THE CIA VAULT: CIA-BACKED DEATH SQUADS IN AFGHANISTAN
How bad intel and little accountability led to the killings of hundreds of civilians over a decade.
Shortly after the tragedy of 9/11, America’s war in Afghanistan began. For over a decade, CIA-backed special forces units terrorized the people of Afghanistan. Members would undertake efforts to downplay the severity of civilian deaths caused by their ghastly night raids. Unsurprisingly, these attacks caused blowback, the “unintended consequences” of covert operations, a term first coined by the CIA itself.
WHO WERE THEY?
Zero Units — squadrons of U.S.-trained Afghan special forces soldiers.
…one of the four Zero Unit squads, which was known in Afghanistan as 02 unit…
The Night Raids. Lynzy Billing, video by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons. Pro Publica. 15 December 2022.
…Afghan operatives believed to belong to an elite CIA-trained paramilitary unit known as 01…
The CIA’s Afghan Death Squads. Andrew Quilty. The Intercept. 18 December 2020.
The earliest of these Afghan forces, the Khost Protection Force (KPF), has operated since the mid-2000s, and the Kandahar Strike Force (KSF) since at least 2009.
“They’ve Shot Many Like This”: Abusive Night Raids by CIA-Backed Afghan Strike Forces. Patricia Gossman. Human Rights Watch. 19 October 2019.
…the strike force based in Nangarhar Province, which has roughly 1,000 fighters and is known as ‘02.’
C.I.A.’s Afghan Forces Leave a Trail of Abuse and Anger. Mujib Mashal. The New York Times. 31 December 2018.
WHEN DID THEY START AND END?
These death squads began sometime around late 2007 or early 2008. It’s difficult to tell exactly when they stopped given their secretive nature, however, we know that America evacuated members of these Zero units during the 2021 fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Any remaining members would have gone into hiding to escape the wrath of the new Taliban government. Based on available sources, a good guess would be sometime between 2018-2021.
The Zero Units were officially established around 2008, according to Afghan officials and soldiers, and modeled on U.S. special operations forces like the Navy SEALs.
The Night Raids. Lynzy Billing, video by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons. Pro Publica. 15 December 2022.
…UNAMA stated: ‘The Khost Protection Force is a pro-Government paramilitary group that has carried out specialized operations in the southeast of Afghanistan since at least 2007.
The earliest of these Afghan forces, the Khost Protection Force (KPF), has operated since the mid-2000s, and the Kandahar Strike Force (KSF) since at least 2009.
“They’ve Shot Many Like This”: Abusive Night Raids by CIA-Backed Afghan Strike Forces. Patricia Gossman. Human Rights Watch. 19 October 2019.
HOW DID THEY WORK?
That trip was the first time I’d heard of the secretive units, which I’d soon learn were funded, trained, and armed by the CIA to go after targets believed to be a threat to the United States. There was something else: The Afghan soldiers weren’t alone on the raids; U.S. special operations forces soldiers working with the CIA often joined them.
Regionally based and staffed by local soldiers, the units were sometimes accompanied by CIA advisers, transported by American helicopters and aided by armed support aircraft.
The Night Raids. Lynzy Billing, video by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons. Pro Publica. 15 December 2022.
Afghan paramilitary forces nominally belong to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), the country’s primary intelligence agency. However, these forces do not fall under the ordinary chain of command within the NDS, nor under normal Afghan or US military chains of command. They largely have been recruited, trained, equipped, and overseen by the CIA. They often have US special forces personnel deployed alongside them during kill-or-capture operations; these US forces, primarily Army Rangers, have been seconded to the CIA. Afghan paramilitary strike forces generally carry out operations with US logistical support and are dependent on US intelligence and surveillance for targeting.
It [Khost Protection Force] functions outside of the regular military command and control structures, does not exist in the official Government tashkil, and its operations are often not coordinated with local authorities or the National Directorate of Security….
“They’ve Shot Many Like This”: Abusive Night Raids by CIA-Backed Afghan Strike Forces. Patricia Gossman. Human Rights Watch. 19 October 2019.
HOW BAD DID IT GET?
In a subsequent press conference, a U.S. admiral revealed that more than 80% of those captured “terrorists” were released within weeks because there wasn’t supportable evidence that they were insurgents. And the raids seemed counterproductive: as they ramped up, so did the insurgent attacks.
Over breakfast, he casually described how American analysts calculated ‘slants’ for each operation — how many women/children/noncombatants were at risk if the raid went awry. Those forecasts were often wildly off, he acknowledged, yet no one seemed to really care.
My reporting showed that even the raids that did end in the capture or killing of known militants frequently also involved civilian casualties. Far too often, I found the Zero Unit soldiers acted on flawed intelligence and mowed down men, women and children, some as young as 2, who had no discernible connection to terrorist groups.
