Wall Street Journal: Four U.S. Intelligence Agencies Produced Extensive Reports on Afghanistan, but All Failed to Predict Kabul’s Rapid Collapse
Summaries of intelligence reports show how agencies diverged over the strength of the Afghan government and military
WASHINGTON—Leading U.S. intelligence agencies failed to predict the rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan prior to the final withdrawal of American troops and instead offered scattershot assessments of the staying power of the Afghan military and government, a review of wide-ranging summaries of classified material by The Wall Street Journal shows.
The nearly two dozen intelligence assessments from four different agencies haven’t been previously reported.
The assessments charted Taliban advances from spring 2020 through this July, forecasting that the group would continue to gain ground and that the U.S.-backed government in Kabul was unlikely to survive absent U.S. support.
The analyses, however, differed over how long the Afghan government and military could hold on, the summaries show, with none foreseeing the group’s lightning sweep into the Afghan capital by Aug. 15 while U.S. forces remained on the ground.
A month after President Biden announced his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops, for instance, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a May 17 report titled “Government at Risk of Collapse Following U.S. Withdrawal.”
The report estimated that the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would fall by year’s end, according to a summary.
Less than a month later, the agency issued another analysis titled: “Afghanistan: Assessing Prospects for a Complete Taliban Takeover Within Two Years,” according to a summary.
A June 4 Defense Intelligence Agency report, meanwhile, said the Taliban would pursue an incremental strategy of isolating rural areas from Kabul over the next 12 months, according to a summary.
In an “Executive Memorandum” on July 7, the DIA said the Afghan government would hold Kabul, according to a person familiar with the report.
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Update: U.S. Intelligence Agencies Did Not Predict Taliban’s Rapid Takeover Of Kabul, Report Says (Forbes)
WNU Editor: To WSJ's credit they reach out to Bill Roggio for his comment on the above report ....
.... Bill Roggio, a senior fellow who follows Afghanistan at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank in Washington, said intelligence agencies and policy makers bear responsibility for being blindsided by the Taliban’s swift battlefield success.
Mr. Roggio said individual analysts at several agencies he was in touch with foresaw a rapid Taliban takeover, “and for whatever reason that didn’t make it to the top.”
“The intelligence community needs to take a long, hard look at how it provides assessments to senior leadership,” Mr. Roggio said. The White House, he said, seemed intent on the troop withdrawal.
Bill Rogggio's analysis is spot on.
Bill Roggio also posts at the Long War Journal. I am a long time reader of his work, and the Long War Journal was predicting the rapid disintegration of the Afghan Army in June. A prediction that this blog was always posting on.
One final note. In view of this massive intelligence failure from the top, will those who are responsible for the biggest US foreign policy/military defeat since the Vietnam War be held responsible and accountable for their mistakes?
Mr. Roggio said individual analysts at several agencies he was in touch with foresaw a rapid Taliban takeover, “and for whatever reason that didn’t make it to the top.”
ReplyDeleteNo mystery. There is a feedback loop from the Whitehouse to the upper levels of the pentagon to each agency to the middle managers. The middle managers know from their superiors what is expected. The cues can be verbal or nonverbal. Nothing needs to be out in writing. There is no record.
Senior levels can honestly tell that they were never told as their personality and hubris creates the social equivalent of a biofilm around them.
Ditto for the assholes the White House.
The white house is suppose to get 3 scenarios from worst case to best case. By honestly giving the 3 cases the analysts can honestly do their job. Rightfully, the senior government officials/president can use their judgment to pick which case to go with.
But that is not good enough for the Beltway, The best case and worst case have to be shoehorned into less spread less variance. The analyst are implicitly threatened with not honestly giving best and worst cases.