Frontline SIGINT: Afghanistan Was GCHQ’s Largest Foreign Deployment Since WWII

Ben Farmer

December 28, 2014

GCHQ ran string of front-line listening posts in Afghanistan

GCHQ mounted its biggest overseas deployment since the Second World War and ran a string of listening posts across southern Afghanistan to protect troops from Taliban attacks, security sources have disclosed for the first time.

The Government’s electronic eavesdropping agency operated 10 top secret posts inside often remote British military bases across Helmand and the south to gather intelligence during the counter insurgency campaign.

Its operations climaxed over the course of 2014, monitoring Taliban communications to thwart plans to hit vulnerable British convoys as they withdrew from bases across Helmand.

The scale of GCHQ’s front-line involvement in the military campaign has only now been disclosed after the secretive Cheltenham-based agency completed its own pull out of staff and equipment.

The agency, which is currently battling the fallout from Edward Snowden’s allegations about its intelligence gathering techniques, has flown out more than 400 tons of monitoring and technical equipment as part of the withdrawal.

The equipment, equivalent to 100 shipping containers worth, was six times more kit than the agency deployed during Britain’s post-2003 Iraq campaign.

One security source said: “Signals intelligence is critical to dealing with an insurgency and it ended up being the biggest overseas deployment since the Second World War.”

At the height of the campaign, when dozens of British troops were being killed and maimed each month by insurgent homemade bombs, GCHQ waged its own battle trying to identify and target commanders smuggling bomb-making equipment into the country from Pakistan.

Analysts identified and stopped one commander ferrying more than 15 tonnes of precursor explosives across the border.

A security official said: “Huge quantities were being moved in, although the commander himself took great care to avoid being exposed.

“The intelligence enabled the military to take action to disrupt the commander and his supply network.”

GCHQ staff arrived in Afghanistan almost as soon as British combat troops were sent to help topple the Taliban regime in late 2001. By the peak of the campaign the Afghan mission had become the agency’s second largest task, after counter terrorism. At any one time it had around 30 staff in the country, backed by a team of around 90 back in the UK.

The need to monitor insurgents communicating on battlefield radio and mobile phones, as well as talking to Taliban leaders in Pakistan, meant the number of Pashto speakers in the agency grew from a handful to dozens over the campaign.

Coalition commanders believed one of the most vulnerable times of the entire campaign for troops would be as they withdrew base by base back to Camp Bastion and then to Kandahar air field over the course of 2014.

Commanders were particularly worried about fighters being able to hit a convoy with a belt of homemade bombs across its withdrawal route.

But the job of spotting any plan was made more difficult by officials having to dismantle and remove all their surveillance equipment as they left bases, limiting the amount of intelligence they could gather.

One security source told The Telegraph: “There was recognition it only takes a successful rocket propelled grenade hit to a vehicle for very serious loss of life.”

“There was a definite deliberate attempt by the Taliban to disrupt the withdrawal. It was their opportunity to give the coalition a bloody nose.

“They rely on overseas funding and they recognised it would be a great way to show donors that they were doing good work.”

“As it happened, the Taliban never managed to organise a substantial or successful attack. It took an awful lot of work getting ready. We reckon it took 500 to 600 hours of work to prepare for each of the convoys.”

“The operator on one particular convoy spotted that it sounded like they had got their act together and wanted to do something. It sounded like they were about to throw an RPG into the convoy and he warned everyone. The convoy had enough time to take defensive action before it struck and no one was hurt.”

Britain’s combat mission in Afghanistan ended in October with the closure of Camp Bastion, but around 500 troops including a special forces counter terrorism mission will remain in the capital, Kabul. Britain’s intelligence agencies are also expected to continue working in Kabul after the Nato combat mission ends at the end of the year.