capable people with experience and language skills were working for multi-national corporations. As a result, under the Strategic Review, the GOP had decided to recruit from government agencies beyond the MFA and MOD. ¶4. (C) Creating the right instruments to support civilian activities would be as important, and as difficult, as securing sufficient outlays, according to Chomicki. He noted that two years ago, MFA had to return funds to Finance when it was unable to spend money budgeted for civilian activities. Chomicki was unconvinced that development spending would effectively counter insurgency, and pessimistic about military leaders' use of reconstruction and development funding on anything other than immediate problems. He predicted that as quickly as the GOP civilian bureaucracy removed commanders' regulatory obstacles to spending money quickly, the military chain of command would impose controls to insulate themselves from future accusations of fraud. Chomicki asked for U.S. examples of how to structure spending authorities to avoid over-regulation. ¶5. (C) Chomicki said that some ISAF partners had solicited EU Commission money to fund member state PRTs. But he said procuring Commission money had been described to him as "the most painful process possible," and that his Italian colleagues said that if they could do it over again they would use their own national funds. Chomicki said that there was no concrete idea of how to implement FM Sikorski's idea of forming EU PRTs: it was MFA's view that it would be impossible to get the necessary formal agreement between the Commission, ISAF, and U.S. forces. Instead, the Asia and Pacific Department had briefed Sikorski that if things go well with the Polish PRT, then EU-member civilians could be invited to join it. ¶6. (C) FM Sikorski had considered a plan to augment the Polish effort with civilian police, Chomicki said. But after internal negotiations, Sikorski passed this idea to MOD as a request for military police. At numerous points in the conversation, Chomicki hinted that the military would be asked to overcome civilian shortfalls. In all, Chomicki said the GOP would come to its internal conclusions on the Strategy Review in about a month. ¶7. (C) COMMENT. Poland has all along been expected to take small steps when first assuming responsibility for the PRT in Ghazni. As the MFA clearly understands, the lack of a convincing strategy for mobilizing civilian assets is a persistent problem for the Poles, as for other ISAF partners. The Polish military has a sufficient challenge in the form of its patrolling mission, without being forced to take on PRT activities best managed by civilians. END COMMENT. ASHE