Pumping the Brakes on Reports of Afghan Commandos Joining Putin's War
There are multiple reports now that Russia and Iran are trying to recruit former Afghan special forces to join Putin’s campaign of war crimes in Ukraine. This is concerning on multiple levels, but I think we all need to slow down and look at the facts before jumping to conclusions.
The first report I saw came from Foreign Policy, and it included this line in the lead:
Multiple Afghan military and security sources say the U.S.-trained light infantry force, which fought alongside U.S. and other allied special forces for almost 20 years, could make the difference Russia needs on the Ukrainian battlefield.
That set off alarm bells, but not for the reason you might think. The statement is clear — if Russia manages to woo significant numbers of the 30,000 or so Afghan commandos the United States trained to fight the Taliban and terrorists, those Afghans could turn the tide and lead to a Russian victory in Ukraine.
Imagine that. The allies that the United States invested billions to train and equip and then left behind when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, joining forces with the nation that invaded and devastated Afghanistan in the 1980s in the present-day fight against a U.S. ally.
It’s yet another indictment of how the Biden administration handled the withdrawal, leaving the best of the U.S. partner forces in Afghanistan to flee to Iran, Pakistan, central Asia, and other places to avoid Taliban retribution. The Afghan special forces were partners, allies, brothers to the U.S. forces (and CIA officers in the case of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Intelligence forces) who trained them. Many of the Afghan commandos were hardcore fighters who routinely put their lives on the line for their country.
Afghan commandos were so much better than the regular Afghan army and police that they were routinely deployed to bail out conventional forces and man checkpoints. It was a gross misuse of the elite forces the Lead Inspector General reports I used to write and edit called out on a regular basis. It was a symptom of how feeble the broader Afghan security forces were and a sign that the country could not hold its own against the Taliban.
Veterans who served with and trained Afghan commandos are understandably outraged that the Afghan forces were left to fend for themselves, and even more furious over the notion that the Afghans could use their U.S. training and tactics to turn the tide in Ukraine.
Retired Green Beret LTC Scott Mann spoke to The War Zone about this.
“The United States government should actively move to evacuate this vulnerable at-risk population away from this kind of nefarious mobilization,” he told The War Zone. “What a national embarrassment if even one Afghan commando shows up on the battlefield in Ukraine representing Russia as well as an even deeper blow to the U.S. veteran community who trained and fought alongside them.”
I completely understand the anger and frustration. The plight of the Afghan commandos (and Afghans more broadly) is a shame, and more should be done to help them. Therefore, I’m not surprised that there is now reporting claiming the commandos are going to help Putin win. But I think the sources in the reports are fear mongering to generate action to help the Afghans.
Let’s look at the facts.
I do not doubt at all the statements from former Afghan military commanders and U.S. veterans that Russia and Iran are aggressively trying to recruit Afghan commandos. Thousands are residing in Iran, and reporting indicates Iran is telling them that their visas will not be renewed if they do not go and fight. Iran used similar tactics by sending Afghan refugees to fight for the regime in Syria.
Afghan commandos are barely getting by in places like Iran. Again, reports indicate many are unemployed and can’t feed their families. Hence, an offer of $1,500, a visa, and a job upon return to Iran would certainly seem enticing.
So, there is no doubt Russia is working aggressively to recruit Afghans to fight in Ukraine — sources have provided reporters with text messages and flyers from alleged recruiters. The next question is, are any Afghans taking the offer?
This is where the reporting gets fuzzy. There are indications some are signing up and going to training facilities in Iran, but no clear indication that any are on the ground in Ukraine.
Even so, how many would likely join the fight? We’re talking a rough number of 30,000 Afghans who were members of the various elite units as of 2021. Certainly, some of them were able to flee and find safe refuge elsewhere and have no need to go fight for anyone. Some are still in Afghanistan in hiding or have joined the ranks of resistance movements in Afghanistan that are hoping to take down the Taliban.
There is no way to know how many former commandos are in the pool of potential recruits, but it is certainly not 30,000.
Then, the question is how many are desperate enough that they would be willing to join the military of a nation that if they didn’t fight it themselves, their fathers most likely did? How many are willing to give their lives for a cause that they have no stake in other than money?
An anonymous Afghan quoted by Foreign Policy claimed that 10,000 former commandos would be willing to join Putin. I think that’s an entirely made-up number. Here’s an open secret about things like this — Afghan officials routinely fudged numbers to bolster arguments (to be fair, U.S. politicians make things up all the time, but I found Afghans had a certain flair for selling suspect data).
When I was in Afghanistan, it was common to hear a district or provincial governor make claims about the number of Taliban or al-Qaeda in their area to get Kabul to send them more resources. It was the same for students enrolled in schools — local officials would state numbers without a shred of evidence to back them up to justify budget requests.
Other officials “improvised” data about the number of foreign fighters in the country, the economy, crime, and other things that are technically quantifiable, but extremely difficult to count in a place like Afghanistan with a large rural population, the ongoing violence at the time, and low levels of education and infrastructure.
Journalists, myself included, often took Afghan statements at face value because they came from officials and they “sounded good.” I have memories of interviewing officials about things like the economic impact of the protracted 2014 presidential election. Officials would say things like “the economy is down 60 percent because of the uncertainty,” and I would run off and report that.
