Wikileaks has released a 2009 CIA document, Best Practices in Counterinsurgency.
This is a secret CIA document assessing high-value targeting (HVT) programs world-wide for their impact on insurgencies. The document is classified SECRET//NOFORN (no foreign nationals) and is for internal use to review the positive and negative implications of targeted assassinations on these groups for the strength of the group post the attack. The document assesses attacks on insurgent groups by the United States and other countries within Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Israel, Peru, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand. The document, which is "pro-assassination", was completed in July 2009 and coincides with the first year of the Obama administration and Leon Panetta's directorship of the CIA during which the United States very significantly increased its CIA assassination program at the expense of capture operations. It produces a chart for US officials to use in strategically assessing future operations and methods in HVT assassinations.
CIA Best Practices in Counterinsurgency, Wikileaks
The document contains bullet points about the best practices in capturing or killing people, including discussion of which is better.
The report is pessimistic about the effectiveness of the CIA program of killing high value targets in Afghanistan, where the high value targets are usually killed.
A CIA report in 2009 found that "high-value targeting" had limited utility in beating back the Taliban in Afghanistan, ahead of an increase in drone strikes against the group.
The internal agency report, released without official permission Thursday by WikiLeaks, analyzed the targeting of insurgent group leaders for capture or assassination by U.S. and other governments in various armed conflicts.
In Afghanistan, where the report said targeting emphasizes lethal attacks, government corruption, “endemic lawlessness” and the “egalitarian Pashtun structures” associated with the Taliban hindered the effectiveness of efforts, the report found.
“Senior Taliban leaders’ use of sanctuary in Pakistan has also complicated the [targeting] effort,” says the report, written by the CIA’s Office of Transnational Issues.
WikiLeaks Releases Downbeat CIA Appraisal of Strikes in Afghanistan, U.S. News and World Report
The CIA analysis released Thursday provides a new snapshot into the intelligence the White House and Pentagon were working with at the time. It acknowledges that “high-value targeting” had been conducted against the Taliban only on an intermittent basis at that point, with limited effect. Counterinsurgency operations conducted against the Taliban to that point had moderate effect, according to the report.
CIA analysis: ‘high-value targeting’ had limited effect against Taliban, Washington Post
Bloomberg has a report on Afghans who had become millionaires from U.S. contracting.
We are driving to the Nawa district, just 30 minutes outside Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the southwest corner of Afghanistan. Matie is going to show us how he first became a millionaire.
Earlier that morning, photographer Lorenzo Tugnoli and I found Matie sprawled on his office floor. He’d spent the night Facebooking—until he passed out. In the corner, on the armrest of a brown couch, a Dell laptop flashed an error message. Stacks of blue posters for the cell phone company Salaam lay against the wall. Matie had recently bought the local Salaam distribution license. It’s his latest project.
Afghanistan’s New Millionaires, Bloomberg
Hikmatullah Shadman had started as a contract translator. He had used his pay to buy a used Land Rover, which he rented to international forces. He then bought many more trucks to rent.
He eventually ended up being captured by the U.S. military, and imprisoned at Bagram.
Shadman is accused of defrauding the U.S. government of $77 million. According to court documents, SIGAR alleges that Shadman managed to expand his trucking empire only because he “bribed and paid kickbacks” to managers of the Hungarian contractor, who then allegedly inflated prices for Shadman so he could charge the ISAF even more. In October 2012, at 4:30 a.m., the U.S. military raided his compound in Kandahar. He says they flashed a light in his eyes, blindfolded him, tied his hands, and flew him to the prison at the American military base at Bagram. He was held there for 74 days and accused of funding the enemy and supplying women to the Taliban and alcohol to U.S. soldiers.
Afghanistan’s New Millionaires, Bloomberg
Shadman, now free, currently plans to build a pomegranate juice factory in Kandahar.
Shadman has been able, so far, to withstand the legal assault on his reputation. While he no longer has any contracts with the U.S. military, he imports German energy drinks, which are extremely popular among young Afghans. He is planning to build a pomegranate juice factory in Kandahar.
Afghanistan’s New Millionaires, Bloomberg
The BBC, Khaama Press, and the Wall Street Journal have all recently had positive articles about million-dollar plans to buy pomegranate juice from Kandahar.
The weather is still mild and ideal to let the fruit sweeten. Packed in boxes or jute sacks, the fruit make its way to markets and warehouses, some goes to Pakistan and the Middle East.
But for Afghanistan to profit from one of its key crops, it needs to reach more profitable markets in Europe and beyond.
Afghanistan: Can pomegranates power the economy?, BBC
Eurasia Review reports on the high economic inequality in Afghanistan, fueled by the wealth from U.S. contracting.
[T]he flow of cheap and easy foreign aid money and military contracts over the last one and half decade has created a rich urban elite often oblivious of the rural Afghanistan which in turn has widened the inequality gap in the country.
...
According to a recent report by Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) the findings of which shows that almost all major contracts are taken by the few wealthy and well connected business with ties to the strongmen in the government i.e. ministers, governors, deputy ministers among others and when a strongman enters a line of business, small businesses tend to voluntarily opt out of the market, be intimidated, or forced to quit. The perception that competing against a strongman is a futile effort is quite common among businessmen who have smaller and medium‐sized businesses. Monopolization also indicates the exclusivity of markets. The market in Afghanistan is run by a limited number of actors, making the Afghan market an oligopoly wherein a few sellers or providers of services dominate the whole market. This clearly shows the extent of market failure and capture of the Afghan economy by criminal and mafia networks.
The Price Of Inequality: The Dangerous Rural-Urban Divide In Afghanistan, Eurasia Review
U.S. analysis usually stresses the religious nature of the Taliban. But economic disenfranchisement is an important factor.
Today, the majority of the Taliban foot soldiers are unemployed youth from the most impoverished and under developed parts of the country. Many of these youth are seasonal fighters who work during the cultivation season in the field and fight for the rest of the year precisely due to lack of descent employment opportunities and a grudge against overnight millionaires of the country who they consider as American collaborators and incredibly corrupt.
The concentration of power at the subnational level in the hands of rural elites and tribal chiefs with connections to the presidential palace has further marginalized and dissuaded people to distance themselves from the current government.
The Price Of Inequality: The Dangerous Rural-Urban Divide In Afghanistan, Eurasia Review
Gallup reports that suffering in Afghanistan is now at the highest level they have ever recorded.
Already the worst in the world in 2013, Afghans' ratings of their lives declined even further in 2014. More than six in 10 Afghans evaluate their lives poorly enough to be considered "suffering" -- the highest figure ever recorded for any country since Gallup started tracking life evaluations in 2005. As in 2013, no Afghans rate their lives highly enough to be considered "thriving."
Suffering in Afghanistan Hits Record High -- for Any Country, Gallup