No, our guys (or mimics) would stick out like sore thumb, immediately..(immediately!).....in this region of the world. Only getting fellow Pashtuns to rat out on their own...(and extremely difficult task)..That is the only way to go.....And AQ has made weekly beheadings of plenty routine....in order to try and stop such...
Quick snatch and grab Ops are the key.....Small hunter killer teams....Along with employing some big balled, Pashtuns or Uzbeks with their own personal axes to grind......But HQs have to be willing to take more risks.....That is the bottom line.
Obviously dropping some 6 footers from Nebraska or Kentucky would stick out, but according to a bunch of websites, thre’s a rather large Pashtun diaspora(100K in the UK, less in the US but still sizeable, tens of thousands in France and Germany, millions in India and Afghanistan, etc...) I’m talking about running agents not sending in our own guys.
I find it hard to believe that with all of them and the networks of CIA, MI6, Karzai’s people and Afghan intel, BVT in Germany, French DST, etc... we’re unable to find people who know the language, look the part, and would be able to blend in and if not get close enough to UBL, Zawahiri or other top guys to take them out, would at least be able blend in enough and get close enough to hear things, pick up information that should be of major help.
I mean is it really that hard to gather up a few hundred out of more than 200,000 in the US, UK, France and Germany alone, not to mention the millions in India and Afghanistan, send them out to the Farm or wherever to train and put a few of em in the ring and see what happens.
We did it with people in Tibet and the Himalayas against the PRC, we worked with the Hmong and Montagnards and others in Laos, etc...
Now maybe all that is going on and we don’t hear about it.
But I’d have to think that it’s at least worth trying.
Sorry DevSix, but I tend to agree with jeltz25 here - there is no substitute for developing your own human intelligence - and in 99.9 percent of situations like this we run the risk of having our informers turn on us.
If getting Pakis, Pashtuns and Uzbeks to rat on their own was the way to go then we would have captured all of Al Qaeda by now and they would not be able to use it as a safe haven. But here we are six years later and still nothing.... meanwhile individuals like John Walker Lindh, Adam Gadhan, and others are able to infiltrate the innermost circles of Al Qaeda.
Sorry but there is no substitute for getting your own hands dirty and the US has by nature avoided doing what is necessary under the circumstances to achieve victory.
Sorry, but I'm a firm believer that outsourced intelligence is as good as no intelligence.