Read Online Intel Wars by Matthew M. Aid - Free Book Online Page A

intently watching. The marines’ interest in these men was heightened when they suddenly became camera shy when video cameras were pointed at them, covering their faces with the edges of their turbans. One of the marine intelligence officers present muttered to his sergeant, “They’re back”—meaning the Taliban.
    While officials continued to put on a brave face for the public, by the spring of 2010 deep concern about the situation in Afghanistan had begun to creep into the highest levels of the U.S. government and its NATO allies. Public opinion polls showed that support for the war in Afghanistan was slipping among the American people. In Western Europe and Canada, support for the Afghan war, which had never been very high to begin with, plummeted. In March 2010, after a lengthy public debate, the Dutch government had collapsed because of the vast unpopularity of the war in that country, which according to a confidential CIA report “demonstrates the fragility of European support for the NATO-led ISAF mission” in Afghanistan. The Canadian, Dutch, and Polish governments all announced that they were pulling their troops out of Afghanistan at a time when the Obama administration was pressing the NATO governments to increase their troop levels there.
    The situation on the ground was increasingly grim, with the April 2010 ISAF intelligence staff’s assessment of the security situation showing that in the NATO zone in southern Afghanistan, only one district, the city of Kandahar, was rated as “sympathizing with the Government of Afghanistan,” while thirteen districts were assessed as actively supporting or sympathizing with the Taliban. In the American zone in eastern Afghanistan, the situation was better, with fifteen districts rated as being supportive of the Afghan government and twelve as actively supporting or sympathizing with the insurgents. All of the remaining districts were “on the fence,” waiting to see who would come out on top.
    Despite all of the bad news, a small but determined group of officers at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, snidely referred to by their colleagues as “Team Victory,” continued to resolutely believe in eventual victory in Afghanistan. One of the leading members of “Team Victory” was Major General Bill Mayville, General McChrystal’s operations chief, who confidently predicted in a March 17, 2010, blog posting that “ there are growing fissures between [the Taliban] groups and we believe they are starting to experience considerable stress due to the increased operational tempo on both sides of the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.”
    This statement was met with disbelief by a number of ISAF intelligence officers. Not only was there no tangible support for the general’s statement in any of the intelligence reporting they were reading, but it actually ran contrary to all of the official internal estimates they had been sending to Mayville and General McChrystal. Even the Pentagon’s April 2010 assessment on Afghanistan sent to Congress admitted that the security situation was “far from satisfactory.”
    Speaking at a closed-door NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels in June 2010, General McChrystal admitted that only 5 of the 121 districts in Afghanistan that he deemed to be essential if the war in Afghanistan was to be won were rated as “secure,” while 40 of these key districts were rated as “dangerous.” Moreover, a document prepared by his staff admitted that ISAF did not expect any major improvement in the military situation in Afghanistan for the rest of the year.
    A number of American, Canadian, and European defense and intelligence officials attending the meeting left the briefing believing that General McChrystal’s “protect the populace” strategy in Afghanistan was not working. Not only had the new strategy failed in its primary objective of securing