CIA pushes for authority to conduct drone strikes in Afghanistan

Changes being gauged as part of extensive push inside White House to ease Obama-era restraints

The CIA is pushing for further powers to conduct covert drone strikes in Afghanistan and other war zones, a proposal that the White House apparently favour according to, current and former, intelligence and military officials.

If US President Donald Trump approves, this would mark the first time the CIA would have such powers in Afghanistan, expanding beyond its existing authority to carry out covert strikes against Al Qaeda and other terrorist targets across the border in Pakistan, reports The New York Times. 

The changes are being gauged as part of a extensive push inside the White House to ease Obama-era restraints on how the CIA and military fight militants around the world.

Until now, the Pentagon has had the lead role for conducting airstrikes — with drones or other aircraft — against militants in Afghanistan and other conflict zones, such as Somalia and Libya and, to some extent, Yemen. The military publicly acknowledges its strikes, unlike the C.I.A., which for roughly a decade has carried out its own campaign of covert drone strikes in Pakistan that were not acknowledged by either country, a condition that Pakistan’s government has long insisted on.

But Mike Pompeo, CIA's director, has made a forceful case to Trump in recent weeks that the Obama-era arrangement needlessly limited the United States' ability to conduct counter-terrorism operations, according to the current and former officials, who would not be named discussing internal debates about sensitive information. He has publicly suggested that Trump favours granting the CIA greater authority to go after militants, though he has been vague about specifics, nearly all of which are classified.

"When we've asked for more authorities, we've been given it. When we ask for more resources, we get it," Pompeo said on Fox News.

He said that the agency was hunting every day for Al Qaeda’s leaders, most of whom are believed to be sheltering in the remote mountains that straddle the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"If I were them, I’d count my days," Pompeo said.

Pompeo has made clear that he favours pushing the agency to take on a more direct role in fighting militants. Afghanistan, the most active war zone in which the United States is fighting, makes sense as the place to start. In the past three years, the number of military drone strikes there has climbed, from 304 in 2015, to 376 last year, to 362 through the first eight months of this year.

The CIA, in comparison, has had little to do across the border in Pakistan, where there were three drone strikes last year and have been four so far this year, according to the Long War Journal published by the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

"This is bureaucratic politics 101," said Christine Wormuth, a former top Pentagon official. "The CIA has very significant capabilities, and it wants to go use them."

Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defence Department declined to comment on the pending proposal, which involves delicate internal deliberations.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has not resisted the CIA proposal, administration officials said, but other Pentagon officials question the expansion of CIA authorities in Afghanistan or elsewhere, asking what the agency can do that the military cannot.

Some Pentagon officials also fear that American troops on the ground in Afghanistan could end up bearing the burden of any CIA strikes that accidentally kill civilians, because the agency will not publicly acknowledge those attacks. The military has also had to confront its own deadly mistakes in Afghanistan.

In Trump’s speech last month, outlining his policy for South Asia including Afghanistan, he promised that he would loosen restrictions on American soldiers to enable them to hunt down terrorists, whom he labeled "thugs and criminals and predators, and — that’s right — losers."

"The killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might and American arms," the president said. "Retribution will be fast and powerful."

Trump has already authorised Secretary Mattis to deploy more troops to Afghanistan. Some 4,000 reinforcements will allow American officers to more closely advise Afghan brigades, train more Afghan Special Operations forces and call in American firepower.

Among the chief targets for the CIA in Afghanistan would be the Haqqani network, whose leader is now the No 2 in the Taliban and runs its military operations.

Despite their objections, Defence Department officials say they are now somewhat resigned to the outcome and are working out arrangements with the CIA to ensure that United States forces, including Special Operations advisers, are not accidentally targeted, officials said.

This article originally appeared on The New York Times.