WASHINGTON — The rapid U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistanlinkiscreating intense pressure on the C.I.A. to find new ways to gatherintelligence and carry out counterterrorism strikes in the country, but theagency has few good options.
The C.I.A., which has been at the heart of the 20-year American presence inAfghanistan, will soon lose bases in the country from where it has runcombat missions and drone strikes while closely monitoring the Taliban andother groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The agency’s analystsare warning of the ever-growing risks of a Taliban takeover.
United States officials are in last-minute efforts to secure bases close toAfghanistan for future operations. But the complexity of the continuingconflict has led to thorny diplomatic negotiations as the military pushesto have all forces out by early to mid-July, well before President Biden’sdeadline of Sept. 11link,according to American officials and regional experts.
One focus has been Pakistan. The C.I.A. used a base there for years tolaunch drone strikes against militants in the country’s western mountains,but was kicked out of the facility in 2011, when U.S. relations withPakistan unraveled.
Any deal now would have to work around the uncomfortable reality thatPakistan’s government has long supported the Taliban. In discussionsbetween American and Pakistani officials, the Pakistanis have demanded avariety of restrictions in exchange for the use of a base in the country,and they have effectively required that they sign off on any targets thateither the C.I.A. or the military would want to hit inside Afghanistan,according to three Americans familiar with the discussions.
Diplomats are also exploring the option of regaining access to bases informer Soviet republics that were used for the Afghanistan war, althoughthey expect that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would fiercelyoppose this.
Recent C.I.A. and military intelligence reports on Afghanistan have beenincreasingly pessimistic. They have highlighted gains by the Taliban andother militant groups in the south and east, and warned that Kabul couldfall to the Taliban within years and return to becoming a safe haven formilitants bent on striking the West, according to several people familiarwith the assessments.
As a result, U.S. officials see the need for a long-termintelligence-gathering presence — in addition to military and C.I.A.counterterrorism operations — in Afghanistan long after the deadline thatMr. Biden has set for troops to leave the country. But the scramble forbases illustrates how U.S. officials still lack a long-term plan to addresssecurity in a country where they have spent trillions of dollars and lostmore than 2,400 troopslinkovernearly two decades.
William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, has acknowledged the challenge theagency faces. “When the time comes for the U.S. military to withdraw, theU.S. government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish,” hetold senators in April. “That is simply a fact.”
Mr. Burns made an unannounced visit in recent weeks to Islamabad, Pakistan,to meet with the chief of the Pakistani military and the head of thedirectorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s militaryintelligence agency. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has had frequentcalls with the Pakistani military chief about getting the country’s helpfor future U.S. operations in Afghanistan, according to American officialsfamiliar with the conversations.
Mr. Burns did not bring up the base issue during his trip to Pakistan,according to people briefed on the meeting; the visit focused on broadercounterterrorism cooperation between the two countries. At least some ofMr. Austin’s discussions have been more direct, according to people briefedon them.
A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment when asked about Mr. Burns’stravel to Pakistan.[image: William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, at the Capitol last month.He has made an unannounced visit to Pakistan in recent weeks.]William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, at the Capitol last month. He hasmade an unannounced visit to Pakistan in recent weeks.Stefani Reynolds forThe New York Times
Two decades of war in Afghanistan have helped transform the spy agency intoa paramilitary organization: It carries out hundreds of drone strikes inAfghanistan and Pakistan, trains Afghan commando units and maintains alarge presence of C.I.A. officers in a string of bases along the borderwith Pakistan. At one point during President Barack Obama’s first term, theagency had several hundred officers in Afghanistan, its largest surge ofpersonnel to a country since the Vietnam War.
These operations have come at a cost. Night raids by C.I.A.-trained Afghanunits left a trail of abuselinkthatincreased support for the Taliban in parts of the country. Occasionalerrant drone strikes in Pakistan killed civilians and increased pressure onthe government in Islamabad to dial back its quiet support for C.I.A.operations.
Douglas London, a former head of C.I.A. counterterrorism operations forAfghanistan and Pakistan, said that the agency was likely to rely on a“stay behind” network of informants in Afghanistan who would collectintelligence on the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the stability of the centralgovernment and other topics. But without a large C.I.A. presence in thecountry, he said, vetting the intelligence would be a challenge.
“When you’re dealing offshore, you’re dealing with middlemen,” said Mr.London, who will soon publish a book, “The Recruiter,” about his C.I.A.experience. “It’s kind of like playing telephone.”
In the short term, the Pentagon is using an aircraft carrier to launchfighter planes in Afghanistan to support the troop withdrawal. But thecarrier presence is unlikely to be a long-term solution, and militaryofficials said it would probably redeploy not long after the last U.S.forces leave.
