Newly assertive CIA expands its hunt for Taliban
WASHINGTON — The CIA is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country, according to two senior U.S. officials, the latest sign of the agency’s increasingly integral role in President Donald Trump’s counterterrorism strategy.
The assignment marks a shift for the CIA in the country, where it had primarily been focused on defeating al-Qaida and helping the Afghan intelligence service. The CIA has traditionally been resistant to an open-ended campaign against the Taliban, the primary militant group in Afghanistan, believing it was a waste of the agency’s time and money and would put officers at greater risk as they embark more frequently on missions.
Former agency officials assert that the military, with its vast resources and manpower, is better suited to conducting large-scale counterinsurgencies. The CIA’s paramilitary division, which is taking on the assignment, numbers in the hundreds and is deployed all over the world. In Afghanistan, the fight against the Islamic State has also diverted CIA assets.
The expansion reflects the CIA’s assertive role under its new director, Mike Pompeo, to combat insurgents around the world. The agency is already poised to broaden its program of covert drone strikes into Afghanistan; it had largely been centered on the tribal regions of Pakistan, with occasional strikes in Syria and Yemen.
“We can’t perform our mission if we’re not aggressive,” Pompeo said at a security conference this month at the University of Texas. “This is unforgiving, relentless. You pick the word. Every minute, we have to be focused on crushing our enemies.”
The CIA declined to comment on its expanded role in Afghanistan, which will put more lower-level Taliban militants in its cross hairs. But the mission is a tacit acknowledgment that to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table — a key component of Trump’s strategy for the country — the U.S. will need to aggressively fight the insurgents.
In outlining his security policies for Afghanistan and the rest of South Asia this summer, Trump vowed to loosen restrictions on hunting terrorists.
The CIA’s expanded role will augment missions carried out by military units, meaning more of the United States’ combat role in Afghanistan will be hidden from public view.
At the height of the conflict, U.S. Special Operations troops hunted Taliban bomb makers. Now, with Afghan commando forces and their Western partners focused primarily on retaking territory from the Taliban and the Islamic State, the agency’s teams will concentrate on hunting these types of threats.