What then followed was usually a very inefficient, extremely fatiguing and quite dangerous pattern of having to move on foot (this was in the days before the LAV etc.) quickly yet surreptitiously over vast areas of difficult terrain in horrible weather to obtain information for 2 masters with widely differing views of the battle space, time, priorities etc. To this day I marvel at the skill and stamina of those Marines carrying out those missions.

“Ignorant CIA should copy Raj agents to avoid failure says spy chief”

Jerome Starkey in Kabul

The job description reads like a modern-day blend of Shackleton and the Raj: US officials are looking for “the best, most extroverted and hungriest analysts” to revolutionise the way they foster intelligence on Afghanistan’s volatile frontlines.

In a scathing attack on Nato’s failures, the top US intelligence officer in Afghanistan is demanding urgent changes to the way the military does business.

After the death last week of seven CIA agents in the country, when an al-Qaeda suicide bomber infiltrated their base, Major-General Michael Flynn describes the agency as “ignorant”, “disengaged” and unaware of the power structures it seeks to influence. In a report released by a Washington think-tank, he called for a return of district level experts, reminiscent of Britain’s Raj-era political agents. The work, he said, would be “among the most challenging and rewarding … an analyst could tackle”.

Based in the provinces, with orders to travel in and out of Afghanistan’s most dangerous districts, applicants would endure near constant danger. But, General Flynn insisted: “The stakes are too high … for us to fail.

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

“The vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate.”

He called for teams of analysts to focus on specific areas, and “write comprehensive district assessments covering governance, development and stability”.

Crucially, General Flynn and his two co-authors argued that analysts’ reports should be made readily available to soldiers and civilian development workers. His report warned that most of Nato’s intelligence officers were “ignorant of local economics and landowners”.

“US intelligence officers can do little but shrug in response to high level decision makers seeking knowledge, analysis, and information,” General Flynn said. “It is little wonder then that many decision makers rely more upon newspapers than military intelligence.”

Only a handful of Nato soldiers speak Pashto, the language of the Taleban, and few spend more than a year in Afghanistan at a time.

General Flynn warned that Nato had concentrated too much on plotting out terrorist networks to launch kill-and-capture missions at the expense of understanding the local people they were trying to win over.

But in a rare example of an operation in which intelligence was working, he said US Marines in Nawa, Helmand, had managed to build up a detailed picture of the people around them. “As the picture sharpened, the focus honed in on what the battalion called ‘anchor points’ — local personalities and local grievances that, if skilfully exploited, could drive a wedge between the insurgents and the greater population.”

Such knowledge was the currency of Britain’s Raj-era political officers, who — armed with little more than wit and a keen sense of adventure — often disappeared into the hills for years at a time, penning detailed dispatches to their political masters in Delhi and London.

“The collection of information is one of the most important military duties,” wrote Winston Churchill in his first-hand account of a British campaign along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The Story of the Malakand Field Force, published in 1897, includes reams of colourful detail about local tribal dynamics.

General Flynn argued that soldiers needed to learn from recent mistakes. He cited one example in which local women destroyed a new well in their village because it denied them a chance to walk to the river each day and gossip.

His warning was clear: “Without the ability to capture this simple history, prosaic as it may be, others are doomed to repeat it.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6977046.ece

The difference is that McChrystal is no ordinary commander and Flynn is struggling to get the behemoth to change course on his boss’s behalf. Instead of keeping his criticisms “in-house,” he is using the CNAS platform to shame the Beltway-focused intelligence community (IC) that contributes case officers and analysts to get on-side through its wider coverage in the mainstream media. As I noted on Twitter, I don’t think the timing of the report just after the CIA operation blew up in its and the Jordanian GID’s faces was deliberate, though it is certainly being linked in much of the reporting.

Good insights. I also raise again my concern that in addition to the issues you raise, “western” nations (and in particular their militaries) have a larger problem of trying to conduct “influence” operations under the glare of media klieg lights that seem to always cast such efforts as propaganda and therefore anathema to an open society of representative government yada yada….