War Gaming Peace Operations

The Challenge

From 2006 to 2011, the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs supported work at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Berkley Center on the nexus of religion and U.S. foreign and national security policy. Berkley Center leadership managed the effort, developing a range of teaching, research, and outreach products and activities.

In 2009, the Berkley Center teamed with National Defense University’s Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership to provide a symposium on religion and military affairs for faculty from U.S. war colleges and senior service schools. The symposium focused on themes for integrating religion and world affairs (e.g., religion and development, religion and African security issues, religiously inspired terrorism) and how to integrate such into the existing curriculum. Feedback from participants indicated need for an active learning tool or simulation to support war college curricula.

To this end, Dr. Eric Patterson of Georgetown University and Chaplain (Colonel) Eric Wester of National Defense University began investigating the possibility of war gaming peace, reaching out to simulation designers at LECMgt LLC, in California. The goal was to develop an active learning tool to familiarize military personnel with the nexus of religion and stabilization/reconstruction issues in highly religious societies.

End User Requirements

Key classroom application assumptions were based on the end user requirements. The game had to be easily learned by the instructor, such as by playing it at a faculty workshop. The game had to be portable, low tech, and adaptable to classrooms ranging from 5 to 20 individuals. The game would need appropriate, easy-to-access read-ahead and preparatory materials and should be set in a real-world, contemporary context. The use of the game for a single class of 2 hours precluded a high-tech, high-complexity game.

The end user group would be a typical, 10- to 12-person seminar group at National Defense University or a military war college. The simulation would be used as an active learning tool supporting the existing (and hopefully evolving) curriculum. The objective would be to apply traditional war gaming design techniques, familiar to students at the Naval Post Graduate School (NPS) level, to war game peace operations.

Most importantly, the game had to realistically introduce some of the challenges and opportunities for working in highly religious societies and/or culturally rich societies. These are societies where religious and/or cultural actors and traditions may carry more weight than governmental authority such as those in the greater Middle East and Africa. Conversations among the game creators, Georgetown, and the National Defense University (NDU) settled on at least three ways that religious factors would be included in the game.

Design Parameters

First, because the game is set in a future post-conflict Afghanistan, a number of religious inputs affect the play. The game would use event cards that announce situations such as religious edicts by angry clerics or hostage taking by the Taliban. The use of cards provides the players a constantly changing list of contingencies that include cultural and religious factors. Second, one third of the players would represent a religious, Western-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) and must work for reconstruction and peace from the role of a quasi-pacifistic religious organization. The reader can imagine this dynamic, the intended class of participants are military officers, who in this instance are role-playing a faith-based organization skeptical of the U.S. military.

Limited role-playing in a game provides the opportunity for personalization and decision making, which is absent in more traditional top-down pedagogical systems (Mitchell, 1998). By playing the role of someone different from themselves, participants can learn to appreciate why similar actors (in past or future experience) act the way they do and modify behavior to promote cooperation and avoid conflict.

The issues related to faith-based humanitarian groups would be introduced in read-ahead materials available to each group of players. The specific types of reconstruction projects given to the faith-based humanitarian groups are unique to their real-world projects. Finally, the content of the national and provincial game cards would involve topics directly related to the issues facing these groups in this setting.

The third and most critical role that religion and culture display in the game is in the area of relationships. Before any government or NGO can begin reconstruction or security efforts, they must first develop relationships with the local leadership triad. The triad consists of the local religious leader (mullah), the quasi-official village representative (malik), and the local shura (or jirga) council.

This is the “three cups of tea” rule: Before anything can get done at the local level, one must develop relationships with the key local authorities (Mortenson & Relin, 2006). More will be said on this point later, but it is important to note how different such an approach is from the business-only, kinetic, direct nature of most U.S. military engagement that cares little for cultivating personal (vs. professional) relationships.

In sum, the focus of the simulation was the interaction between the military, civil, and faith-based humanitarian organizations in a highly religious, unstable, late- or post-conflict society. The inclusion of a direct adversarial player was discussed and rejected by the Berkeley Center and National Defense University staff. The consensus was a player representing the Taliban would direct the focus of the game to the conflict and away from reconstruction.

Developing a Model

The process of developing a model as the basis for the simulation began with the domain research. It is noteworthy that many simulations designed for professional military education often rely on hot conflicts from the past such as the Second World War rather than late- and post-conflict scenarios, particularly of a contemporary nature. Thus, particular attention was paid to the issue of validity. Validity is often defined as the extent something represents the real world (Golafshani, 2003).

