CIA’s Afghan Kill Teams Expand War in Pakistan

Administration Officials Bragged About Assassins' Infiltration of Pakistan

The Obama Administration’s dramatic escalation of the air war into Pakistan, to the tune of well over a thousand Pakistanis killed in air strikes, has not been a very closely kept secret. But for all the talk of “boots on the grocund” it turns out the ground war in Pakistan has also already begun, just quietly.

This is the necessary conclusion of the revelation that the CIA has assembled a “secret army” of some 3,000 assassins who have been carrying out “counter-terror operations” on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Administration officials are openly bragging about this infiltration, and about the “major contributions” made by these forces, yet it amounts to another proxy war in Pakistan, above and beyond the one in which US officials constantly harangue Pakistan’s military to launch new wars along the border on their behalf.

Questions about whether the CIA can be trusted to manage yet another massive international assassination force and questions about what will happen to this heavily armed and highly trained group when the US inevitably loses interest in the region aside, one can’t help but wonder how the administration felt comfortable launching yet another war entirely in secret, and how it will react now that the cat is out of the bag.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.