Early military career From 1969 to 1975, Isberg served as platoon leader and company commander. He attended the Engineering Officers School at the
Artillery and Engineering Officers School from 1971 to 1972 and the
Swedish Armed Forces Staff College from 1975 to 1978 and served in the
Army Staff from 1978 to 1983, whereupon Isberg served as company commander 1984 to 1985. and he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1986 He served as battalion commander from 1988 to 1990, after which he was commander of the Swedish Lebanon Battalions L106/L21 from 1990 to 1991 and commanding officer of the Swedish Army Field Work School (
Fältarbetsskolan, FarbS) from 1991 to 1993 and at the same time head of the Swedish UN Stand-by Force in 1992.
1990s to early 2000s In January 1992 during the
Yugoslav Wars, during the planning stage of the Swedish contribution to the
United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), there was thought that the Swedish unit JK01 could largely amount to a battalion, possibly in cooperation with other nationalities. Battalion commander would be the then colonel Isberg, but politicians and other senior decision makers wanted otherwise. The force finally came to include a purely Swedish company instead, now led by major Jan Söderberg. In January 1993, Isberg was appointed to command Nordbat 1 (Nordic Battalion 1) with the United Nations Protection Forces/Macedonia (UNPROFOR/M), a joint
Nordic unit consisting of a mechanized infantry company from
Sweden,
Norway and
Finland, as well as a joint staff and
train company from these countries. In mid-1993, American troops were sent to Macedonia and were put under Isberg's command. This was the first time a Swedish officer commanded American soldiers. In 1993, Isberg was also appointed commanding officer of the
Norrbotten Engineer Corps (Ing 3) and the Haparanda Border Regiment (
Haparanda gränsregemente) (that consisted of the 2nd brigade of the
Norrbotten Regiment) which comprised more than 6,000 men. In the 1990s, he also served as adviser in
Bulgaria. In 1996, Isberg served in the Bosnia Army Corps Staff of the
Implementation Force (IFOR). Isberg was promoted to senior colonel in 1997 and served at the
Swedish Armed Forces Headquarters in Stockholm from 1997 to 1999: as head of the Program Department (1997–1998), as head of the Ground Warfare Department in the Joint Forces Directorate (
Krigsförbandsledningen) (1998–1999). Isberg served as Senior Military Adviser at the
United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA) from 1999 to 2000 and from 2001 to 2003 he served as head of the Baltic Cooperation Department at the
Swedish Armed Forces Headquarters. Although a peace agreement had been signed in 2002, it was broken by militia groups in the eastern part of the country. On 21 August 2003, Isberg was appointed acting commander of the Ituri Brigade - the UN force that took over on 1 September from the French-led Interim Emergency Multinational Force (IEMF) that had completed its mandate of securing the eastern town in
Bunia in the embattled
Ituri District. In October 2003, Isberg, superseded as brigade commander by a Pakistani brigadier general, returned to his regular position at the MONUC headquarters in Kinshasa, a time as Acting Force Commander; the regular,
Mountaga Diallo, was replaced in December by major general Somaila Ilyia from
Nigeria, a superior with whom Isberg had easy cooperation. Isberg was later appointed commander of the Kivu Brigade from March 2004. He was the only western soldier in his brigade, which was composed of a Uruguayan and a Bangladeshi battalion, totalling 4,000 men. Isberg would command the Kivu Brigade during 11 month, March 2004 to February 2005. In 2008 he was responsible for the VIKING 08 exercise. In 2010, Isberg led a commission of inquiry into the killings of two Swedish officers in
Afghanistan. ==Later life==