Leaked CIA report on targeting Taliban

The targeted killing of Taliban leaders has had little impact on the organisation, a CIA report released by WikiLeaks says.

The 2009 report said that Taliban were able to replace senior members quickly, coalition operations against its leadership largely ineffective.

The report, released on Wednesday, analysed the pros and cons of 'high value targeting', defined as 'focused operations against specific individuals or networks whose removal or marginalisation should disproportionately degrade an insurgent group's effectiveness'.

It concluded that the Taliban was not particularly vulnerable to the tactic, due to its 'high overall ability to replace lost leaders, a centralised but flexible command and control overlaid with egalitarian Pashtun structures'.

Most of the Taliban fighters come from the the Pashtun ethnic group of the tribal region in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The report did say benefits of such targeted operations include 'eroding insurgent effectiveness, weakening insurgent will and reducing the level of insurgent support'.

However, potential negatives effects include 'increasing insurgent support' in some cases, or 'provoking insurgents to alter strategy or organisation'.

The report pointed out that such campaigns strengthen armed groups' support among the population, radicalise the remaining leaders, and creates a vacuum into which more radical groups could enter.

They can also 'escalate the level of violence in a conflict, which may or may not be in a government's interest', it said.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there have been 354 drone strikes in Pakistan alone targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership since US President Barack Obama upped the drone warfare in 2009.

Between 2400 and 3888 people have been killed in the campaign, with the estimates of civilian casualties ranging from 416 to 959, including hundreds of children.

Source http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/world/2014/12/19/leaked-cia-report-on-targeting-taliban.html