Secretly, CIA Successfully Evacuates Unit Zero, Langley's Afghan Paramilitary From Kabul

Evacuation from Kabul airport, Afghanistan. (Twitter/@DeptofDefense)

JAKARTA - Without attracting attention, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) managed to evacuate members of Unit Zero, a shadowy Afghan paramilitary force sponsored and controlled by the CIA.

They were given priority for evacuation to the United States when more than 122,000 people were flown out of Afghanistan in the second half of August after Kabul fell to the Taliban, a former senior US and Afghan intelligence official and former Afghan commando with knowledge of this told The Intercept, as quoted by Sputnik News, October 8th.

As many as 7,000 former commanders and their family members are believed to have been flown out of Afghanistan.

"Most of them were first taken to US military bases in Qatar, and then flown to bases in Virginia and New Jersey, Ramstein Air in Germany and the United Arab Emirates before obtaining permanent residency permits", the source said.

Evacuation at Kabul airport, Afghanistan. (Wikimedia Commons/US Air Force/MSgt. Donald R. Allen)

Collectively known as the 'National Assault Unit', the commando unit Zero assisted US forces in guarding Hamid Karzai International Airport or Kabul airport in the last two weeks of evacuation operations from Kabul.

Only, they are said to use this to ask for money for those who want to pass through the airport gates to get an evacuation opportunity.

Al Jazeera reported one such incident, in which an interpreter was beaten by commandos, and told that she, her husband, and their three children would not be allowed through the gates unless she paid them $5,000 for herself and each member of her family. The woman was rejected, unable to pay the bribe.

Unit Zero troops are said to have been given priority over the command of the Afghan National Army's elite special forces. Two former special forces members said no formal effort was made to evacuate them and their families, leaving them to hide and fend for themselves when Taliban forces began hunting down former government officials and military personnel. At least four of the former commanders are feared to have been tracked down and killed, according to sources in The Intercept.

US soldiers stand guard at one of the gates of Kabul airport, Afghanistan. (Twitter/@DeptofDefense 12)

The CIA, headquartered in Langley, Virginia, United States, is thought to have had significant influence in the evacuation of Kabul, with a report in the Washington Post last week estimating that up to about 20,000 Afghans working with the agency and family members managed to board evacuation flights. which constitutes nearly a third of the 60,000 or so Afghans taken over by the United States as a whole.

In their operations, often alongside CIA agents or US special forces, Zero Unit forces have earned a reputation for extreme brutality against non-combatants, with Human Rights Watch and other rights groups accusing them of a range of abuses and outright war crimes. Including the execution of civilian adults and children during night raids.

Created as a guerrilla-style paramilitary force, Unit Zero was originally envisioned by the CIA in part as a means of countering Taliban fighters traveling back and forth between the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The force allowed the US to send units on cross-border strikes, something US personnel could not risk due to Washington's official good relations with Islamabad.

The command is also used to carry out missions that might tarnish the reputation of the US, with the use of the Zero fighter unit which Washington says allows reasonable denial of the fighters engaging in illegal activities or war crimes. The force was incorporated into a joint program between the CIA and the Afghan National Directorate of Security in 2010, with the US funding the unit's operations.

Illustration of CIA gallery in Afghanistan. (Wikimedia Commons/The Central Intelligence Agency)

In 2019, former Afghan National Security Adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, confirmed the forces were controlled by the CIA and said he was not fully aware of how they operated. In January 2021, President Joe Biden's administration reportedly indicated that it would cease funding and cooperation with the Zero unit force within a year.

Late last year, an in-depth investigation of Unit Zero's activities in one area found they were said to have killed more than 50 civilians, including women and children, in a series of attacks in Wardak Province.

In a 2019 report, civil society activists and other sources told Human Rights Watch about “systemic human rights violations” involving CIA-backed paramilitaries, police, and other security forces including torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings.

To note, Thursday, October 7 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Beginning after the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, DC under the pretext of the need to eliminate suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan soon became a nation-building mission.

Brown University's 'Coast of War' project estimates the war cost US taxpayers more than US$2.2 trillion (or about US$300 million per day for nearly 20 years).

Meanwhile, around 100,000 Afghan civilians, 70,500+ Afghan security force personnel, tens of thousands of Taliban fighters, more than 3,500 US and coalition troops, and 4,000+ western mercenaries died in the conflict.