Drones, Missile Strikes, and Afghanistan
There has been some debate of late about whether the use of air assets alone could contain the development of a terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. Joshua Foust makes a compelling case that they cannot:
The Case for Afghanistan: (Recent) Historical Considerations — Registan.net
In fact, I’ll take it a step further and say it actually made us worse off: relying solely on drones and cruise missiles to work for us, we demonstrated we cannot assemble the necessary intelligence for effective air strikes from satellites or the Indian Ocean. Despite the many targeting mistakes we see, our current round of drone strikes and SOF raids are heavily reliant on HUMINT sources that simply cannot be cultivated with a “substantially reduced” presence. We would give up our eyes and ears on the ground, making targeting monumentally difficult.
Even though I have criticized Foust for fear-mongering on the nuclear issue, I think he makes a good point here.
The only caveat I would add is that while I don’t think we can expect to use off-shore strikes to eliminate individuals due to a lack of intelligence, I do think we can probably effectively target large-scale infrastructure — particularly major training camps. In reality, we don’t know whether that would have much of an effect on reducing the risk of terrorism. And critics of a withdrawal of U.S. forces are quite right to be skeptical about any claims that we could control AQ in Afghanistan after we leave.
That said, it isn’t clear to me that we can control them even if we remain, and anyway, for all the talk of safe havens in Afghanistan, the reality is that they have one already in Pakistan.
1) Maybe I just don’t know enough about this. What does a “substantially reduced” military/overt presence have anything to do with our ability or the necessity in keeping a significant clandestine/intelligence presence in Afghanistan? Couldn’t we withdraw militarily and not diminish our ability to recruit HUMINT assets by keeping CIA, DIA, or other intel officers on the ground?
2) Foust I think dismisses an important point about the strikes, “despite the many targeting mistakes we see…”
Intelligence is never perfect, or it wouldn’t be intelligence, it’d be called fact. However, if the HUMINT we are collecting isn’t all that good, in that it leads to “many” targeting mistakes, we need to be asking what the root causes of these mistakes are. Is it simply the luck of the draw or the nature of the beast? Are we using sketchy intelligence because its all we’ve got? Is it because we need more troops/intel officers collecting and corroborating intel? Are our HUMINT assets duplicitious? I don’t have an answer.
All I know is that the perception in that region is that our “precision” strikes are killing far more civilians than they are militants: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/14-islamabad-urged-to-concede-its-tacit-approval-of-drone-attacks-zj-02.
Consequently, keeping or increasing our military presence in Afghanistan in order to continue a system of using often faulty intelligence to carry out strikes and raids while civilians in both Afghanistan/Pakistan cite the collateral damage as a major region for their anti-Americanism and/or support for groups like al-Qaida and the Taliban, seems counterproductive at best.
Which is why I agree with your statement that, “…it isn’t clear to me that we can control them even if we remain, and anyway, for all the talk of safe havens in Afghanistan, the reality is that they have one already in Pakistan.”