The MARO Project was founded in 2007 by Sarah Sewall in her capacity as Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. It quickly became an institutional partnership with the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at the US Army War College. The Project has relied heavily on the expertise of a Core Planning Group comprised of active duty and retired military officers. The Project's initial intent was to develop a generic military concept of operations for mass atrocity intervention for the US and foreign governments and military actors. However, Project participants ultimately found it more appropriate to develop a planning framework tailored to the common requirements of a MARO and designed to identify specific operational dynamics and requirements. In this process, the Project developed a conceptual framework for MARO, explaining the underlying common elements and unique challenges of a MARO compared to other types of military operations. The combined functions of conceptual framework and planning guide ultimately resulted in this Military Planning Handbook.

The Initial Annotated Planning Framework Effort

By articulating the unique aspects of MARO, the Project hopes to prompt military and non-military actors to develop the appropriate doctrine and other adaptations to be prepared if a mass atrocity response is required. National or organizational doctrine is needed to inform mass atrocity and genocide response, just as it guides responses to other types of military operations.

To speed this process, MARO military planners drew upon and reconfigured existing US military operational guidance and task lists to create a template for mass atrocity intervention. The Project examined guidance and tasks common to peace support operations, foreign HA operations, peace enforcement operations, NEOs, and COIN operations. Initially, the planners recommended developing a generic CONOPS, sometimes referred to as a “Level One Contingency Plan.” Such plans are created by the military for a broad range of contingencies and underpin and facilitate the transition to more detailed planning. Because the final audience for such a product would be senior policymakers, it was decided to create a generic planning document that would be iteratively modified to provide the Secretary of Defense with detailed military courses of action to respond to a mass atrocity.

More fundamentally, as the Project worked through different variations of mass atrocity response, it became evident that any attempt to create a universal or generic plan would likely be inadequate. As a result, the Project decided to take a procedural step back. Instead of creating a one-size-fits-all plan, it would develop an “Annotated Planning Framework” (APF) to guide the process of analyzing and customizing responses to mass atrocity. This effort was based on the military's existing Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES) process, but the APF was envisioned to provide guidance to a GCC on how to develop a Commander's Estimate and Operation Plan. It moved interagency considerations earlier in the process, and added a variety of other planning factors and analytics that would be useful when faced with a mass atrocity situation. For example, situational factors common to past genocide and mass atrocities were integrated into the planning assumptions. The endstate was defined as stopping the atrocities. Planners also sought to translate the JOPES process into concepts and terms that would be more easily understood by the US interagency community as well as NGOs and the general public.

The Project began briefing the APF widely in the fall of 2008, part of which consisted of holding three conferences—one in September 2008 with US military representatives, one in December 2008 with other US government officials, and one in April 2009 with the UN and NGOs. The feedback was extremely useful and prompted a more significant revision of approach. Audiences were concerned that the outline of a detailed military planning process was an end in itself, rather than a means to an end of explaining what needed to be done differently in a MARO. In other words, the document appeared duplicative of a process already well understood by military planners, but it was still not accessible to non-military readers. Second, the APF included too many additional factors and analytics without explaining their value or linking them to one another. As a result, the APF distracted from the understanding of MARO-specific requirements. Third, many audiences failed to understand what was fundamentally different about a MARO. The Project concluded that the initial product, while attempting to explain the uniqueness of planning for a MARO, still placed too much focus on a planning process at the expense of developing and conveying the key MARO concepts.

Moving toward the MARO Military Planning Handbook.

This feedback prompted a revision of our approach and coincided with a transition of leadership on the MARO staff. Sally Chin joined the Carr Center as MARO Project Director, bringing extensive field experience from Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other conflicts in Africa. Retired Army Colonel Dwight Raymond assumed leadership of the MARO Project effort at PKSOI, bringing his operational and planning experience. PKSOI's Colonel (Retired) William Flavin also contributed his extensive policy and planning expertise to developing a revised approach.

We concluded that by gearing our initial product to a planning process, we had become overly focused on process at the expense of developing and conveying the key MARO concepts. Fortunately, Lt Col Clint Hinote (USAF) of the CPG had already written an important predoctrinal piece on escalatory dynamics and various ways to think about using force to deter and halt mass atrocities. Drawing on this work, the CPG discussions, and her own analysis, Sarah Sewall created a summary of mass atrocity characteristics and their operational implications, which has become Part I of the Planning Handbook and a point of departure for military doctrine.

We also changed our approach to explaining MARO planning, making it more general and more accessible to a wider audience. We streamlined the entire process, stripping it of many detailed elements that would be essential but familiar to military planners while making the language and process easier for civilian actors to understand and apply. We removed many, although not all, ancillary methods of predicting or assessing mass atrocity or genocide because of their varying purposes and degrees of support and track records. Instead, the guide highlights important planning considerations that might be useful to planners who have been directed to prepare for a mass atrocity response. Over the past two years of the project, we also sought to engage more closely with humanitarian agencies and international and regional institutions. It became apparent that a successful MARO, even as it was primarily a military endeavor, would require the cooperation and coordination of a wide range of actors. This would be true during and definitely after the intervention, when a handoff of responsibilities would be necessary. These entities would likely already be present at the onset of a mass atrocity, and would therefore be key sources of information and advice that should be factored into the planning process from the outset.

Finally, as we began to consolidate the various elements of the Military Planning Handbook, the MARO Project began working with Mission Essential Personnel to develop a tabletop exercise that would allow actors to apply the MARO guidebook to a realistic scenario. As a result, the MARO Project has been able to begin testing its concepts and planning process, initially with the US military. The first effort was in January 2010, when the Project held a planning workshop and MARO tabletop exercise at US European Command (EUCOM). The two-day exercise, which focused on planning for a hypothetical potential mass atrocity scenario in EUCOM's area of responsibility, brought together EUCOM J35 crisis action planners, J5 deliberate planners, and planners from J9, J4, and S/CRS to test the MARO concept. Participants reported that the exercise helped them recognize why a mass atrocity response would be one of the more difficult types of problems that they might have to face, and they appreciated having the conceptual framework, planning considerations, and checklists provided to them. As a result of this, EUCOM has invited the MARO Project back for a follow-on exercise and engagement with other Combatant Commands is also envisioned.

One of the MARO Project's goals is to continue to expand this process beyond the US military to include foreign military and government actors and international and regional organizations.