Follow us on social

Commandos-scaled

US-trained Afghan commandos join Russian campaign in Ukraine

This is what happens when we leave our friends behind.

Analysis | Asia-Pacific

According to two key reports by Foreign Policy and Associated Press this week, Afghan commandos trained by the United States military during our war there are going to fight Ukrainians on behalf of a Russia for $1500 a month.

“They don’t want to go fight — but they have no choice,” said one of the former Afghan generals who spoke to the AP, emphasizing the fear the commandos have of being deported back to Afghanistan. “They ask me, ‘Give me a solution. What should we do? If we go back to Afghanistan, the Taliban will kill us.’”

So this is where the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the withdrawal, and Washington's failure to keep these men and their families safe from Taliban vengeance has left them: fighting for the descendants of the former Afghan enemy (the Soviet Union) in a Ukrainian hellscape 3,000 miles away.

While there are tens of thousands of Special Immigrant Visa holders/applicants (translators and others who worked closely with the U.S. State Department or military over a 20-year span) still waiting to leave Afghanistan, the soldiers headed to Ukraine are among the 20,000-30,000 Afghan commandos who worked with U.S. forces but do not qualify for an official ticket out of the country because they did not technically work for Uncle Sam.

These men were stood up, trained, and paid for with American taxpayer dollars, but that doesn't matter, according to the AP. While "a couple of hundred" were airlifted out during the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, the remaining are getting out any way they can. Afghanistan, writes AP reporter Bernard Condon, is rife with stories of Taliban fighters going door-to-door looking for these guys, "torturing or killing them, or doing the same to family members if they are nowhere to be found."

So the Russians, who need all recruits they can get, are reportedly bringing these Navy SEAL/Green Beret-trained commandos in. No one knows how many. Another irony is that these trained fighters, considered among the fiercest in Afghanistan, will be facing Ukrainian fighters, also trained by U.S. special forces. Perhaps, they may even face their former American partners, many of whom have gone to Ukraine to fight the Russians.

We talk about Great Power politics, but this is Great Power abuse. Now, our former battlefield compatriots will be killing Ukrainians, the very people we are supposed to be aiding, or vice versa. While Biden has so far kept U.S. troops from the ground there, our hands are far from clean.


Afghan Commando forces armoured convoy leaves toward the front line, at the Ghorband District, Parwan Province, Afghanistan June 29, 2021. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani
Analysis | Asia-Pacific
Latin America's hidden role in shaping US foreign policy
Top image credit: President Getulio Vargas of Brazil confers with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at a conference aboard a U.S. destroyer in the Potengi River harbor at Natal, January 1943 (via US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Latin America's hidden role in shaping US foreign policy

Latin America

For much of the Washington D.C. foreign policy apparatus, Latin America — a region plagued by economic instability, political upheaval, and social calamity — represents little more than a headache or an after-thought.

Not for Greg Grandin.

keep readingShow less
Hiroshima
Top image credit: Dennis MacDonald / Shutterstock.com

Symposium: Why was Japan the only nuclear holocaust in 80 yrs?

Global Crises

Eighty years ago today, August 6, 1945, the U.S. military dropped an atomic weapon nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in a blast equivalent of 15 kilotons of TNT, killing approximately 66,000 people immediately and some 100,000 more, the vast majority civilians, by the end of 1945.

Three days later, the U.S. deployed another nuclear bomb — this one “Fat Man” — on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, leaving upwards of 80,000 people dead by the end of the year.

keep readingShow less
Paul Biya
Top image credit: Cameroonian President Paul Biya, July 26, 2022. Photo by Stephane Lemouton/Pool/ABACAPRESS.COM via REUTERS

How an aging despot's grip on power could unravel Central Africa

Africa

A few weeks ago, 92-year-old Cameroonian President Paul Biya announced his intention to run for an eighth term in the country’s forthcoming election. This announcement, shocking, albeit widely anticipated, is already fueling fear that the country’s stability could be at risk, with wider implications for regional security.

The aged leader, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist since 1982, is easily the oldest president anywhere in the world. Indeed, only a few Cameroonians alive remember a time without Biya in power. Yet recent health scares seem to suggest that he may have reached the limit of his natural abilities. In 2008, his regime carried out a constitutional amendment to annul the two-term limit — clearing Biya’s path to rule for life through elections that, although regular, have been neither free nor fair.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.