Afghanistan: too many butchers spoil the cow

By MusaKhanJalalzai

This policy of the US and NATO allies towards Pakistan and Afghanistan prompted the emergence of Russia and China as competent stakeholders in the region.

Intelligence is crucial to the development of understanding — it requires practitioners and experts to operate in a complex environment. The Taliban intelligence war in Kunduz province received mixed responses in military circles of Afghanistan where terrorist groups used cell phones to organise and coordinate surprise attacks against the government forces. The way Taliban and the ISIS advanced in small towns and cities is a new tactic of modern war, in which mobile phone technology played an important role in coordinating all forces on various fronts. Today’s intelligence war presents an entirely different picture from the cold-war era, where policy makers and secret forces used old military strategies to develop a strong relationship with communities in countering enemy on all fronts. The cold war secret intelligence strategies and policies were aimed to protect sources and keep adversaries from gaining access to military secrets. For this purpose, the compartmentalised acquisition by secret agencies, information analysis, dissemination of information, and a professional and technical approach that worked intelligently well as long as policymakers knew who the enemy was what information to look for and who needed to have it.

During the cold war, competition among agencies about the intelligence information gathering was deeply complicated as every agency used different tactics of collection and dissemination. Today, the most important challenge faced by secret agencies is the issue of effectiveness. During the last four decades, we experienced numerous incidents of intelligence failure in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, in which the lake of professional skills, staff and authentic source of information, and reliance on secret surveillance were major causes. The modern intelligence warfare among scores of foreign intelligence in Afghanistan has painted a new picture; in which every agency learn from the operational capabilities, failures, gains and professional skills of its rival power. This complex business of secret war created numerous difficulties for the United States in Afghanistan, as the country has deeply embroiled in an unwanted war and the war that is going to intensify, and will never allow its forces to safely withdraw from the country.

For Russia and China, one of the leading security challenges is the aggravation of war in Afghanistan where crisis phenomena continue to grow. The most violent threat is posed by the exponentially growing influence of ISIS Khorasan group in the country that controls more than 70 districts where it trains and equips fighters from Chinese and Russian Central Asia. These political and strategic developments forced Russia and China to reactivate their policies towards Afghanistan in the political and military spheres. Moscow and Beijing are trying to deploy more intelligence units from Badakhshan to Swat region, and from Gilgit-Baltistan to Tajikistan to intercept the infiltration of the ISIS terrorists into Central Asia. However, the altercation of Afghanistan and the rise of Daesh group is a part of Russia’s relations with the United States where competition between the two powers has been accompanied by partial cooperation. Having realised security threat from the ISIS and the expansion of NATO eastwards, President Putin organised an Afghan Taliban group — funded and adorned with modern weapons on the one hand, and reincarnated KGB, and merged all domestic and foreign intelligence agencies into one agency (MGB) on the other. This process was named the reorganisation and reinvention of intelligence infrastructure.

Secret links between the Taliban, Northern Alliance and Russian intelligence are a matter of great concern for NATO and the Afghan government. The Russian government is trying to reach every religious and political group, and warlords in the Afghan state institutions to persuade them that Russia is no longer a threat to the national security of Afghanistan. The country needs broader cooperation from Pakistan and Afghanistan in the fight against ISIS terrorists in Central Asia. On October 1, 2015, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani requested military equipment from Russia for the Afghan army. However, Russian envoy to Kabul, Zamir Kabulove admitted that Taliban’s interests objectively coincide with Russian interests. This development was seen in Afghanistan as an intelligence success of Russian and failure of the CIA and Pentagon’s modern surveillance and intelligence system. Afghan and the US policy makers are now increasingly worried that any deepening of ties between Taliban and Russian intelligence could further complicate security situation. The failure of US government to adopt a consistent policy on Pakistan and its military needs prompted deep discontent in relations between the two states.

The United States allowed India’s civilian and military intelligence agencies to establish terror networks and training camps in Afghanistan. These terror networks recruited thousands Baloch insurgents to carry out attacks against Pakistan’s security forces in Baluchistan province, which resulted in spoiling relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This unfriendly policy forced Pakistan to approach China and Russia for their support against the Indian aggression on its soil. Thus, after four decades of hostility, Pakistan improved relations with Russia and signed important agreements with the country. However, Chinese intelligence also reinvented its old Afghan contacts. It approached Taliban leadership through Pakistan and retrieved the sympathy of Haqqani group inside Afghanistan. In 2015, Taliban and the Afghan government representative met in China to discuss the prospect of peace in the country. The involvement of Chinese intelligence in the Afghan theatre strengthened, and Beijing was involved in all peace talks. The involvement of Indian intelligence (RAW) in Afghanistan and its terror attacks inside Pakistan is seen in China as a great threat, as the country wants to complete the CPEC project within a peaceful environment.

This policy of the US and NATO allies towards Pakistan and Afghanistan prompted the emergence of Russia and China as competent stakeholders in the region. If we look at the performance of the US and NATO intelligence in Afghanistan, their operational mechanism has not been so successful during the last 15 years. Interestingly, the US says its intelligence network in Afghanistan is one of the largest in the world, but if we read the report of Major General Michael Flynn (2010), we can better judge the failures and successes of US intelligence in Afghanistan. Moreover, Russian intelligence specialists recently indicated that CIA has been unable to identify the actual aspect of rising threats in the country. The US and NATO intelligence agencies are preoccupied with information gathering, but they lacked processing skills and failed to provide vital general information about the insurgents' nests. They collect human intelligence information through espionage, but spies are unable to reach remote areas in Afghanistan. It means they gather information only from cities, while insurgents are based in villages and mountainous regions.

More than 15 years into the battlefield in Afghanistan, US intelligence agencies have only been marginally relevant to the fight against Taliban. They focused on information collection but failed to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which the US and NATO allies’ agencies operated. They arrested countless people like farmers, shopkeepers, religious clerics and political workers, put them in prisons, tortured and humiliated, but these tactical intelligence approaches and wrongly designed strategies could not bring about changes in their minds. General Mike Flynn noted these and other challenges in his report:

“This problem and its consequences exist at every level of the US intelligence hierarchy, from ground operation up to headquarters in Kabul and the United States. At the battalion level and below, intelligence officers know a great deal about their local Afghan districts but are generally too understaffed to gather, store, disseminate, and digest the substantial body of crucial information that exists outside traditional intelligence channel. With insufficient number of analysts and guidance from commanders, battalion S-2 shops rarely gather, process, and write up quality assessment on countless items, such as census, and patrol briefs, minutes from Shuras with local farmers and tribal leaders, after-action reports from civil affairs officers and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), polling data and atmosphere reports from psychological operations and female engagement teams, and translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers, not to mention the field observations of Afghan soldiers, United Nation Officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGO).”