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Leak Of CIA In Afghanistan A Sign Of U.S. Retreat
The Obama administration has decided to leave Afghanistan. That is the only explanation I can find for this massive leak by "administration, military and intelligence officials" to the NYT's administration stenographer David E. Sanger:
The risk that President Obama may be forced to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year has set off concerns inside the American intelligence agencies that they could lose their air bases used for drone strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and for responding to a nuclear crisis in the region.
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If Mr. Obama ultimately withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, the C.I.A.’s drone bases in the country would have to be closed, according to administration officials, because it could no longer be protected.
By leaking this the administration is saying that should U.S. troops stay in Afghanistan:
- the CIA would continue drone raids into Pakistan,
- the CIA would continue to use its bases in Afghanistan to spy on Pakistan's nukes.
Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan would want the CIA to do any of this. Both countries will, after this leak, increase their efforts to get the U.S. out.
Already two years ago the Afghan foreign minister categorically rejected any further CIA drone activity beyond the end of 2014:
Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool said on Thursday Afghanistan would not be used as a launch pad for U.S. drones attacks on neighboring countries after NATO combat forces leave by the end of 2014.
"Afghan soil will not be used against any country in the region," Rasool told Al Jazeera television when asked if Washington would be allowed to launch drone strikes against Pakistan after the troops' withdrawal.
I believe that the government of Afghanistan was and is serious with this. Any further antagonizing of Pakistan, which supports some of the Taliban fighting the Afghan government, would only prolong a war the Afghan government wants to end.
The U.S. is currently holding a new strategic dialog with Pakistan. Making some progress in U.S. relations with Pakistan while drones stay in Afghanistan and regularly violate Pakistani sovereignty will be impossible.
That multiple sources bring this up to Sanger at this time can only mean that the Obama administration has given up on the status of force agreement with Afghanistan that would allow its troops to stay beyond 2014.
The U.S. leaving Afghanistan is likely the best for that country as well as the best solution for the United States and its allies. There are hardly any positive results from the 12+ years of U.S. occupation of the country and there is no reason to believe that more time would change that sorry record.
These are some of the articles and blog posts I remember reading about CIA presence in Iraq.
“The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional U.S. troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones, U.S. officials said.”
— Greg Miller, WaPo stenographer, February, 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-digs-in-as-americans-withdraw-from-iraq-afghanistan/2012/02/07/gIQAFNJTxQ_story.html
The Greg Miller article says CIA has “moved the CIA’s emphasis there toward more traditional espionage”. He doesn’t say they have ceased doing paramilitary operations, just that the emphasis changed.
Jim White followed up on it a year later in March, 2013 to follow up, noting that the plan for leaving troops in Iraq before the SOFA renegotiations fell through included mostly Special Ops forces who would train and lead Iraqi counterinsurgency militias (a pattern we see in other countries like Afghanistan):
“We have a report today in the Wall Street Journal that shows Miller’s prediction of “espionage only” for the CIA’s role in Iraq was wrong, as militias formerly trained and run by Special Operations Forces are now under CIA control”
— Jim White, emptywheel.net March, 2013
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/03/12/no-sofa-then-transition-death-squad-control-from-special-operations-to-cia/#sthash.oBIY3gTg.dpuf
And the Wall Street Journal article Jim references talks about the secret troops in Iraq, not technically troops but CIA paramilitaries who fight wars, which in my view, are troops:
“In a series of secret decisions from 2011 to late 2012, the White House directed the CIA to provide support to Iraq’s Counterterrorism Service, or CTS, a force that reports directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, officials said.
The CIA has since ramped up its work with the CTS—taking control of a mission long run by the U.S. military, according to administration and defense officials. For years, U.S. special-operations forces worked with CTS against al Qaeda in Iraq. But the military’s role has dwindled since U.S. troops pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.”
— WSJ March, 2013 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735304578354561954501502.html
They might be at the embassy/base but in the first WaPo article I referenced, a CIA source says that during the Iraq war, CIA had many different bases and safe houses.
Since that WSJ article is less than a year old, and considering what has happened since, it seems safe to say that we’ve still got CIA playing the role of special forces there, at the very least. In the past week or so we’ve heard about the additional aid we’re now giving to Iraq. I don’t know if any kind of agreement was signed with the Iraqi government in exchange for that. Like perhaps an agreement that modifies the SOFA that allows covert special forces. I’m speculating. I don’t know if that can be done without Congress.
