RUSSIANS OFFERED TALIBAN A ‘BOUNTY’ TO KILL US TROOPS
Outrage mounts over report Kremlin offered cash to Afghan militants for killings, writes Ellen Nakashima in Washington DC
ARUSSIAN military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including US and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin’s hostility toward the United States, American intelligence has found.
The Russian operation, first reported by the New York Times, has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic by Russia — a nation that most US officials regard as a potential foe but that Donald Trump has frequently embraced as a friend, said officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The officials said administration leaders learned of reported bounties in recent months from US intelligence agencies, prompting a series of internal discussions including a large interagency meeting that was held in late March.
According to one person familiar with the matter, the responses discussed at that meeting included sending a diplomatic communication to relay disapproval and authorising new sanctions.
Russian involvement in operations targeting Americans, if confirmed, is likely to lead to outrage on Capitol Hill and questions about why the Trump administration has not responded to it.
Spokesmen for the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the CIA declined to comment.
It was not immediately clear whether the militants approached by Russia as part of the initiative had succeeded in killing US or British soldiers.
News of the murky initiative comes as American diplomats attempt to kindle political talks that could put an end to America’s longest war — now in its 19th year.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration struck an initial peace deal with the Taliban.
The agreement, which outlined the full withdrawal of the US military within 14 months, was supposed to lead to a prompt start to talks between militant representatives and the Afghan government. But the Afghan parties have failed to reach agreement on interim steps — and with the coronavirus crisis taking hold in Afghanistan, those talks have yet to materialise.
Hanging over the process is Trump’s frequently stated desire to remove US forces from the country, where local forces have been unable to secure an edge over the Taliban — despite two decades of foreign funding and advising.
The attempt to stoke violence against Americans, if confirmed, would also represent a significant departure from Moscow’s earlier position toward Islamist militants in Afghanistan. Previously, US officials had cited what they characterised as sporadic, low-level Russian support for the Taliban — including the supply of small arms via Afghanistan’s northern neighbours.
After the Soviet Union’s own insurgent war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Moscow remained largely in the background in the years after US and Nato forces entered the country in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. But as America’s anxiousness to depart has fuelled greater uncertainty, Russia has appeared to attempt to wield greater influence.During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which ended in 1989, the US government provided weapons and funds to
Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet forces.
While Moscow’s motives for offering alleged bounties were not immediately clear, officials said they might include retaliation for the US military’s 2018 killing of Russian mercenary troops working for Yevgeniy Prigozhin (an oligarch with links to Russian leader Vladimir Putin) in Syria. Alternately, as one official put it, it could simply be an attempt to “muddy the negotiations on Afghanistan by throwing a stick in that”.
The unit that officials identified as responsible for allegedly offering the bounties has also been linked to the poisoning and attempted murder of former Russian military spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018. While that attack — along with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its role in the war in Syria
— has generated strong criticism in Europe and from many of Trump’s most senior advisers, the US president himself has frequently appeared to have a chummy relationship with Putin, downplaying Russian interference in the 2016 US election and other Russian transgressions.
Russia is one of a number of issues on which Trump’s instincts have appeared to differ from those of his senior advisers. The US has imposed sanctions on Russia over a number of issues, including its invasion of Ukraine, cyber attacks, and election meddling, while the Pentagon has identified Russia as second only to China in terms of its “great power” rivals.
Military officials this month spoke out in unusually harsh terms over what they said was Russia’s decision to provide fourthgeneration jet fighters to a rogue general in Libya, adding to a spiralling proxy conflict there.
News of the cloaked operation comes as the Pentagon confirms that it has completed an initial drawdown of American forces to about 8,600 service members from Afghanistan, a first step toward a full withdrawal.
Officials have said the full withdrawal remains “conditions-based”, suggesting they will seek to keep a sizable force there if the Taliban does not make a political deal with the Afghanistan government.
While Taliban forces have halted attacks against US forces as part of that deal, the militants have continued to assault Afghan troops, making for what one senior Afghan official described last week as the most deadly conditions in 19 years.