Seth Jones, a counter terrorism expert and former Pentagon official, said: The challenge ahead in Afghanistan “is unlike any we have seen in other arenas.” Jones called the Biden administration’s claims that war was possible from afar “fictitious.”
According to experts, US policy to fight terrorism in Afghanistan “beyond the horizon” will lead to the blind actions of Centcom in this country, and will kill innocent people instead of terrorists. Even when the United States had thousands of troops in Afghanistan, Centcom still performed poorly in identifying terrorists and distinguishing them from the innocent, and did not even bother to investigate the deaths of civilians, according to civil society organizations following Centcom’s actions in Afghanistan.
Seth Jones, a counter terrorism expert and former Pentagon official, said: The challenge ahead in Afghanistan “is unlike any we have seen in other arenas.” Jones called the Biden administration’s claims that war was possible from afar “fictitious.”
Jones said: “When we compare the challenge of Afghanistan with the US operations in Libya, Somalia, Syria and Iraq and even Africa on the coast, we see that this is the toughest counter terrorism campaign to be carried out.” In each of the other countries named, he said, the United States enjoys the privilege of bases in neighboring areas and local partners, including pro-militias that provide important human intelligence to validate intelligence signals and other forms of countermeasures.
But in Afghanistan, Centcom must track and kill terrorists without any or at least some human intelligence. This factor would lead future operations to target innocent people and civilians instead of terrorists, such as the August 29 drone strike against an ISIL operative who turned out to be an innocent helper, along with nine other members of his family.
“It is important to know that civilian casualties are no exception,” said Annie Shiel, a member of the Civilian Center for War Injury Assessment (CIVIC). “Civilian casualties are a hallmark of US air strikes, not an accidental defect.” “Even in areas like Yemen and Somalia, where Washington has better access to databases and information,” Shell says, “the United States has a poor track record of dealing with, identifying, and responding to civilian casualties.”
Afghanistan’s mountainous and inaccessible border areas, which are the best places for terrorists to hide, are now considered intelligence hotspots with the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the absence of US-led Afghans.
The United States also now has to conduct long-range attacks from remote areas in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, including six to eight hours of drone flight. Jones said: “We have no bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.”
That being said, Biden’s credibility has been called into question because he has claimed for more than a decade that the United States can prevent terrorist operations in Afghanistan with a small presence. Republican Sen. Deb Fischer said: “I do not think the president was honest with the American people. He has misled the people by saying that the fight against terrorism is easy from afar.”
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Chris Woods of the British Air Warfare Center, which conducts the most credible follow-up on casualties in US attacks around the world, said: “Centcom’s transparency and accountability for civilian casualties from US airstrikes have plummeted in the last half of Trump’s presidency – and unfortunately there is still no sign of improvement since Biden entered the White House. We are still waiting for a unified government stance on civilian casualties – and the attacks continue.”