Development and Validity

During the development of the game, particular attention was paid to construct validity. The validity of a construct is determined by measuring its inferences against its operationalizations (Carmines & Zeller, 1979). In game design terms, it indicates whether your game or construct match the real-world situation you are trying to model. In the Afghan PRT game, construct validity meant developing an idea for the game based on a theory of what we theorized was happening and using multiple paths of inquiry to insure this was matched by the game.

Construct validity was developed along three paths: pre-design research, development play testing, and interviews of domain experts. Pre-design research was initially conducted regarding the topic of military war gaming. Resources like the United States Air Force Air University Library provided the foundational materials regarding the development and uses of war games by the U.S. military (Chun, 1999). Studies about the design of war games and data regarding their use by the U.S. Department of Defense were examined (Dunningan, 1992; Perla, 1990). These data were important since many of the end users will be the members of the Department of Defense.

The next area of interest was research on the cultural, social, and political systems within Afghanistan (Bleuer, 2011). This included political, religious, and societal interactions (Guistozzi, 2009; Saikal, 2004), issues related to insurgency (Guistozzi, 2007), and examinations of the systems operating within the country (Sinno, 2008). Reports by the U.S. military (Gant, 2009) as well as nongovernmental agencies such as Oxfam (Oxfam, 2010) were included.

An important data collection requirement was the U.S. Army plans for provincial reconstruction in Afghanistan. The U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) approach was novel: Instead of operating from massive military garrisons, smaller forward-deployed operations centers—Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs)—were built around the country. PRTs include not only military personnel, but also experts from other agencies such as USAID, the State Department, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the like (U.S. Army, 2011).

Members of our design team and collaborators had actually visited PRTs in Afghanistan for other projects, so they had firsthand knowledge of how the PRTs function. In theory, PRT is designed to bolster host nation governance legitimacy by providing security and the delivery of essential services without a massive occupation footprint. The PRT also promotes a sovereign and stable self-government system while improving and integrating the local economy with the outside world (U.S. Army, 2011).

Beyond this basic research, the use of domain experts was critical to developing an understanding of the topical reference for the game. These experts were interviewed and included in the early play test development after playing an early prototype of the game. The experts were divided into three groups: military personnel with experience in Afghanistan, faith-based humanitarian workers with Afghanistan experience, and persons involved in potential end user academic organizations.

The military members included officers who were involved in provincial-level reconstruction as well as personnel with experience at the national decision-making level. The persons with provincial-level experience had worked in field hospitals providing medical aid to local villages. The senior personnel had served on NATO Commander General Petraeus’ command chaplain’s staff.

The faith-based humanitarian workers had experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They had worked in projects in close proximity to NATO forces, but not with the forces. Their experience was with direct contact by nongovernmental humanitarian groups providing aid to local villages.

NDU, the Naval Post Graduate School (NPS) and Georgetown University. The individuals from NPS were important for feedback since they represented typical end users as defined by the original design criterion. The Georgetown University’s faculty and students were included to determine if this design was applicable to other nonmilitary institutions.

The Model

The next challenge was developing a model of Afghanistan and reconstruction efforts on which the game system could be attached. A study by Major James Gant (Gant, 2009) provided the description of a leadership triangle in local villages. This triangle of the shura (village elders), the mullah (the village religious leader), and the malik (the local combination of a lawyer, interpreter, and person with education) was selected as the framework for modeling village-level interactions.

Of course, the critical element to the game—which made it unique from any other—was the focus on religious elements in the Afghan theater. The designers chose to focus on three specific religious and cultural elements as vectors for learning about their role in late- and post-conflict situations. Those three factors are faith-based humanitarian groups, religiously inspired nonstate actors (e.g., the Taliban) and messages (e.g., fatwas), and the local leadership structure of Afghan society, which draws much of its justification from religious and cultural forms of authority (Islam, patriarchy, etc.).

Several faith-based groups are operating in Afghanistan, and they proved problematic to model. The largest groups include organizations whose size and resources allow them to operate autonomously such as the Catholic Relief Services or World Vision International. These large groups often partner with smaller groups who lack a permanent presence in the country. The group created for this game is titled World Church United (WCU) as a fictitious representation of actual groups currently in Afghanistan.

In the game, the WCU players are more pacifists and are skeptical of the U.S. military, so having military officers in the classroom play this role provided important insights into the ethical dilemmas such organizations face, including, “Do we provide information from our local sources to the U.S. military in hopes that it will save lives?” “Do we take funds from the U.S. military to pursue humanitarian and development project, or does such compromise our neutrality?” and “If one of our workers is taken hostage, do we reach out to security forces?”

Participants might also be assigned the role of representing the the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRA) or NATO’s International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF).

