Shooting in the Dark By GARETH PORTER
Ignorance of Afghan Culture Leads to Botched Raids and Civilian Deaths

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and his chief of intelligence, Gen. Michael Flynn, have admitted the profound ignorance of the U.S. military about Afghan society, while avoiding the implications of that ignorance for the issue of false intelligence on the Taliban.

McChrystal acknowledged in his "initial assessment" last August that his command had to "acquire a far better understanding of Afghanistan and its people".

In an interview with National Public Radio Aug. 13, Flynn admitted, "What we really have not done to the degree that we need to is really truly understand the population: the tribal dynamics, the tribal networks, the ethnicity…."

Such dynamics are different "from valley to valley", Flynn observed.

And in an unusual paper published by the Centre for a New American Security last October, Flynn was even more frank, saying, "I don't want to say we're clueless, but we are. We're no more than fingernail deep in our understanding the environment."

Flynn avoided any suggestion that this profound ignorance of the society in which U.S. troops are operating could affect targeting of suspected Taliban. He asserted that the intelligence problem is not about the Taliban but about the lack of knowledge about governance and development issues.

But a foreign military force that is so fundamentally ignorant of the socio-political forces at play inevitably allows local sources which have access to it to act in their own self-interest.

More often than not, the U.S. and NATO have depended heavily on ties with Afghan tribal leaders and warlords. That has proven disastrous over and over again.

Col. David Lamm, who was chief of staff for Gen. David Barno, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, has said that it became clear to top officials in the command that it should not make alliances with tribes to obtain information on the Taliban.

It often turned out that a group which a tribal leader said was the Taliban was actually a competing tribe, Lamm recalled in a September 2008 interview with IPS.

Barno also ordered his commanders to shun local police as intelligence sources on the Taliban. "Local police were too close to the local elite," said Lamm.

Despite such warnings, however, CIA and military intelligence operatives have continued to rely on tribal patriarchs and local warlords as intelligence sources on the Taliban. As recently as December 2008, U.S. intelligence officials were telling Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick that their operatives had been using gifts of Viagra, among other inducements, to get warlords and tribal leaders to provide such intelligence.

The U.S. military, including SOF units, have also relied on local warlords to provide security for their bases and logistics, as documented by a study by the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University last September. Those ties translate into channels for intelligence as well.