Intelligence Sharing and US Counterterrorism Policy

A chapter I wrote on the topic of intelligence sharing and US counterterrorism policy will appear early next year in Emerging Transnational (In)security Governance, edited by Ersel Aydinli. You can find a pre-publication version of the paper here, or just read the summary below:

A top foreign policy priority of the United States is the dismantlement of the al Qaeda terrorist network. Like all terrorist organizations, al Qaeda is most effective if it can successfully conceal its activities from the authorities. Accurate intelligence is thus a crucial part of the campaign against the group. And many states are in a position to develop valuable intelligence. Countries in western Europe, North Africa, the Persian Gulf, and South and Southeast Asia are able to collect intelligence that the United States is unable to gather, and can engage in mutually beneficial intelligence sharing with the United States.

But some of these states also face powerful barriers to full intelligence sharing. European governments face legal challenges to some of their foreign intelligence activities. Domestic political pressures prompt some states in the Middle East and Europe to curtail collaboration with the United States. Some countries contain religious or nationalist groups or elements of the government apparatus that are less enthusiastic about taking effective action against al Qaeda. Other governments may wish to exaggerate the effectiveness of their action against and the accuracy of their intelligence on al Qaeda in order to win the approval and support of the United States.

These cross-cutting motives pose an important challenge for the United States because less than full cooperation and sharing is very difficult for it to detect. All intelligence agencies seek to ensure that their sources of information remain secret. This involves strictly limiting the distribution of such information among government officials and carefully controlling its dissemination to foreign governments. But these security measures also make it very hard for the recipients of shared intelligence to verify its accuracy. The problem for the United States is that some of the states that have the most valuable intelligence on al Qaeda are also those with the strongest incentives to defect from agreements to share such intelligence.

Yet the United States has managed to strengthen intelligence sharing arrangements with many of these countries. How, if at all, do such arrangements address concerns about defection? At one extreme, it has been rather straightforward to arrange effective intelligence sharing with countries that have the fewest incentives to defect, such as those in western Europe. In many (but not all) areas, the United States and European countries have developed mechanisms for the regular exchange of intelligence. At the other extreme, the United States has largely eschewed intelligence sharing with countries that have the strongest motives to defect, such as Iran. More interesting are the arrangements pursued with many of the remaining countries that are formally committed to share intelligence with the United States but also face substantial pressures to renege on this commitment. Here the United States has created hierarchical mechanisms that give it some ability to directly monitor and control the intelligence activities of its partner. These mechanisms provide the United States with a way to secure intelligence from partners of problematic reliability. This paper explains how hierarchical relationships enhance intelligence sharing the conditions under which hierarchy will emerge. Specific mechanisms include financing the partner’s intelligence service to influence its objectives, providing training that imparts technical skills and socializes individuals to the goals of the United States, and rendering suspected terrorists to allied intelligence services in return for influencing their treatment and questioning. These hierarchical mechanisms provide the United States with a way to secure intelligence from rather unreliable partners.

Human rights and what to do in Afghanistan

How should concerns about human rights influence the current review of Afghanistan policy? Human rights have not figured prominently in this debate. But they are important for three reasons. First, um, human rights are important so we should talk about them. Second, if the human rights picture in Afghanistan deteriorates markedly (and there is a good chance that it will), the US is going to get blamed for it, and Obama is going to get blamed for it by some of his supporters at home. Third, human rights play a big role in some of the strategies currently under discussion.

So what are these strategies, and how do human rights concerns figure into them? Seems to me that the current course, while unsatisfactory in many ways, may not be so bad from a human rights perspective.

One option is for the US to leave. This would be pretty bad for rights in Afghanistan. Two likely outcomes of such a withdrawal are a Taliban takeover of most of the country or a big-time civil war. We have a pretty good idea from the 1990s how the Taliban would treat human rights. Human rights also fare pretty poorly in civil wars. So this would be bad.

Another option is to implement the counterinsurgency strategy advocated by the US theater commander. This could in principle be really good for human rights. A centerpiece of COIN is being so nice to the population that they support you rather than the insurgents. Practical difficulties abound, though. First, where would we find the many hundreds of thousands of troops needed to do COIN properly? If they could not be found, would we abandon some sections of the country to the insurgency (as recent redeployments away from remote areas would seem to suggest we are doing)? Or spread them so thinly that they cannot really protect the population? Another huge issue here is the Afghan government. COIN says we are to support this government in its efforts to win the legitimate support of the population. Well, it's difficult to think of a government with less legitimacy due to corruption, drug smuggling, stealing elections, alliances with warlords, and general incompetence. So legitimacy is a huge problem. Also, past efforts to implement COIN in other conflicts have not always been so nice to the peeps. Some have involved building security barriers, forcibly resettling people, and other violations of basic human rights. So COIN is nice for human rights in theory, but pretty difficult to carry out in practice.

The third major option is "counterterrorism". This means focusing military force primarily on Al Qaeda. It also means largely ignoring the rest of the country and its government. This could be problematic for two reasons. First, the rest of the country might fall apart. If insurgents aim to topple the government, and the US does not intervene to prop it up, both sides might commit massive human rights violations. Second, the inevitable civilian casualties produced by a military counterterrorism campaign could themselves be considered human rights violations and might create more
sympathy for the Taliban or Al Qaeda or both.

A final, and perhaps most likely, option would be to continue with the status quo. This essentially combines the COIN and counterterrorism strategies outlined above, but each at less than optimal levels. What has happened in the last few years suggests that this combo is unlikely to create a legit Afghan government or curtail terrorism, which is why everyone is talking about new and better strategies. But from a human rights perspective, the status quo may be the best of a series of bad options. The reason is that it commits the US and NATO to try to contain the worst excesses of the Afghan government, while keeping it in power. This means that the western powers can restrain the government from engaging in full-scale atrocities to maintain its hold on power, and convince the insurgents that a frontal attack on Kabul and other cities will not succeed.
ct

coin

status quo

election is a hr--so supporting K is good for coin, but bad for hr