The Enemy Within

When a bombing occurs in Kabul, Westerners blame the Taliban but Afghans speak of another enemy. It is not the Taliban they fear but the central government.


One week ago, insurgents armed with RPGs, 82 mm rockets and assault rifles, transformed an unfinished, 12-story concrete skyscraper into a snipers perch. For over 20 hours, rockets and gunfire rained down on the U.S. Embassy and Afghan government compounds below. Across Kabul, other insurgents staged attacks in five quiet neighborhoods. When sun rose the next morning, 16 Afghans lay dead and scores injured.


After last week's attack, media reports stressed the increasing sophistication and strength of the Taliban. It is not tactics that changed but the potency of intelligence. What is happening inside Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), is troubling and are signs of civil war.


Nature of Insurgency.


Multipronged, complex attacks are not a new tactic for anti-government elements (AGEs). Since October 2008 , attacks on UN guest houses, government ministries and hotels have killed dozens and maimed hundreds. Nor is the 'iron fence,' a maze of cameras, checkpoints and barriers protecting western embassies, has ever been tight. Notably, on August 15, 2009, as presidential elections approached, a bomb exploded outside the front gate of ISAF HQ killing seven and wounding 91 civilians and military personnel.


Kabul has never been secure because the nature of conflict in Afghanistan is insurgency. The enemy is inside government, security forces, tribe and even family.


What has kept Kabul relatively peaceful has been the power and efficiency of the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Experts in collecting and analyzing intelligence; they are the key element spoiling attacks and bombings since 2002. The NDS is the only security force respected by Afghans.


It has been a rough summer for the NDS. Their operatives have been targeted and killed by insurgents across the country and now another attack has terrorized Kabul. Is the NDS losing its edge?


Intelligence in Afghanistan.


All issues in Afghanistan—social, financial and security—depend on the strength of family. Tribe and ethnic group are important but inside one's family is where trust is forged.


However, inside the family information is not wholly shared, even with the most trusted brother. For to be an Afghan man is to exist under constant pressure. He is expected to support the large family financially and to obey strict rules of tribal society. This extreme pressure encourages the withholding of facts and bits of information for self-protection. Otherwise he is exposed to exploitation from family, who may disapprove of his choice in a bride or pressure to hand over more wealth.


When important issues are reduced to family relationships, intelligence is social and within and difficult to access. Drones, satellites, and electronic surveillance cannot collect what is never spoken to the closest cousin.


Seeing the complexity hidden within Afghan culture, NDS operatives have built ties both diverse and numerous. Piece by piece, family to family, the agents build robust analysis uncovering hidden caches of explosives; exposing Taliban plans for attacks; and ties to the Pakistan Intelligence (ISI). More importantly, they understand that at any moment a loyalty can tilt towards another due to the history or strength of the relationship. It is why a friend of 30 years can in one day transform into an assassin, as longtime friend Sardar Mohammad did when he shot of Wali Karzai, the President's brother.


The family tree of the NDS has roots to KhAD, the Afghan intelligence agency supported by the KGB during the Soviet occupation. After the Soviet withdrawal, KhAD disbanded with many its operatives defecting and joining the forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Their choice was not religious but to destroy President Burhanuddin Rabbani's mujahid government preventing a peaceful end to the civil war. As the Taliban took control, these same KhAD operatives defected again, partnering with the Taliban, and then again after the Taliban ouster in 2001, joining the NDS.  Afghanistan's intelligence agency has experience many rebirths.


It is this historical knowledge to enemies of past which forms the strength of the NDS today. However, this strength is also a great weakness. Why it is under attack, not from outside but from within.


On Sept 2, 2009 the intelligence organization suffered serious damage when Abdullah Laghmani, the Deputy Chief was assassinated. A pragmatic operations man, Laghmani was respected for his deep knowledge of criminal, tribal, and ethnic ties with Tajik and Pashtun groups. It was he who connected the Pakistan's ISI to the bombing of the India Embassy in 2008. His death shook the confidence of the Kabul citizens.


In a perplexing move months later, President Karzai forced the resignation of his two top security leaders, the NDS Director Amrullah Saleh and Interior Minister Hanif Atmat. Some reports point to the President's anger over Saleh's opposition to peace talks with the Taliban. Regardless of his reasons, the organization was substantially changed.


One theory given to Zones by sources in 2009, is perhaps Karzai feared not the NDS leadership but the organization itself because of its comlex history. Inside the halls of power of the central government are the same powers who destroyed their country in a brutal civil war before 9/11. If a civil war is reigniting, it is inside NDS where factions are aligning and using the Taliban to take out their opponents.  These powers cast a dark shadow on a peace for Afghanistan. Hopefully the tenacious intelligence agency, the NDS, will survive. 


by Janet Killeen