Abstract

This study focuses on the cooperation process between civilian actors and the Dutch Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Baghlan, a northern province of Afghanistan. The problem is that most civil–military cooperation processes are improvisational and ad hoc. This leads to inefficient use of limited aid resources, inconsistency between rotations, and conflicting objectives in the (post-)conflict environment. Although there is no single solution to improve civil–military cooperation, the logic of structured cooperation should lead to efficiency gains and greater respect for the comparative advantages of civilian and military actors. The objective of this study is to diagnose civil–military cooperation processes using a model that was earlier developed. In the end this model should enable the development of checklists, an increased understanding of (potential) conflicts in the cooperation process, and procedures to increase the performance of the cooperation.