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 Intelligence organization operating in Afghanistan included CIA, SOF,
national assets available for tactical exploitation, and other Army units.
How well did these organizations blend to provide the intelligence required
to the tactical commanders?
  • Introduction: Afghanistan Case Study – Operation Anaconda
    In this week’s content we begin an integrated look at tactical (or combat) intelligence by examining a well researched case: Operation Anaconda. At the time Operation Anaconda was being developed, the White House and the Pentagon had evolved into the belief that the Taliban had been defeated, governmental restoration of order, services, and civil functions had become the new priority. All that was left on the battlefield was a need to mop up disparate and disconnected ill-organized Taliban remnants that posed a problem for stability in outlying areas. The nature of the Taliban, their continuing influence in the South and in the cities was not yet recognized, and the ability to melt away and reform was not yet apparent.
     
    Militarily the war was won in the minds of policy makers. Senior commanders saw a winding down period leading to rebuilding civil society in the absence of the influence of the Taliban and the foreign fighters located in various terrorist training camps. The mindset was not of a war that would likely last into several decades but instead of a war coming to a swift end where the potential for combat operations was increasingly unlikely. Thus, in a way, Operation Anaconda upset that thinking.
     
    After Operation Anaconda ended it was clear the Taliban were not dissipating but were staying in the fight, they were determined, they had adapted well, retained political influence, and it would be far more difficult than imagined to eliminate the Taliban as an effective military or paramilitary force. Indeed, Operation Anaconda had stopped the “victory” thinking in short order and had set the stage for what would become an enduring, apparently never-ending war that changed flavors over time: insurrection, insurgency, fight against foreign invaders, terrorism, civil war, etc. Operation Anaconda was turning point in the American approach in Afghanistan in part because the nature of the fight was so unexpected. The question we have here, in this class, is what happened and why did the American’s fail to anticipate the nature of the fight? For a student of tactical intelligence, these are profound questions.
     
    Before we get started it is important to know that initially the events leading up to and during this operation were immediately restricted. USCENTCOM and USSOCCOM agreed to ban all public discussion of the operation.
     
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    While it is not immediately known why this is the case, given the facts that came to light later it becomes clear that numerous mistakes, failures in judgment, and the operating climate put more than a handful of careers at risk should the events be exposed in the press. As information about the operation began to leak out, journalists and others began to ask questions. In the spirit of lessons learned and full disclosure the military eventually granted highly unusual access to one journalist, Sean Naylor, who proceeded to write the definitive history of the operation. As a result of the subsequent interviews, information releases, and analysis, we have an unusual opportunity to peek inside the operation and the decision making process. The lessons learned for intelligence operations and staffs is invaluable and much, though not nearly enough, information is presented here in this content to allow us to draw lessons. It is strongly recommend you read, Sean Naylor’s, Not a Good Day to Die.
     
    It is also important to note that the problems were not just in the area of intelligence. Indeed, it is possible the more salient failures were not related to intelligence in any direct manner, but were instead caused by poor judgment or poor decision making on the part of senior commanders or politicians who put restrictions on the military. But, nonetheless, those commanders and politicians did not function in isolation and their decisions and choices were based on the combination of their training and personal biases as well as information and analysis from the various intelligence staffs and organizations. Therein, intelligence does have some culpability, even if indirectly, in support of these decisions. What information was available, was is timely, did it bear on the problem? Was it presented in the proper context? How effectively did the operations and intelligence staffs communicate and function as a team? Were the implications of the intelligence properly presented? There are many questions that are outstanding.
     
    Some of these external problems that bore down on operation planning, and intelligence, were obvious. Problems emerged at the strategic level with artificial troop caps in-country, a wide-held belief that the war in Afghanistan was winding down and that it was just a matter of mopping up the enemy. Resources were capped, military commanders appeared to be concerned that their opportunities to command in combat were dwindling. The pressure to find and kill Usama bin-Laden was growing every day that he remained alive. UBL had apparently escaped the clutches of the military and intelligence services and was feared still operating in Afghanistan. The desire to capture or kill UBL energized tactical thinking. In fact, in one episode, a tragedy of phenomenal proportions was made during Operation Anaconda when the hunger to locate and kill UBL had become so strong that the US, believing it located UBL on a bus, had attacked and destroyed the bus only to discover that instead they had killed a teacher (the tall figure they thought was UBL) and dozens of school children.
     
    At the same time, the Pentagon was being torn in a new direction. At the operational level, the commander at CENTCOM was deeply involved in the planning and politics of opening a new war on another front: Iraq. CENTCOM forward was spending fewer resources and time on Afghanistan as they beat a hasty and disorganized path toward an invasion of Iraq. The CENTCOM commander disagreed with starting a new war in the region when there was no resolution to the one underway in Afghanistan, and the realization that the US military was no prepared to fight two major wars simultaneously in the Near East. Resources and visibility of the ground truth in Afghanistan were limited, and no one outside Afghanistan was keen on anything other than clearing out the remaining pockets of resistance. Little did they know this would be a war that would at times fester, erupt, and boil over for at least the next 17 years.
     
