British foreign secretary admits errors in intelligence assessments of Afghanistan
September 3, 2021 1 Comment
THE CONSENSUS VIEW OF British intelligence in the weeks leading to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was that the Afghan government would be challenged, but that the rebels were unlikely to take over the country in 2021. This was revealed on Wednesday in the House of Commons by Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab. Speaking at an emergency meeting of the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Raab fielded criticism that he had reacted slowly to the crisis in Afghanistan.
The foreign secretary told his critics that his department’s decisions had relied on assessments by the Joint Intelligence Committee, an interagency body that coordinates Britain’s intelligence agencies in issuing reports about pressing security matters. He told Parliament that the assessments he had been given pointed out that the pro-Western government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would be threatened by the Taliban following the withdrawal of Western troops. But they concluded that the government would remain in control of Kabul through 2021, said Raab.
The rapid fall of the Afghan capital to the Taliban caught the British intelligence establishment —and, consequently, the government as a whole— by surprise, said Raab, adding that the sheer “scale and speed of the fall of Kabul” was unexpected. The foreign secretary blamed “optimism bias” for the reports, but added that similar optimistic views were “widely shared” across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. All parties involved would have to learn lessons from Afghanistan about the accuracy of intelligence reports, Raab concluded.
But the foreign secretary was less clear about why his office did not heed the warnings of the principal risk assessment of his own department, which was issued on July 22, approximately a month before the fall of Kabul. The assessment warned starkly that the return of the Taliban to power could be rapid, as “peace talks are stalled and [United States and] NATO withdrawal is resulting in Taliban advances”. This, said the assessment, could lead to the “fall of cities, collapse of security forces, [and] Taliban return to power”. The document also discussed the possibility that the British “embassy may need to close if security deteriorates” in the Afghan capital.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 3 September 2021 | Permalink
intelNews.org 
German spy services had foreknowledge of Wagner mutiny, report claims
July 11, 2023 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
In the days following the June 23 mutiny by soldiers of the Russian private military firm Wagner Group, German intelligence agencies were publicly criticized for allegedly failing to warn Berlin about the unprecedented incident. Specifically, it was claimed that Germany’s primary foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), did not issue an actual warning about the mutiny until Saturday —a full 12 hours after the first clashes had erupted between Wagner mercenaries and forces loyal to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Much of the criticism came from the ranks of the center-left German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is the primary political party behind the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. However, criticism also came from the Green Party, which supports Scholz’s administration, and the liberal center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP), which also supports Scholz’s government. The criticism intensified after June 28, when, during a live television interview, Chancellor Scholz appeared to confirm speculation that the BND had left his administration in the dark about the Wagner mutiny until it was too late.
Late last week, however, a joint investigation by two of Germany’s most respected public television broadcasters, the Hamburg-based NDR and the Cologne-based WDR, concluded that the BND had been far more informed about the Wagner mutiny than its critics have claimed. The investigation concluded that, not only did the BND have foreknowledge of the mutiny nearly a week before it materialized, but that it was able to listen-in to the frantic telephone conversations between Prigozhin and Belarussian President Lukashenko, as the latter tried to dissuade the Wagner leader from storming the Russian capital with his heavily armed band of mercenaries.
According to the NDR-WDR report, the BND had been able to hack into Wagner’s internal communications system up for over a year. However, its operation was betrayed by “Carsten L.”, a German intelligence officer who was arrested late last year for spying for Russia. However, the German spy service was able to continue to monitor the internal affairs of Wagner through other sources and had access to channels of information within Wagner in the months leading up to the mutiny. Thus, according to the report, the BND had “vague indications of an imminent uprising by Wagner” about a week prior to June 23.
However, the agency was unsuccessful in verifying these indications through other sources, including its foreign counterpart agencies. For this reason, it chose not to notify the German Chancellery in concrete terms.
Nevertheless, the BND did issue a warning on Friday evening, a few hours before the Wagner mutiny began. The warning was issued a full day prior to the takeover of Wagner’s armed takeover of the Russian armed forces’ operational headquarters in Rostov, which occurred on Saturday. The two state broadcasters reportedly reached out to the BND for confirmation of the report’s findings. However, a BND spokesperson declined to comment on the matter, saying simply that the BND “generally does not comment publicly on matters relating to intelligence findings or operations”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 July 2023 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, BND, forecasting, Germany, News, PMC Wagner, Russia