Let’s Hear from the Spies
Posted by Steve Coll, New Yorker, November 24, 2011
In late 2008, the United States intelligence community produced a classified National Intelligence Estimate on the war in Afghanistan that has never been released to the public. The N.I.E. described a “grim situation” overall, according to an intelligence officer’s private briefing for NATO ambassadors.
In late 2010, there was another N.I.E. on the war. This one painted a “gloomy picture,” warning that “large swaths of Afghanistan are still at risk of falling to the Taliban,” the Los Angeles Times reported. This N.I.E., too, has never been published.
This autumn, intelligence analysts have again been poring over their secret district-by-district maps of Afghanistan, finding and assessing patterns. A new N.I.E. on Afghanistan is just about finished, people familiar with the latest draft told me this week. This one looks forward to 2014, when President Obama has said U.S. troops will be reduced to a minimal number, and Afghan security forces will take the lead in the war.
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In late 2010, there was another N.I.E. on the war. This one painted a “gloomy picture,” warning that “large swaths of Afghanistan are still at risk of falling to the Taliban,” the Los Angeles Times reported. This N.I.E., too, has never been published.
This autumn, intelligence analysts have again been poring over their secret district-by-district maps of Afghanistan, finding and assessing patterns. A new N.I.E. on Afghanistan is just about finished, people familiar with the latest draft told me this week. This one looks forward to 2014, when President Obama has said U.S. troops will be reduced to a minimal number, and Afghan security forces will take the lead in the war.
The new draft Afghanistan N.I.E. is a lengthy document, running about a hundred pages or more. As is typically the case, it is a synthesis, primarily written by civilian intelligence analysts—career civil servants, mainly—who work in sixteen different intelligence agencies. These days, an Estimate usually contains “Key Judgments” backed by analysis near the front of the document. There are six such judgments in the Afghanistan draft, I was told. I wasn’t able to learn what all of them were; according to the accounts I heard, however, the draft on the whole is gloomier than the typical public statements made by U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan.
Those generals and their aides have lately been talking up signs of progress, such as improved security in Kandahar and Helmand provinces and a reduction in self-reported statistics on violence, even though other statistics, published by the U.N., suggest that things are still getting worse. The draft, however, is said to raise doubts about the authenticity and durability of the gains the military commanders believe they have made since Obama’s troop surge began in 2009.
The findings also raise questions about the Administration’s strategy for leaving behind a stable Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is due to step aside in 2014, at the end of his second term, as the Afghan constitution requires. The N.I.E., I was told, includes a forecast that the next generation of political leaders is likely to be—and to be seen by Afghans—as corrupt. The Estimate also raises doubts about the pillar of the Administration’s strategy, the training and equipping of about three hundred and fifty thousand Afghan military forces and police. The report notes that the projected cost of running an Afghan force of that size is about eight to ten billion dollars annually, a sum that may well outrun the will or the fiscal capacity of the United States. A withdrawal of American funds would leave the Afghan forces vulnerable to a crackup. (At the same time, those costs are only a tenth or less of what the U.S. currently spends each year on the war.)
Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson at the White House’s National Security Council, told me that she was “not in a position to comment on the content of a purported N.I.E.” As to the high cost of sustaining a large Afghan military after 2014, she added, “We fully recognize this reality.
Accordingly, the U.S. and other donors are working with the Afghan government to clarify the long-term costs for sustainment … and how to best ensure that these costs will be met.”
On the corruption issue, Hayden acknowledged that it “remains a challenge.” Overall, she said, “We readily acknowledge that huge challenges remain in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The President’s announcement in June marked the beginning—not the end—of our effort to wind down this war.”
It does not require secret information to assess the Afghan stalemate trenchantly. According to Lexis-Nexis, the Times has published two thousand four hundred and seventy stories mentioning Afghanistan since the first of this year alone. Add to that archive the essays and reports on the Af-Pak Channel and the publications of the European-funded Afghanistan Analysts Network and, presto, you have all the raw material required for your own, customized N.I.E.
Yet the formal, rather more expensive N.I.E. has a distinctive status and credibility in Washington. The finished documents, typically classified Secret or Top Secret, are particularly influential with members of Congress, in part because they are meant to be free of partisan spin. The N.I.E. is also intended to be a vessel for intellectual independence within the intelligence community. In that respect, the accounts of the latest Afghanistan N.I.E. raise some worrying questions.
Those generals and their aides have lately been talking up signs of progress, such as improved security in Kandahar and Helmand provinces and a reduction in self-reported statistics on violence, even though other statistics, published by the U.N., suggest that things are still getting worse. The draft, however, is said to raise doubts about the authenticity and durability of the gains the military commanders believe they have made since Obama’s troop surge began in 2009.
The findings also raise questions about the Administration’s strategy for leaving behind a stable Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is due to step aside in 2014, at the end of his second term, as the Afghan constitution requires. The N.I.E., I was told, includes a forecast that the next generation of political leaders is likely to be—and to be seen by Afghans—as corrupt. The Estimate also raises doubts about the pillar of the Administration’s strategy, the training and equipping of about three hundred and fifty thousand Afghan military forces and police. The report notes that the projected cost of running an Afghan force of that size is about eight to ten billion dollars annually, a sum that may well outrun the will or the fiscal capacity of the United States. A withdrawal of American funds would leave the Afghan forces vulnerable to a crackup. (At the same time, those costs are only a tenth or less of what the U.S. currently spends each year on the war.)
Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson at the White House’s National Security Council, told me that she was “not in a position to comment on the content of a purported N.I.E.” As to the high cost of sustaining a large Afghan military after 2014, she added, “We fully recognize this reality.
Accordingly, the U.S. and other donors are working with the Afghan government to clarify the long-term costs for sustainment … and how to best ensure that these costs will be met.”
On the corruption issue, Hayden acknowledged that it “remains a challenge.” Overall, she said, “We readily acknowledge that huge challenges remain in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The President’s announcement in June marked the beginning—not the end—of our effort to wind down this war.”
It does not require secret information to assess the Afghan stalemate trenchantly. According to Lexis-Nexis, the Times has published two thousand four hundred and seventy stories mentioning Afghanistan since the first of this year alone. Add to that archive the essays and reports on the Af-Pak Channel and the publications of the European-funded Afghanistan Analysts Network and, presto, you have all the raw material required for your own, customized N.I.E.
Yet the formal, rather more expensive N.I.E. has a distinctive status and credibility in Washington. The finished documents, typically classified Secret or Top Secret, are particularly influential with members of Congress, in part because they are meant to be free of partisan spin. The N.I.E. is also intended to be a vessel for intellectual independence within the intelligence community. In that respect, the accounts of the latest Afghanistan N.I.E. raise some worrying questions.
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