As US troops and personnel from Afghanistan continue to withdrawal from Afghanistan, a raging debate has sparked over who should take responsibility for the overall poor outcome of the operation. US policymakers and the military blame the intelligence community for its inaccurate judgements around the collapse of the Afghan government and its troops.
“The truth is that this unfolded faster than we expected. What happened?” said President Biden in his recent August 16 speech. When reporters asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken if President Biden had been misled by his own intelligence agencies, his response was not a positive one. Secretary Blinken noted only that "The fact of the matter is we’ve seen that that [Afghan] force has been unable to defend the country … and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated.”
During a press briefing at the Pentagon, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley said, “Intelligence clearly indicated multiple scenarios were possible: one of those was an outright Taliban takeover following a rapid collapse of the Afghan Security Forces and the government. Another was a civil war, and a third was a negotiated settlement. However, the timeframe of the rapid collapse, that was widely estimated and ranged from weeks to months and even years following our departure.” He continued, “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days." Clearly General Milley had rejected the possibility that intelligence units could have given any early warnings.
The US media continued to follow up with stories covering the withdrawal from Afghanistan, sending out mixed information. Some claimed that intelligence agencies believed the Afghan government could hold out for another two years in the wake of the American withdrawal. On April 27th the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel to vacate the Afghanistan-based US embassy. As US military operations to retreat ramped up, the Taliban began their advance, much sooner than expected. Intelligence agencies revised their original two year estimate down to just six months, then again down to just one month following the Taliban takedown of several major Afghan cities.
As Kabul was collapsing, what were the intelligence agencies busy with? CIA Director William Burns was reported to be in the Middle East engaging with several countries in conversations surrounding the isolation of China and other non-urgent matters.
William Burns spent a total of six days in the Middle East, from August 10th to the 15th. On the 10th and 13th, he met with senior government officials in Israel and Palestine, respectively. While this was happening, the Taliban continued to push forward and secure control of more Afghan cities and countryside towns.
On August 14th, William Burns traveled to Lebanon to meet with Lebanese security and intelligence chiefs in Beirut. His intention was to convey a message of support to the Lebanese military and intelligence chiefs for their role in preserving security during the deep economic crisis. Meanwhile, the Taliban had seized control of Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar.
Burns then traveled to Egypt on August 15th to meet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. According to an Egyptian statement, the two discussed the situation in Afghanistan as well as regional issues. They talked about the situation in Libya, the crisis with Ethiopia over the Grand Renaissance Dam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That same day, Kabul fell. Biden immediately held an emergency discussion on Afghanistan in which Burns joined virtually from Cairo.
NBC commented on the CIA’s involvement, “The fact that Burns was on an overseas trip suggests the agency didn’t think a collapse was imminent.” During such a critical moment when intelligence was of the upmost important, the head of the CIA was in the busy Middle East. What exactly what he so busy with?
Apparently, most decision makers in Washington D.C. never actually came to a consensus on whether a rapid collapse of the Afghan government would happen immediately following the US’s withdrawal. Aside from the fatal mistake of starting the Afghan war in the first place, the US intelligence operations have had serious historical problems.
The intelligence communities cater to decision makers’ preferences rather than providing judgements based on independent thinking. Including the newest arm added in January (the Space Force), the US intelligence community now comprises of 18 total members. Through the NIP (National Intelligence Program) and MIP (Military Intelligence Program), the community has requested a FY 2022 budget of $85.6 billion. This figure is substantially higher than the entire military budget of most countries, including Russia, India, the UK, and Japan. With this kind of funding, the US government certainly could have received faster, more accurate and more comprehensive intelligence support. Unfortunately, the reality is that the intelligence community has progressively become nothing more than a vehicle for US government policy. More than anything its primary mission has been directed towards fabricating lies. There are numerous examples of US intelligence agencies deliberately lying throughout operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and more. For example, let’s have a look at the trigger for the Iraqi war. When the war had reached a stalemate, US Congress launched an investigation into the initial intelligence provided by the intelligence agencies. What they found was that the intelligence around the Iraqi government possessing weapons of mass destruction and funding the Al Qaeda was a blatant lie. As he was trying to deflect criticism on President Biden, Avril D. Haines, Director of National Intelligence said in a statement to The New York Times, “As the president indicated, this unfolded more quickly than we anticipated, including in the intelligence community.”