There was no evidence or data to support it. The official was winging it for dramatic effect, and I was complicit in his messaging efforts — as were the rest of the journalists in Kabul.
When I worked for the Defense Department Office of Inspector General and was regularly reading classified information, I saw how difficult it was to collect accurate data about just about anything in Afghanistan. A lot of data came from Afghan government and military sources, and Pentagon and State Department officials would say they could not verify the data. Often, they ignored raw numbers and focused on changes over time as that was the only useful metric that had a degree of reliability.
The point is, it doesn’t surprise me that a former Afghan security official who has an agenda — attracting international attention to the plight of former commandos — claims 10,000 Afghans could be recruited by Putin. But I don’t trust that number, and if I were reporting the story, I would add a line indicating that said official could not provide data to support that estimate.
Sure, as in any society, there are probably Afghans who enjoy the thrill of battle and will happily join a fight for the right price, just like U.S., U.K., Russian, or other mercenaries. But in my time in Afghanistan, I didn’t see a lot of that attitude. I saw a lot of pride and patriotism in the Afghan commandos I met. They were fighting to liberate their country from the Taliban and that was as far as they wanted to go. I did not get the sense that if they won, there would be large numbers eager to keep fighting somewhere else.
Plus, as I mentioned, Russia/Soviet Union battered Afghanistan in the 1980s, and more recently Russia provided not-so-covert support to the Taliban. So, my sense is there is a limited subset of the Afghan commandos who would be willing to join Putin’s army.
According to an Afghan general quoted by The War Zone, Russia is hoping to recruit 3,000 Afghans in the short run and maybe as many as 5,000. So, we’re talking about a brigade, and roughly 10 percent of the former commando population.
Let’s say Putin is successful. The next question is, would 3,000 former Afghan commandos really be a game changer as the Afghan official said to Foreign Policy?
In a word, no.
Russia is in the process of mobilizing 300,000 additional Russian reservists — and some not-so-willing conscripts — to bolster the north of 100,000 troops already in Ukraine. So, the Afghans would be 1 percent of the reinforcements. Is that game changing?
Then, there are claims that these Afghans are elite fighters with extensive U.S. and U.K. training and therefore inside knowledge of western tactics, techniques, procedures, and technology.
A House Republican Report made such claims last year.
“Given their unique knowledge of U.S. intelligence operations, these Afghan personnel could potentially present a risk to U.S. security should they be coerced or coopted into working with an adversary, including international terrorist groups such as ISIS-K or state actors like China, Russia, and Iran,” the report stated.
“Could potentially” is the operative phrase.
While the Afghan special forces were elite by Afghan standards, they were far from Seals or Green Berets. They were equivalent to light-infantry forces trained for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. They were fighting a low-tech adversary in a permissive environment. Afghan commandos had overmatch against the Taliban and terrorists, but obviously they were not enough to turn the tide in Afghanistan.
They were not conducting combined arms operations using tanks, HIMARS, sophisticated drones, and other weapons in play in Ukraine. Sure, they had training in intelligence — signals and human — and they had some organic capabilities to call in air strikes. They certainly saw how U.S. forces conducted counterinsurgency operations using some sophisticated weapons and technology.
But they were not given all the good stuff. They always wanted more exotic weapons and kit, but the international community gave them no more than what they needed for the counterinsurgency fight, not a major-power conflict.
One of the ongoing concerns in Afghanistan was equipment provided to the Afghans ending up in the hands of the Taliban, so even things like night-vision goggles were provided to the Afghans in limited supplies. Afghan forces were not working with all the best gear that they would be facing in a fight in Ukraine.
It’s a stretch to say the Afghan commandos have intimate knowledge of U.S. and western tactics and weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine that would give Russia a significant boost.
Keep in mind that Russian special forces, or spetsnaz, haven’t fared well in Ukraine where they know the terrain, culture, language (for the most part), and a lot of the military systems and technology they were up against in the early months of the fight. How are 3,000 Afghans — who don’t speak the language, will be integrated into Russian units with questionable leadership and low morale, will be given lousy equipment, fought a low-tech enemy that went to ground in the winter, and haven’t had any training in more than a year — going to turn the tide in a major drone and artillery ground war in Ukraine?
They aren’t.
So, let’s look at this reporting for what it is: justifiable outrage over the plight of former U.S. allies who are struggling to survive. Russia and Iran see them as ripe recruits and that highlights how vulnerable they are.
Be outraged that the Afghans who risked and committed the most to the United States effort in Afghanistan have been hung out to dry. But let’s not use hyperbole — the notion that former Afghan commandos are going to deliver victory for Putin — to fuel the outrage. There is already plenty of justification for the outrage.
However, you might want to keep some outrage in reserve, because sooner or later, the Syrian Democratic Forces — the Kurdish-led counterterrorism force the United States stood up in eastern Syria to fight ISIS — are going to be in a similar situation as the Afghan commandos. Let’s hope that the United States comes up with a better plan to manage the denouement in Syria so it doesn’t leave another partner force hanging.
Image credit: Afghan commandos conduct a helicopter assault force mission Sept. 7, 2013, at Shurgerd Village in Herat province, Afghanistan. The Afghan Commandos are assigned to the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command's 2nd Special Operations Brigade. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Richard B. Lower/Released)