    Resources, focus, and attention were limited and communications between ground commanders and CENTCOM forward were strained by hasty and impersonal videoconferencing and the greater weight of concern shifted toward putting in place the units and equipment for an expeditionary strike at Baghdad to de-throne Saddam Hussein.
    It is in this environment and circumstances that Operation Anaconda was developed, in response to reported Taliban build up in the Shah-i-Kot valley, a place where American commanders felt that the enemy had retreated and prepared a remote and costly defense against the apparently victorious American military.
     
     
     
    Problems emerged on the ground in Afghanistan with fixed-wing ground-attack air support, helicopter transportation, the coordination with CIA and NSA elements, etc. Problems in the intelligence world were fairly profound. Analysts worked off of assumptions based on the Soviet experience in fighting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Analysts read the Soviet General Staff’s study on their experience during the Soviet-Afghan War and drew lessons about the operational and tactical behavior and decisionmaking of the Mujahideen and blindly applied that to new and radically different Taliban. Intelligence collected was ignored or not at least did not apparently effect operational planning.
     
    In the bigger picture, the nature of the war in Afghanistan changed in the minds of many as a result of the problems in and around Operation Anaconda. It was both shocking, but also a realization that the enemy was more resilient, that the US couldn’t yet think in terms of “mopping up” the enemy, that the enemy was highly mobile and at least in some great part was taking sanctuary in ungoverned areas of Pakistan, and that the war was far from won. Now, well over a decade later, while the circumstances have changed considerably a few things remain: the Taliban remains as both a terrorist force, a military opponent, and a political actor in Afghanistan.
     
    However, as Operation Anaconda wound down in early March of 2002, pieces and bits of information began to emerge almost immediately and questions were raised about the purpose, nature, preparation, decision-making, casualties, and effects of the operation. The information was incomplete and misleading.
     
    A veteran reporter for the Army Times, Sean Naylor, got onto the story quickly, and was quickly squashed as individuals who were involved in Operation Anaconda refused to answer questions. In the end, this created only more suspicion. Eventually, in 2004 (two years later), USCENTCOM gave Sean Naylor approval, near carte blanche, to interview anyone who was involved in the operation in an effort to recall, recount, and document the events that led to Operation Anaconda.
     
    The result of this incessant pushing by Sean Naylor was a book published in 2005, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda. It is this book, widely accepted as the definitive account of the operation, that forms the backbone of the case study in tactical intelligence.
     
    In fact, the the bulk of the book deals directly and indirectly with conditions and decisions revolving around the decision making process, of which intelligence formed a particular nexus. It is an example of CIA and NSA operations overlaid and in the background of military operations. This book is not required for this class, but I cannot emphasize enough the value you will gain if you are able to get a copy (either now or when the class is over).
     
    Operation Anaconda was complex with multiple services involved, a wide variety of commands, the employment of indigenous forces, the extensive use of special operations forces, etc. It represents an excellent case study in the application of military force on what is generally accepted as an irregular insurgent enemy consisting of those who engage in terrorism, supported terrorist training camps, and had been generally organized in defense of the US invasion and toppling of the Taliban regime in Kabul. At the time of the operation, CENTCOM and the Pentagon and generally come to the conclusion that the fight was over in Afghanistan and the only thing left was mopping up a discouraged and disspirited enemy. This was far from the case, as we now know. But the perception of conditions under which this operation was organized did in fact limit available air power, limit airborne intelligence collection, forced the premature use of indigenous forces, drove SOF units into roles for which they were not trained, and placed greater emphasis on deterministic operational planning (which naturally limited the effective use of intelligence).
     
    The case study also also exposes many of the requirements and demands on intelligence to provide effective and useful information on terrain and weather. In the first image in this content you can see the mountains laced with snow, the exceedingly rough terrain at the entrances to the valley, the steep and deep gashes in the earth where the roads make their way in, and the altitude differences between the valley floor and the ridgelines. Temperatures, precipitation, climate, weather, nature of the roads, lines of communication, avenues of approach, ability to create defendable positions in the valley and on the mountainsides, etc., all played into the planned operations.
     
    The purpose of the case study is to explore the role of intelligence in supporting the operational planning for Operation Anaconda. Intelligence was collected by regular military units, SOF, CIA, indigenous forces, by NSA and CIA. It was collected using open sources as well as by technical means. Analysis occurred at the operations center where the intelligence staff was in fact separated from the operational planning staff. The flow of information should be of keen interest.
     
