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Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-South) is well known
within the U.S. Government as the "gold standard" for interagency
cooperation and intelligence fusion, despite its preference for
keeping a low profile and giving other agencies the credit for its
successes. It is often cited as a model for whole-of-government
problem-solving in the literature on interagency collaboration, and
other national security organizations have tried to copy its
approach and successes. Despite the plaudits and attention, the way
that JIATF-South actually operates has only received superficial
analysis. In fact, few people actually understand why JIATF-South
works as well as it does or how its success might be replicated.
This study attempts to fill the gap in knowledge about JIATF-South
as a model for crossorganizational collaboration. It traces the
evolution of the task force from its roots in the "War on Drugs" in
the 1980s, through its original manifestation as Joint Task Force-4
in the early 1990s and its later reinvention as Joint Interagency
Task Force-East (and still later, its renaming as JIATF-South), up
until the present day. It then examines how JIATF-South actually
works with the help of 10 organizational performance variables
taken from organizational and management research on
cross-functional teams. Investigating JIATF-South's performance
through these different organizational lenses, and weighing the
importance of each variable in light of JIATF-South's historical
experience, yields a compelling explanation for JIATF-South's
stellar performance. The results contribute to a better
understanding of interagency teams and help answer the pressing
question of whether successes like JIATF-South can be replicated
elsewhere in the national security system.
The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National
Defense University's (NDU's) dedicated research arm. INSS includes
the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations,
Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for
Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic
Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The
military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its
subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and
analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy
support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic
studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the
academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S.
Government agencies and the broader national security community.
The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National
Defense University's (NDU's) dedicated research arm. INSS includes
the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations,
Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for
Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic
Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The
military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its
subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and
analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy
support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic
studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the
academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S.
Government agencies and the broader national security community.
This study argues that interagency teams were a major catalyst in
turning around the Iraq War, and that they will disappear from
America's arsenal unless the knowledge base supporting the
innovation can be secured. Most explanations credit the dramatic
reduction in violence in Iraq between 2007 and 2008 to new U.S.
leadership, the surge in U.S. forces, and/or U.S. financial support
to Sunni tribal leaders. In contrast, we argue that the United
States employed an underappreciated organizational
innovation-interagency teams-to put insurgent clandestine
organizations on the defensive and give population security
measures a chance to take effect. By the end of 2004, Special
Operations Forces (SOF) were using interagency high-value target
teams in Iraq that were tactically successful-even
awe-inspiring-but they were not making a strategic difference.
Meanwhile, Army commanders in Mosul, Tal Afar, and Ramadi
demonstrated that the insurgency could be beaten with organizations
and tactics capable of conducting classic counterinsurgency
warfare. They targeted insurgents and terrorists with sufficient
discrimination to put them on the defensive, while
population-centric security measures and influence operations
pacified the broader population. The SOF and Army commanders used a
kind of collaborative warfare that involved three separate
innovations, each of which required interagency collaboration and
all of which ultimately had to merge into a unified approach. The
first innovation was network-based targeting. This meant charting
the clandestine terrorist and insurgent cells and their immediate
supporters in order to attack them, but also using all-source
intelligence to reveal the local environment, its social networks,
and key decision makers and their motivations. The second
innovation was the fusion of improved all-source intelligence with
operational capability. Having intelligence and operations working
together in common space on a sustained basis produced persistent
surveillance, improved discrimination, and better decision making.
The third innovation was the integration of counterterrorist and
counterinsurgency efforts and the proliferation of this model. All
three innovations-networked-based targeting, fusion of intelligence
and operations, and counterterrorist-counterinsurgency
integration-required unprecedented collaboration between diverse
departments and agencies and between SOF and conventional forces.
Together, these innovations set the stage for the dramatic reversal
of the security situation in Iraq in 2007. We explain the
performance of the interagency high-value target teams using 10
variables often cited in organizational literature as important
determinants of team success. The qualitative assessments offered
by personnel with direct experience on the teams unanimously
underscore the importance of common purpose, clearly delegated
authorities, small size and collocation, and a supportive
organizational context. Teams that did not develop a sense of
common purpose were not able to override interference from parent
organizations. When, initially, interagency teams did not benefit
from clearly delegated authorities, their performance suffered.
When the teams later were clearly empowered, their performance
improved, but the issue of ambiguous authorities was a constant
source of tension and a major reason for the fragility of the
teams' performance. The ability of the teams to learn also was
important. SOF did a better job of assessing the second- and
third-order effects of their operations and made a greater
strategic contribution after learning the importance of expanding
their collaboration to include conventional forces. Finally,
because departments and agencies could hamstring team performance
by withholding support, cajoling parent organizations for support
was a major preoccupation of senior leaders in Iraq. The U.S.
experience with interagency teams justifies several broader
observations.
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