Trump Likely did Throw US Troops in Afghanistan under the Bus, but Why would
the Russians have Targeted Them?
JUAN COLE
06/28/2020
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Charlie Savage; Eric Schmitt and Michael
Schwirtz at the New York Times broke the blockbuster story on Friday that
GRU 29155, a violent unit of Russian military intelligence accused of
poisoning a double agent in Britain in 2018, had offered militants and
criminals a bounty if they killed coalition forces (US, British and other
NATO troops) in Afghanistan. Only 4 US personnel have been killed in
Afghanistan this year, all before a February agreement with the Taliban, but
in 2019 some 20 were killed.
Moreover, the NYT said its sources in US intelligence alleged that Trump was
briefed on this intelligence in March and that a menu of options was
presented to him, from lodging a diplomatic complaint to specific sanctions
(presumably in GRU commanders).
The intelligence was gleaned by the US military and the CIA from
interrogations of captured criminals and militants in Afghanistan. There
were indications that some bounties had been paid, which means that the GRU
had US troops killed.
Nick Paton Walsh, Veronica Stracqualursi and Radina Gigova CNN report that
Director of National Security John Ratcliffe, a strong Trump supporter who
is a political appointee rather than an intelligence professional, denied
the report that Trump was briefed on the GRU instigation.
I'll say right away that I don't find Ratcliffe's denial plausible. If the
intelligence were gathered, it would have been briefed to the president.
Both Russia and the Taliban are denying the story.
In Washington, a leak like this makes you ask questions. Who leaked the
information and why? Then, US intelligence has had major failures, such as
the supposed biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq in 2003, and you wonder
how solid this information tortured out of criminals and militants is.
Also, in intelligence work there is always a problem of false flag
tradecraft. Anyone could pretend to be GRU as a cover for such an operation.
It worries me that the intelligence seems to be from the ground up, rather
than the result of a penetration of the GRU itself.
Another question is why the GRU would have done this.
You could see a program to increase US troop casualties as an attempt to
demoralize Washington and speed the US departure from Afghanistan.
The problems with that theory are many. First, there isn't a need to give
Trump a reason to leave. Trump has long wanted to withdraw all US troops
from that country. He believes that the white working class resents spending
blood and treasure there after all these years. He thinks he can run on
getting out of Afghanistan as an accomplishment. High US government
officials are trying to convince Trump to leave at least 1,500 US troops in
country to gather intelligence. He seems to want zero troops there.
Second, it isn't clear that Russia wants the US out of Afghanistan. In fact,
when President Obama was preparing to pull out early in his second term,
Russian president Vladimir Putin pleaded with him not to do it.
Things could have changed, since the US pushed back against the Russian
annexation of Crimea and since Russia came to be at loggerheads with
fundamentalist US proxies in Syria and Libya.
But the place to start would be with what Russian observers actually say
about Afghanistan. And I fear that almost no one in the newspapers of record
will ask this question. So let me take a stab at it here:
Russian analysts and media are deeply afraid of the Taliban and of the small
ISIL cells in Afghanistan.
BBC Monitoring for May 15 said that on 7 May, Aleksey Bychkov, a Russian
political scientist, warned on Sputnik's Uzbek service that ISIL, having
been defeated in the Middle East, could well head to Central Asia. He saw
Tajikistan as especially vulnerable, given the "Islamization" of its
population in recent years. He urged Uzbekistan to reinforce its border
against Tajikistan.
BBC Monitoring for May 20 reported that the Kyrgyz Sputnik service carried
an analysis by pundit Aleksandr Khrolenko warning that Trump's peace plan
with the Taliban was foredoomed to failure and that a wave of fundamentalist
Muslim terrorism could wash over nearby or neighboring Central Asian
countries from there, such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. A
cross-country regional "Islamic emirate" might try to establish itself in
the region he said. He seems to have been making an analogy to the ISIL
emirate in Iraq and Syria.
BBC Monitoring for May 21 reported that Tass was carrying the news that the
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had broken up a heroin smuggling ring
based in Afghanistan, seizing 48 kgs of product. Putin is desperately afraid
that Afghan heroin will turn Russian youth into zombies and sap national
strength. It was one of the reasons he had wanted Obama to stay in
Afghanistan, to block the drug trade.
On June 15, BBC Monitoring reported that Sputnik's Uzbek service warned that
the US-Taliban peace deal had failed and that the failure would create a
crisis in the region. It spoke of a "farcical fraternization" of the US
military with the Taliban. It expected that radical fighters would come out
of Afghanistan into the Central Asian republics. In contrast, Russia had
contributed mightily to Central Asian security, it said. In preparation for
the coming meltdown of security, Russia, it said, is lending aid to
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan to reinforce their border
security. It urged, in light of the instability in Afghanistan, that
Uzbekistan and the others come into a closer relationship with the
Russian-lead Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).
Given the Russian line on the dangers of a flimsy US-Taliban peace deal that
would leave Afghanistan and Central Asia (Russia's soft underbelly)
vulnerable to renewed Muslim fundamentalist militancy, you might argue that
if the GRU did want US troops killed by criminals and terrorists, it was to
get American officials' backs up and change their minds about leaving the
country precipitously.
The problem is that not enough troops were killed to produce that or any
other reaction. Most Americans barely know we are fighting a war in
Afghanistan.
Some have suggested that the move was just a petty lower-level GRU
tit-for-tat for the US killing of Russian mercenaries in Syria. But then why
not target US troops in Syria, who are small in number and quite vulnerable?
Seems like a long way to go around, and not a good way to send a message.
So I have to say that the entire scenario is baffling. The most plausible
thing in the story is that Trump would have been told that the Russians had
harmed US troops, and that Trump should have ignored it and gone on pursuing
his creepy friendship with Vladimir Putin.
And, yes, you could imagine US military and intelligence analysts seeing
that happen and being so frustrated that they risked their careers and
possibly their freedom in order to blow the whistle.
