Worried that Afghan Commandos Are Recruited by Russia, Retired CIA: Skilled and Fierce, I Don't Want to Meet Them on the Battlefield

JAKARTA - The former US intelligence agency official in Afghanistan is concerned about Russia's plans to recruit Washington-trained Afghan commandos to join the Ukraine war, recognizing the capabilities and skills of these troops, and so does not want to face them on the battlefield.

An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Afghan special forces fought with the United States during the two-decade war, and only a few hundred senior officers were flown out of the country when the US military withdrew from Afghanistan.

"We didn't get these people out as we promised, and now they're coming home to fight", said Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer who served in Afghanistan, as quoted by Arab News from The Associated Press on November 2.

Mulroy further said Afghan commandos are highly skilled and ferocious fighters.

"I don't want to meet them on any battlefield, frankly, but certainly not against Ukraine", he said of concerns about facing Afghan commandos.

However, Mulroy is skeptical that Russia will be able to persuade many Afghan commandos to join because he knows they want to make democracy in their own country more than a weapon for hire.

As previously reported, Russia wants to attract thousands of former elite Afghan commandos into the "foreign legion".

They were offered a salary of $1,500 per month, up to the promise of a haven for themselves and their families, thus avoiding being deported home to what many assumed would be death at the hands of the Taliban.

"They don't want to go to war, but they have no choice", said one of the Afghan generals Abdul Raof Arghandiwal, adding that the dozen or so commandos in Iran had sent the message most fearing deportation.

"They asked me, 'Give me a solution. What should we do? If we go back to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill us,'" he said.

.

US veterans who fought with Afghan special forces have described to the AP nearly a dozen cases, none independently confirmed, of the Taliban going door to door searching for commandos still in the country, torturing or killing them, or doing the same. to family members, if they cannot be found.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch said more than 100 former Afghan soldiers, intelligence officers, and police officers were killed or forcibly 'disappeared', just three months after the Taliban took over despite promises of amnesty in August 2021.

The United Nations in a report in mid-October documented 160 extrajudicial killings and 178 arrests of former government and military officials.

A GOP congressional report in August specifically warned of the danger Afghan commandos, trained by US Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, could pass the information on US tactics to ISIS, Iran, or Russia, or fight for them.

Separately, Russia's Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Yevgeny Prigozhin, who recently acknowledged being the founder of the Wagner Group, dismissed the idea of continuing efforts to recruit ex-Afghan soldiers as "crazy bullshit."

The US Department of Defense also did not respond to requests for comment, but a senior official said the recruits were not surprising, given Wagner has tried to enlist soldiers in several other countries.