The office of multinational operations shall consist of highly qualified officers of the sending States. In Polish reality, it is hard to qualify elder officers for these quarters and reflection missions. It consists of respective causes and difficulties, which, however, can sometimes be overcome.
Rules and proportions
The same multinational office (Headquatters – HQ) are part of any multi-national operation. They shall consist of highly qualified officers of States who have directed their quotas to the mission. The regulation is that the national proportions in HQ correspond to the share of national quotas in a circumstantial operation. The more soldiers in the contingent, the more officers and officers in HQ. Of course, as with any rule, there are exceptions to this 1 too. For example, PKW KFOR is the seventh contingent in Kosovo Force, in 27 countries, but this does not mean that the Polish national contribution to HQ besides takes place. This is due to difficulties in qualifying elder officers for posts in these contributions. It's easier to send a maneuvering company than a twelve officers to HQ operations. Therefore, Poland does not accept hard or seemingly impossible commitments.
Mentality of the farm owner
This is not due to the deficiency of qualified military candidates, but only to difficulties in obtaining the approval of the commander of the military unit (JW) to leave the officer for six months. An officer's request for approval to be sent to HQ is sent by service, and at each level, the successive superiors must find a satisfactory answer to the basic question: "Who will be working for him while he TAM is “seeking”?" This kind of attitude of the commanders stems from 1 side of the mentality, let's call it noble ("the owner of the farm") and from the attitude of the alleged gardener's dog. In the end, specified a superior did not sign and is not liable for the allocation of posts in HQ, but is liable for the execution of tasks by its sub-chapter, section, department, branch or board.
The Consequences of the Noble Mentality
The first of these consequences is the inclusion of an ‘indispensability mode’ in a given volunteer for a mission. This officer can execute tasks efficiently in his position for years, e.g. a specialist, being 1 of respective officers in a given section, department or branch. But erstwhile you send a request to go to HQ according to your qualifications, abruptly it becomes “indispensable” and its half-year absence can even origin the structure to disintegrate, due to the fact that it is “indispensable”...
As a result, his request to ‘die’ somewhere by service or arrive with the deficiency of consent of his superior to the addressee, the General Command of the Armed Forces, liable for preparing the quotas for participation in the operation. The tradition is that the most hard and most resistant are completed national contributions to HQ operations, due to the fact that they are completed among elder officers, i.e. those “unreplaceable”. I myself applied twice for the service at HQ, in Resolut Support Mission (in PKW RSM in 2015) and in Kosovo Force (PKW KFOR in 2021). In both cases, I lost a fewer months before I got permission. In HQ RSM, this was not a problem due to the fact that the “difficulties” were overcome before the first change began. I only had to compose the motion a second time, due to the fact that in the first “date did not agree”.
Delegation of duties to the commander in the Polish Military Quota of KFOR, February 2025.
In 2021 it was no longer so easy, as since February a position in Joint Engineering (JENG) HQ KFOR was free and DGRSZ had no candidate to supplement. My diligent efforts to leave ended in June, and during these 4 months Polish elder national typical Colonel Sławomir Jaskulski "lighted with his eyes" before the commander of KFOR and head of JANG and was ashamed of the effectiveness of the full Polish quota replenishment system. After my arrival at HQ, JENG's chief, a serious Austrian Oberst Siegfried "Sigi", could not get out of admiration, asking how it is that the Austrian army (about 30,000 soldiers) has no problem with the fulfilment of its obligations, and the powerful Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland (then over 100,000 soldiers) 4 months search an officer to direct him to the post, for which they are responsible? I, too, "sacrificed with my eyes," but I explained to him that 1 of the inheritances after "the great-grandmothers of Austria" in Poland is the authoritative mentality at certain levels of the career, erstwhile a given supervisor holds a staff position besides long. The common denominator for consideration proved to be the timeless " Adventures of a Good Warrior of Schweik" by Jaroslav Hašek. He described the types of officers, Colonel Schröder or Lieutenant Dub, we will find in all army.
This ‘indispensability’ mode is not only included for elder officers. erstwhile in 2011 in the 10th Logistics Brigade I was forming the National Supply component for the X-change PKW ISAF, the then P.O. commander of the logistics battalion gave a negative opinion on the proposal of Lieutenant Adriana Pietniunas, arguing that sending her to the mission would consequence in the request to make the battalion. However, as a replacement for Brigadier Commander, Colonel Jerzy Dworucha approved the application, and the lieutenant during her service at the PKW “ordered” many outstanding cases related to the implementation of U.S. Army logistical support for PKW ISAF and returned from her mission with the Military Merit Cross with Swords. I don't request to add that this logistics battalion is inactive functioning rather smoothly.
Problems with the UN observer course
A twelve years ago, erstwhile the Minister of National Defence was Radosław Sikorski, his command was published in the “Army Poland” regarding the anticipation of bypassing the service way erstwhile requests were made to mention UN observers to the course, conducted by the Training Centre for Peacekeepers in Kielce. It turned out that respective junior officers could not be found in the full Polish Army to participate in specified a course, or, in fact, they could not be found in the service post their requests (with the approval of the commanders) to mention to this course. The conclusions were lost somewhere on the "warcourse" between the applicants and the Command of the Land Forces. The reason was akin to the consent to mention elder officers to HQ. In the end, no of the superiors took on a commitment to the UN-et, why they were to implement them, for example, by sending a junior officer to an observer's course and then "pay for business" his yearly absence in the unit. The question, "Who will be working for him while he TAM is “seeking”?" in this case, too. The consequence of these "missing" proposals was an always smaller pool of trained observers with unchanged UN-ethic needs and the deficiency of anticipation of replacing observers after an yearly service. At the time, the minister's order allowed the service road to be ‘detached’ and temporarily enabled Poland to fulfil global obligations.
Problems sending observers
Ministers change, but not the mentality of superiors. And inactive the superiors of possible observers do not consider themselves to be a organization to the agreement between Poland and the UN-et on military observer service in reflection missions. The fact that the problem with the rotation of these respective UN-ethic observers, whom Poland has undertaken to maintain, continues to be demonstrated in Decision 17/MON of 18.02.2022. In accordance with this decision, in cases justified by the needs of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland, a candidate may be eligible to participate in an global mission despite the deficiency of consent of the superiors. In another words, although the commander will not consent to his officer becoming an observer of the UN-et, this officer will become an observer due to the fact that the obligations of the Polish State must be fulfilled.
At this point, it is advisable to extend the above-mentioned provision of the decision to the qualification of officers for service in HQ of multinational operations, besides despite the deficiency of consent of superiors.
