Military overhauls intelligence gathering, analysis in Afghanistan

[unhappycamper]

Military overhauls intelligence gathering, analysis in Afghanistan
By Julian E. Barnes, Chicago Tribune
Stars and Stripes online edition, Tuesday, January 5, 2010

WASHINGTON — U.S. military officials in Afghanistan have ordered a series of steps to overhaul intelligence gathering and analysis in the war-torn country in response to deficiencies uncovered during a lengthy White House strategy review last year.

The overhaul announced Monday will broaden the scope of intelligence gathering from hunting down extremists to gathering information about local attitudes, concerns, people and leaders as part of a deeper U.S. shift aimed at winning over the Afghan population.

The changes were ordered by Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of intelligence for the military command in Afghanistan, and were detailed by a U.S. official and in a paper published Monday by the Center for a New American Security, a military think tank.

In the paper, Flynn and two other officials argued that intelligence efforts in Afghanistan have been focused too tightly on searching for enemy insurgents and roadside bombs, often ignoring crucial information from knowledgeable Afghans, local council meetings, radio broadcasts and similar sources.

"This vast and under-appreciated body of information, almost all of which is unclassified, admittedly offers few clues about where to find insurgents, but provides information of even greater strategic importance: a map for leveraging popular support and marginalizing the insurgency itself," Flynn and his co-authors wrote.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=67028