Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

This paper, written by the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan and by a company-grade officer and a senior executive with the Defense Intelligence Agency, critically examines the relevance of the U.S. intelligence community to the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Based on discussions with hundreds of people inside and outside the intelligence community, it recommends sweeping changes to the way the intelligence community thinks about itself – from a focus on the enemy to a focus on the people of Afghanistan. The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.

This problem or its consequences exist at every level of the U.S. intelligence hierarchy, and pivotal information is not making it to those who need it. To quote General Stanley McChrystal in a recent meeting, “Our senior leaders – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States – are not getting the right information to make decisions with ... The media is driving the issues. We need to build a process from the sensor all the way to the political decision makers.” This is a need that spans the 44 nations involved with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
This paper is the blueprint for that process. It describes the problem, details the changes and illuminates examples of units that are “getting it right.” It is aimed at commanders as well as intelligence professionals, in Afghanistan and in the United States and Europe.

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Gunfire erupts in Niger capital in apparent coup bid

Smoke was seen rising from the presidential palace amid heavy gunfire in Niger's capital, Niamey, on Thursday in an apparent coup attempt. "We can hear gunshots from time to time but ... the president is in his office," a security source inside the presidential palace told Reuters by telephone. Witnesses said machine gun and heavy weapons fire erupted in the city at about noon GMT and that smoke was rising from the presidential palace. A Reuters witness later saw five injured soldiers at a hospital in Niamey.

Niger President Mamadou Tandja and his cabinet are being held by soldiers after gun battles in the capital. Gunfire broke out around the presidential palace at about 1300 (1200 GMT) and continued for 30 minutes, says the BBC's Idy Baraou in Niamey. State radio is playing military music - a similar pattern to two coups in the 1990s. Tensions have been growing in the uranium-rich nation since last year. Mr Tandja was widely criticised when he changed the constitution in August to allow him to stand for a third term.

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Pakistani forces battle Taliban in South Waziristan

Pakistani forces exchanged heavy fire on Sunday with Taliban defending their heartland, a day after launching an offensive aimed at bringing the writ of the state to lawless lands on the Afghan border. The army said 60 militants and five soldiers had been killed in the first 24 hours of a long-awaited offensive on the global Islamist hub of South Waziristan. Soldiers were securing territory while some militants were fleeing, it said. There was no independent verification of the casualty toll.

The offensive follows militant attacks in different parts of the country, including an assault on army headquarters in which more than 150 people were killed. About 28,000 soldiers are battling an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban, including about 1,000 Uzbek fighters and some Arab al Qaeda members. The militants have had years to prepare their defences in the land of arid mountains and sparse forest cut by dried-up creeks and ravines.

• "Tackling the other Taliban", The Economist, 10/1/09.
  
• "Pakistan: The Militant Jihadi Threat", International Crisis Group, 3/13/09.
  
• "Hotbed of Terror", Council on Foreign Relations, 8/11/08.
• "The Taliban of Afghanistan", Council on Foreign Relations, 8/3/09.
• "Pakistan's New Generation of Terrorists", Council on Foreign Relations, 2/6/08.
• "Pakistan's Tribal Areas", Council on Foreign Relations, 10/26/07.
  

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Postcards from the Edge: Pakistan

Pakistan rocked by fresh attacks

A series of attacks on security forces in Pakistan has killed at least 38 people. In Lahore, militants attacked offices of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), as well as two police academies. At least 26 people died.

In the northern town of Kohat, 11 were killed in a car bomb attack on police. Then a bomb in the city of Peshawar in the north-west killed a child. Suicide attacks in Pakistan in the past two weeks have killed more than 150 people. The Peshawar car bomb went off outside a housing complex for government employees. A number of people were wounded.

Thursday's attacks come ahead of an expected military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in their South Waziristan stronghold on the Afghan border.

Pakistan: The South Waziristan Migration

Pakistan has been a busy place over the past few weeks. The Pakistani armed forces have been conducting raids and airstrikes against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other foreign Islamist fighters in Bajaur Agency, a district inside Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), while wrapping up their preparations for a major military offensive into South Waziristan. The United States has conducted several successful missile attacks targeting militants hiding in areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border using unmanned aerial vehicles.

Threatened by these developments — especially the actions of the Pakistani military — the TTP and its allies have struck back. They have used larger, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) in attacks close to their bases in the Pakistani badlands to conduct mass-casualty attacks against soft targets in Peshawar and the Swat Valley. They have also used small arms and small suicide devices farther from their bases to attack targets in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the respective seats of Pakistan’s military and civilian power.

Pakistan Taliban bombing spree could spur backlash

Facing a looming assault from the military, the Al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban launched a spree of brazen attacks and a media blitz over the past week that appeared to say "bring it on. Today, the military responded by bombing the Taliban's hub in South Waziristan as government forces prepare for a ground offensive there.

The Taliban have recently killed at least 112 people – including United Nations workers, peacekeeper recruits in the restive Swat Valley, and a general and two colonels in the Pakistani Army. They also infiltrated Army headquarters over the weekend. But experts on the conflict sense an underlying insecurity behind their tactics.

"For [the militants], it's essentially a battle for their survival. If they lose the sanctuary in South Waziristan, that's pretty much the end of the game for them," says Rifaat Hussain, a security expert at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "For them, offense is a defensive strategy."

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