CIA Director meets Afghan officials

In the wake of plans to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, CIA Director Gina Haspel visited Afghanistan last week to discuss a number of issues including maintaining and possibly expanding the US intelligence presence in the country, CNN said in a report, quoting sources familiar with the visit. Haspel’s visit came as the United States remained actively engaged in peace talks with the Taliban and just days after three US service members were killed by an improvised explosive device near Bagram Air Base in Parwan province. Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Seven US service members have been killed in Afghanistan this year. Haspel met with Afghan government officials including President Ashraf Ghani and the head of the National Directorate of Security, Masoom Stanekzai, according to CNN report.
CIA’s role was exposed in an article published the NYT in 2013, which had revealed: “For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and at occasion plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president. The then president Hamid Karzai had confirmed having received millions of dollars and thanked the CIA. The author however expressed doubts if the money spent had bought the influence the CIA sought. He however referred to the general perception that the cash fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan, as much of the CIA’s money was paid to warlords and politicians, many of whom had ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban.
After the Soviet forces withdrew in 1990 from Afghanistan, America had left the region in a lurch, and had given the task to the CIA, which was responsible for all the mess. The warlords and religious parties fought with each other for gaining control over Afghanistan, but rise of the Taliban ended the civil war for a while, and also eliminated poppy cultivation. After 9/11, the Taliban regime ended and the CIA had dealings with the groups involved in drug trafficking on the pretext of getting useful information and seeking their support. During Vietnam War also, CIA and Kuomintang (KMT) were reportedly involved in opium smuggling operations. John Cooley’s book titled ‘Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism’, among other things revealed the nature of the CIA’s involvement with Afghan opium smuggling.
CIA has many failures to its credit including Vietnam and elsewhere. One can imagine about its so-called omnipresence and expertise in intelligence from this story. On 26th June 1993, President Bill Clinton had ordered U.S. warships stationed in the Persian Gulf and in the Red Sea to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in downtown Baghdad. In all, 23 Tomahawk missiles were fired from the ‘USS Peterson’ in the Red Sea and from the cruiser ‘USS Chancellorsville’ in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building. The American missile attack was retaliation to an Iraqi plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush during his visit to Kuwait, where he was to be honored for his role in leading the coalition that drove Iraqi invaders from that country during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
According to reports, the then president Bill Clinton wanted the confirmation whether the target was hit. The then CIA chief said that there was no agent in Baghdad to confirm, and he phoned CNN official stationed in the vicinity of the Iraqi Intelligence Headquarters. But CNN official was in Jordan at that time, and he contacted his staff in Baghdad who confirmed that the target was hit. This was narrated in the memoirs of the then National Security Advisor Anthony Lake (from 20th January 1993 to 14th March 1997). Anyhow, the US has again given anti-terrorism task to the CIA on the plea that there are scores of terrorist groups in Afghanistan.