Good intelligence vs. Bad men, not easy to distinguish (part 1)

(A high-value target poster of insurgents operating in Nuristan- Simon Klingert (c)

Forward Operating Base Kala Gush, Nuristan-

“What we do isn’t classified, but how we do it is,” Dan said from his small plywood office covered with maps marked Secret. He wore a beard and civilian clothes. His cell phone was constantly ringing from Afghans who wanted to meet with him.

I’d seen him work the day before. We’d trudged through rows of farmland along the river to a mud and brick compound (qulat), where an Afghan patriarch with a salt and pepper beard welcomed the American Provincial Reconstruction team. The man’s brothers and sons spread a rug over the hard packed dirt and served the Americans Chai tea without sugar, a sure sign they didn’t have much.

It was a simple meet and greet, one that happens dozens of times a day in this rugged northeastern province of Nuristan, where the U.S. Army has recently announced it's pulling out of some remote outposts before a recent insurgent attack killed eight soldiers. But there’s an ongoing cultivation of relationships and information during these informal meetings, that often passes below the regular soldier’s radar. That’s Dan’s job. Dan works in intelligence. The Afghan farmer was John Hasit, who local legend has it, was a former Mujahadeen commander who earned a name for blowing up Russian tanks coming through Nuristan’s mountain passes.

Dan nodded as John spoke to him in Pashto. He learned Mandarin in 68 weeks at the Army's Defense Language Institute. “After the first three months, it’s all immersion,” Dan said, of the renowned program reputed to train intelligence types in highly desired languages. Immersion is also how he learned Iraqi Arabic and is learning Pashto.

Dan is a part of a HUMINT (Human Intelligence) intelligence team based out of Forward Operating Base Kala Gush. According to GoArmy.com the HUMINT soldier’s job is to coordinate and participate in controlled operations and interviews. There is not much online information available on HUMINT operations in the war on terror.

What’s not online is the implication that the CIA is able to hit insurgent leaders with drone missiles guided from Langley precisely because human intelligence is constantly being gathered on the ground. We can bet that the drone strike that killed Baitulla Mehsud in the Southwest tribal region, started with a chain of human intelligence placing his location and timing. Insurgent leaders of his status know they are targeted, eschew technology and move constantly. (See David Rohde's "Held by the Taliban" for an account of being held hostage in this Insurgent-controlled region.)

But Dan doesn’t act like a spook. “A pen and paper and a cell phone,” he said, “that’s our bread and butter… Ask questions and demand answers. That’s what we do. We have entire echelons above us that need information. We need answers quickly. Yes, we’re looking for bad guys, but the biggest part is to build relations with locals.”

“The most important skill is rapport building,” said Dan’s boss, Chief Warrant Officer Edward Strauss. “Adapting to a situation to relate to those cultures, to direct your questioning and interviews,” said Strauss who has 23 years experience in the field in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo.

Dan did three tours in Iraq. He experienced his share of explosions- propane IED’s, IED’s made of 155 rounds, and didn’t advertise what else he was doing. “We always embed and blend in,” he said. “Subtlety is the key.”

Dan volunteered to come to Afghanistan. He’s been here close to nine months and is trying to extend on another tour in this same region.

Non-lethal vs. Lethal

HUMINT teams conduct two kinds of operations categorized as non-lethal and lethal. “Non-lethal is information operations,” Dan said. “That includes civil affairs, psychological operations, counter-propaganda…Of the information we collect, 40 percent goes to the PRT, 60 percent is to target bad guys. Intelligence analysts use the reports to feed into the targets. We do the grunt work.”

“We create target packets as a collection team,” he said. Meaning they collect information on the enemy’s patterns that Special Forces use to either capture or kill them. “Tracking guys, they rarely fall off the grid because we have coverage from here to Pakistan. It’s a big area, but there are common weapons depots, a car rental place in Jalabad, for instance. We have people (informants) in places they pass through.”

