MISUNDERSTANDING THE ENEMY WITH VIAGRA

I wasn’t going to post anything before January 2009 but as I am so shocked at what the CIA is doing, I felt that I had to make this posting. I believe that any true soldier that respects women will share my concerns…

When I read that the CIA is now offering Viagra to Afghan warlords, I finally realised just how little the CIA’s operatives understood about their enemy. The claim that this is offered “to win over Afghan warlords in the US-led war against Taliban insurgents” (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2445933,00.html) is a perfect example of how the CIA continually gets it wrong. (I posted the original report on this method of payment as an addition to “The Lost Art of Intelligence Tradecraft”).

Whereas an intelligence agency is expected to resort to whatever measures are necessary to gather information, there is a fine line between controlling agents and in bribing them so that they can "put them back in an authoritative position" over their wives. Afghanistan is a country where women are raped and beaten by their husbands as a matter of course. Here women are known have set themselves ablaze to escape the brutality of their husbands. Many of these wives were sold to their husbands and given half a chance would most probably have chosen differently. Girls as young as 5-years old are sold into sex slavery and young boys raped.

While the rest of the world wonders why the Afghan men treat their women like prostitutes and their daughters as barter-goods, the CIA is helping to increase the sexual stamina of these men. With intelligence techniques such as this, no wonder the CIA has failed so dismally in Iraq and Afghanistan. As long as these warlords need their sexual stamina to be increased, they will have something to tell the CIA - regardless whether it is true or not - as long as they get paid…But there is also a difference in getting the information you need and want and being given what the sources believe you want.

Grand strategy gives rise to policies that are carried out by a nation’s foreign policy directives. If the Viagra gifts being handed out by the CIA are part of the overall foreign policy direction the US is taking, they are in serious trouble. Handing out Viagra in essence endorses marital and extra-marital rape because that is what is going to happen. Implementing a foreign policy that encourages forced sexual-gratification as a consequence cannot be wise. Indeed, the US can airlift in plane loads of Viagra to Afghanistan and the results will be little in terms of winning the war. But, the sexual torture they are encouraging will no doubt increase. I hope that someone, somewhere in the CIA, will feel a deep sense of shame about that.

Unfortunately, the US’s foreign policy has – as Africa can testify - been based on a lack of understanding of foreign cultures. They charge into countries and try to force the locals to agree and side with them, with no idea of the consequences of what they are doing. When their opinion is disregarded, the government is undermined and overthrown.

The ripple effects the Afghanistan Viagra gifts will have on those who determine the sensibility of this policy will be felt for some time to come. Women who have often been sold into marriage will now have to “grin and bear it” as a warlord recovers his lost virility.

Sun Tzu’s Art of War gives a valuable bit of advice to strategists and planners: Know your enemy. Knowing the enemy requires intelligence. The recruitment and running of agents requires detailed planning – including methods of payment. If Viagra has become an agent-currency in Afghanistan, no wonder there is so little success.

Added on 2 January 2009: It seems as though the Taliban are not only taking the CIA’s Viagra to heart, they are now going one step further: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/264395#tab=&sc=&local=