Daily Times

On December 13, 2014, the NATO and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan came to an end with the transfer of security responsibilities to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) but they could not succeed in establishing the writ of the government in all parts of the country. The challenges of building a strong army for the country remains a dream because the power of the central government depends on negotiations with the Taliban, Islamic State (IS) and regional criminal militias. In the US-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan and the ongoing civil wars in the Middle East and Pakistan, professional intelligence was the only way to assess the strength and lethality of terrorists and insurgent groups. However, the Afghan government never focused on reforming the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Khadamat-e-Aetela’at-e-Dawlati (KHAD) or strengthening the intelligence structure.
The withdrawal of US and NATO intelligence staff from Afghanistan and the desertion of NDS professional officers to join the Taliban and private militias has left a vacuum that has facilitated IS and the Taliban in their fight against the unity government. Regrettably, one of the major problems of Afghan intelligence is that the relationship between the local population and policy makers has broken down. Two weeks ago, during IS’s attacks on Kunduz province, the NDS’s local officials could not accurately estimate the Afghan army’s strength and resources. The NDS misled the army commander to take pre-emptive action and disrupt the terrorists’ supply line. Since the role of intelligence agencies in the Afghan conflict has expanded and they now are a core element in conflict management, coordination and cooperation between the NDS and policing agencies is important.
The NDS does not share all information with the police department and has failed to provide intelligence information to policy makers, Afghan army commanders or other agencies about IS and Taliban activities. The other major challenge is the lack of experience and education within the NDS’s ranks. They have no knowledge of modern intelligence systems or their role in conflict management across the world. Another challenge is adapting intelligence to local needs. The NDS supports and provides intelligence information to leaders, commanders and warlords of a specific community because the Sovietised agency still needs to be adapted to Afghanistan.
The Afghan Military Intelligence (AMI) is also facing numerous difficulties in collecting information about the war strategies of IS and Taliban commanders from remote districts. The agency lacks trained officers to reach remote districts or even those outside the provincial headquarters to interact with the local population. If the AMI and NDS agents in war zones try to collect, analyse and process intelligence information, their efforts can allow policy makers and the army commanders to discern friend from foe, and thus apply professional measures with precision and minimal collective damage, human or material.
A major portion of intelligence information collection and analysis for countering insurgency in Afghanistan is labour intensive and relies on the local commanders being able to interact with farmers, Maliks, educated people and religious clerics regularly. The agencies do not rely on modern methods and cannot differentiate between Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns or between Afghan Tajiks, Turks and their Central Asian friends. The NDS has often been repudiated by parliamentarians, press analysts and ordinary Afghans for its unprofessional modes of operation, torture and death in custody. The agency has been targeting specific communities and operating on ethnic lines since 2001. Because the agency’s roots are in the north, most of its agents do not know the security parameters of the southern, eastern and western provinces of Afghanistan.
Afghan intelligence agencies ultimately rely on human intelligence because they still lack the availability of modern intelligence collection technologies. The NDS and RAMA (a research and intelligence agency) have a weak human intelligence network in the cities and most of their sources are unreliable. The information they receive is useless because the agencies are unable to analyse or process it. There are numerous factors that hinder the performance of the Afghan intelligence agencies. For instance, many NDS agents cannot use Facebook, e-mail and the internet for intelligence purposes. After the US invasion in 2001, the Afghan National Military Intelligence Centre (ANMIC) was established to support senior military commanders in the battlefield but the president and army chief have not been satisfied with its performance in the past. The Directorate of Policing Intelligence (DPI), which provides intelligence information about the arrest and prosecution of criminals, National Information Management System (NIMS), Wolfhound Information System (WLS), National Target Exploitation Centre (NTEC) and dozens of other military and police intelligence organisations have so far failed to lead countrywide military operations in the right direction.
Two months ago, IS kidnapped 31 people from Zabul province but Afghan intelligence were unable to determine their whereabouts. After two months, the government swapped 26 prisoners for 19 hostages and millions of dollars. On May 14, 2015, Tolo News reported the closure of 69 schools in Uruzgan province due to the security situation. Some 14 civilians, including nine foreigners, were killed after Taliban gunmen stormed a guesthouse on the outskirts of Kabul. On May 16, the Pajhwok News Agency reported that IS had kidnapped 27 passengers in Sayed Karam district of the south-eastern Paktia province. The residents said gunmen took passengers with them in Badam Kanda. The Taliban forced passengers out of 30 vehicles and took them to an undisclosed location. All these fatalities occurred due to the inability of NDS and AIM to inform the authorities in time.
When intelligence fails and becomes corrupt the government needs to reform its infrastructure. Much of the debate over recent mistakes started from the belief that major reforms are necessary to prevent intelligence failure in the future. The government needs to make major changes in NDS’s structure because, after years of neglect, human intelligence in Afghanistan remains seriously deficient. Signal and imagery intelligence has also been inadequate during the last three decades. The unity government needs to initiate the process of de-radicalising and de-politicising the NDS, KHAD and policing agencies, and appoint professional management to tackle the Taliban and IS effectively. The unity government cannot get away with simply expressing concern over the presence of IS in the country; professional measures need to be taken to tackle the issue on a long-term basis.

The writer is the author of Punjabi Taliban and can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com