And the U.S. responsibility for the Zero Unit operations is quietly muddied because of a legal carve-out that allows the CIA — and any U.S. soldiers lent to the agency for the operations — to act without the same oversight as the American military.
As one U.S. Army Ranger ruefully told me after the Taliban’s triumph last year: “You go on night raids, make more enemies, then you gotta go on more night raids for the more enemies you now have to kill.
It was a “classified” war, I’d later discover, with the lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer publicly for operations that went wrong.
Baseer and Hadi looked at me angrily. “The militants were not in the target house,” Baseer said. “They were not even inside the village. They had changed location and started firing on us from behind,” he said. He paused and locked eyes with Hadi.
“I can’t say who killed them, the Americans or us … all of us were shooting,” he said, and there were no Taliban members residing in the compound they targeted. “The intelligence was incorrect. Or the Taliban had better intelligence than us.”
The raid, though it was like so many others, felt like a tipping point. They returned to the base that night with questions and anger. It was the responsibility of their commander to write the after-action report and send it up the chain of command, and they didn’t know if it included the four dead. After the raid, they asked him if anything would be done about those killed, but they said they never got an answer.
Instead, they said, all the soldiers on the raid were required to sign a battle damage assessment, prewritten by their superior, along with a nondisclosure agreement. The assessment, Baseer said, noted no civilian casualties.
“These deaths happened at our hands. I have participated in many raids,” Hadi said, his voice thin and raspy, “and there have been hundreds of raids where someone is killed and they are not Taliban or ISIS, and where no militants are present at all.”
But the grieving families I spoke to in these remote communities were united in their rage at the Americans and the U.S.-backed Kabul government.
I cataloged hundreds of night raids by one of the four Zero Unit squads, which was known in Afghanistan as 02 unit, eventually identifying at least 452 civilians killed in its raids over four years.
The Night Raids. Lynzy Billing, video by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons. Pro Publica. 15 December 2022.
The vast majority of civilian deaths attributed to the Khost Protection Force were caused by intentional shooting, mostly in the context of search operations.
“They’ve Shot Many Like This”: Abusive Night Raids by CIA-Backed Afghan Strike Forces. Patricia Gossman. Human Rights Watch. 19 October 2019.
HOW WAS THIS DISCOVERED?
I crisscrossed hundreds of miles of Nangarhar interviewing survivors, eyewitnesses, doctors and elders in villages seldom, if ever, visited by reporters.
My pursuit would take me from the palatial Kabul home of the former head of Afghanistan’s spy agency to clandestine meetings with two Zero Unit soldiers who were ambivalent about their role in America’s war. It would lead me back to the United States, where I met an Army Ranger in a diner in a bland middle-American city.
I met Muhammad Rehman Shirzad, a 34-year-old forensic pathologist from Nangarhar.
As a government employee, Shirzad had access to official records to verify the identities of those killed. But helping me was a risk. Nevertheless, he was keen to join. “We have to share the truth,” he told me. We began building a database of alleged civilian casualties and hit the road.
The Night Raids. Lynzy Billing, video by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons. Pro Publica. 15 December 2022.
Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report in Afghanistan between November 2017 and August 2019. Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed 39 local residents and other witnesses to night raids in Ghazni, Helmand, Kabul, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Uruzgan, Wardak, and Zabul provinces. We identified incidents on the basis of reports from local media and Afghan NGOs tracking civilian casualties. We also interviewed staff at Afghan human rights groups who have documented these raids, and NGO officials whose Afghan staff have been caught up in raids. Most interviews were conducted in Dari and Pashto. Some of the interviews were conducted by telephone.
Human Rights Watch also interviewed staff members of Afghanistan-based NGOs and international humanitarian organizations, representatives from the United Nations, journalists, and military analysts familiar with Afghanistan’s security institutions and oversight of special forces operations.
In August 2019, Human Rights Watch asked the Afghan government and US military for information, including any investigations into the incidents documented in this report, and for their comments. Responses from the US Forces-Afghanistan and Resolute Support and from the CIA are included in appendices to this report.
“They’ve Shot Many Like This”: Abusive Night Raids by CIA-Backed Afghan Strike Forces. Patricia Gossman. Human Rights Watch. 19 October 2019.
ADDITIONAL MEDIA
FINAL THOUGHTS
So much violence and bloodshed over so many years. For what? A 20-year war that ended in abysmal failure as a new government made up of Islamofascists armed with America's help rose to power. This and many other facts about America’s actions in Afghanistan are hard to stomach as an American citizen. I am not hopeful for Afghanistan’s future. Thanks for reading.