Operational Experience

There were eight countries who participated with a number of interviews in this study. It was obvious that their participation in operations varied according to the type of operation. For instance operations in Afghanistan and Iraq aimed (aim) to recover these two countries after full scale military conflicts that ravaged them and destroyed economic and social fabrics of the state and communities. So that they went through those last phases in the wake of combat operations as stabilization and reconstruction operations. In some other of the researched operations the military personnel participated in peacekeeping missions that had been consequence of civil strife, genocide and national calamities. Whilst the former occurred by using full size military formations from all services in joint operations, the latter happened only after the UN, the EU or other international organizations had decided to deploy missions in order to transform afflicted nations and regions back to normal. Although all of these operations differ in goals and characteristics, after a close look one may say that they have some similarities as well.