Es wird berichtet, dass die CIA ihre Aktivitäten in Afghanistan weiter ausbaut.

Genaue Zahlen unterlägen der Geheimhaltung. Nach Angaben eines Regierungsbeamten seien jedoch bereits rund 700 Mitarbeiter in dem Land aktiv. Es würden Agenten, Analysten und Paramilitärs entsandt.

[...]

Auf die Agenten warteten viele Aufgaben. Sie sollten etwa zusammen mit Spezialeinheiten hochrangige Zielpersonen jagen, die öffentliche Meinung in den Provinzen erkunden, die sich offensichtlich mehr und mehr den Taliban zuneige, sowie Informationen über Korruption in der afghanischen Regierung sammeln.

[CIA will Präsenz ausbauen, Ö1 Sonntagsjournal, 20. September 2009]

Da unsere Medien absolut keine Lust haben, darüber zu berichten, was das bedeutet, was in Afghanistan jetzt schon passiert (massive Bombardierungen von Wohngebieten, gezielte Tötungen mitsamt „Kollateralschäden”, usw.) und was dort in Zukunft passieren wird: ein Blick in die Vergangenheit, um eine Ahnung zu geben, wie die „anti-Terroraktivitäten” der CIA in Afghanistan aussehen könnten:

Government terror teams are nothing new. My father-in-law, Andy McKevitt, who is 98 years old, remembers British soldiers leaving their barracks at night, dressing as civilians, and murdering IRA leaders.

The Brits would gather the wives and children of missing IRA leaders in the barn and burn it down, shooting anyone who ran outside to escape the flames. The idea was to send a message to the community at large – support the IRA and you’re horribly dead.

All the CIA did in Vietnam was to formalize this venerable practice, and give its terror teams a cutesy name: Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRU).

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A big problem in South Vietnam, as in Afghanistan, is that the CIA defines its enemy as “insurgents” when in fact they are nationalists. Thus, it is counterproductive for political action and counter-terror teams to hunt them down in their own villages.

In South Vietnam many American targets were not terrorists but, as counter-insurgency guru David Galula writes, "men whose motivations, even if the counterinsurgent disapproves of them, may be perfectly honorable. They do not participate directly, as a rule, in direct terrorism or guerrilla action and, technically, have no blood on their hands."⁷

Collecting intelligence on these Robin Hoods meant recruiting agents and informants.

But, as erstwhile CIA officer and Phoenix advisor Warren Milberg noted in his 1974 thesis, "The Future Applicability of the Phoenix Program," written for the Air University, recruiting informants and agents in enemy territory was dangerous work, so "it became necessary to do detailed studies of various motivational factors."

Consequently, the CT teams focused on recruiting "people who had been victims of Viet Cong atrocities and acts of terrorism."⁸

In the Philippines, Lansdale boasted about training some troops “to pose as a Huk squadron in enemy-controlled areas.”⁹ David Galula agreed this is an effective tactic, saying, "pseudo insurgents are another way to get intelligence and to sow suspicion at the same time between the real guerrillas and the population."¹⁰

Thus, CIA counter-terror teams started pretending to be VC and terrorizing friendly as well as enemy villages.

This counter-terror “intelligence function” (it’s an intelligence function because, by producing informants and agents, it produces intelligence) was well known by October 1965, when Ohio Sen. Stephen Young charged that the CIA’s CTs disguised themselves as Vietcong and discredited the Communists by committing atrocities.

"It was alleged to me that several of them executed two village leaders and raped some women," the Herald Tribune reported Young as saying.”¹¹

The scandal generated by Young had only effect – to prompt the CIA in 1966 to change the name of its counter-terror teams to the PRU, which, in 1967, became one of three foundation stones (along with the CIA’s interrogation and administrative detention programs) of the CIA’s infamous Phoenix Program.

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7. David Galula, Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Praeger, 1964) p. 124.
8. Warren Milberg, "The Future Applicability of the Phoenix Program" (Research Study, Report #1835-74, Air command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, May 1974), pp. 33-34.
9. Lansdale, 88.
10. Galula, 120
11. The Herald Tribune, October 21, 1965

[Douglas Valentine, A Bad Vietnam Lesson for Afghanistan, Consortiumnews.com, 17. September 2009]

[Wer den Artikel zur Gänze liest, wird feststellen, dass er sich auf einen Kommentar in der New York Times bezieht, in dem die Einrichtung genau dieser PRUs in Afghanistan gefordert wird.]