Tactical failures such as missing the target and not rounding up the enemy are generally considered “failure of intelligence.” So, the US military operations in Afghanistan, frustrated that the Taliban are even actually winning the war, want to augment the usual military espionage with CIA covert operations. Thus, the CIA will expand its undercover presence in Afghanistan. ‘The buildup coincides with new warnings that the Taliban has continued to gain territory and strength.’

Touted to be even bigger than their spy networks in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars, the US chief intelligence agency will expand beyond its current 700 employees in Afghanistan. ‘The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence “surge” that will make its station there among the largest in the agency’s history.’

The US has been short on special and detailed information regarding the enemy, resulting in unsettling trends such as ‘twofold increase in the number of roadside bombs, a growing sophistication in the kinds of assaults aimed at coalition troops and evidence that a Taliban group has developed an assembly-line approach to grooming suicide bombers and supplying them to other insurgent organizations,’ as well as ‘a more sophisticated suicide attack: sending multiple fighters armed with guns to carry out coordinated assaults before detonating their bombs.’

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Via Los Angeles Times