PERRYSCOPE
Perry Diaz
A
New York Times news story claiming that a unit of
Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) was paying a bounty to Taliban fighters to
target and kill American troops in Afghanistan has created a political
maelstrom never before seen. Claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin had approved the bounty policy, the
scandal caught President Donald Trump napping.
According to the news account, Trump was briefed in March
and was subsequently presented with a number of possible policy responses, but
did not take any action. Trump’s inability
to respond to a national security incident quickly spread in other media
outlets, which unleashed a tsunami of criticism against Trump.
But Trump, in his usual modus operandi, denied receiving
the intelligence report, which was contained in a
Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) given to him on February 27,
2020. Neither did Vice President Mike Pence and Chief of Staff Mark
Meadow been briefed on the matter.
The PDB is a compendium of foreign policy and national
security intelligence compiled for Trump to read and
to take action if necessary. However, Trump admitted in a
tweet, "Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info
credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP." So,
who’s telling the truth?
The
NYT further said, “Subsequent news reports identified the GRU operatives as
members of a secret group called Unit 29155. The unit is believed to be tasked
with foreign assassinations and other covert activities aimed at destabilizing
European countries.” But the Kremlin and
the Taliban denied the report, which is expected. Do you think
they’ll admit it?
The next day, the Pentagon issued a statement,
declaring, "The Department of Defense continues to evaluate intelligence
that Russian GRU operatives were engaged in malign
activity against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan.”
However, interrogations
of captured Taliban fighters played a central role in making the intelligence
community confident in its assessment that the Russians indeed paid bounties in 2019.
The NYT report added,
"Two officials said the information about the bounty hunting was ‘well
known’ among the intelligence community in Afghanistan, including the CIA’s
chief of station and other top officials there, like the military commandos hunting the Taliban."
Charlie Wilson’s War
It is a fact that Russia is actively
supporting the Taliban with cash, arms, supplies, and intelligence just like
the way it was in the 1980’s during the Russian occupation of
Afghanistan.
As the story goes, then-Congressman Charlie Wilson was drawn into the
Afghan resistance against the Soviets who were fighting the fierce mujahideen
in the mountains of Afghanistan.
As a member of the House
budget subcommittee who dealt with secret funding for the CIA, he used the position to secure a doubling of aid to the
mujahideen. Over the years, he would channel hundreds of
millions of dollars to the Afghan resistance, saying he wanted "to make
sure Afghans could do everything possible to kill Russians, as painfully as possible."
The weapon of choice used
by the mujahideen was the shoulder-fired Stinger missile, which was lethal
against the low-flying helicopter gunships employed by the Soviets to terrorize
the local population. By 1986, Stingers were arriving by the planeload in Pakistan for delivery to the mujahideen.
Three years later, Moscow
concluded the war was unwinnable and pulled out. Less than three years after
that, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Asked in an interview on US television
about the turn of the war's tide against Moscow,
Pakistan's former president Zia ul-Haq replied, "Charlie did it.” The
whole episode was immortalized in “Charlie Wilson’s War,” a 2007 motion
picture.
As you can see, the
Russians will never forget what happened to them in
Afghanistan in 1986. Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1990, the Russians switched roles with the Americans – they’re siding with the
mujahideens in fighting the American occupation. The Russians are
doing to the Americans exactly what The Americans did
to the Soviets back in the 1980s.
American casualty
The U.S. had 17 soldiers killed in action in
Afghanistan in 2019, and another four killed so far in 2020. In
February, the U.S. reached an agreement with the Taliban to end the fighting. In return, the U.S. agreed to pull out
of Afghanistan. The Taliban has refrained from attacking U.S.
military personnel since then.
The Russians have been
paying bounties to the Afghans for some time now without causing
criticism. But that was then when it was
the only reason to motivate the Afghans to kill Americans. It’s all
about money.
The mighty Dollar flooded
the country for years, paying off the warlords who commanded the loyalty of the
Afghan mujahideens. And the GRU – the CIA’s Russian counterparts – keeps account of the bounties paid, which were as
much as $100,000 per each American killed.
A recent report pinpoints
a key figure in the alleged Russian-backed bounty program. The NYT named
Rahmatullah Azizi as a “central player” – a middleman
-- in attempts to launder money from Russia into Afghanistan in order to make
payments to the Taliban.
Attempts were made to
detain Azizi at least six months ago, but it was believed that he has fled to
Russia. Security forces found roughly
$500,000 in cash in one of his Kabul properties.
It’s interesting to note
that Aziz was once a beneficiary of U.S. largess but has turned to the
Russians. Azizi, a small-time drug smuggler, reportedly was a former
recipient of U.S. contractor cash for road building
in the early days of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, until he allegedly found
more lucrative options. I guess he found switching sides more
profitable.
Meanwhile, with the
entire hullabaloo about the alleged Russian bounty program, one wonders how money was transferred from Russia to the Taliban
bounty killer?
According to three
American officials familiar with the intelligence, electronic data showing
large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s GRU to a
Taliban-linked account, which supported their
conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing American and NATO
troops in Afghanistan.
These electronic
intercepts from GRU down to the Afghan middlemen are then sent to the bounty
killers themselves before they were dispatched to
target the American and coalition forces. These intercepts are
electronic paper trail for “services asked and services rendered,” which is
proof that the Taliban were “killers for hire.”
This disclosure further
undercut White House officials’ claim that the
intelligence was “too uncertain” to brief Trump on February 27 in a
PDB. But Trump seldom read the briefs provided by intelligence,
which by not doing so could undermine the country’s national
security.
However, Trump whose relationship with Putin is like a puppy dog that lovingly
licks his master’s hands is not too keen about reading the PDB’s, particularly
if the subject is Russia or Putin. Trump on many occasions had shown aversion
or displeasure to reading anything – usually bad –
about Russia, which makes one wonder: Is Putin keeping a secret that would – or
could -- horrendously embarrass Trump, which could create a national scandal of
the magnitude 12 on the Richter scale?
So it’s no wonder that
Trump offered Russia to rejoin the G7 back in March –
after the Russian bounty PDB was released -- and ordered the withdrawal of
9,500 American troops from Germany, all the while the Taliban were killing
Americans at the behest of Russia, which makes one wonder: What would Trump going to do now that the cat is out of the bag?
With the American
people’s outrage over Russia’s bounty killing in full view, Trump is still
unmoved like a Robert E. Lee monument erectly standing still, a relic of the
country’s divisive civil war. He’s still preoccupied with his
re-election campaign, which is hurting badly due to
the pandemic and ongoing street protests for racial justice.
However, the Pentagon and
the intelligence community began looking at options on how to deal with the
situation, including economic sanctions, which could further cause damage to Russia’s economy. But the bottom
line is: It’s up to Trump the commander-in-chief to decide which way to
go.
But Trump to this day
isn’t convinced that his BFF – best friend forever -- Putin has stabbed him in
the back. He calls the Russian bounty
program a “hoax.” “The Russia Bounty story is just another made up
by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party,”
Trump said. “The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the
story itself.”
Trump’s bullheadedness makes one wonder: Is he putting the security of
the nation on perilous ground?
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