Di Vincenzo Santo*
(Da NYT – 22 ottobre 2017)
CIA’s own Afghanistan surge. The Central Intelligence Agency is sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants (…) The new deployments are something relatively new for the agency, which has in the past bristled at waging such an open-ended campaign against the Taliban. But the expansion reflects the C.I.A.’s assertive role under its new director, Mike Pompeo, to combat insurgents around the world. The agency is already poised to broaden its program of covert drone strikes into Afghanistan; it had largely been centred on the tribal regions of Pakistan, with occasional strikes in Syria and Yemen. (…) “We can’t perform our mission if we’re not aggressive,” Mr. Pompeo said at a security conference this month at the University of Texas. “This is unforgiving, relentless. You pick the word. Every minute, we have to be focused on crushing our enemies.” The C.I.A. declined to comment on its expanded role in Afghanistan, which will put more lower-level Taliban militants in its cross hairs. But the mission is a tacit acknowledgment that to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table — a key component of Mr. Trump’s strategy for the country — the United States will need to aggressively fight the insurgents. (…) The new effort will be led by small units known as counterterrorism pursuit teams. They are managed by C.I.A. paramilitary officers from the agency’s Special Activities Division and operatives from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence arm, and include elite American troops from the Joint Special Operations Command.
The CIA is sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants
*Generale CA ris
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