Finally, insurgents (Taliban), terrorists (al-Qaeda), and warlords were included abstractly. These groups appear due to random event cards that occur throughout the game. The purpose of including them was to provide a realistic backdrop of friction that requires reallocation of resources and personnel. In the game, the terrorists represent the smallest of these groups. This provided an opportunity to include a critical factor in reconstruction without directing the focus of the game into active conflict operations.

After determining the players, a framework was necessary to place them in the real-world space of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has 34 provinces and so modeling the entire country was impractical for classroom use. Three provinces on the eastern border of Afghanistan were selected due to their proximity to the areas of unrest along the border with Pakistan: Kunar, Khost, and Kandahar.

This led to the development of four playing maps: a national-level map showing the entire country and three provincial maps, creating 12 distinct players. The players were divided between three national-level decision makers representing each group and three group representatives in each of the provinces. The national-level players were seated at the national map making strategic-level decisions. The remaining 9 players were divided into 3 players at each provincial map representing NATO, Afghanistan, and the WCU.

Besides the 12 players, the game also uses a facilitator. The facilitator helps to keep play moving by assisting the players with the game mechanics, answering questions, and adjudicating any disputes that arise during play.

Designing the Game System

Military war gaming has a long history. Baron von Reisswitz invented the first military war game in the 19th century for the King of Prussia, although it has been argued that Roman leaders and Chinese generals used war gaming techniques. Since then military forces around the world have used war games to improve decision-making performance and examine potential conflict resolutions. The idea of war games in the United States can be traced back to early ideas, including an 1880 U.S. Army War College article on the use of war games to teach military principles (Totten, 1880).

The game system was based on combining the Wiener methodology (use of adversaries, clearly defined objectives, and a system to determine success; Weiner, 1959) with the Dunnigan approach to war game design (Dunnigan, 1992). Dunnigan states that after researching the topic and identifying the participants in the game, the next step is integration. This includes taking what you know and developing it into a system that provides a framework for playing the simulation.

The goal was to build as much hidden complexity into the system as possible that was not readily apparent to the participant, but enhanced the learning experience. An example is the use of the card draws providing local affects for each group of provincial-level players set against the results of a national card draw that impacts all players. The game system can be described as a prioritization exercise set against an ever-changing environment of stochastic indeterminacy. The players have individual objectives, limited resources to achieve them, and a constantly changing situation offering opportunities and challenges to achieving them.

In designing the system, the various elements and forces that directly impact Afghan reconstruction and stabilization were evaluated for inclusion in the simulation. These elements provide the internal conflict resulting opportunities for decision making, creative problem solving, and cooperation. They include how financial aid comes into the country and how it is disbursed to various locations, what type of reconstruction projects are unique to each group, special capabilities of the primary stakeholders, cooperative relationships with local leadership, insurgent operations, stochastic indeterminacy, and a national stability index (NSI).

Sequence of Play

In keeping with the requirement for 12 distinct players, the first level of play is at the national level (see Figure 1). Each turn (or quarter) the national representatives of NATO, GIRA, and the WCU receive their budget. The amount of funding is proportionate to the real-world support of these groups meaning NATO receives the most followed by the GIRA and the WCU. Each of these decision makers then divides the funds among their representatives in each of the three provinces (NATO, GIRA, and the WCU). Each of the local-level decision makers has five unique reconstruction projects they are attempting to complete (see Figure 2).

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Figure 1.

Sequence of Play

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Figure 2.

Individual Stabilization Projects

The individual projects are the same for each group of player in all three provinces. For example, the GIRA players have development, courts, police, governance, and services. The NATO players have security; sewers, water, electricity, trash, roads (SWETR); health/education; agriculture; and governance. The WCU player has community development council, agriculture, health, education, and general relief.

Each of these reconstruction projects reflects the unique characteristics of the individual stakeholder groups. Only NATO has security while the GIRA are responsible for the court system, and only the WCU offers general relief. Some projects overlap. Both the WCU and NATO have provincial agricultural projects. This overlap was included based on the observations of humanitarian groups opposing the entrance of security forces into domains traditionally reserved for relief organizations.

Each stakeholder group has special capabilities representing personnel, materials, or aptitudes related to their specific domains. In real-world reconstruction, these capabilities are limited and must be targeted to specific locations to support contingencies. In the case of the humanitarians, well-known secular and faith-based groups are represented by fictitious names (e.g., Farmers of Faith, Doctors for Everyone).

