Over the past five days....a lot of talk in Germany has centered on perceptions by the German Federal Intelligence Service, or BND (the German CIA).....and why they really didn't know about the Afghan 'fall' that was about to occur.
There are various ways to look at this, but I'd offer this scenario.
Lets say for the sake of the argument that the BND was there, and had five folks making up their core collection and assessment business.
In an average week, these five went out and spoke to Afghan national police, the Afghan military headquarters, the CIA, the American Army, the US ambassador, the US State Department sophisticated folks, and another dozen-odd groups of 'spooks'. Maybe they even sipped coffee with the Russian 'spooks' once a week.
So they take everything and come to realize there's three different Afghanistans being laid out and described by all these groups. The US Army folks are painting a dire situation, with maps updated hour by hour. The CIA folks go mostly in this direction. Then you get Afghan folks to say things which indicate threats exist but it's not that bad. Then finally you come to the US Ambassador and State Department folks who seem super-positive.
Rather than looking at the maps, and the weekly progress of territory being taken over by the Taliban....you seem to believe the sophisticated State Department folks. So you write a three-page report which goes back to Berlin, and it's read by Chancellor Merkel occasionally.
Problems now? Well....if the BND screwed up on that assessment....what else are they screwing up on? The BND crew in Afghanistan being sent to some basement operation in Berlin as 'punishment'? Maybe.....but you will just get a fresh new group who likely will fall into the same issues.
Dumping all of this into the public domain, and having public forums on ARD or ZDF.....to give blame assessments? Well....it's a sad part of the whole story, but that's the reality of the mess created.
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