The United States is stationing MQ-9 Reaper drones in the Persian Gulfregion, aircraft that can be used by both the Pentagon and the C.I.A. forintelligence collection and strikes.
But some officials are wary of these so-called over the horizon optionsthat would require plane and drones to fly as many as nine hours each wayfor a mission in Afghanistan, which would make the operations moreexpensive because they require more drones and fuel, and also riskierbecause reinforcements needed for commando raids could not arrive swiftlyduring a crisis.An MQ-9 Reaper drone at an Air Force base in Nevada. The military isstationing drones in the Persian Gulf region as it withdraws troops fromAfghanistan.Isaac Brekken/Getty Images
Pakistan is a longtime patron of the Taliban; it sees the group as acritical proxy force in Afghanistan against other groups that have ties toIndia. Pakistan’s spy agency provided weapons and training for Talibanfighters for years, as well as protection for the group’s leaders. Thegovernment in Islamabad is unlikely to sign off on any U.S. strikes againstthe Taliban that are launched from a base in Pakistan.
Although some American officials believe Pakistan wants to allow U.S.access to a base as long as it can control how it is used, public opinionin the country has been strongly against any renewed presence by the UnitedStates.
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Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told lawmakers lastmonth that the government would not allow the U.S. military to return tothe country’s air bases. “Forget the past, but I want to tell thePakistanis that no U.S. base will be allowed by Prime Minister Imran Khanso long he is in power,” Mr. Qureshi said.
Some American officials said that negotiations with Pakistan had reached animpasse for now. Others have said the option remains on the table and adeal is possible.
The C.I.A. used the Shamsi air base in western Pakistan to carry outhundreds of drone strikes during a surge that began in 2008 and lastedduring the early years of the Obama administration. The strikes focusedprimarily on suspected Qaeda operatives in Pakistan’s mountainous tribalareas, but they also crossed the border into Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s government refused to publicly acknowledge that it was allowingthe C.I.A. operations, and in late 2011 it decided to halt the droneoperationslinkaftera series of high-profile events that fractured relations with the UnitedStates. They included the arrest of a C.I.A. contractor in Lahore for adeadly shooting, the secret American commando mission in Pakistan to killOsama bin Laden and an American-led NATO airstrike on the Afghan border inNovember 2011 that killed dozens of Pakistani soldiers.
The Americans and the Pakistanis “will want to proceed cautiously” with anew relationship, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to theUnited States who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. But, hesaid, Mr. Biden’s announcement of a withdrawal “has the C.I.A. and theDefense Department, as well as Pakistanis, scrambling.”
American diplomats have been exploring options to restore access to basesin Central Asia, including sites in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan that housedAmerican troops and intelligence officers during the war.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke this month with his counterpartin Tajikistan, though it is not clear if base access was discussed duringthe call. Any negotiations with those countries are likely to takeconsiderable time to work out. A State Department spokeswoman would sayonly that Mr. Blinken was engaging partner countries on how the UnitedStates was reorganizing its counterterrorism capabilities.After an explosion near a school in Kabul, Afghanistan, last month. TheC.I.A. faces challenges in gathering intelligence about threats inAfghanistan once the U.S. military presence there ends.Kiana Hayeri for TheNew York Times
Russia has opposed the United States using bases in Central Asia, and thatis likely to make any diplomatic effort to secure access to bases for thepurposes of military strikes a slow process, according to a senior Americanofficial.
While the C.I.A. in particular has long had a pessimistic view of theprospects of stability in Afghanistan, those assessments have been refinedin recent weeks as the Taliban has made tactical gains.
While military and intelligence analysts have previously had assessments atodds with one another, they now are in broad agreement that the Afghangovernment is likely to have trouble holding on to power. They believe theAfghan security forces have been depleted by high casualty rates in recentyears. The announcement of the U.S. withdrawal is another psychologicalblow that could weaken the force.
Intelligence assessments have said that without continued American support,the Afghan National Security Forces will weaken and could possiblycollapse. Officials are working to develop options for continuing thatsupport remotely, but the Pentagon has not yet come up with a realisticplan that officials believe will work.
Some current and former officials are skeptical that remote advising orcombat operations will succeed. Collecting intelligence becomes far moredifficult without a large presence in Afghanistan, said Mick P. Mulroy, aretired C.I.A. officer who served there.
“It doesn’t matter if you can drop ordnance,” he said, “if you don’t knowwhere the target is.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
Mark Mazzetti is a Washington investigative correspondent, and a two-timePulitzer Prize winner. He is the author of “The Way of the Knife: theC.I.A, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth.” @MarkMazzettiNYTlink
Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington,covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, hewrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarneslink • Facebooklink
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