With NATO and the GIRA, the capabilities represent real-world operational units (e.g., Afghan National Police, U.S. Army Civic Action, etc.). These capabilities are held by the national decision makers and sent temporarily to meet various provincial needs. These limited resources can be given by the national-level players to the provincial players to address contingencies that may appear from the provincial card draws.

Relationships and Challenges

The relationship between those attempting to rebuild Afghanistan and the leadership in local villages was a critical part of accurately simulating the process of reconstruction. The game has a system for developing influence with local leaders. Without their direct assent and support, even the most well-meaning and ambitious project is doomed. The provincial-level players must take part of their budget and apply it to developing this influence. This influence is necessary for provincial reconstruction to occur, and thus, provincial decision makers must invest some of their assets in the game to building support with the leadership triad of shura, malik, and mullah.

The purpose of the game is to examine the relationship and challenges involved in reconstruction and stabilization in Afghanistan. While specifically not a war game, the issue of how insurgent activity impacts peace operations needed to be included. They are introduced into play by a random card draw. The three groups capable of disrupting operations are warlords, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda terrorists.

Because of the unusual and mercurial nature of the warlords’ relationship to Afghan society, their presence in the game can be positive or negative. The Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists bring a negative impact on reconstruction and stabilization. All three groups are introduced randomly, and the players are forced to use a combination of military force, money, and influence to remove them. These groups are never killed off, but players must devise strategies to minimize their impact. The players can use the influence they have developed with local leaders, money, military force, or a combination of all three to accomplish this.

Stochastic Factors

An important part of any war game is the randomness of conflict. History is full of military encounters, which, on paper, should either have never occurred or should have ended with a different result. To introduce this to the game, two levels of stochastic factoring were included using cards. Each turn a national event card is read, indicating situations or factors that will influence the entire country. Some of these include events of a religious nature or factors that directly impact each of the reconstruction groups. Because the card topics were based on real events, the players recognize them as realistic possibilities.

Each of the three provinces also has a set of random event cards that provide individual information about the specific province. These are revealed each turn. The result is conditions in the country, and each province can vary widely from turn to turn (each turn representing 3 months). Decision makers are constantly dealing with contingencies such as hostage taking, allegations of proselytizing against the humanitarians, and environmental and health issues like cholera epidemics.

These cards also offer the ability to develop strategy using intelligence gathering. Some of the national event cards are marked with the CIA logo. When drawn, the NATO players can look at the next national event card before the next turn allowing them to anticipate what might be coming. On the provincial level, some cards have a marking that means the humanitarian player and they alone can see what the next province card is. This reflects the information available to the humanitarians through their relationship building, and helps to even out the disadvantage in resources and capabilities compared with the NATO and GIRA players.

Measuring Outcomes During Play

In the typical war game, victory is determined by the gain or loss of territory or the destruction of enemy forces. This provides important feedback to the players in evaluating their efforts. In the Afghan simulation, a NSI provides the players feedback on their progress each turn. The index is based on a numeric scale that is evaluated at the end of each turn. The level of local influence combined with the completed reconstruction projects is calculated to determine if the index moves up. The higher the scale goes, the greater the level of national stability.

The NSI can also drop rapidly due to random events. A national card indicating the President of Afghanistan has just been assassinated, for example, directs the NSI be lowered 4 degrees. Other less catastrophic, but serious, situations revealed in the national event cards can also lower the NSI. When combined with the random card draw at the provincial level, achieving progress can be challenging.

Events in the provinces are important. It is entirely possible that creative leadership in one province means rapid gains in security while a neighboring province faces violence, corruption, and rising insecurity. All of these factors are taken into account at the end of each turn and reflected on the NSI. A gain in Kandahar may be offset by unrest in Kunar.

The victory conditions are scaled. At the end of the eight complete turns, the final NSI level determines the degree of victory or defeat. An NSI level from 50 to 70 is a tactical victory, 70 to 90 is an operational victory, and 90 to 100 is a strategic victory. A level of 50 to 30 is a tactical defeat, 30 to 10 is an operational defeat, and below is a strategic defeat. It is also possible for all players in a single province or all players of a single type (GIRA, NATO, WCU) to “win” by completing all of their assigned projects. Thus, while the game is generally cooperative, there is nevertheless potential for conflicting interests among the players.

Development

A prototype of the game was produced in early 2010. Three groups were identified for play test and evaluation. They were military officers with Afghanistan deployment experience, members of faith-based humanitarian agencies with Afghanistan experience, and members of the target end users. The military officers and humanitarian workers were interviewed after the play tests. Their comments were recorded and evaluated by the designers.