Coordination both within the US intelligence community and within other government departments remains problematic. After 9/11, President George W. Bush signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which called for the appointment of a Director of National Intelligence and for him to coordinate operations within the US intelligence community. Aside from some progress on integrating annual budgets, this new position has so far failed to actually improve coordination between intelligence bodies. Each intelligence body is still acting completely separately from one another. For example, look at US Department of State, the Department of Defense, USAID, and the CIA, all of which are operating in parallel both in the US and Afghanistan. Aside from the CIA, each department also has its own intelligence unit. There are so many similar functions, yet official investigations have revealed that the US still doesn’t have a holistic strategy in Afghanistan. Objectives and means of completing them are completely misaligned. There is a lack of communication between units and departments. Intelligence gathered by one unit may not be shared with another unit. It’s not even like this is an unknown fact. In 2009, Vice President Joe Biden said to President Obama following a visit to Afghanistan, "If you asked 10 people on the ground what American objectives were, you would get 10 different answers.”
The traditional pragmatism of the US intelligence community has led them to neglect strategic intelligence assessments. The US government's operations in Afghanistan have lasted more than 20 years and costed more than $982 billion dollars, $837 billion on the war itself and another $145 billion on Afghanistan's reconstruction. Consider the expense on arming and training the Afghan security forces, a cost of over $83 billion. If converted to a yearly expense, that comes out to about $4 billion per year which would rank about 40th in global military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden. That being said, the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt, unable to put a stop to desertion and suffers from ghost soldiers – soldiers who don’t actually exist, but the money is still paid out, often kept by commanders to pad their payroll. The country has and still is drug-ridden. The result of the US invasion of Afghanistan had already been decided early on in the fight. Why US decision makers have been slow to make up their minds is because the intelligence community failed to provide clear, strategic, and systematic advice. In other words, the US strategic community has always favored pragmatism – meaning that they continuously uphold the belief that usefulness prevails above all else. The intelligence community, on the other hand, has a strong preference for immediate and tangible results and therefore focuses on independent cases rather than assessing the big picture, conducting systematic analysis, and doing the necessary research. This can be seen throughout the wars the US have been involved in, the mentality of winning by means of tactical and technical maneuvers precedes over any thoughts of evaluating and offering advice on overarching strategies. The intelligence community has even mistakenly believed that as long as their intelligence is deep and extensive enough, they can set and carry out their own strategic goals. They believe they can promote democracy in a “non-democratic” way, pursue equality in an “non-equal” way, and even achieve peace by “non-peaceful” means.
The US intelligence community has significant deficiencies in its intelligence analysis methodology. Both the US military and intelligence community still primarily use structural analysis methods based on the PMESII-PT method (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Information, Infrastructure, Physical Environment, and Time) to assess the strengths and potential of an adversary. That being said, in practice the assessment of an armed force’s operational capability is extremely difficult. Not only do the aforementioned elements need to be considered, but also the adversary’s will to fight, the fighting spirit of soldiers, and the support of the country’s people. These factors are rarely, if ever, present in US intelligence assessments. So much so that President Biden himself said, “We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong. Incredibly well equipped. A force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.” President Biden then later followed, “The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.” and “We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.” Even after the US spent billions of dollars to build and maintain the Afghan security forces, they are still far weaker than any of the “home-grown” forces of ordinary countries. They have become heavily dependent on the US for support in intelligence operations, close fire, logistics and equipment replenishment. They simply do not possess they key elements of an armed force. With the US military withdrawing from Afghanistan, the life support plug has been pulled, leaving the Afghan security forces paralyzed.
The truth is that the problems within the intelligence community aren’t going away as long as the US government withholds its “America above all, America first” policy and continues to bully, coerce, and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries through its powerful military and intelligence. As time goes on, mistakes will continue to be made and fingers will continue to point at the various departments of the US government.