CIA on the military warpath

Most people probably think of the CIA as a huge organisation focusing on spying operations overseas, hunting for intelligence to track down terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden and, occasionally, masterminding coups in faraway places. All of which is true. But the Central Intelligence Agency has a special military or paramilitary section which is effectively the organisation's special forces wing. Over the years there has been much debate within the agency and within different political administrations over how military the CIA should be, especially when the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which includes the legendary US Navy Seal Team 6 and the US Army's Delta Force,has the firepower and expertise to run covert missions anywhere on the planet. But the CIA's Special Activities Division (the paramilitary set-up) which frequently teams up with JSOC, remains a potent force. Now, it seems, Mike Pompeo, the heavyweight director of the CIA, wants the Special Activities Division to get stuck in in Afghanistan, hunting for Taliban leaders, senior or junior, to put maximum pressure on the insurgents to drive them to the peace table. It may sound an odd concept, trying to persuade the Taliban to talk peace when the US is doing its very best to kill as many of them as possible. Actually, it does have logic. The Taliban, after all, practice exactly the same battlefield strategy, killing and maiming on an increasingly expanding scale in the hope that the Kabul government will surrender and the Americans will go home. So the Taliban will understand why Mike Pompeo wants to send in his boys to join the US special forces counter-terrrorist units who are already attempting to eliminate al-Qaeda, Isis and top Taliban leaders. The CIA, and its British counterpart, MI6, have played key roles in Afghanistan ever since 2001. It was CIA paramilitaries who joined up with the warlords of the Northern Alliance in 2001 to drive the Taliban out of the country, along with Osama bin Laden and his gang. The video snatch of a long-haired CIA paramilitary riding a horse at galloping speed as part of an offensive against fleeing Taliban was one of the enduring images of the war that toppled the Taliban from government. Sending the CIA paramilitaries back in strength into Afghanistan fits in with Trump's strategy to put renewed pressure on the Taliban. But it won't please those members of Congress who believe that the CIA should be about human intelligence, not shooting wars. What they really mean is that if the CIA Special Activities Division starts killing off Taliban leaders, their actions will not be accountable in the way such missions are if JSOC is involved. Anything the Pentagon does in Afghanistan is accountable to Congress. Anything the CIA does in Afghanistan is classified as secret.