Mitchell Thompson describes one of the experiences of the Afghan War that he hopes will produce some positive lessons for improvement in Breaking the Proconsulate: A New Design for National Power Parameters (US Army War College) Winter 2005-6:
Interagency cooperation in Afghanistan was less impressive. The CIA was virtually an independent actor, and often did not bother to coordinate its operations with military forces in the field, causing great confusion among both the US military and Afghanis. Numerous smaller agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control, actually had personnel on the ground in Afghanistan with no means of communication with the US military. USAID personnel could not effectively perform their missions outside of Kabul, as they fell under State Department responsibility but the department had no means of safeguarding them. The Combined Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC), which obviously did have those means, did not have any organizational responsibility for such a mission. Non-DOD agency interest, and their perceived benefits, in coordination with CENTCOM quickly waned in the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban regime. This assessment of diminishing returns appears to have been mutual; USAID officials stated that access to the senior CENTCOM staff decreased markedly. In the absence of any legislative or National Security Council-imposed interagency guidelines, both the State Department and USAID withdrew their representatives from CENTCOM in early 2002.
If the war in Afghanistan was characterized by a regression in interagency coordination, Operation Iraqi Freedom represented a headlong retreat. (my emphasis)
Presumably Thompson here is referring to the early months (2001-2) of the Afghan War, which of course is still going on.
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