    Who was doing the collecting? What were the requirements? How was that information provided to the analytic staff? What did the analytic staff do with the information it had? What was the relationship between the intelligence and operations staffs? Did operations respect and utilize the intelligence available? Why did the commander elect to ignore intelligence and instead think “deterministically” about the upcoming operation? What happened when command was surprised by the unexpected deployment of heavy machine guns in unexpected places? How well did national assets (NSA and CIA) provide information to the military? Why was the initial estimate of the enemy pegged at about 300 when the real number was roughly around 1000?
     
    Questions about organizations such as CIA and NSA are raised. How did national agencies support the planning and execution of this operation? The use of UAVs and manned aircraft for reconnaissance and surveillance is also raised. Remember, this was early in our now very long war in Afghanistan and the procedures and tactics for employment of such collection was in its infancy. How did SOF forces and regular Army units integrate intelligence? To what extent did commanders effectively organize and use intelligence?
     
     
    These questions, and many more you will generate on your own will form the core of how we look at tactical intelligence in an integrated case study.
     
    The following map and excerpt are from a study in 2007 of how the US military adapts to experiences in the field. The point of the article is irrelevant for us here in this class. But a short section of that report relies in part on Sean Naylor’s reporting and is a succinct, but incomplete, overview. I include this summary here to help give you context as you read Naylor’s account of the operation.
    (The following extract is from a National Defense University Paper by Dr. Richard Kugler, “Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan: A Case Study in Adaptation in Battle.” 2007. ADA463075.)
     
    In mid-January 2002, U.S. officials began receiving intelligence reports suggesting that enemy forces, including al Qaeda, were assembling in the Shahikot Valley. This valley was a natural place for the enemy to regroup its forces after its earlier defeats. Located in Paktia province, which borders Pakistan, the Shahikot Valley is about 80 miles southeast of Kabul, and 18 miles south of Gardez. At an altitude of 7,500 feet, it runs on asouthwest-to-northeast axis.
     
    The valley is relatively small, about five miles long and two and a half miles wide. On the valley’s floor are four small towns: Marzak, Babulkhel, Serkhankhel, and Zerki Kale. Surrounding the valley are high mountainous ridges. On the western side is a humpback ridge called the “Whale,” which is four miles long, one mile wide, and almost 9,000 feet high. On the eastern side is a high ridgeline culminating in the south at a peak called Takur Ghar: at an elevation of 10,469 feet, it is the highest peak in the valley. Jutting into the valley’s southern end is an arrowhead-shaped ridgeline called the “Finger.” With its high ridgelines and limited access routes, the valley provided seclusion and natural protection to the gathering enemy fighters.
     
     
     
     
     
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    The Shahikot Valley is relatively easy to defend. Its high ridges provide many natural caves, crevasses, and other protected locations for guerilla fighters to establish positions capable of raking the valley floor and access routes with gunfire. Twice during the 1980’s, the Soviets mounted assaults against the Shahikot Valley with attack helicopters, artillery, and infantry. On both occasions they withdrew in retreat, driven back by fierce resistance.
     
    In 2002, the U.S. military possessed capabilities, especially modern information networks and precision strike weapons, which surpassed the weaponry fielded by the Soviet Army. But the rugged terrain, high altitude, and cold foggy weather had not changed, thereby making it hard for an attacking force to operate.
     
    Events were to show that the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters of 2002 intended to take full advantage of the valley in mounting an effort to repulse the latest attacker.
     
    As U.S. military officials began contemplating an assault on the Shahikot Valley in late January 2002, they faced a major drawback—lack of good intelligence on the number of enemy fighters and their weaponry. U.S. officials relied upon multiple sources of intelligence, including human intelligence, communications intercepts, and overhead reconnaissance. Even so, getting accurate and reliable intelligence was a serious problem.
     
    [Several lengthy paragraphs on intelligence are redacted.]
     
    U.S. officials contemplated how the enemy might react to an American assault composed of ground forces and precision air strikes. The consensus was that the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, readily defeated in the past and facing overwhelming firepower again, likely would not put up staunch resistance. A common belief was that they were mostly living in the valley’s villages, rather than deployed in the surrounding mountains and ridgelines. Another common belief was that they would try to flee the valley, and if that failed, try to negotiate a peaceful surrender. Thus, an invasion of the Shahikot Valley was deemed likely to take the form of some intense fighting at the start, followed quickly by police action aimed at arresting enemy fighters while ensuring innocent civilians were not harmed. For this reason, U.S. officials preferred to rely upon friendly Afghan soldiers to enter the valley floor and perform the arresting: they were judged better able than U.S. troops to separate al Qaeda fighters from innocent civilians. The role of U.S. ground troops was to block escape routes created by narrow passageways through the mountains on the valley’s eastern side. An extended, bitter battle for control of the valley was not on the minds of U.S. officials who designed the Operation Anaconda plan.