Two of the most important comment areas were the competitive atmosphere between reconstruction stakeholders and the issue of influence at the local level. The military officers described the difficulties of working with the other stakeholders who were often seen as competitors. The humanitarians felt that the influence they can exert at the provincial level should be emphasized. They suggested including the possibility of rapid increases in the cost-gaining influence due to situational contingencies.

The officers’ comments resulted in the mechanism for intelligence sharing and requiring the assistance of all provincial players in resolving some of the insurgent/warlord issues. The humanitarians’ suggestions regarding changing levels of influence were included by including situations on the random provincial event cards involving the sudden loss of influence or necessity of increasing influence to allow reconstruction to progress.

The third group of evaluators involved a play test evaluation at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the NPS, National Defense University, and Georgetown University. The evaluators from the NPS and National Defense University felt the game could be adapted to support a variety of curricula related to nontraditional military operations such as stabilization.

The staff members from the U.S. Institute for Peace suggested emphasizing the involvement of the humanitarians in conflict resolution involving the insurgents and terrorists. This was accomplished by modifying the provincial event cards through the addition of cards that facilitate successful negotiations in the event of a crisis. This allows players to develop coping strategies for insurgents and warlord other than solely relying on military force.

Application

After the initial development of the prototype was completed, it was sent to four locations for use and further evaluation. Prior to delivery, the original game maps were redesigned using the development feedback and comments.

The game was played at six educational/training organizations: NDU’s College of International Security Affairs, the Operations Research Center at the United States Military Academy (West Point), the U.S. Institute for Peace, Marine Corps University, the U.S. Naval Academy (Annapolis), and Georgetown University. At NDU, the game was used in a course on “Religion and International Affairs.”

One instructor, Colonel Eric Wester, said,

The game clearly met the intent of integrating the three main pillars of the conflict including NATO, the Afghan government, and faith-based humanitarian and other nongovernmental aid organizations. Though the framework of the simulation is by and large operational the students used it to process a range of strategic learning outcomes, all of which were the measure of their investment in their learning as individuals and as a group.

Major Brian Sawser of the West Point Operations Research Center said,

The Afghan game facilitates an early understanding of the complexities surrounding capacity development. Leaders that will serve on the ground in districts and villages across Afghanistan are able to acquire hands-on capacity development experience in a safe, simulated environment. The interactive and engaging aspect of the game cannot be created through lectures or presentations.

Major Sawser also commented on the question of using traditional war game design methodologies for nontraditional domains. He observed,

Using these techniques was very successful. In fact, the use of game boards resembles traditional war gaming map boards. This approach is familiar to soldiers and officers alike, and assists in buy-in from students.

He also commented,

The game serves as an excellent tool to bring forth engaging question and answer sessions. It is a great supplement to any curriculum attempt to vary from the traditional lecture/notes/exam paradigm.

Ronald Cole from the U.S. Institute for Peace observed,

Open and frank discussions of the power relationships in a society are hard to arrive at. The Afghan reconstruction game makes this easy. It also enables the players to step out of themselves and to see the world through other people’s eyes. As a board game, the mechanics behind it are necessarily simple and transparent. This is another of its strengths—players can push back against the game and learn more. More can be conveyed in one day of playing this game than in a week of lecture. It is truly an invaluable tool in our work to understand others and help resolve violent conflict and move societies toward stable, peaceful states.

That being said, like any instructional tool, the Afghan PRT game does not exist in a vacuum. Faculty must take care to program it effectively, using appropriate read-ahead materials so that students and participants nest the experience in a wider appreciation for religious, cultural, and other socioenvironmental factors. Because our audience is graduate students who meet once weekly during a semester, time was of the essence and it was likely that students only played the game once. However, one could imagine a very different set of outcomes if the game was played “cold” on the 1st day of class and then played again after comprehensive instruction later in the semester. These and other innovations, such as tying the readings to other culturally and religious vibrant contexts (e.g. Sudan, Colombia, the Philippines), demonstrate that the game could be used in cocurricular ways beyond simply a course on Afghanistan or on U.S. reconstruction and stabilization operations.

The Afghan PRT game is currently being used by the Naval Post Graduate School, National Defense University, Marine Corps University, The US Army Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace Program, McGill University, Oakland University, and Georgetown University.

Conclusion

Policy makers and practitioners face evolving challenges in high-risk situations, with often little hands-on training. The challenges of global security often require working with nongovernment partners while employing nontraditional strategies against nonstate actors. The Afghan PRT game successfully employs traditional war game techniques to teach nontraditional peace and stability concepts, particularly the inclusion of cultural and religious considerations and actors. Such approaches are not only good for academic learning, but they are good for real-world policy and engagement.