New reports from Insider and Der Spiegel add considerable detail to prior reporting by the New York Times that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, spent tens of millions of dollars funding terrorist groups in Afghanistan to target U.S. and NATO forces.
The scheme, as summarized by Insider, involved a gemstone trading company that operated “as a front to run a network of Afghan couriers who delivered money to Taliban fighters and other militant groups.”
Former Afghan and U.S. intelligence officials told Insider that the program evolved over time, starting with the recruitment of assets in Afghanistan, followed by “weapons and ammunition flows to the Taliban via neighboring Tajikistan” and then “[f]inally, it led to money transfers to incentivize insurgent attacks on the occupying army.”
Insider’s sources, formerly employed by the erstwhile Afghan Republic’s intelligence agency, NDS, said that on average, payment for a killed American or coalition solider amounted to $200,000.
The program, run by the GRU’s notorious Unit 29155 – which has been linked to a series of bombings in NATO countries, as well as the infamous Skripal poisoning incident – featured at least three networks in Afghanistan. According to Insider, “The most prolific network, operating in northern Afghanistan from a base in Kunduz, was headed by Rahmatullah Azizi, a longtime smuggler whose recruits included his own family members. They acted as couriers between Unit 29155 and the Taliban.”
Later in the report, Insider stated that “Unit 29155 maintains a forward operating presence at Russia’s 201st Military Base in Dushanbe.”
The Insider report is worth reading in full, but I want to focus on the Central Asian connection that arguably contributed to this northernmost network’s prominence.
Russia’s 201st Military Base in Tajikistan is one of its most significant foreign bases, with an estimated 7,000 troops – although that figure is an estimate and invariably impacted by reported redeployments to Ukraine. Actually made up of three installations, the former Soviet base remained under Russian control after the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the Tajik Civil War. Moscow’s military presence in Tajikistan, previously set to expire in 2014, was extended to 2042 in 2013.
That a GRU unit is operating out of the base is unsurprising.
Among the individuals exposed by the Insider report is a senior Unit 29155 member, Col. Alexey Arkhipov, who the report stated “not only ran the Azizi courier network but also remained intimately involved with GRU’s intelligence operations in postwar Afghanistan.” Leaked emails and other documents attest to his ongoing collaboration with the Taliban, now in power in Kabul. In one hand-written memo, the Taliban appear to ask Russia not to allow “the activity of enemies of the new Islamic rule from the territory of Tajikistan” – a reference to former Afghan government officials who fled to Tajikistan following the collapse of the Republic in August 2021.
“Arkhipov’s emails confirm that the Kremlin is indeed considering requests from the Taliban to assist with concessions in relation to Tajikistan, including access to territories allegedly providing safe haven to opponents of the new Islamist regime,” Insider reported.
When it comes to Afghanistan, Tajikistan exists in a liminal political space, positioned at the threshold – and Dushanbe has sought to benefit from that position. Throughout the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Tajikistan benefited from funding and equipment transfers with border security in mind, and yet the border never seemed to become more secure. According to the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan, “Since 1992, the United States has provided over $330 million in security sector assistance to Tajikistan.” A November 2021 fact sheet from the embassy stated that “[l]ast year alone, U.S. security assistance to Tajikistan totaled $11.4 million, making the United States one of Tajikistan’s top donors.”
At the same time, as alleged in the Insider report, Russian agents and their Afghan assets were smuggling weapons across the Afghan-Tajik border and using Tajikistan as a waystation for funds, transferred from Russia to Tajikistan (as well as China and Pakistan) and then on to Afghanistan using the Islamic hawala system of informal money transfers.
For Russia, the objective wasn’t just giving the United States a bloody nose in Afghanistan – that was a means to an end. Douglas London, the CIA’s chief for counterterrorism in South and Southwest Asia from 2016 to 2018 was the only CIA source who spoke to Insider on the record, and he pointed to the wider aim (emphasis added):
In a series of interviews with The Insider, London characterized what the GRU was doing as a “strategic incentives program” aimed at refocusing the Taliban’s guerrilla terrorism against Americans. The overriding objective, he said, was to erase the United States’ military and intelligence footprints in Central Asia, a region Russia considers to be within its own sphere of influence. This meant driving U.S. and NATO troops out of Afghanistan. The program developed gradually, but ultimately expanded into proxy warfare as Putin became increasingly hostile to Washington over the last decade.
