Our Afghan intel mess By RALPH PETERS

New York Post
Our Afghan intel mess

By RALPH PETERS
January 7, 2010

'Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to our overall strategy."

That's the opening line from a courageous, heartfelt report, "Fixing Intel," http://www.cnas.org/node/3924 just released by our senior Military Intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Mike Flynn.

Writing with two talented co-authors, Flynn goes on to damn our bewildering failure to gather comprehensive knowledge about Afghanistan's provinces, as well as our overreliance on technology and the PowerPoint culture ravaging our staff work.

Nothing written on post-9/11 intelligence has been as honest and forthright. Nearly every recommendation Flynn makes is a good one. But the fatal problem is that the general misses the forest for the trees.

If you begin with the wrong questions, it doesn't matter how tenaciously you pursue the answers. This report views everything through the lens of our lack of success in Afghanistan.

But the key question -- which we refuse to ask -- is why the Taliban are successful. How did this brutal organization that alienated Afghans during its time in power make such a stunning comeback? Even as we dumped our largesse on the locals?

If we don't answer that one honestly -- and we won't -- we'll continue to waste blood and treasure.

Beyond that, there are four predictable deficiencies in this battle cry from the deck of the Titanic:

* The report assumes that our politically correct counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine works and that local development inevitably translates into strategic success. Yet our local COIN wins remain rare and, too often, temporary. We think defensively and surrender the initiative. And we don't want to know what Afghans really think.

* Extending our blinkered PC approach, the 23-page document never mentions Islam or jihad, offering only a single fleeting reference to attendance at local mosques. Yet the Taliban entwine religion and tribal relationships brilliantly. We're deep in a war and ignoring the enemy's arsenal.

* When discussing "success," the doctrine denigrates the importance of killing our enemies and assumes that, if only we get the soft power right, we can create the Afghanistan we desire. If that's the goal, quit now.

* The document falls into the classic American trap of throwing quantity at a quality problem. The general wants to devote more fly-in-fly-out analysts to understanding complex local environments. The goal's admirable, but the approach is amateurish.

That last bullet demands more discussion, since it goes to the heart of the intelligence deficiencies in our current conflicts. It's been said that the US military wasn't in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times. The same lack of continuity haunts us in Afghanistan.

Such successes as the British finally achieved on India's Northwest Frontier came from two complementary sources: the willingness to punish jihadis with ruthless force and the obsessive dedication of military officers and political agents who spent not just years, but decades, learning local languages and living among the natives.

You just can't develop the essential sixth-sense feel for a profoundly foreign culture during a one-year deployment, let alone a shorter stint. That's not even long enough to learn to pronounce the names. But our industrial-era, check-the-block personnel system wouldn't consider asking for (then guaranteeing the careers of) volunteers for five-year stints immersed in Helmand Province.

Compounding our disrespect for human capital and intolerance for unorthodox career paths is our self-destructive, short-term view: Few want to suggest that we might be in Afghanistan five years from now -- even though we've been there for over eight years already.

(Plus, you couldn't very well impose the general orders forbidding sex and any other fun on officers kept on-station for a decade. But we prize puritanical conformity above effectiveness.)

All the stop-gap measures in the world can't substitute for the long-term, on-the-ground commitment of talented officers who want to be there. If we won't dedicate hundreds of people, we'll throw away thousands of lives.

I've known Gen. Flynn since we were captains. As a young Military Intelligence officer, he was hard-working, physically fit, charismatic, Airborne with gleaming boots -- the perfect corporation man, groomed for success. Now the corporation he spent three decades supporting is failing him.

I understand his frustration, admire his courage and applaud his good intentions. But the problem isn't the intelligence officers down at battalion and brigade. It's the generals who gave us the failing system we've got.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon."