Tracing the Reason for the CIA’s Consistently Faulty HUMINT on the Taliban

The CIA is deliberately passing along faulty anti-Taliban HUMINT in order to deceive American decision makers and indefinitely perpetuate the Hybrid War of Terror on the Golden Ring, something that some in the US leadership may not even realize they’re participating in after having been manipulated to these ends by their chief intelligence agency.

The American public has continually been fed the narrative that the War on Afghanistan is “almost over”, and that all that’s needed is to put in “a little more effort” in order to break the backs of the Taliban and bring peace to the country. This storyline has been recycled for 17 years already in various forms and media, but it’s nevertheless always proven to be wrong. It’s not so much that every individual in this narrative pipeline from the ground-up is “in on it”, but just that the perception management system is being manipulated by the primary first-level set of actors who contribute into it, namely the CIA and its on-the-ground human intelligence sources (HUMINT).

Deceptive Sources

The Afghan mentality is very unique and has evolved over the centuries in response to continuous military threats from the outside world, leading to its people developing an ingrained intuition that predisposes them to deception for defensive purposes. It’s all but impossible for any foreigner, even those in the region, to understand their psyche because of how conditioned it is by local factors during an individual’s entire life cycle, especially over the past 40 years of incessant conflict, though these very same people are the “trust-worthy” sources that the CIA depends on for information about the latest developments in the War on Afghanistan and for evaluating the US’ progress in that campaign.

Being the masters of bluff that they are, local self-interested stakeholders have regularly deceived the Americans and fed them “intelligence” that aligns with the elected US leadership’s “confirmation bias” in believing that victory over the Taliban is “just around the corner”. In fact, it’s actually inaccurate to describe their information as “intelligence” in the first place because it’s mostly just uncollaborated words without substance that are pushed up the chain of CIA command until they get to the desks of analysts, and later, decision makers and the public. The CIA has enough experience to realize that it’s being played, yet it still keeps feeding its flawed “intelligence” (which is for the most part just analyses of inaccurate and deliberately deceptive information) to decision makers and the media.

Laying The Basis For Langley’s Lies

The natural question is why the CIA keeps perpetuating the narrative that the war is almost over (based, as is known, on unreliable HUMINT) when it clearly isn’t. Nearly two decades of fighting have proven that the Taliban is more a National Resistance Movement (NRM) than a religiously extremist organization, which is why it has sustained such widespread support from the Afghan people. This objective assessment is being kept away from American decision makers and their media by the CIA, which knows better than to take the words of faulty HUMINT at face value in propagating optimistic narratives about the “imminent defeat” of the NRM, provided, of course, that “a little more” resources are poured into the war.

The CIA, as it has a history of doing, is manipulating its fellow “deep state” partners (the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) for the purpose of advancing its Hybrid War of Terror on the Golden Ring. To explain, the guiding concept behind this strategy is to externally provoke identity conflicts through the use of Color Revolutionaries and/or Unconventional Warfare instruments (terrorists, “rebels”, “insurgents”) in order to disrupt, control, or influence the various branches of the CPEC+ megaproject that’s envisioned as forming the basis for the game-changing multilateral Great Power partnership between China, Russia, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and the Central Asian Republics in the geostrategic Heartland of Eurasia. From the US’ perspective, this strategy is “desirable” but it may not be fully “achievable” given the risks involved and the requisite resources.

Sneaky “Deep State” Schemes

It’s particularly because of its uncertainty of success and the potential to prompt geostrategic blowback that’s ultimately disadvantageous to the US’ interests (such as accelerating the formation of the very same Golden Ring that it wants to destroy) that the Hybrid War of Terror on the Golden Ring is such a divisive concept even within the “deep state”, ergo why the CIA must manipulate the rest of the country into going along with it through its “fake news” means of spreading discredited HUMINT to decision makers and the media. Most of the recipients of this information behave more like “useful idiots” than “willing collaborators” in disseminating this weaponized narrative far and wide, manufacturing a dangerous groupthink mentality that the NRM can be defeated if only the US stays in the war “just a little longer” and contributes “just a little bit more” resources.

Through this manner, the CIA successfully “goes with the flow” of its HUMINT sources, though for completely different reasons that have much more to do with indirectly advancing a certain strategy than simply remaining on the “deep state” payroll. As it turns out, many of those who are deceived by this disinformation campaign would probably be opposed to the strategic ends that it’s aiming for, as the American public and its elected leadership (at least officially) do not want to continue the War on Afghanistan, nor get entrenched in what would be (and already is to an extent) a bigger proxy quagmire against China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, and the Central Asian Republics. Since the Hybrid War of Terror on the Golden Ring is unpopular, the CIA chose to trick its intended targets into going along with it instead.

Concluding Thoughts

To reiterate, the deliberately flawed information that the CIA receives from its HUMINT sources in Afghanistan is being exploited by this “deep state” force in order to reinforce a false narrative that plays to the public, media, and decision maker’s “wishful thinking” “confirmation bias” in believing that the NRM is facing “imminent defeat” and can irreversibly be crushed if the US remains in the country “just a little bit longer” and dedicates “just a little bit more” resources. This inaccurate depiction of reality is designed to get the “useful idiots” in the Pentagon, Congress, and the White House into unwittingly going along with the CIA’s Hybrid War of Terror on the Golden Ring, an ultra-controversial strategy that doesn’t enjoy any public support and has already divided the “deep state” even more than it already is.

The War on Afghanistan will never be “won”, nor will it ever be “over”, so long as the US military remains in the country and continues inspiring the NRM, but that’s the point even though the majority of Americans and their elected leadership have yet to realize it. The US originally invaded the country not just to defeat Al Qaeda (which was accomplished shortly after the war began), but to construct a pliable puppet regime that would allow the US to exert influence throughout this critical tri-regional space for keeping the Golden Ring countries in check (before they were even conceptualized as such in having the possibility of comprehensively integrating with one another into a 21st-century power bloc). This objective was only hinted at in the media even if it was obvious to decision makers, but it nevertheless failed even if this isn’t publicly acknowledged.

Instead of announcing a humiliating Vietnam-like withdrawal, and influenced by decontextualized fear mongering narratives pertaining to the rise of Daesh shortly after the withdrawal from Iraq, the US continues to remain in Afghanistan despite the defeat of its second objective there. The intentionally inaccurate “intelligence” being peddled to the CIA by unreliable HUMINT is willingly passed along by the Agency in order to deceive its intended audiences into committing more resources to the conflict, knowing full well that this won’t turn the tide against the NRM but will instead exacerbate Afghanistan’s anarchy to the point where it functions as a destabilization factory exporting its “product” throughout the region. Everything is going according to plan, however, because the CIA is once again relying on smoke and mirrors in order to advance its desired strategy, which nowadays is all about waging the Hybrid War of Terror on the Golden Ring.


By Andrew Korybko
Source: Eurasia Future

 

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One Comment

  1. None of the American wars will be over until an end is put to them by the resistance of the indigenous population of the affected territories… This is not the 70s… Americans will not pull out from Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria…. this time they will be kicked out and kicked out hard… it is just a matter of time the process will take… as exposed as the American Empire stands today, is bound to lead to its demise sooner or later…

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