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whatsoever. The lack of evidence is not “gaps,” as the NYT wrote, but “total absence of evidence” in what has been a high-profile and politically incendiary report.
Follow up failure
Russia watchers have been sceptical about the bounty hunters report
from the start, which was based on
a single set of anonymous quotes from intelligence agents, but offered no concrete evidence whatsoever.
While no one disputes that GRU agencies are operating in Afghanistan, or that it is more than likely they
are offering money to fighters, it is the specificity of the payments for “bounties” that raises questions. While it remains possible that bounty payments were made by GRU officers, there are several other, more plausible explanations.
In the absence of any evidence of payments as bounty – which the CIA has now admitted it does not have – those concerns seem to be borne out.
“What to make of the current claims that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill US and allied soldiers in Afghanistan? Both Moscow and the Taliban deny it, while claims of new evidence surface.
It is still hard to understand any reason for the Kremlin to take such a dangerous step, though – and a possible alternative explanation for what evidence has been presented,” respected Russia security services expert Mark Galeotti said in an opinion piece for the Moscow Times.
Briefly, Russia has its own interest in Afghanistan and is afraid of the spread of both drugs and extreme Islamic terrorism from the country into its soft underbelly, via Central Asia. The GRU are active in the country and keen to foment good relations and to bring about a peace.
“These hard-nosed Afghan warlords do not co-operate with Moscow out of altruism or good-neighbourliness. In today’s Afghanistan – just as the British and the Russians found during the “Great Game” of the nineteenth century – alliances
are bought with blood, arms and cash. Certainly, the US has not shied away from such pragmatic behaviour,” Galeotti said.
Most of the reporting that followed the NYT article was simply parroting the NYT piece and produced no new sources.
The Kremlin vehemently denies the story. “Maybe I can sound a little rude, but this is 100% bullsh*t,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said after the story broke. “As far as I’m concerned, none of America’s representatives has ever raised this question against Russian representatives.”
More tellingly, the Taliban officially denied the reports, saying that to accept bounty payments would encroach on Afghanistan’s sovereignty.
"Our target killings and assassinations were ongoing in years before, and we did it on our own resources," Zabihullah Mujahid told the NYT. He added that the Taliban had stopped attacking US and NATO forces after they agreed in February to a phased troop withdrawal and to lift sanctions. In return, the Taliban said they would not allow extremist groups to operate in areas they control.
One of the few pieces that attempted
a follow up to confirm the NYT was
a poorly sourced report by Business Insider. The publication has no reporters on the ground and used an unidentified “trusted intermediary” who spoke to three Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, who purportedly confirmed the story.
However, the Afghani sources admitted that those that took money were not Taliban but “less-disciplined elements on the fringes of the group” and this was not official Taliban policy. Moreover,
the most vocal of the three sources,
a refugee who has been in Greece since 2016, admitted that he had never been offered money, but the practice was “well known” – in other words hearsay.
The unofficial nature of payments, if any, was confirmed by Business Insider
in a statement from Moulani Baghdadi, a current Taliban commander from Ghazni Province, who said Russian influence inside the Taliban itself was impossible but that there were many affiliated groups that have maintained ties with Russia.
"These are criminal groups that work alongside the Mujahideen and give us a bad reputation with many people because they sell drugs and commit crimes and work with [foreigners]."
What emerges from these reports is that it seems likely that GRU has maintained a network of contacts inside the country since the time of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and is still active in the country. Moreover, it appears to pay money and support fringe groups, but how and for what purpose is not specified. At the same time, it appears the GRU is not formally supporting or funding the Taliban
itself, but none of the evidence for any conclusions is concrete or clear, least of all that the GRU offered to pay bounties for the death of US soldiers.
Observers have also speculated the story was planted in the NYT by intelligence agents for domestic political reasons. US President Donald Trump has been pushing to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, but a motion to begin the process was defeated in the first week of June.
The US has been fighting in Afghanistan for 19 years – the US longest ever war – but House democrats, working together with key pro-war GOP lawmakers, including Liz Cheney, the daughter for former hawkish Secretary of State Dick Cheney, managed to kill the proposal.
The House Armed Services Committee voted on July 1 overwhelmingly in favour of an amendment – jointly sponsored by Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado and Congresswoman Cheney of Wyoming – prohibiting the reduction in the number of US troops deployed in Afghanistan below 8,000 without
a series of conditions first being met, which effectively kills off Trump’s withdrawal plans.
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