Posted by: JoanneLeon | Jan 27 2014 19:58 utc | 23
“…is CIA playing both sides?”
Yes. But not necessarily because it aims to do so. The problem with spending more on the military than the rest of the world put together is that, often enough the militaries you employ are fighting each other.
Take Iraq, for example, the US is supplying Maliki and promising more supplies. But the militias that Maliki is fighting are, very clearly, Saudi financed and US armed. Up north the Kurds see the US as allies in their campaign for autonomy, at the expense of both Arab factions, while regarding the US allied Turks with deep suspicion.
Those who wonder whether this means that the US might be falling out with the KSA need wonder no longer: it doesn’t. The same militias, the very same, fight in Iraq one week-against Maliki- and Syria the next –against Assad. They alternate between the two places for safe bases and collect supplies in one that they use in the other. And the CIA (or the Pentagon’s Special Ops) not only arms and supplies them, furnishes them with intelligence (targets, weak points, assessment of forces opposing etc) but offers tactical advice and training.
Surely the same is true in Afghanistan: there is no way that the Saudis, after all they have invested, have lost interest in the Taliban. We know they haven’t in Pakistan where the ISI remains joined at the hip with Riyadh.
I’m not sure that I understand Rowan’s “pseudo gang” theory. Originally these were agents of the state/empire pretending to be insurgents in order to discover and destroy the real insurgents’ bases.
But nobody, (with the possible exception of John Kerry) supposes, I presume, that the Saudi jihadists in Syria are on anyone’s side but the Empire’s. Surely they are what they pretend to be, not because Bandar has lost control of them but because he hasn’t. Nor does he-or his CIA deputy-lose control when they step out of Syria into Iraq or, for that matter, despatch suicide bombers into the Bekaa Valley or Beirut.
In Afghanistan the US not only has an army, controls allied armies and hires tens of thousands of mercenaries, but it also controls, more or less, most of the Afghan warlords who double up as Generals in the Afghan forces-which the US pays, supplies and trains. It also, as we know, maintains militias in the Pashtun areas, some of which are almost certainly units of the Taliban. The militia leaders will routinely execute ‘false positives” –innocent villagers- to collect blood money bounties from the Americans.
From Atlantic Africa to the Chinese border there is a belt of warfare. A zone tinder dry ready to ignite at the next spark. Millions of armed men in hundreds of militias, national armies and guerrilla bands are fighting. And the US is involved in almost every conflict. The signs are that these conflicts will intensify and spread.
I’m not sure what the plan is.
My guess is that there isn’t one and that, absent the discipline of a real enemy, post Cold War, the vast congeries of criminality, death squads, corporate militias plundering minerals and cleansing tomorrow’s plantations of the peasantry, the creatures of Zionism subverting potential opponents, the incredibly ambitious wahhabi missionary programme, projecting Saudi influence throughout the sunni world, the old Gladio formations designed to encircle and weaken the Russian (not Soviet) state, banging away in the Caucasus, as they did in the Balkans- all these and more, for this is only to scratch the surface, will just continue to cannibalise communities until either they meet and go for each other or run up against a power ready to suppress them.
This is an Empire falling apart-the way that empires do-from the head down. The brain has rotted away: there is no overarching purpose, just the muscle memory which tells it to clench its fist and smash things.
The metaphor of the asylum run by its inmates is perfectly apposite: nobody is in charge so anyone with a forceful personality can take charge of one wing or part of the institution. The kitchen maybe or the TV room.
Nobody believes that The President runs things. And Congress certainly doesn’t. The banks don’t care enough to take over-they are happy to control their own affairs. The Pentagon is divided into several large and dozens of smaller factions. So are the spy agencies.
Look at Libya. Does it strike anyone that what is happening there was planned? The only persons who could possibly have planned to arrive at the current situation would have been enemies of NATO, enemies of the US and opponents of the oil industry. The search for a strong man is on, again. As always the problem is that those looking for him count weakness, malleability and a taste for American bootleather as prime qualifications for the role of running roughshod over his countrymen while the oil is drained away.
So who came up with the plan of doing Libya? Hillary Clinton? Samantha Powers? Susan Rice?
OK: all three. Now explain what the fuck airheads like these (and BH Levy!!) were doing exerting influence over the fate of an Empire.
Posted by: bevin | Jan 28 2014 2:43 utc | 30
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