KABUL, Nov 1 (AFP) - Afghan special forces soldiers who fought alongside American troops and then fled to Iran after the United States’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year are now being recruited by the Russian military to fight in Ukraine, the Associated Press news agency has reported.
Three former Afghan generals told the AP the Russians want to attract thousands of the former elite Afghan commandos into a “foreign legion” offering a steady, $1,500-a-month salary and promising a safe haven for themselves and their families so they can avoid deportation home to what many assume would be death at the hands of the Taliban.
“They don’t want to go fight — but they have no choice,” said one of the generals, Abdul Raof Arghandiwal, adding that the dozen or so commandos in Iran with whom he has texted fear deportation most.
“They ask me, ‘Give me a solution? What should we do? If we go back to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill us.’”
Arghandiwal said the recruiting is led by the Russian mercenary force Wagner Group.
Another general, Hibatullah Alizai, the last Afghan army chief before the Taliban took over, said the effort is also being helped by a former Afghan special forces commander who lived in Russia and speaks the language.
The Russian recruitment follows months of warnings from US soldiers who fought with Afghan special forces that the Taliban was intent on killing them and that they might join with US enemies to stay alive or out of anger with their former ally.
A Republican Party congressional report in August specifically warned of the danger that the Afghan commandos — trained by US Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets — could end up giving information about US tactics to the Islamic State group, Iran or Russia, or fight for them.
“We didn’t get these individuals out as we promised, and now it’s coming home to roost,” said Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer who served in Afghanistan, adding that the Afghan commandos are highly-skilled, fierce fighters. “I don’t want to see them in any battlefield, frankly, but certainly not fighting the Ukrainians.”
Mulroy was sceptical, however, that Russians would be able to persuade many Afghan commandos to join them because most he knew were driven by the desire to make democracy work in their country rather than being guns for hire.
The recruitment comes as Russian forces reel from Ukrainian military advances and Russian President Vladimir Putin pursues a sputtering mobilisation effort, which has prompted hundreds of thousands of Russian men to flee the country to escape service.
