Serving on a Multinational Staff

Summary of Jan-Erik Jakobsson's article in RSAWSPJ no 4 2001.

This lecture contains some of the author's own experiences when Chief of Staff, United Nations Multinational Standby Forces High Readiness Brigade (SHIRBRIG).

In the early 1990s the UN Secretary General asked for a highly flexible, efficient unit that could be activated at short notice. The size of the unit should be roughly that of a brigade and all subsections should be trained to the same standards using the same procedures and making use of interoperable equipment. Furthermore, the unit should take part in exercises at regular intervals, thus making sure that combat readiness could be kept on a high level at all times.

Denmark took the initiative and a working party was set up where many nations were represented, e.g. Sweden, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Portugal. A report with a number of recommendations was presented in 1995, some of which were:

• The name of the brigade should be SHIRBRIG.
• Establishment of a permanent part of the brigade staff, a Planning Element, should be set up in Denmark.
• The brigade should be scheduled for missions in accordance with Chapter VI of the UN Charter.
• There should be no obligatory demand for participation in any given mission.
• A governing body should be established.
• The brigade should have the capacity to operate far away from its home base and in an environment where no or very little infrastructure might exist, and where host nation support might be non-existent.
• All units should be self-sufficient during the first 60 days of a mission.
• The bulk of a unit should have the capacity to leave its home base within 30 days and an advance party should be operable within 15 days.
• The maximum time for a mission in a given area should be six months.

This lecture deals with the setting up of SHIRBRIG, what challenges had to be met and how they were overcome as well as outlining some of the specific red-tape problems arising from the necessity of handling a decision-making process in which a number of natins had to come to grips with an inherently somewhat slow UN bureacracy.

In addition, both the strengths and weaknesses of the SHIRBRIG concept are outlined and accounted for, as are the specific experiences and conclusions drawn when looked at from a purely Swedish perspective. Swedish leadership, competence, military and linguistic skills are favourably described.

This article is Colonel Jan-Erik Jakobsson's inaugural lecture, presented to the Air Warfare Section of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences on 23rd March, 2000.