“Our non-lethal target packets focus on villages that are on the fence,” Chief Strauss said. “We coordinate with cultural development teams, PRT teams on projects. They’ll make an assessment on how to help them out.” In other words, payment can persuade a village elder that working for the coalition can be more profitable than submitting to the Taliban’s will, even though the Talibs will probably return to the same village and make threats later that night night.

And Strauss said even with high-value targets the answer is not always to set up a military operation to nab or kill them. “We’ll collect on a high-value target and it could be more value to persuade, (probably with promise of tribal jobs or payments) than to send a guy to jail…This culture can switch sides as quickly as we can track them. This guy is the good guy, and then he isn’t.”

Chief Strauss said he believes Afghan children will have better attitudes about coalition forces, not necessarily their parents. “It’s a never ending cycle and it will take generations, to resolve.”

Responsible for the High Ground

I asked Dan if they pay informants. “We don’t traffic for information,” Dan said. “If we did, we’d be no better than a spy. It’s an intelligence taboo.”

“We’re responsible for the high ground,” he explained. “We could go to the Taliban and say we’ll tell you about one of our informants if you give us three of yours, spy for spy, but we don’t.”

Strauss explains it more pragmatically. “We try not to be a money pot…We give them a phone, we compensate them for their travel. They provide information on where the bad guys are... The whole culture is big on respect. But they’re not doing it for free. And we don’t go in and shoot guys, we just get information.”

(Dan speaks with a local Afghan- Simon Klingert (c)

Dan wouldn’t say how they groom an informant. It’s classified, but he hinted that a lot is based on reputation of operatives like him. He said they can gain ground on the smaller fish- those paid to plant an IED or shoot an RPG on a weekly basis. But the bigger fish, the ones who make the most wanted posters and for whom cash is rewarded for their capture, are a combined intelligence gathering effort.

“We have laws for war. Yes, other teams will slip to the dirty side and get people killed by trading information for someone’s life,” Dan said. “People sometimes forget it’s actually people’s lives. Sometimes there’s a justification for greater good, sometimes there’s an inhumane side. If you use your training and experience and follow the rules you can avoid it.”

But there are ethical conflicts in the intelligence business, even using the rules as guidelines. For example, sometimes insurgents will put the intelligence gatherer into an ethical quandary by saying, if you don’t tell us who an informant is, we’ll continue to fire rockets at the base. Dan explained if they give up the informant, they’d be violating the rules of protecting the soldier over the more vulnerable local population.

“It happened in Iraq. You try to gather the most information in the shortest time possible to seal your target packet (to get him) before he can kill more people. The insurgent has the advantage of being a local; we have the advantage of training and resources.” In such a fast paced, deadly competition, “We’ve had to be in multiple places,” to win, Dan said.

But note everyone, even allies, play by the same rules. In Iraq a few years ago, Dan’s team was rotating into an area of operation controlled by a Macedonian intelligence team, many who were former KGB, near Camp Taji. “They took us out to test us, to basically see how we’d react,” Dan said.

“There were two neighbors, Dan recalled. On one side of the street was a weapon’s dealer for the Badr Corps. (Shia insurgents allied with Iran) and the other side was their informant. The Macedonians pretended to do a medical evaluation at the informant’s house and then went to the Badr house across the street. (A bad practice since, the insurgents were clearly aware whose house they had just come from.) We didn't trust the Macedonians, we knew they were trying to get information on us, but we went along and shook hands. The next day the informant called and said they’re (the insurgents) standing outside my house. Two days later his body washed up on the Tigris.”

Despite a terrible compromise, and loss of life, Dan said, “Keeping an informant safe is the most important thing. I’ve not lost an informant in seven years on the job.”

“I had my own selfish reasons for stealing a language and a clearance,” Dan said, “but any soldier worth his salt wants to challenge himself and learn. Pushing yourself is all about hard work. A mentor of mine told me, there’s no such thing as high-speed (the Army term for its bad-ass warrior elite), just hard working. I’ve been in more countries than I can remember, but I’m here to help local people who’ve been constantly abused.”