CARLO J.V. CARO
As we have witnessed over the last 20 years, Afghanistan has proven to be a remarkable example of the failure of US intelligence.
The precedent for this had already been witnessed in Somalia due to the lack of suitable intelligence developed by the United States.
The need for adequate intelligence on the Taliban movement was a prerequisite for the success of US strategy. Superior technology did not have to lead to success in unconventional warfare. Indeed, the advantage of the Taliban was in its ability to disperse its force in a decentralized and mobile manner.
The origin of the failure of US intelligence can be traced to its culture. The US has oriented itself toward technology, which has weakened the real capacity for human intelligence. Decision-makers normally have a preference for intelligence from nonhuman sources. Reports based on political attitudes and intentions are not dominant.
While the British taught us that every soldier can be a collector of intelligence, cooperation from the local population is essential. And in Afghanistan, with US dependence on air power and the resulting high civilian casualties, the locals’ perception of the US military was hurt, and as such this decreased information sharing.
Most importantly, the United States and its allies failed to exploit, penetrate, and manipulate the structural weaknesses of the Taliban.
In April of 1996, Mullah Omar appeared before his subjects in Kandahar, who saw him as the Amir al-Mu’minin or Commander of the Faithful. Twenty-five years later the Taliban is back in Kandahar, but ironically it has always been plagued by the problem of guaranteeing the loyalty of its fighters to its leadership. Ever since the Taliban was formed, the interests of its shura council have not always coincided with the interests of its regional commanders.
The Taliban in Afghanistan is made up of a network of groups, each based on ethnic, financial or tribal affinities, and each group’s commander creates a particular degree of commitment with the rest of the network and the shura council. While the leadership was normally loyal to Mullah Omar, as the Taliban’s hierarchy descended, there was less cohesion to the center, and there were even rivalries among the different groups that made up the movement, in terms of tribal, ethnic and personal factors.
Why US intelligence failed to exploit this remains puzzling.
While much of the Taliban’s strategy is dictated from its leadership, this strategy has always taken time to reach its fighters on the ground, and while each group’s commanders might have sworn allegiance to the shura council, this has never translated into blind following. Tribal and regional commanders have had to engage in strenuous dialogue to reach consensus within their own group and with each other before adopting the strategy prescribed by the shura council.
Thus the Taliban movement was always vulnerable to fragmentation and disintegration. This weakness had even been observed by its own leadership, which is why the death of Mullah Omar was originally kept hidden.
Of course, there are some advantages to this structure – mainly, that it allowed the Taliban more sources of recruitment. Also, casualties in a given region did not necessarily have a direct effect on the capacity of the Taliban in another region. This is another reason that the Taliban has tried to show itself as a movement that is not exclusively Pashtun and thus gain more influence at a national level against the government.
IN COMPARISON, locals always perceived the government in Kabul as out of touch and corrupt. Its politicians did not really understand their own country, as they had spent too much time abroad.
Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), was largely absent from rural areas, and compiled most of its intelligence in regions under the control of the government, leading to incorrect assessments and actions.
The intelligence services were also largely under the control of ethnic Tajiks, something problematic since it was crucial to gain leverage over the Pashtun population.
In 2015 during the Battle of Kunduz, when the Taliban overran the government, the NDS failed to see the attack coming, and did not initially consider the Taliban’s actions as serious enough.
The lack of communication between the NDS and other state organisms like the NSA (National Security Agency of Afghanistan), the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior, always made it impossible to guarantee security in the country.
This was notably different from Colombia, where the US propped up the government, and intelligence played a crucial role in defeating the insurgency. In Colombia, for example, it is estimated that a network was established with over a million informants in rural areas, which fed information and developed functions of military intelligence.
THE RELIGIOUS character of the Taliban was also underestimated, as it had always been the web that tied the movement together. This has helped Afghans to identify with the Taliban, and it has seduced local leaders, since under the Taliban’s religious system they can gain more influence.
The loyalty of the commander of each group to the shura council has been another reason that the Taliban did not splinter on its own, and it is what has kept the movement alive.
The existence of two shura councils, after 2012, in Peshawar and in Quetta, two different sources of leadership for the Taliban, further proved the organizational problems of the Taliban. While Peshawar followed a stricter command and control center, Quetta was marked more by decentralization. The leadership in Quetta always showed more instability with the regions under its authority.
After the US invaded Afghanistan the Taliban started to reorganize itself and mobilize its fighters. Some of the insurgency fled to Pakistan, but other local commanders stayed in their respective territories. The failure to identify them or to reintegrate them led to the consolidation of the Taliban in 2002
While the United States and the Northern Alliance effectively defeated the Taliban in a few months, their presence in the southern regions was nonexistent, which also helped the return of the Taliban.
OF COURSE, the most important point here is Pakistan, and I am not referring to the fact that it has given armament and refuge to the Taliban.
In 2010, Pakistan captured some leaders of the Taliban, including Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan and Abdul Salam Baryalai Akhund. The United States and its allies might have seen this as a blow to the Taliban or as Pakistan’s pledge to finally cooperate against international terrorism.
But, in practice, Pakistani intelligence had always known how to pressure and manipulate the structure of the Taliban. It is impossible for Pakistan’s intelligence services to not know that members of the Taliban had been operating in their country, and all of the individuals captured were open to negotiations with the government in Kabul, which was not in Pakistan’s interests at the time.
After the US occupation in Afghanistan, Pakistan tried to manipulate the nature of the Taliban, by attempting to place people more akin to Pakistani interests. There have been indications of members with dual nationality in the Taliban, who crossed the border undetected by the Afghan security services and have been able to coordinate with the shura council in Pakistan and the different regional commanders in Afghanistan. Many Taliban members were also Afghan refugees in Pakistan who attended madrassas there and had been influenced by their host country.
As the Taliban takes over Kabul, we can see how intelligence and failing to exploit the structure of our enemy was a critical element for the failure of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment