While the United States is currently engaged in just one outright proxy war, backing a multi-nation African force to battle Islamist militants in Somalia, it’s laying the groundwork for the extensive use of surrogate forces in the future, training “native” troops to carry out missions - up to and including outright warfare. With this in mind and under the auspices of the Pentagon and the State Department, US military personnel now take part in near-constant joint exercises and training missions around the world aimed at fostering alliances, building coalitions and whipping surrogate forces into shape to support US national security objectives…

One track of the US plan has been a little-talked-about proxy army run by the CIA. For years, the Agency has trained and employed six clandestine militias that operate near the cities of Kandahar, Kabul and Jalalabad as well as in Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces. Working with US Special Forces and controlled by Americans, these “Counter-terror Pursuit Teams” evidently operate free of any Afghan governmental supervision and have reportedly carried out cross-border raids into Pakistan, offering their American patrons a classic benefit of proxy warfare: plausible deniability.