The Afghan Army’s US-trained light infantry force, which has fought alongside US special forces and other allied forces for nearly 20 years against the Taliban, is being recruited by the Russian mercenary “Wagner” paramilitary company to make a difference. that Russia needs on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Members of the elite Afghan National Army Commando Corps, abandoned by the United States and Western allies when the country fell to the Taliban last year, say they have already been contacted with offers to join the Russian military to fight in Ukraine.
Afghanistan’s 20,000 to 30,000 volunteer commandos were left behind when the United States ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021. Only a few hundred senior officers left when the democracy collapsed. Thousands of soldiers fled to regional neighbors as the Taliban hunted down and killed loyalists to the collapsed government. Many of the commandos who remain in Afghanistan are in hiding to avoid capture and execution.
The United States spent nearly $90 billion building up the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. Although the force as a whole was incompetent and surrendered the country to the Taliban within weeks, the commandos were always held in high regard, having been trained by the US Navy SEALs and the British Special Air Service.
Emblematic of the commandos’ pyrrhic success was the battle of Dawlat Abad, where an Afghan commando unit fought the Taliban while waiting for reinforcements and supplies that never came in June 2021. The US-trained major who led the unit, Sohrab Azimi ), became a national hero when it was revealed that he had only rested for three days after 50 consecutive battles before going into his final battle.
Now unemployed and desperate, many commandos are still awaiting resettlement in the United States or Britain, making them easy targets for recruiters who understand the “band of brothers” mentality of highly skilled fighters. That potentially makes them easy pickings for Russian recruiters, Afghan security sources said. A former senior Afghan security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their integration into the Russian military would be a “game changer” on the Ukrainian battlefield as Russian President Vladimir Putin struggles to recruit for his war and allegedly using the infamous Wagner Group, a private mercenary company, to recruit Afghans to the front.
Wagner behind the recruitment
Wagner is a shadowy organization that officially does not exist, but is believed to be run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an associate of Putin, who probably finances it through the GRU military intelligence service. It is said to have first appeared in Crimea after Moscow annexed the region in 2014 from Ukraine, and has since appeared in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in Africa. Prigozhin was recently filmed signing up prisoners in exchange for commuted sentences to bolster Russian lines in Ukraine.
Some former commandos report being contacted via WhatsApp and Signal with offers to join what some experts have described as a Russian “foreign legion” to fight in Ukraine. News of the recruitment efforts has raised concerns in Afghanistan’s former military and security circles, with members saying as many as 10,000 former commandos could be amenable to Russian offers. As another military source said: “They have no country, no job, no future. They have nothing to lose.” “It’s not difficult, they’re waiting for work for $3 to $4 a day in Pakistan or Iran or $10 a day in Turkey, and if Wagner or any other intelligence agency comes to a man and offers 1,000 dollars to be a fighter again, they won’t turn it down. And if you find a guy to recruit, he might get half his old unit to join because they’re like brothers — and pretty soon, you’ve got a whole platoon.”
