Is Eirik Kristoffersen best suited to lead the Armed Forces?

Is Eirik Kristoffersen best suited to lead the Armed Forces through the biggest restructuring and rearmament in 70 years? I mean no.

This is a debate post. Any opinions expressed in the text are the responsibility of the writer. If you want to participate in the debate, you can read how here.

We live in a time where situations can quickly arise where trust in the Armed Forces, and what the Armed Forces tell us, can become very important. That is why it is serious when Eystein Kvarving, in an article in Aftenposten on 15 April, steps down from the role of Defense Communications Manager, and instead takes on the role of spin doctor for a defense chief on thin ice.

Still unanswered questions

VG has revealed that a – in Norway – much-celebrated military operation in Afghanistan was not as it has been portrayed. The aim was to apprehend a certain Taliban leader named Qari Nejat, but American military logs show that our allies quickly reported back that soldiers from the Special Forces Command (FSK) under Kristoffersen’s leadership had taken the wrong man.

Anyone who reads the revelations in VG, the interview with Kristoffersen in DN on March 23 and Kristoffersen’s own book “Jegerånden” – which mentions the operation – will see that there are still unanswered questions.

Communications manager Kvarving does not answer four of the five questions I asked in my column in Aftenposten (15 April), but writes in the first person about his own trust in the chief of defence. As if that were relevant. He believes that the support for a new long-term plan for the Armed Forces shows how credible Kristoffersen is perceived, but the professional military advice it is based on is not something that the Chief of Defense alone can take credit for.

Casts doubt on established facts

Kvarving misquotes me, attacks the press and casts doubt on established facts. Some examples:

• Kristoffersen has told DN that he understands that the man they arrested was not Taliban leader Qari Nejat. Kvarving now claims that “it is not certain that he who was arrested was Qari Nejat, but we do not know that”. Yes, we know that. US forces continued their pursuit of the Taliban leader and killed him and four bodyguards with drones a year later. These are verifiable facts.
  
• Kvarving writes that I claim that Mohamed Naseem, the man who was falsely arrested, was an “innocent mason”, but I have only claimed that he was not a Taliban leader. Like many men in the area, the bricklayer was both a Taliban sympathizer and often armed, but thus no leader and definitely not Qari Nejat. Therefore he was set free. Naseem, who wanted to sue the Norwegian authorities, is devoted to a separate chapter in Anders Sømme Hammer’s book «The dream war». There is no doubt who he was.
  
• Kvarving calls Naseem a Taliban fighter and says he was part of a heavily armed Taliban group. Afghan intelligence called him a “local worker”. In Kristoffersen’s own book, it appears that FSK burst into the home of a sleeping Afghan farming family, with women and children, when they arrested him. The men slept with weapons next to them. It is normal in Afghanistan.
  
• Kvarving says that the operation was both “groundbreaking” and described as a “textbook” by those who took part, but what is ground-breaking is not in any “textbook”. Books and testimonies from Iraq and Afghanistan tell of many similar operations. The lack of humility is striking.
  
• More serious is that Kvarving accuses VG of misinforming, and that Kristoffersen claims in DN to be exposed to rumor-mongering and asks how the issues surrounding his person affect people’s trust in the media. Attacking the press is effective, but it contributes to littering the public discourse and undermines the role of the press in a democracy.

Appears to be unreliable

Kvarving tries to defend Kristoffersen by claiming that the feedback from American and Afghan allies that the wrong man had been arrested never reached Kristoffersen and the FSK, despite the fact that this was a joint Norwegian-American operation. It is hardly credible.

Should that be the case, shouldn’t Kristoffersen, out of pure curiosity and professionalism, have requested information on whether the operation he led was successful?

Kvarving spends a lot of time defending that Kristoffersen deserves Norway’s highest ranking medal. It’s a derailment. The important question is whether he deserves our trust. However, former member of the Chief of Defense’s decoration council Arne Willy Dahl takes the bait in Aftenposten on 17 April.

Both Kvarving and Dahl agree that the operation was carried out very skilfully. Maybe so, but they arrested a man without bodyguards and met no resistance.

A culture that cannot be accepted

Anyone who has experienced sharp situations abroad knows that it is only when the shooting begins that things tend to go a little crazy. Dahl’s post is nevertheless interesting. He writes that he has little faith that the matter would have come to the decoration council at all, if it had been clear that the prisoner they took was not an important person at all.

Harald Høiback, professor at the Norwegian Armed Forces’ museums, who has pointed out the problematic nature of the Norwegian special forces writing their own character book, has also written insightfully about how the Norwegian Armed Forces have a culture of not telling the truth.

Now that the Norwegian Armed Forces will receive huge sums from the community’s coffers in the coming years, this is a culture that cannot be accepted. Honesty must also be a military virtue. Role understanding and orderly argumentation must also be expected of the person who will hold the important job of being the Defense’s communications manager.